God bless The New York Times, which has just given the Angelika Film Center the trashing it richly deserves. Oh sure, I could have done without the blah blah blah about how hip the Angelika used to be. (I note with some pride that I hated this place while it was still cool.*) And I object to the assumption, perpetuated in this article, that "newer" necessarily equals "better" where moviehouses are concerned. Often it does, especially in a city with as high a concentration of crappy little theaters as New York. But there are a number of older theaters that were built with comfort and quality in mind. Some of them haven't been subdivided yet into a multiplicity of miserable screens, and it would be a shame if theatergoers abandoned them completely to patronize the personalityless googolplexes.

Interesting tidbit -- the folks at IFC are apparently ready to start renovating the old, unlamented Waverly on Seventh Avenue downtown, across from the basketball cages. As locations go, that's a pretty good one.

* To be fair, the Angelika has upgraded in recent years. The last time I was there (for Irréversible and Spider) the sound system had a little more oomph and a little less eeek, and the seats were slightly less than utterly uncomfortable. I did, however, get hassled by an usher whom the popcorn guy had convinced I was double-dipping. I was innocent, and had my double-feature ticket stubs to prove it. In your FACE, buddy.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.deep-focus.com/pcgi-bin/MT-2.21/mt-tb.cgi/24

Comments

Post a comment