LA's Last Double-Bill Revival Cinema Hanging On By A Thread - Don't Let It Go Under!

[papibear]

Linked from the LA Weekly July 18-24, 2003 -- The Last Picture Show: Of Los Angeles’ great archival double-bill theaters, only Sherman Torgan’s New Beverly Cinema remains. Can this revival house be saved?

Love the photo accompanying the article: a double-feature of "The Wild Bunch" and "Once Upon A Time in the West".

Don't let places like this wither die, guys....seriously, we NEED revival theaters like the New Beverly Cinema, especially in Los Angeles. Do your best to support them!

[Dr. Shrinker]

The article didn't mention the Nuart theater...are they gone too? It's been years since I lived in L.A., but I used to the Nuart.

After moving to OC (yes, the O.C.), I was a regular at the Balboa revival theater, but they're long gone, too...

Of course, our hobby has something to do with the demise of these theaters...If I can watch a film in top quality in the comfort of my own home, it's hard to get excited about going to a revival theater...

[papibear]

Originally Posted by Dr. Shrinker

The article didn't mention the Nuart theater...are they gone too? It's been years since I lived in L.A., but I used to the Nuart.

After moving to OC (yes, the O.C.), I was a regular at the Balboa revival theater, but they're long gone, too...

Of course, our hobby has something to do with the demise of these theaters...If I can watch a film in top quality in the comfort of my own home, it's hard to get excited about going to a revival theater...

The Nuart is still open and showing films, but it's now a part of the Landmark arthouse cinema chain, so many of the films they show are first-run arthouse films (which is not a bad thing in itself, but...). However, they do still have Friday midnight movies at the Nuart (and at the Rialto in South Pasadena, also owned by Landmark). Check out this upcoming schedule of midnight movies!

At the Nuart -
Skekses vs. Gelfings in The Dark Crystal · Aug 15
Ron Livingston & Jennifer Aniston in Office Space · Aug 22
Keanu Reeves & Patrick Swayze in Point Break · Aug 29
Jay & Silent Bob in Kevin Smith's Mallrats · Sep 5
William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. · Sep 12
John Hughes's The Breakfast Club · Sep 19
Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs · Sep 26
Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Ed Wood · Oct 3
Diane Lane in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains · Oct 10

At the Rialto
Molly Ringwald in John Hughes's Sixteen Candles · August 16
Japanese animation! Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust · August 23
Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove · August 30
Nicolas Cage in David Lynch's Wild at Heart · September 6

By the way, my fellow SoCal'er (I'm an OC native, and BTW we NEVER call it "the" O.C. - that's just too pretentious and it was made up for TV anyway), I've done a bit of searching and apparently there's a plan to restore the Balboa Theater and make it a performing arts center (as well as a movie theater)!

As for preferring to see a film on your home theater system on DVD than seeing it in a revival theater -- not everyone lives in a palace, not everyone has a great home theater system, not every classic film is on DVD (and some are but with lousy transfers), and they haven't made a TV system yet (not even projection systems) that can match the size of a real theater screen (especially for the widescreen epics) and retain the image quality. That's why it's important that theaters like this still survive. Stadium seating and 20 screens under the same roof are hardly reasons to see the latest average film (let alone spend nearly $10 a pop for it) in a theater (compared with HT viewing), but for classic films -- as wonderful as DVD and Home Theaters can be, there's nothing like walking into a real classic movie palace and seeing a great classic film on a BIG screen. Few people have houses large enough to REALLY allow them to duplicate such an environment.

Some would say you could worship God in your own home and thus negate the need for churches, but they still build those, don't they? I wouldn't write off theaters juuuuust yet.