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3/2/2004
Wanted to revive this thread. It'd be nice to have a working directory of art house theaters (on the to-do list).
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Just curious what kind of access people have to art house theaters and in which cities.
NY:
Lincoln Plaza
Lincoln Center (Walter Reader)
MOMA
The Quad
Cinema Village
Anjelicka
Sunshine
Film Forum
The Screening Room
some others but they arent coming to mind....
I'm from Canberra (Australia) and we have (arguably) 2 arthouse cinemas
Electric Shadows (I always thought that was a cool name)
and
Centre Cinema
There was the Valhalla in Sydney, but I think it's closed - multiplexes probably killed it. I feel abit ashamed that I don't know more arthouse cinemas in Australia
Of course, it all begs the question "What is an arthouse cinema?" The answer is simple: "One in which arthouse films are shown."
Catchya
The Tower management just this month bought into a multi-plex (five threatres) in downtown Salt Lake City which had been competing with the one theater art house located in a residential area on the outskirts of downtown. Finally, The Tower and its sister theaters are on the map to bring many more independent movies to Salt Lake City, the Capitol of Utah, the state where the Sundance Film Festival is put on in Park City, Utah only 45 minutes from Salt Lake.
FilmWurld and other internet sites are valuable resources for me. I live on the Oregon coast--a really beautiful area--but there are no art houses in this community. Portland is a hundred miles away. We do have a small neighborhood theatre called the Bijou, and the owners try to bring in “art house” films, but to survive in a small community with a competing six-plex they must show commercial flix. They do try to be discerning in their selection (to the extent that they can when competing with AMC for bookings). The Bijou also runs a six film (each twice in one week) “International Film Fest” three times a year. I’m recently retired from the Kansas City area where there were two film houses that showed “art films,” so I have gotten to the point where I have to rely on DVDs of new releases. By the time I can get them, they’ve been around for awhile.
Well we've got three: The Globe (named after Shakespeare's theatre), the Uptown (the best one of all. Very old & very cozy) and the Plaza. These valuable buildings regularly screen classics and standard/current art house.
I just saw the sing-along Sound of Music- I'd never seen it. Admission was $20- at first i thought it was too much, but after seeing this crazy musical with a house full of 40-something women shouting "now your seventeen" I have a strange affection for Maria & the kids....
I don't know about other art house movie theaters, but the one is Salt Lake City charges five dollars per ticket and the popcorn and Italian Soda are cheaper than most other theaters. Is this normal? I mean what a deal, a great movie and food for cheap, why go anywhere else?
The multiplex on South Beach devotes 2-3 screens to foreign film. Two cozy, little one-screeners: Absinthe and Soyka. My treasure is the Cosford Cinema, run by U. of Miami's film school and named after a beloved Herald film critic who passed in his 40s. Sound and projection are excellent and no food or drink are sold, just film. What we have plenty of here are film fests: Miami Intern. FF, Fort Lauderdale FF, Hispanic, Jewish, Gay and Lesbian, Brazilian, Argentinian, etc. What I don't get to see much are retrospectives, East European, and Asian Cinema. I buy a lot of Asian DVD on internet to compensate. The secret is out: South Korea has produced as many memorable films over the last few years as the rest of Asia combined.
As I mentioned, in this small community on the Oregon coast the movie opportunities available to most people in larger cities just aren’t there. However, it is amazing what we do have in this community of about 15,000 people. The owners of the Bijou in Lincoln City bought a duel manual theatre organ and for the past three and a half years have run a series called “Silents at the Shore.” Dave Parks, a theatre organist who plays for the Elsinore Theatre in Salem (75 miles away), and several other guest organists have accompanied a standard repertoire of silent films, including “The General,” “Steamboat Bill,” “Wings,” “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and “Faust.” They have also included some more rare fare, such as “The Red Lily” (1924) with Romon Novarro and Wallace Beery, and “Forbidden Hours” (1928) with Novarro and Renée Adorée.
The silents series is currently on hold as the driving force behind it moved away. However, silents accompanied by theatre organ continue to screen monthly at the Elsinore in Salem.
We have the home of cinema in Newcastle in the Tyneside Cinema. If it wasn't there I would have missed some of the best films I have ever seen.
There is so much more to cinema than multiplex fodder. I mean why do multiplexes show rubbish like Boat Trip for example when they could have been showing Donnie Darko?
Anyway the Tyneside Cinema rules and it is the centre of my cultural world, check it out at www.tynecine.org to see what there's on this month!
