Posts tagged film

Film of 1960 World Series Game 7 Found in Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar

Old Film Site Breathes New Life (Post Gazette)

The Paramount Pictures Film Exchange is saved.

Pittsburgh’s Inexact Translations

If you read the Magazine section of yesterday’s Post Gazette, you may have noticed an ironic pairing of articles about the new, and inevitably disappointing sitcom set in Pittsburgh, “Romantically Challenged.”  The first article, “Love for Penguins behind City’s setting for ‘Romantically Challenged,’” explains creator, Ricky Blitt’s crazed enthusiasm for Pittsburgh Hockey, while the review immediately following the article begins, “The first thing for Pittsburgh viewers to know about ABC’s ‘Romantically Challenged’ is that it does not feel Pittsburgh-y.”  

So why is that Pittsburgh so often fails to translate with any degree of accuracy to television or film?  Or, maybe more accurately, why haven’t many people tried to make this translation?  

It seems to me that most of the time films and TV shows think of the city in two of the following reductive forms: 1. Pittsburgh as generic mid-sized city OR 2. Pittsburgh as “Hell with the lid off.”  Where the former makes no effort to consider the “place-ness” of Pittsburgh, the latter relies on out-dated stereotypes to construct the “Flight from [insert unsatisfactory hometown here]” narrative… Can’t blame them for trying, though, right?  

On the other hand, there have been a handful of films as of late that have utilized Pittsburgh more fully (think Adventureland, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, She’s Out of My League).  The city, in these films, is not presented as a caricature, nor is it used merely as a scenic backdrop; the place is intimately connected to the protagonist.

Of course, I don’t mean to make any kind of value judgement about these films based solely on this criteria - after all, I’ve been kind of unfairly using a lens of realism to examine genres that don’t strive for realism - but we are left with a number of questions concerning the way artists and writers develop these thumbnail sketches of our city - one of the biggest questions being, to what degree are steel and sports our inescapable representational modes? 

“My Tale of Two Cities” Trailer

This will be playing at South Side Works this Friday and Saturday.  It would be very unneighborly of you not to check it out.

More information and show times here.

Special thanks to Pop City Media for originally bringing this to my attention.

We’ll miss you, John Hughes.

Unstoppable, Runaway Train Headed Towards Pittsburgh

Looks like a “runaway train drama” called Unstoppable, starring Denzel Washington will be the first film to take advantage of the awesome new film studio in the Strip District.  While I personally hate these kind of films, a big budget movie like this is terrific news for the studio and the city.  Click on the link to read more.

Parts of Pittsburgh were used in the post-apocalyptic world of The Road.

… interesting that our city is both a “model of recovery” and a model of a post-apocalyptic world.

It seems like everybody I’ve talked to has said this movie was better than they expected, and I’d have to agree.  I was surprised to see them use some great shots of the city as well.  Shots near the bridge have a great rustic, if not gritty, quality to them that feel relatively authentic in their aesthetic.

While the basic plot of this film falls squarely into the “flight from Pittsburgh” genre, it’s not altogether reductive.  And at the same time, it’s difficult for me to say that the portrayal of the city is favorable, especially given James’s desire to move on to New York (which he eventually does).  But it’s also obvious that the filmmakers have taken notice of some of the unique landscapes and architecture of the area in a way that is a bit of a departure from previous portrayals of the city.

Pittsburghers in Star Trek

Zachary Quinto and Randy Pausch in the new Star Trek movie.

I’m eager to see this adaptation of Michael Chabon’s 1988 novel by the same name, but I’ve been hearing mainly negative reviews.  However, with respect to the image of the city in the film, a review that I read either in the Post-Gazette or The Tribune remarked that the city “has never looked better.”

Pittsburgh has so often beeen used in film as a run down town that the protagonist wants to get away from (see Flashdance, & Deerhunter).  In Chabon’s book though, we get a version of Pittsburgh that is far more complex — one that breaks outside the reductive image of it as an old steel town, or the rust belt’s Bedford Falls.