We’re feeling photographer and filmmaker Tone, who’s sumptuous work seem as natural and effortless as the amazing talent he chooses to collab with. Here’s a sample of that unique style. We’re guessing lovely model Alexandra Estevez is in front of the Canon 5D Mark II?
Veteran film actor Jeff Bridges must have licked his lips when he read the script for “Crazy Heart.”
The film offers him up the saucy role of protagonist Bad Blake, a fallen country music legend who hop-scotches the Southwest to perform in small-town bars and guzzle down his anguish with shots of whiskey from plastic cups. Bridges’ voice finds the character’s charm with a ragged Southern twang, even as his bloodshot eyes and flat-heeled gait beg for oblivion.
It’s the lovable loser kind of role that Bridges has nailed before in such films as “The Big Lebowski” and “The Fisher King” but in “Crazy Heart” it’s writ large with the archetypal drive of song lyrics and Oscar chases. The role screams for a best actor award. Quite frankly it’s worthy of one.
But much has been made of Bridges’ performance, and not nearly enough of that of his co-star Maggie Gyllenhaal. She plays Jean, a reporter who manages to fall in love with Blake during a two-night stop in Santa Fe, despite their 20-odd year difference in age and the grotesquerie of Blake’s alcoholic sweats.
Their love affair is believable for Jean’s almost childlike crush on Blake and his musical gifts that she has nurtured for years from afar. But it’s also believable for Gyllenhaal’s restraint. One moment she gazes up at Bridges like a little girl. The next she tempers that gaze with the experience of past affairs gone awry.
Jean is a single mother with a four-year-old child and a lot to lose if Blake tanks out on her. In the performance of a lesser actress, the character could easily become too weepy and scared to believably engage the danger that Blake and his lifestyle represent, or else too bitchy and overprotective when Jean starts to hold back.
Gyllenhaal stands toe to toe with Bridges. She adds wisdom and intelligence to Jean’s reluctance to follow Blake on the road or to immediately accept his invitation to visit him at his home in Houston.
This hard edge has a softness, too, that allows Bridges to establish a warm chemistry with her. This chemistry, of quick and restrained passion, takes their characters towards a more mature relationship than is commonly seen in love films and to a conclusion that reflects satisfying growth in both characters.
Yes, Bridges’ performance makes “Crazy Heart” a very moving experience. But the strength of Gyllenhaal’s, paired with his, is what makes it memorable.
“Crazy Heart” merits three-and-a-half out of four stars.
photo: Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal in CRAZY HEART (Photo by Lorey Sebastian)
As the Great Recession lumbers into 2010, New York City needs more resources and more support for single-parent mothers.
More than one in four children in the city are living in poverty, according to the New York Coalition Against Hunger. City government reports that two of every three children in poverty live in single-parent households, which are usually led by mothers.
While local and national government officials wrangle about expanding assistance programs and the Earned Income Tax Credit, nonprofits are doing their best to pick up the slack by directly targeting single-parent mothers for support.
One example is Raising Him Alone, a nonprofit that provides access to resources for single mothers raising boys. Raising Him Alone has offices in Baltimore and in Newark, from which it serves the New York-New Jersey area.
Matt Stevens, a co-founder and leader of the Newark office, said he receives 40-50 e-mails per day from single-parent mothers desperate for help. Mothers often speak of being abused by their sons or not knowing how to get their sons off the streets. Once he was approached by a grandmother in Brooklyn raising six grandsons on her own.
“There’s no quick fix,” he said during a recent interview. “You won’t solve these problems by just getting a mentor.”
Stevens and co-founder David Miller in Baltimore act primarily as information sources and as facilitators. They can link mothers to parenting, social service, financial literacy, and other resources anywhere in the country within 24-48 hours.
“We want to make sure that mothers who need help have someplace to go tomorrow,” Stevens said.
Webinars, articles, and YouTube videos on Raising Him Alone’s website offer resource listings and helpful tips, such as how to have discussions with children about sex or drugs. Single mothers also connect to one another through the nonprofit’s Facebook page and through workshops and networking activities. It has a database of over 4,700 mothers in just a year and a half of operation.
“One of our goals is to create safe places where moms can open up and support each other,” Stevens said.
The Open Society Institute has spotlighted the organization with a sizable grant as part of its Campaign for Black Male Achievement. Other funders are jumping on board, and overwhelming demand from mothers in 2009 has prompted Stevens and Miller to possibly open more offices in 2010.
The work of Raising Him Alone and other nonprofits serve as examples of how to respond to the considerable needs of single parent mothers in the city and across the nation. Although nonprofits cannot replace the role of government, they can point the way to more direct action and show us how to best make use of technology and limited funding as we move into a new decade.
photo: Mother and Daughter by bondidwhat via Flickr CC
Celebrated actor Christopher Walken makes his return to Broadway after ten years away with a new role in “A Behanding in Spokane” co-starring Sam Rockwell, Zoe Kazan and Anthony Mackie. The Martin McDonagh black comedy is scheduled for 16 weeks with previews starting February 16 and opening March 4th at the Schoenfeld Theater. If you’re a Christopher Walken fan, this is a great opportunity to watch him do his thing in a genre made for him.
