Lawrence of Arabia Again–This Time in a CineMark XD Theater

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

Seems kind of crazy. I haven’t been able to go to the movies anywhere near as often as I’d like, lately. Yet I’ve managed to see the same film three times in the last four months. And that film is almost four hours long.

But it was worth it. Although I now own it on Blu-ray, Lawrence of Arabia really does deserve a darkened theater, a huge screen, and an audience of more than your friends and family. And this time, I had a chance to see it in a theater that’s really optimized for a big picture, digitally projected.

The theater in question was the Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD, and they screened Lawrence as part of their regular Wednesday Classic series.

But this was a special presentation. They screened Lawrence in their XD theater. XD promises a very high-quality digital presentation on a very large screen. They use Barco 4K projectors, a very bright image, and top sound. And sure enough, this was the best-looking Lawrence of Arabia I ever experienced.

For my other recent Lawrence experiences, see Great Projection Saturday, Part 2: 70mm & Lawrence of Arabia and The Digital Lawrence of Arabia Experience. Here’s what I say about the movie in my newsletter when it plays locally:

A+ One of the greatest films ever made. Stunning to look at and terrific as pure spectacle,Lawrence is also an intelligent study of a fascinatingly complex and enigmatic war hero. T. E. Lawrence—at least in this film—both loved and hated violence, wanted desperately to become something he could never be, and told himself that he was liberating Arabia while knowing deep down that he was turning it over to the British. This masterpiece requires a very large screen and either 70mm film or 4K DCP digital projection for its full effect.

The XD theater looked like a typical 21st century multiplex auditorium, but larger. The huge, moderately-curved screen recalled the big roadshow palaces of the 1960s–in other words, the type of theater in which Lawrence of Arabia was meant to be shown. The front row is set back a bit, making it just about perfect for me for this kind of movie.

I should mention that CineMark charges a premium price, $14.50, for XD presentations. But so did those big roadshow palaces.

An XD Theater

When the preshow started, I turned around and looked at the light coming from the projector. And my heart sank. Two light sources, one on top of the other, told me that the 3D housing was still on. The picture was bright, so I’m confident that the polarizing filters had been properly removed. I know that with a Sony 4K projector, running a 4K, 2D image through the 3D attachment results in a 2K image (click here for details). With Barco, I honestly don’t know. I called Barco and the theater, and got conflicting information. So I’m not sure if I’ve seen Lawrence of Arabia in 4K.

Update: It appears that the 3D attachment was left on, but it used the RealD-XL 3D system, which doesn’t reduce resolution the way the Sony does. Some image quality was probably lost, but it wasn’t significant. I definitely saw the film in 4K.

And it looked great–crisp, bright, and detailed. The occasional digital artifacts that marred a few minutes of the Castro’s December screening only showed up in only one shot. The large, curved screen made this very immersive film even more immersive. The sound was just about perfect.

A fair number of people showed up, although it wasn’t near a full house. The audience laughed and gasped in all the right places. Some, quite obviously, were seeing Lawrence of Arabia for the first time. Always a good thing.

Of course, you can’t expect a modern multiplex to offer the sort of showmanship you would get at the Castro. There was no curtain. The masking wasn’t versatile enough for Lawrence’s 2:20×1 aspect ratio (a screen shape that died with 70mm projection), resulting in blank screen above and below the image. The houselights went dark at the beginning of the overture rather than slowly fading while the music played.

In my recent piece on the UA Emery Bay multiplex, I stated "One clear difference between an art house and a multiplex: Good coffee and tea vs. none at all." I have to take that back. The Century’s concession stand sold Starbuck’s coffee and Tazo Tea.

I realize that over the past two years, I’ve written three posts about Lawrence of Arabia that concentrated on presentation and said little about the movie. I’m going to have to fix that.

Filed under: Digital Projection, First-person Report, Large Formats, Technical, Theaters | Leave a Comment »

Return to an Aging Multiplex, plus Side Effects & Silver Linings Playbook

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

Over the past week, I’ve twice visited the UA Emery Bay, a once-popular multiplex I used to patronize regularly. But this was my first visit there in maybe a decade. On Saturday, I caught Side Effects there. Tuesday night, Silver Linings Playbook. I’ll tell you about the theater, and then the movies.

Built in the late 1980′s, the Emery Bay was the major multiplex of the Greater Berkeley Area (Berkeley, North Oakland, Albany, and Emeryville) for over a decade. Eight of its ten screens were (and still are) large enough for a true immersive experience if you sit near the front. It played both Hollywood and Indiewood fare. Among the films I saw there in its heyday were sex, lies, and videotape, Forrest Gump, Groundhog Day,  The Fifth Element, Whale Rider, The Princess Diaries, The World Is Not Enough, and The Fellowship of the Ring. But not, I should point out, The Two Towers or The Return of the King.

Mind you, it was always a multiplex, with all of the negatives that word entails. It existed to get people into and out of the theater, and to expose them to advertising before the feature. And the concession stand contained then and now little that I would want to eat. (One clear difference between an art house and a multiplex: Good coffee and tea vs. none at all.)

But in the early 21st century, AMC opened a larger, fancier multiplex in Emeryville, just a few blocks from the Emery Bay. It immediately got the bigger titles, and with them more customers. The Emery Bay, I suspect, lost a lot of business.

Which is a pity because in many ways it was and still is a nicer theater. Parking is free and plentiful. The screens are fixed height rather than fixed width, which allows the scope films to be immersive and the standard ones to be appropriately sized. I’ve yet to experience bad projection there, while I’ve experienced it often at the AMC. Both films I saw recently were well screened off Sony 4K digital projectors–without the problematic 3D lenses (which degrade 2D films). And although there’s little that’s attractive to eat, you’ll find a very nice food court across the parking lot.

