WHAAAAAAT the heck is THIS?

http://imdb.com/title/tt0360323/

Ya know what it is? I'll TELL you what it is! It's a movie called 10th and Wolf, which Joe M. ran across on the Internet Movie Database while he was reading about something else.

People who know me offline and are familiar with the 19148 ZIP code will be well aware why the name of that intersection bears meaning for me. For those who don't know Philadelphia well, that is the name of the intersection where I lived for several years. "Lived", as in "gave that intersection when asked 'Where in South Philly are you from?' ", as well as "gave it to friends as the primary landmark to look for when they were driving to my home for the first time" . I also grew up and spent the first 20 years of my life describing an intersection a block away from there (10th & Ritner) as the Place Where I Lived. (As you can see, when my family moved out of the house where I grew up, we stayed in the same neighborhood.)

In fact, as I have three relatives who live within a block of 10th and Wolf today, I *still* have strong ties to that very intersection.

So when Joe M. called me to let me know that this movie is in existence, I went to check IMDB for myself. It is set in South Philly, right in My Old Neighborhood, and it's about a neighborhood guy's troubles with a mob boss in the area.

Let me tell you how much I DON'T appreciate having my former home depicted as Mob Central to the rest of the world.

I will, however, make an attempt to see the movie, if only out of curiosity. I'd like to see just HOW much of the portrayal is from the Land of Stereotypes vs. an attempt to represent a neighborhood full of hard-working people, many of whom are of Italian-American descent, who just want to live their lives in peace, and desire neither to cause trouble for other people nor to have trouble caused for them.

I'm also curious to see just how much on-site filming was done. I certainly did NOT hear from any of my relatives, two of whom could stand on their house's front step and look right at the real 10th and Wolf street sign, about the presence of any film crews in the neighborhood. That makes me think that if they DID film in the area, they probably did so during off-hours like late at night or VERY early in the morning, the way the first Rocky movie was filmed.

Sigh. Of all the intersections for them to use as the namesake of a movie that describes mob problems. Dang Hollywood, taking My Old Neighborhood's name in vain. They'd better have given the area a fair shake, or I'll be seriously PO'ed.