This is an image that has been associated with me or characters I’ve played for the bulk of my career. It’s a still from the first film I produced, Death Fish, which was shot in August, 1997. One of writer/director Carlos Sanchez Lopez‘s influences was Sergio Leone, especially the film A Fistful of Dollars:
When I was a kid, A Fistful of Dollars was on television a lot because westerns were still popular and Clint Eastwood was at the height of his superstardom in the 1970‘s. Also, it was only about 100 minutes long without commercials, so it fit perfectly into a two hour prime time TV slot. If Clint had a new movie out in theaters, Fistful of Dollars would be on The Million Dollar Movie all week, so I saw it a lot.
This video is a slideshow of photo highlights from the pro wrestling event Salvation, presented by House of Glory, an independent pro wrestling organization based in Queens, New York. The program is available to watch via streaming video at Fite.tv
If you have yet to be tested for COVID-19, you should make every effort to do so. There are many test sites throughout the United States now offering tests at no cost. The test itself only takes a few seconds. Check out the video to see a mobile test site set up by CORE in action in The Lower East Side to get a sense of what’s involved.
Some of you may know that I have been a Team Leader for New York Cares for a while. The last couple of years I’ve been leading projects with seniors and kids. When the pandemic shut everything down earlier in the year, my projects were included in those shut downs. I continued to volunteer from home, making wellness checks on seniors and vulnerable populations via telephone, and providing tech support to students who received iPads from the New York CityDepartment of Education for home schooling. (Full disclosure: I wasn’t actually able to provide tech support to students due to technical issues, but I tried and others did). For the last few weeks, I’ve been leading a project delivering groceries and PPE go bags to tenants at The Vladeck Houses on The Lower East Side.
smile and his Team deliver go-bags and Vladecks’ Residents’ Association President Nancy Ortiz explains the project
If you watched the video, Nancy mentioned that CERT also answered the call, and you saw how we coordinated our efforts nicely. I was invited to tag along and observe a similiar operation that CERT was running on Roosevelt Island this past Saturday. I didn’t take any pictures that day, but others did, so I’ll post pictures here when I get them.
Today marks the 9th anniversary of the passing of Elisabeth Sladen, who was best known for playing Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures and various spinoffs. The video below was posted today. Written by Russell T Davies, it plays like a short audio drama enhanced with visuals, telling the story of Sarah Jane’s funeral and some of her family and friends eulogizing her. It brings the feels.
If the embedded video doesn’t load, click to watch Farewell, Sarah Jane at YouTube.
Most of you know that I’m not really a film critic, but my friend who is asked my thoughts on Made In Hong Kong about a month ago, and I’m just getting around to posting them now. This isn’t really a review, just my opinion. I suppose that is a review, huh? Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it:
I wasn’t sure I had seen the film based on the trailer. The cast looked familiar enough and I had seen plenty of movies back then. Even though the trailer mentions that this if the first time Made In Hong Kong was released in the US, there were plenty of movies shown in Chinatown (not to metion bootleg VHS tapes and DVDs) that never had official American releases. I don’t even know the titles of many of the ones I saw back then. It also mentions that this is the firstindependent HK film, but I’m sure Tsui Hark would take issue with that.
Turns out, I had not seen the film before. The 4K restoration I saw looked like the movie was shot yesterday. It looked better than it would have had I seen it back in the 1990s, because in those days the 35mm prints were beat up by the time I saw them. It was actually a little disconcerting to me at first, but not everyone is going to have that issue. While it isn’t for everyone, I enjoyed the movie. Given the plot, it could have gone the extreme melodrama route like similiar gangster youth films of the era. The director chose instead to keep things grounded, focusing on the characters, their relationships to each other and the greater societies they inhabit, occasionally injecting some social commentary. I wouldn’t call Made In Hong Kong a bleak movie, but it does have that streak of fatalism prevelant in HK cinema leading up to the Handover and uncertainty about the future. It’s worth a watch, but not if you’re in need of cheering up.
My second oldest, Krystal and her partner, Matt, recently became foster parents to two young brothers. They came into Manhattan for a visit and the kids got to ride the subway for the first time. While waiting for the train, the boys each took some photos with my phone. One of the boys was trying to get a good grip on the phone because his hands were small and while he was futzing around with it, he took a couple of quick video clips.You can hear my mother shouting advice at him and Krystal gives me a compliment that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. I’m proud of my heirs, and in their own way they’re proud of me too.
smile 
You must be logged in to post a comment.