IN THE HEIGHTS (2021) - FULL LENGTH REACTION.
Added 2025-05-29 17:22:42 +0000 UTCComments
If there ever was a film that embodies the word "Celebration", this be it. I never get tired of the rhythms, the colors, the energy of such an amazing cast. I'm not surprised that Ms. Kemi's prescience ruled. She's such an accomplished detective. Once again, my thanks, Adam, for the opportunity to revisit this with Kemi.
Jim Schmitz
2025-05-30 06:11:47 +0000 UTCThanks for the amazing background info, Mr. Pacio.
Jim Schmitz
2025-05-30 05:58:40 +0000 UTCI moved to my neighborhood on the northern edge of Washington Heights and the southern edge of Inwood here in Manhattan in 2019. I had been a Spanish Major in my undergrad, and I studied abroad in Concepción, Chile, in the summer before my senior year. And this neighborhood reminds me very much of that study in Chile. There are three neighborhoods "officially" on the northern panhandle tip of Manhattan -- -- Washington Heights where the George Washington Bridge crosses the Hudson to New Jersey -- Fort George which is the valley nestled in the lowlands just north of the Heights proper, near the Revolutionary War Fort Tryon which George Washington briefly held at the start of the US War for Independence -- and Inwood, the (current) northernmost tip of the island of Manhattan where the Cloisters and Indian Hill Park are located, just across the Spuyten Duyvil creek from the Bronx. All three of them share the same basic cultural identity as Washington Heights, and unless you're a local, everyone else in the City just refers to all three of them as "Washington Heights". Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote the music for the musical, used to live in Inwood at the address of 5000 Broadway, which he uses as the name of his production company, and where he wrote In The Heights, Hamilton, and started production on Tick Tick Boom! his first movie directing credits. He was in the film as the Piraguas/Shaved Ice Cone street vendor. During the Blackout when Benny fires up the generator and Nina's father comes in, you hear him make a dispatch to the intersection half a block from me, to pick up someone in labor delivering a baby in the blackout. Fun Fact - because NYC apartment buildings take their street name from where their front door opens up, there were no residential buildings with that address on the intersection. (Now there is a new building converted from an old parking lot which DOES have the only residential building at that address, but it wasn't there when they wrote the film. The two crossing streets, though, Broadway and Nagle Avenue, are very well-known commercial streets with all the shops and everyone in the region knows the address because it's more or less right in the center of all three of the "Washington Heights" neighborhoods. I am happy to report that although yes, the CIty always gets more expensive each year, no part of Washington Heights (all 3) has fallen victim to Gentrification. Not like poor Harlem, to the south. The neighborhoods have all retained their basic same cultural identity. A stronghold of Hispano-Americano ethnicities. My own neighborhood is part of what is officially known as "Little Santo Domingo", the same way Mulberry Street on the lower east side is "Little Italy". I walk the neighborhood streets all the time, and every summer the sidewalks are full of just what you saw - folks sitting out on their stoops fighting the heat, lots and lots of tables full of older and younger men sitting and betting on Dominos games all day long. Nagle Avenue and Dyckman Street and then Broadway all the way up Inwood are all like constant street carnivals every weekend. Clubs and restaurants, lovely latin cuisine, and a mix of a lot of other races. We're also known as being relatively affordable, so a lot of the folks who are not Latinos who live in the neighborhood are involved in theater, dance, musicians, artists, and quite a few opera singers. Having heard that Kemi enjoyed most Abuela Claudia's song, "Paciencia y Fe"/"Patience and Faith", I am now going to go out and snap a photo of the 191st Street Station, the long-assed tunnel for the subway station and the ramp and stairs. It's one of the two subway stations that gets us downtown for work and play. In the Heights remains a very faithful depiction of the kinds of communities and ethnic diversity which rules these streets. And the neighborhood still hangs on, still very Latino, and still lovely and completely off the beaten path for most tourists, despite having the Cloisters Park right in the middle of it all. Look in the Community Chat for the photos soon. :)
Adam Pacio
2025-05-29 22:49:36 +0000 UTC
