Brooklyn Heights Blog

BHB  entertainment newshound Inna Chumikova sent us a photo and video of yesteday’s fake car crash on Cranberry and Willow Streets shot for the FX drama Damages. She comments, “Driver of the car was quite dizzy after crash other than that
everything went smooth.” Video after the jump. Read more »

Rezso Kasztner, a Jewish-Hungarian journalist who helped Jews escape Nazi occupied Hungary but later was wrongly accused of collaboration with the Third Reich by an Israeli court — leading  to his assassination – is the subject of a biopic by Gaylen Ross of  Brooklyn Heights.

The Brooklyn Eagle interviews Ross this week.   It notes that she was able to track down and interview Kasztner’s assassin, Ze’v Eckstein, for the film.

Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis, is currently playing at Cinema Village in Manhattan.

FX drama drama Damages will “reenact a car crash” in the vicinity of Willow and Cranberry Streets on Thursday (11/19) according to a notice distributed in the area on Wednesday.

Read the entire memo after the jump. Read more »

As previously announced here, the Plymouth Church Yankee Fair will be held at the Church, Hicks and Orange Streets, tomorrow from 10:00 to 4:00, rain or shine. We have just received the following message from the Church: Read more »

Starting this afternoon, the Brooklyn Women’s Exchange (disclosure: your correspondent’s wife is active in the work of the Exchange), a not-for-profit, volunteer organization that provides a marketplace for locally handmade craft goods, including infants’ and children’s clothing, toys, housewares and gifts, and books by local authors or about local subjects, will host its annual “Holiday Thursdays”, during which artists, craftspeople and authors will be present to demonstrate their techniques or crafts, or read from and sign their books. The Exchange is located at 55 Pierrepont Street, between Henry and Hicks. The schedule of events is as follows: Read more »

Five Dutch Days is an annual “celebration of  the continuous influence of Dutch arts and culture in New York City and brings together arts and cultural organizations from across the city,” begun in 2005 by 3 directors of Dutch-American sites in New York City.

Brooklyn’s part in this event commences at 6:00 this Thursday evening, November 12, at Borough Hall, with a welcome from Borough President Marty Markowitz, and a preview of the HOME/LAND art project, a portion of which will be at the Old Stone House this weekend.

Thursday’s festivities then move to the Brooklyn Historical Society, Pierrepont and Clinton, for a viewing of Pages of the Past: The Breukelen Adventures of Jasper Danckaerts.

On Saturday, November 14, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., BHS, along with Studio in a School, will present a workshop for adults and kids beginning with a tour of “Pages of the Past”, after which participants will “create their own journals using paints and pencils with Studio in a School artists.” A $20 ticket gets in one adult and two kids; each additional person is $5.  If you wish to attend, please RSVP to 718-222-4111, ext. 250.

Finally, on Sunday, November 15, beginning at 3:00 p.m., BHS will present a concert by BaroQue Across the River, titled “A Touch of Dutch: Mythical Adventures & New World Journeys”. Admission is $25 for adults, $20 for students and BHS members. Seating is limited; please RSVP to 718-222-4111, ext. 250.

Director Paul Wohlstetter has posted a music video he shot with Canadian singer/songwriter Carmine Paradiso here in Brooklyn Heights. He writes on YouTube:

I spend the summer in New Jersey and New York. I had produced an album for a guy named Carmine Paradiso. We had a great time making his CD. He came to visit me and he had a song called “Brooklyn”, so we decided to go to my old stomping grounds.. near Brooklyn Heights, the Promenade and the Brooklyn Bridge one sunny day and shooting some footage. Alot has changed since the early nineties. We had a lot of fun and we ended up turning into a music video for his song. We also shot footage for a song called “Catey” all over Jersey- which is the second music video. For a guy from Vancouver, Carmine seems to have a lot of New York in him… call us the Brooklyn Brothers.

Brooklyn Heights resident, former NYC mayoral candidate and world renown author Norman Mailer died two years ago today from acute renal failure.   We thought it appropriate to remember the cantankerous writer with this clip from his 1968 appearance on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. Read more »

Brooklyn Heights resident and hipster icon Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT talks about living in the neighborhood and making the band’s new album with New York Magazine (they’re on the cover this week with other NYC bands):

New York Magazine: I never thought I’d live in Brooklyn Heights,” muses MGMT front man Andrew VanWyngarden, as he strolls down the leafy streets of the neighborhood where he resides, and where MGMT are finishing work on Congratulations, their follow-up to 2007’s neopsychedelic smash, Oracular Spectacular. “But it’s a nice place to come down off tour.”

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 »