Brooklyn Heights Blog

Alexander Payne’s 2004 opus Sideways, which was a breakout role for Brooklyn Heights resident Paul Giamatti, has been remade in Japanese.  Director Cellin Gluck has unleashed his version of the film, with Giamatti’s character Miles transformed into the less edgy Michio, played by Fumiyo Kohinata.  The venue of the film is changed from Santa Barbara to the Napa Valley, which is more familiar to Japanese audiences.  That flip has at least one wine writer a little miffed and calling on Santa Barbara wine makers to try harder in making their brands more well known worldwide.

As for the movie itself, Japan Times writer Mark Schilling notes:

This is pretty much the approach of the entire film, which rounds off the original’s rough (that is, interesting) edges, particularly Paul Giamatti’s prickly wine-snob writer, while re-engineering the story for Japanese tastes.

This makes box-office sense, since a direct translation of the original would jangle local sensibilities like merlot in a sake cup. Gluck’s “Sideways,” however, has a play-pretend quality, like the Japanese boomers who dud themselves up in cowboy gear to listen to Hank Williams tunes at a club in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Not that there’s anything wrong with it — but you would never mistake it for the real thing, would you?

You really need to see the trailer… after the jump. Read more »

County of Kings, written and performed by Lemon Andersen, directed by Elise Thoron at The Public Theater through November 8th, is a tour de force coming of age story set primarily in Brooklyn, Kings County.  Produced by Spike Lee and the Culture Project (w/Steve Colman, Jayson Jackson, Tom Wirtshaffer), Andersen explodes onstage  “car-jacking a sonnet,” spitting, rhyming and dancing his way through a fractured childhood in Sunset Park that culminates with a young man finding his voice in the most influential cultural movement of our time, hip hop.  Read more »

The “Brooklyn Utopias” art exhibit at the Brooklyn Historical Society, or at least one of the works included, inspired a lively discussion here. This Sunday, October 25, from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M., the Society, located at 128 Pierrepont Street (corner of Clinton), will hold a roundtable discussion in which artists whose works are in the exhibit, and the exhibit’s curator, will debate the ideas motivating the art works with a panel of architects, urban planners, and community leaders. The event is free and open to the public.

The Los Angeles Times profiles writer-director and Brooklyn Heights native Akiva Goldsman today.  Goldsman, who grew up on State Street, was the writer behind landmark Hollywood flops Lost in Space and Batman and Robin.  What a difference a decade makes for this former neighbor: he’s now riding a wave of success that began with A Beautiful Mind.

Los Angeles Times: He recently directed the season premiere of the Fox series “Fringe” and is now lining up his feature-film directorial debut. And despite having written what is perhaps the most reviled comic-book movie adaptation of all time, he’s aggressively pursuing his childhood love of superheroes as the producer of five movies based on Marvel or DC comic books.
On closer inspection, comic-book fantasy and dark psychology are the touchstone themes of Goldsman’s career. It’s a tandem that might make a therapist smirk or reach for their notepad, and the same goes for the 47-year-old’s memories of his childhood. The writer is the son of child psychologists Mira Rothenberg and S. Tev Goldsman, and the nature of his youth was a key reason that Grazer used the writer for “A Beautiful Mind.”

“I grew up, essentially, in one of the very first group homes for what was then termed as ‘emotionally disturbed children’ — these were days when, unimaginably, childhood schizophrenia and autism were lumped together in the same population,” Goldsman said. “My parents founded this home, and I grew up there in this brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and my peers were, um, crazy. My definition of sanity is very labile; it’s flexible and open.”

Time Out NY photo

Time Out New York writes up Brooklyn Heights’ own Homeless Museum (homelessmuseum.org) in this week’s edition:

TONY: Seven years ago, conceptual artist Filip Noterdaeme and cabaret performer Daniel Isengart began making works for a project they called the Homeless Museum, located in their two-bedroom Brooklyn Heights apartment in the attic of a brownstone. The couple opened HoMu to invited guests in 2005, partly as a way of exploring the idea of actually living with art, and partly to thumb their noses at the pretensions of the art world.

The Heights Players present Candide, the musical adapted from Voltaire’s classic novel (note: Homer’s favorite).  They’ve uploaded a nifty promo video to YouTube.  The production continues through October 25th.  Tickets and showtimes available at the Heights Players website.

New Yorker writer/ Brooklyn Heights resident Tad Friend is interviewed in the Arizona Republic about his new book, Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor:

Arizona Republic: Question: What is a WASP?

Answer: The standard definition, “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” seems to me overly broad. It takes in people like Bill Clinton, who is technically a WASP, but doesn’t really fit anyone’s mental picture of one. Or Elvis Presley, for that matter. But the shorthand definition would be someone with a fancy name who went to a fancy school and grew up mostly in the Northeast.

The Wall Street Journal also spoke to Friend:

WASPs, Mr. Friend says in the book, won’t talk about money unless it’s to do with necessary expenses (that rules out any mention of income or elective expenditures). They name their dogs after liquor and their cars after their dogs. They tolerate family members’ eccentricities, as long as they show up for Christmas. And they believe in putting on a good face, especially in hard times.
The book originated with a New Yorker article Mr. Friend wrote in 2006 after the death of his mother Elizabeth Groesbeck Pierson, a complicated woman who put her dreams of writing poetry aside to be a good wife to Theodore “Dorie” Wood Friend III, an historian who became the president of Swarthmore College. His mother would later become an interior designer and painter.

As the weather gets crisper, your dog obsessed neighbors’ thoughts turn to the annual Howl-o-Ween Doggie Charity Costume Parade and Contest, organized by Perfect Paws and Friends of Hillside Dog Park.

This year, the event will be held on Sunday, October 25th at 1pm, beginning at the Remsen Street entrance to the Promenade.

It’s free to attend the parade, but if you want to enter your dog the cost is $25. All proceeds will be donated to nonprofit animal  causes, including a portion to Friends of Hillside Dog Park, Inc., which is the nonprofit that advocates for Hillside.

To the amazement and bewilderment of tourists and locals alike, the parade will march to the north end of the Promenade then cross the street at the corner of Columbia Heights and Middagh Street where a team of local celebrity judges will review the contestants starting around 2:00pm.

Fun will be had by all, including prizes and doggie bags for contestants. If you’ve participated in the past, you know what a blast it is. If you’ve never joined, come on down and have a good time.  We’ll have the usual contingent of costumed adults and kids, dolled up dogs, and drag queens.

The costumes are always imaginative and usually hysterical. It’s a fun way to spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon in the Heights.

Following the judging and the prizes, all contestants and their humans are welcome to burn off the stress of competition at Hillside Dog Park.

Tickets are now available at Perfect Paws at 102 Hicks Street, the corner of Pineapple Street. Tel: (718) 852-6200

You must purchase your ticket at least a day before the event to register your dog.

The String Orchestra of Brooklyn will be performing Saturday night at St. Ann + the Holy Trinity Church (157 Montague Street). Creative Director Eli Spindel will lead the Orchestra in Bach’s Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080, Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue, k. 546, and Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. The concert begins at 8pm and tickets are $10.

NYSD photo

The Brooklyn Heights brownstone of designer Kathryn Scott and artist Wenda Gu is featured in New York Social Diary:

NYSD: They are both organized and thorough to a point that fascinated us. Kathryn physically learned how to do various skills such as carpentry when the house was being renovated (one floor also serves as an office space) and, a linguist, she made sure she knew enough Chinese to get Chinese craftsmen to perfect her designs for various projects in China, where they also own property.

More photos at New York Social Diary.