Month: September 2008

A Real Hat

After a morning that saw me put a bid in on a spacious two bedroom apartment with a formal dining room in Bay Ridge – $10,000 down with 75% financing and a very adult activity, if ever I engaged in one – I decided to go shopping for a new hat. I’ve been wearing hats for a little over a year now: a straw hat followed by a light felt black fedora. Fashionable as it might otherwise be, a black hat clashes with the navy blazer I’ve taken to wearing lately. This is another dubious sign of maturity. As the Clash song goes, “You grow up and you calm down / You start wearing blue and brown.” A grey hat seemed in order, so I made my way to Bencraft Hatters. Bencraft has two locations in Brooklyn. The original is located in Williamsburg, not far from where my paternal grandfather […]

Woody Allen’s Later, Darker Ones

“Vicky Christina Barcelona” is the most thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half you could spend at the movies this season. At what point does Woody Allen’s “comeback” (as each of his last few movies have been hailed by critics) get to stick? Liberated from the upscale Manhattan locations that his characters could no longer afford, as well as from the crutch of casting himself or a famous impersonator as the romantic lead, Allen’s films have been consistently thoughtful, sober and darker than his proverbial “early, funny ones.” Bankrolled by the Spanish tourism industry, the film is set in a clearly booming Barcelona (note the construction cranes that dot the skyline), which gets top billing along with the two American tourists (played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) whose summer in the city fuels the plot-line. Vicky and Christina are propositioned by painter Juan Antonio for a weekend of art, wine […]