Word is spreading fast around the ‘hood that the Jelly Pool Party, originally, famously held at McCarren Park, and unceremoniously moved to the redeveloped East River State Park, is now in danger of happening at all next summer. This according to the organizers themselves in a sky-is-falling email to their subscribers. They write:
The future of the Pool Parties at the East River State Park could be in jeopardy. After a very successful 2009 season with 8 weeks of free performances including Grizzly Bear, Girl Talk, The Black Lips, Dirty Projectors, Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, No Age, Mission of Burma, Beach House, and Simian Mobile Disco, news came from the New York State Parks Department and the Open Space Alliance that the East River State Park may not be available to JELLY for the 2010 season. This will ultimately put an end to the flourishing free summer series.
Senator Schumer rallies the folks at the Pool Party, photo Tim Griffith
Like a good blockbuster, there’s a hero emerging and he’s got juice. It’s Senator Schumer, a native of Brooklyn who’s already been quoted by the ‘Times with kind words for the pool party and a promise he’ll try his darndest to have it return to the waterfront in 2010. He also apparently rides his bike through Williamsburg.
“I happened to pass by the Jelly concerts when I was riding my bike through Williamsburg and was amazed at the thousands of people who lined the streets to come to the concerts,” the senator said on Wednesday. “People from every part of the country who had made their way to Brooklyn, enjoying music and one another’s company – it’s the best of New York. When I heard that the concerts might be canceled, I couldn’t understand why, given that this is exactly what our parks are supposed to be for, and I am going to do everything I can to see that they continue.”
If you’ve been a fan of the pool parties at both McCarren Park and most recently East River State Park, you owe it to yourself and your fellow music lovers to remind the good Senator how much fun it is to have that music blasting all summer.
You can Contact Senator Charles Schumer via his Senate Contact Page.
photo: (top) Jay Z, Beyonce Knowles and Senator Chuck Schumer credit: Michael Rusch
photo: Jay Z attends the Pool Party with Beyonce Knowles, Senator Chuck Schumer rallies the crowd. credit: Tim Griffith, BrooklynVegan.com
video: Beyonce and Solange Knowles rocks out to the Grizzly Bears performing at East River State Park, August 30, 2009
Solange Knowles, baby sister of you know who, is making her own name in the pop landscape. Her official debut album, T.O.N.Y. showed the Knowles family’s funkier, more retro side and now comes word that she’s gone indie rock. Brooklyn indie rock to be exact. Solange recently unveiled her remake of the Dirty Projector’s “Stillness is in the Move” (original Dirty Projectors version below). MTV approves:
She takes the original’s trippy groove, lays in a sample of Sou Mann & the Brothers’ “Bumpy’s Lament” and throws her own smooth croon over it. The result is somehow simultaneously a futuristic exploration and a supercool throwback, full of smokey sexiness and after-hours pomp.
It’s being reported that there’s no planned official release for the song and the posted version on pitchfork.com has been removed as requested by Universal Music. Given MTV’s glowing review, there’s a good chance a deal will be worked out. Hopefully llamas will make it in her version of the video.
First the assistant, now the intern – news of David Letterman’s trysts is about as predictable as his opening monologue. Hot on the heels of a revelation between the legendary comic and longtime staffer and occasional comic foil Stephanie Birkitt, a second woman has come forward. Holly Hester, an intern at the show has revealed a year long secret relationship in the early 90’s, even as David Letterman was with longtime girlfriend and now wife Regina Lasko.
Hester has been quoted as saying that she was “madly in love with him at the time,” and “would’ve married him”. David Letterman’s shocking confession came on national TV, after an ex-boyfriend of Birkitt, Robert (Joe) Halderman, saddled with financial debt from a divorce settlement, allegedly tried to extort Mr. Letterman for $2 million over the secret affair.
photo: Outside the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the Late Show with David Letterman is taped, NYC credit: kevinthoule via Flickr Creative Commons
The long awaited and fought after Bushwick Inlet Park may finally be moving into the reality phase as TransGas Energy Systems, which has fought for seven years to build an energy plant on the site, had their appeal thrown out by Appellate Court judges, it was revealed in New York Daily News. TransGas had proposed a 1,100 megawatt powerplant off North 12th Street, and according to the paper has revised their plans twice in response to the community uproar.
In its place are stunning plans by the Parks Department for a major “green” overhaul of the industrial brownfield into a 28 acre park, complete with soccer field, performance space, a scenic overlook, and in some renderings, a beach. Community organizers are elated, and are hoping construction of the Bushwick Inlet Park could begin as early as next Spring.
