CLOSE UP Video Interviews

Two vacationing young couples from D.C. and the Philly area came out on the Cape May beach before 7 AM on the first day of spring to catch the sunrise. Because the beach faces more southerly than east, they had to position themselves out on a jetty to better see the sun peek above the horizon. One of them planted her phone in the sand to capture a time-lapse movie of the sunrise. Your correspondent had come to the beach at the same time to do the same! The friends had not yet visited Sunset Beach and your correspondent recommended an excursion there to witness a spectacular sunset from bayside on the west coast of the cape. Watch Cape May sunrise and conversation with vacationers here.

​As your correspondent was walking home, a guy operating a drone above was in the street opposite a white sports car idling in the driving lane. Maki Hristo has a mobile car detailing business. Before he and his partner started cleaning and detailing the sports car in a nearby parking lot they were filming the car while it was still dirty with a drone-mounted 4K camera for their aerial “before” shots. Both the “before” and “after” will likely soon be presented among the slick music videos showcasing their detailing talents on Instagram and YouTube @MakiMotors Watch car detailers make movie with 4k drone camera

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Participating in Renaissance fairs is what brought teacher Ken Nichols and student Ann Nicholson together in Nichols' current class through the Mount Airy Learning Tree, "Swashbuckling for Stage and Screen." At fairs around the country, Nichols would focus on swordplay, jousting and choreographing. He eventually earned certification in stage-fighting and now teaches the art at colleges and choreographs fights for theater productions. At the medieval fairs, Nicholson, alternatively focused on the dramatic portrayals and now hopes to add combat skills to her repertoire. Your correspondent signed up for the course fancying it might be fun to flourish a sabre like Errol Flynn. In class, we are learning and practicing an array of thrusts, slashes and parries with our blunt edged and tipped swords along with some footwork. We are working our way toward performing a convincing sword-fight scene and, with proper cuing, not getting hurt! Video of class stage-fighting with swords for theater and movies

When Tiffany Gaal is not selling popcorn or sweeping up spilled popcorn at the 100 year-old, one screen Hiway  [Movie] Theater in Jenkintown, Pa., she’s auditioning for or appearing in musical theater. After the early evening screening of “Jersey Boys,” the story of singer Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, your correspondent cajoled Gaal into singing while she was restocking the snack stand. She chose “Come with me” from the epilogue of Les Miz, the musical she is most desirous of performing in. For good measure, I got her to sing some of Valli’s hit song, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”  

Watch video here.

In the accompanying video, Andrew Heller, Gaal’s work partner at the Hiway, appears in a non-singing role.

Lillian Bijl (left) and Tara Bucci, Mt Airy USA interns, are going around the neighborhood stapling up posters for the popular “Moonlight Movies” series this summer. Starting with an outdoor showing of “Frozen” at 8:30 pm on June 20^th  in the park adjacent to the Lovett Library at Germantown and  Sedgwick Avenues , the series continues on Fridays there, and on Saturdays next to the Trolley Car Diner. At Lovett, moviegoers may patronize “Dining under the Stars” food trucks or bring their own picnic dinners. Mount Airy USA, Trolley Car Diner, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Valley Green Bank  and a certain big box store sponsor the  popular series of mostly G and PG rated films through August 16^th. For more information, visit http://gomtairy.com/events/moonlight-movies-in-mt.-airy.html.

Complete list of movies:

 Watch video here.

On Tuesday, May 21^st, at the home of Mary Moorhouse and Angela Griffiths on the corner of Ardleigh and Meade Streets in Chestnut Hill, Nena Eskridge and Fairleigh Dickinson University students began shooting an independent feature length film called “Stray.”

 “Stray is a dark psycho/thriller about a killer who decides to give up a life of crime to settle down in a small town to start a family. But first she has to find the right guy to help make it happen – whether he wants to or not.” This, according to the production’s Kickstarter fundraising page which shows 133 donors have already pledged $50,400 surpassing the $50,000 goal.

“Stray” features actress Michele Page (who played a punk girl in a bank  “Miss Congeniality 2”) as the lead Jennifer Davis and also tv and screen actors Annie Corley and Aaron Lustig.

A flier left some weeks ago through your correspondent’s mail slot alerted us that filming would begin today and continue through June 10^th. The crew will shoot scenes along Germantown Avenue, at the Mermaid Inn and one on June 6^th at the back of 213 E Meade Street, Eskridge’s house  (on the alley behind our house.) Everyone is welcome to “stop by and watch. Just remember everyone has to be quiet “

Stray trailer from nena eskridge on Vimeo.

Moviegoers attending the Chestnut Hill Film Group’s inaugural screening of the season this Tuesday evening were delighted by the artful musical accompaniment of veteran keyboardist Don Kinnear. Kinnear improvised as he watched, for the first time, two silent short films chosen by Jay Schwartz (founder of the Secret Cinema) and employed the operatic style of playing and interweaving themes assigned to different characters for the silent main feature he had seen before, W.C. Fields’ 1926 “It’s the Old Army Game.” With his electronic keyboard and a laptop loaded with a digital version of the Wurlitzer organ of the Virginia Theater in Champaign, Illinois  he reproduced the music, sounds and special effects (“toy counter”) the original audiences  in the 1920s may have experienced. Watch video interview here.

The Philadelphia Film Society is renovating the venerable Roxy Theater on Sansom Street downtown, installing new seats and screens and converting to a digital projection system. Marketing Director Katie Powell is excited that the Roxy could become a cultural, film epicenter for the year-round showing of art house, independent and foreign films. In partnership with the Philadelphia Film Office, the Roxy will mount “Filmadelphia,” a once-a-month showing of a film created and produced in Philadelphia. At her booth at the Inliquid “Art for the Cash Poor” arts show at the Crane Building, Powell was encouraging visitors to enter a raffle for the chance to win two free tickets to PFS’s “biggest, baddest” event, opening night at the Society’s premier project, the fall Philadelphia Film Festival. watch video interview here.

That was 1946. I was about 16 then. AND WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION? I loved the movie and I haven’t thought about it since until I looked and saw that it was playing here tonight. It’s interesting – about two-thirds of the way through the movie, I remembered what the ending was. It is a great movie. WHAT MOVED YOU MOST ABOUT THE MOVIE? As I look back, how great the music was at the time. Not just John Garfield, Joan Crawford but Oscar Levant. By the way, that was him in real life the way he was. He complained all the time he couldn’t sleep. Those were his lines that were really him. Ross Reese at the screening of Humoresque, at the Chestnut Hill Library Tuesday night film series. Watch video here.