While there are not the resources of a larger city, I have developed a film group within a local pan arts organization. At 7:00 p.m. on the second Friday of each month I show a film using a video projector in the fellowship room of a local church (Congregational if you’re in the Lincoln City area). This is a free program, and it gives me something to do. I have an e-mail list of seventy plus, and we usually have between twenty and thirty people on hand. Several months ago there were about thirty on hand for Seven Samurai, which most had never seen. I prepare a four page illustrated passout (I’m a retired academic.). Before the film I show extracts from other films to illustrate relative points. Afterwards we have a good interchange about the film. Send me your address and I’ll send you a copy of the passout.
Tonight our film is BUTTERFLY from Spain. I’ll post my passout essay in the General Film Forum.
Oscar Jubis wrote:
The secret is out: South Korea has produced as many memorable films over the last few years as the rest of Asia combined.
Can you recommend some? Are there some that are more subtle than “Attack the Gas Station” and “Shiri”?
I probably won’t have to buy them because Berkeley has two great video stores, Reel Video and Movie Image, the latter truly independent, the former pseudo-independent.
The SF Bay Area has a lot of Landmark cinemas, which have helped the cineplexes wipe out the small art houses. They show good movies, but aren’t truly independent or offbeat in their selections. This remains an excellent area for movies, if less first-run than LA and NYC.
Thanks for the interest, Chris. These are easier to find North American releases:the period romance CHUNHYANG; Noir-meets-Art-School manhunt NOWHERE TO HIDE; Freudian,pomo, serial killer mystery TELL ME SOMETHING, and LIES, a mellower In the Realm of the Senses.
These are imports well worth seeking out:
Two "refined, exquisite, Renoir-Ozu-Rhomer melodramas" from Jin-ho Hur: CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST and ONE FINE SPRING DAY.
The anime MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI about 2 men reminiscing of their last summer together in a fishing village when 12y.o. and the alternative world they find inside an old lighthouse.
MY SASSY GIRL: a "low comedy of humiliation, with a whiplash romance bet. a schlub and a sadistic waif, that turns into an investigation of the suffering beneath the surface of all screwball".
The existentialist psychosexual horror of THE ISLE aka SEOM.
MEMENTO MORI: a ghost story/mystery/lesbian romance.
Others of note:the period epic MUSA,THE WARRIOR, political thriller JOINT SECURITY AREA, crime film FRIEND, and these dramas: HOLIDAY IN SEOUL(has been compared to Chungking Express), FAILAN(about a chinese immigrant), the Dogme 95 film INTERVIEW; HARMONIUM IN MY MEMORY; and LOVE WIND LOVE SONG.
If anyone has seen any of these, please comment.
Thanks a lot for these Korean titles. I've got a list now to take to the video stores and see what I can find.
Oscar jubis, you are a wonder. Thanks for this list. I know nothing about Korean film, so I’ll look for these titles. In case anyone else is interested, I cross-checked them with imdb, and here is more information on them. About half of them were available on DVD on Netflix. Thanks again.
CHUNHYANG (2000)
Directed by Kwon-taek Im
NOWHERE TO HIDE [Injong sajong polkot opta] (1999)
Directed by Myung-se Lee (I)
TELL ME SOMETHING (1999)
Directed by Yoon-Hyun Chang
LIES [Gojitmal] (1999)
Directed by Sun-Woo Jang
CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST [Palwol ui Christmas] (1998)
Directed by Jin-ho Hur
ONE FINE SPRING DAY [Bomnaleun ganda] (2001)
Directed by Jin-ho Hur
THE ISLE [Seom] (2000)
Directed by Ki-duk Kim
MEMENTO MORI [Yeogo goedam II] (1999)
Directed by Tae-Yong Kim & Kyu-Dong Min
MUSA, THE WARRIOR [Musa] (2001)
Directed by Sung-su Kim (II)
JOINT SECURITY AREA [Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok JSA] (2000)
Directed by Chan-wook Park
FRIEND [Chin goo] (2001)
Directed by Kyung-Taek Kwak
FAILAN (2001)
Directed by Hae-sung Song
INTERVIEW [...aka Dogme # 7] (2000)
Directed by Daniel H. Byun
HARMONIUM IN MY MEMORY [Nae maeumui punggeum] (1998)
Written by Young-Jae Lee
LOVE WIND LOVE SONG [Yeonpung yeonga] (1999)
Directed by Dae-yeong Park
The Tower Management that owns the The Tower theater in a small residential niche of Salt Lake City has bought a former Odeon Cineplex multi-plex theater in downtown Salt Lake City on a street aptly named Broadway (Third South). It has five movie screens, which dramatically expands the number of independent art films that can be shown! It was used recently earlier this month (January 2003) for showing some of the films from the Sundance Film Festival during the Festival.
the ones I've been to in LA:
The Egyptian
A beautiful theater from the classic days of Hollywood. Well curated and with quite a few appearances from directors/cast.
The New Beverly
Going tonight. All I know is that it's got a nightly double feature for $6. Tonight - Chinatown and The Tenant. Apparentally it's in danger of closing...
There are many others which I have yet to visit.
P
I walked by The Egyptian in L.A. (American Cinematheque). They were showing Lawrence of Arabia at the time. Hollywood Blvd., right?
Too bad I didn't have time to go in. The exterior of The Egyptian is stunning.
Yesterday I drove by a strip mall here with a new sign up for "Bollywood Theater". I'm intrigued. The environs are standard suburbia stuff, but the films being shown inside sound interesting.
Hey, J
I'm a recent devotee to Bollywood (1.5 years). We have a theatre dedicated to Bollywood here called the Moviedome. I go every couple of weeks when they show a new film. (New for me- the films are often many years old).
The themes are the same for the most part in Bollywood.
Now I watch them for the odd dynamite song or gorgeous starlet.
Salt Lake City has doubled its art movie theaters - Madcap is now operating out of newly renovated Odeon Cineplex multiplex housed in the Historic Trolley Square just a few blocks from downtown Salt Lake City. The capitol of Utah now boasts of eight movie screens for art cinema - one at the Original Tower Threater, four at The Broadway under Tower Management and now three more screens at Trolley Square.
So anybody wanting to experience independent films now has a great reason to move to Salt Lake City (though I must admit I have to drive 30 minutes myself to get there).
Actually, the theater is called "Bollywood Cinema 6", which is the perfect name for an Indian movie theater located in the heart of American suburbia. I'll have to check it out.
Tabuno, I was in Salt Lake City in December, went there to go skiing (and the skiing was phenomenal) but I was impressed with the city itself. Clean, beautiful, and friendly. I didn't make it to one of the theaters you mentioned, but we did go see "The Last Samuri" at The Metroplex. The theater had bean bags at the front near the screen, which was pretty cool. Just walk right by the seats and plop yourself down in front.
I'm from the Detroit area, and there's (unfortunately) very few arthouse theatres around here, as I'm sure is the case with most cities nowadays.
But we do have:
The Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak
The Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield Hills
The Fine Arts Theatre in Detroit
and the best of them all is the Detroit Film Theatre, located within the Detroit Institute of Art... This is not only my favorite place to go to see movies, but it's one of my favorite places to go, period. The Museum itself is absolutely gorgeous and has an amazing collection of all kinds of art, and the theatre is constantly showing little-known foreign/indie/art films, both new and old. They just got done screening Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin recently. Has anybody else ever been here?
Are you still in L.A., P?
The Egyptian is showing a Lars von Trier retrospective until the end of the month!
The Kingdom part 2 on the big screen!
For those passing through town in Salt Lake City, Utah and feel a little lost without your art film fix, here are the theater specifications for anymore who needs to feel more at home:
Tower Theater, 876 East 900 South.
Broadway Theater, 111 East 300 South.
(801) 321-0310.
www.saltlake filmsociety.org.
Regency Theaters, 602 East 500 South (in Trolley Square).
(801) 746-1555
www.Regencymovies.com
All seats $5.00 before 5:30 pm
Oops.
Website site address got chopped off.
Tower Theater, 876 East 900 South.
Broadway Theater, 111 East 300 South.
(801) 321-0310.
www.saltlakefilmsociety.org.
I feel pretty lucky, I live around 3 miles from the nearest Art-house cinema "The Chapter" but it's the only one in this area of Wales, none of the larger towns/cities certainly within a 20 mile radius of Cardiff have one. On average I use "The Chapter" around 6 times a month as opposed to around 8-10 times a month at the mainstream multiplex.
The only problem (and the reason I don't use "The Chapter" more often) is because it's awkward to get to, even though it's only a few miles the traffic congestion is so bad it's quicker to walk there which is fine in the daytime but not so hot in the evenings. Still I've seen some terrific films there, just this year I've seen the likes of:
Kontroll
Head On
Turtles Can Fly
Onibaba
8 1/2
Samaria
Maria Full of Grace
Vodka Lemon
Holy Girl and many more that would never have been in the multiplexes.
The website for The Chapter is www.chapter.org and they have a strong line up (although smaller than usual) for April.
Cheers Trev.
Another art house theater has been open in Salt Lake City, Utah for about a year now, located in the Historic Trolley Square, former home to the City's trolley system that operated until sometime into the middle of the last century, 602 East and 500 South. Regency took over from an earlier theater chain that went out of business. The five theaters have been refurbished and offer both art house films and mainstream films. Prices are little cheaper than other movie theaters in the City.