- published: 27 Aug 2015
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Downtown is a 1990 American police action comedy film directed by Richard Benjamin.
Police Officer Alex Kearney (Edwards) is a patrolman in Bryn Mawr, a rich plush suburb of Philadelphia until he stops an important businessman and his story of the incident is not believed. He is sent to work Downtown, the most dangerous, crime filled precinct in the city. Everyone there is sure that this 'by the book' suburb pampered cop is going to get himself and whoever is assigned as his partner, killed. Sergeant Dennis Curren (Whitaker) draws the unfortunate 'babysitting' assignment but when Alex's best friend is killed investigating a stolen car, Alex throws the book out the window tracking down the killer.
Though the plot of the movie references a Philadelphia suburb, Bryn Mawr, most of the exterior filming is done within the City of Philadelphia. The beginning of the film features Cresheim Valley Road, Stenton, and Germantown Avenues. This is in the Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill neighborhoods. However, there are a few early scenes that are filmed in and around Los Angeles. For example, the scene where Anthony Edwards pretends to pull over Penelope Ann Miller is filmed on Yale Street, in Claremont, CA. Later portions of the film are in the Fairhill and Norris Square neighborhoods which are now known as "The Badlands" circa 2000. Diamond Street is within this area, but Philadelphia police districts are numbered, not named for streets or neighborhoods. Any Philadelphian would enjoy trying to catch their street in the fast paced filming.
Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's core (or center) or central business district (CBD), often in a geographical, commercial, or communal sense. The term is not generally used in British English, whose speakers instead use the term city centre.
The term is thought to have been coined in New York City, where it was in use by the 1830s to refer to the original town at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. As the town of New York grew into a city, the only direction it could grow on the island was toward the north, proceeding upriver from the original settlement (the "up" and "down" terminology in turn came from the customary map design in which up was north and down was south). Thus, anything north of the original town became known as "uptown" (Upper Manhattan), while the original town (which was also New York's only major center of business at the time) became known as "downtown" (Lower Manhattan).
During the late 19th century, the term was gradually adopted by cities across the United States and Canada to refer to the historical core of the city (which was most often the same as the commercial heart of the city). Notably, it was not included in dictionaries as late as the 1880s. But by the early 1900s, downtown was clearly established as the proper term in American English for a city's central business district.
A film, also called a movie, motion picture or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques; by means of CGI and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these techniques and other visual effects. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to the industry of films and filmmaking or to the art of filmmaking itself. The contemporary definition of cinema is the art of simulating experiences to communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere by the means of recorded or programmed moving images along with other sensory stimulations.
The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry.