do the right thing location?

For a few shots in the film, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson created the look of the hottest day of the summer by lighting a can of Sterno and holding it underneath the camera lens. The heat waves drifted up and acted as a filter between the lens and the action.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6525-10-things-i-learned-do-the-right-thing

the Korean fruit and veg shop across from Sal's is labelled as being 159 Stuvesant. the ice cream truck that Da Mayor save the Da Butt kid from turns from Lexington onto Stuyvesant.

and that's the double truth, Ruth

I just watched this again on DVD and the transfer was straight garbage. fuzzy, soft, a yellow cast to everything. really shocking!

still one of the greatest films ever made. it feels so directionless yet it's so watchable and you never notice all the threads pulling tighter.

i had forgotten that this movie is like 75% people arguing with each other

which is perfect for a movie that turns on the X/King dialectic. what is the right thing? let's argue about it

turturro is low-key hilarious in this movie, like very very high-level comic chops

"anyone know which block this bitch was filmed on?"

it's lovingly rooted in a particular time and place obviously - bed-stuy, public enemy, magic johnson - but it also doesn't seem that dated?? some of this is a strange coincidence of retro fashion - jordans, sports jerseys, high waist tights etc - but i don't think that's all of it. we haven't moved on from this moment in a lot of ways. and that includes the jordans. the death of radio raheem is as current as it gets. the internet 'changed everything' but not really. we're sort of stuck here where this movie is, the same problems bedevilling us (and now a lot of new ones)

Criterion print is pretty delicious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDkpXPOqWws

.. also relevant FYI, the full Making Of doc which came with the Criterion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED9p5cvoKdU

we haven't moved on from this moment in a lot of ways.

Watched it with my kids tonight, they were both a.) shook by it and b.) legit amazed that something made 33 years ago felt so immediate and relevant. My oldest son asked me what exactly the moral was supposed to be, which led to a whole good discussion about how complicated all these things are.

Also of course they loved the neighborhood and all the characters in the community, the way it gives you the whole life of this block. And the colors, so many great images and compositions, it’s a great piece of filmmaking.

I’m not sure it has a moral. I think it’s a bit fatalistic in a way. But idk been a while since I watched it.

Incidentally, one of the minor weird things I remember noticing last time I saw it was that you could make out Brooklyn Lager in the convenience store. I had always assumed that came later, but apparently the brewery opened in 1988. Not sure if it’s presence had any intended significance.

Actually this viewing was the first time I noticed the Brooklyn lager, it surprised me.

Yeah, I agree there's not a moral per se, the film doesn't resolve the MLK/Malcolm tension, it ends with somewhat contradictory quotes from the two of them. But the thing that struck me this time was the last few minutes, the day-after scenes. It would have been easy and dramatically powerful to end with Smiley tacking up the photo in the burning pizzeria, but instead it gives us the aftermath — Sister Mother saying, "We're still standing," Mookie's inconclusive final exchange with Sal, and life on the block resuming its normal rhythms. The sense that we've been here before, we'll be here again. My younger son said, "It's like it predicted the future," and I said no, it just reflected its own present. But he's also right.