One more thing: Go there on Tuesday and you get in cheap. $5 for 2D films; $8 for 3D.

The Emery Bay is no longer Emeryville’s king multiplex. But as the scrappy number two, it provides a nicer movie-going experience.

Now then, about the movies I saw:

A Side Effects
Writing about Side Effects without giving away spoilers is like dancing in a mine field. imageMake the wrong move and I ruin a wonderful experience. Steven Soderbergh’s latest and, according to him, last film is a physiological mystery about depression and prescription drugs. Except…well, I can’t really say more. Let me just say that it’s a puzzle well worth unraveling, with Jude Law as an overworked psychiatrist and Rooney Mara as a patient with some very good reasons for feeling depressed. The story has more plot twists than a really good Simpsons episode.

B Silver Linings Playbook
How can good actors give great performances as interesting characters, and come up so empty? Bradley Cooper plays imagePat, recently released from a mental institution, despite his clearly still being a danger to himself and others. Friends match him up with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence in a role for which she deservedly received an Oscar), presumably because she’s also pretty crazy.  Although the characters are complex, realistic, surprising, and ultimately likeable, the story is utter Hollywood cliché–right down to the dance competition (over-edited, as is almost all dancing in modern movies). With characters like these, the last thing you want is a everything-works-for-the-best happy ending, yet you see that coming a mile off.

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The New Parkway and Django Unchained

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

I finally made it to the New Parkway. I went Thursday night to see Django Unchained. Actually, the movie was secondary. I really wanted to see the theater.

The New Parkway is better located than the original. On 24th St. between Broadway and Telegraph, it’s in the heart of downtown Oakland and a short walk from the 19th St. BART station.

From the outside, it doesn’t even look like a theater, but like warehouse covered with graffiti. You have to read some of that graffiti to realize that you’ve reached your destination.

Ticket price: $6.00. What a bargain!

The spacious lobby looks like a cutting-edge, very hip café. Tables, chairs, and couches encourage people to hang out.

I came with a full stomach, so I didn’t sample the food beyond the popcorn–which was delicious. It was also served in reusable, washable bowls. That wasn’t the theater’s only waste-cutting measure–the condiment table had cloth napkins.

Other food offerings included meat and vegi burgers, quesadillas, pizza, and something that looked like a complete and balanced meal with pasta. I suspect that was the "Mystery Meal" that they sell for $7.

The auditorium (one of two) was large, but arranged so it was very wide rather than very deep. For the patrons’ comfort, it was fitted out with a motley collection of used living room furniture. There were even a couple of hair dryers. With my preference for sitting front and center, I picked what turned out to be a horribly uncomfortable couch. But I grabbed a large pillow that was resting elsewhere and made myself exceptionally comfortable.

The screen wasn’t exceptionally large–especially considering the size of the room. It was fixed width, and sufficiently big enough for standard widescreen 1.85×1 movies. For for scope, 2.35×1 pictures like Django Unchained, it was a bit small. There’s no masking, making you aware of the letterboxing. The speakers were visible, beside and above the screen rather than behind it.

One interesting sign of the times: There’s no projection booth. The digital projector was in a in box hanging from the ceiling. With digital, you don’t often need physical access to the projector. The only film projector was an ancient one on display in the lobby.

The ambiance was very friendly–a place to hang out as well as to see a movie. I liked it a lot.

But what about Django Unchained?

Typical Tarantino–clever, entertaining, way over the top in its gruesome and entirely unrealistic violence, and utterly hollow on the inside. Like Inglorious Basterds, it uses imagea great crime against humanity as an excuse for a splatter-filled revenge flick that’s also a tribute to a particular kind of action movie.  In this case, the crime is slavery and genre the spaghetti western. The story is idiotic, with the heroes often picking a ridiculously difficult route to their goal, and showing no qualms whatsoever over killing other human beings. But I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

But I enjoyed the theater a lot more.

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New Movies I’ve Seen Recently…and How I Saw Them

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

I’ve managed to see six first-run movies in theaters over the last couple of months. I liked all of them to varying degrees. Here’s what I thought about the movies, and about the conditions in which I saw them.

Technical note: All of these films were screened digitally, two of them on screens that had only recently been converted. Four of the films and part of another were shot digitally. They all looked good, although the only one shot on film looked the best (Lincoln).

Non-Technical note: Five of these films had clear, individual protagonists, all male. The exception was about four people; three of them male.

I’ve written this in the order in which I saw them. The first grade is the for the movie; the second for the presentation.

A-/A Skyfall
Daniel Craig continues to rewrite the whole idea of James Bond in his third outing as fiction’s favorite spy). This time he suffers a traumatic experience in the pre-credit sequence, disappears, then comes back months later only because he feels that M needs him. He’s physically and emotionally unfit to serve, but he does so anyway because some shady figure appears to be targeting MI5. This may be the first Bond film set mostly in Brittan, and the first since The World is Not Enough to give Judi Dench a part worthy of her acting talents. Her M carries the story almost as much as Craig’s conflicted and emotionally tortured Bond. And speaking of Craig’s unromanticized interpretation of the character, has anyone else noticed that he never ends the picture happily in a beautiful woman’s arms?

My wife and I saw Skyfall at the Cerrito, projected onto their beautiful, big screen. The Cerrito is always fun, with their couches and good food. But that night they had something special. Someone had gone to the trouble to prepare an appropriate pre-show playlist. As we waited for and ate our dinner, we were treated to theme songs from classic spy movies and TV shows.

B/C+ Argo
Ben Affleck’s truth-based political thriller holds together very well for most of its runtime, even though we know the ending. After Iranians took the American embassy in 1979, a CIA specialist (Affleck, who also directed) takes on the assignment of rescuing a handful of Americans hiding in the Canadian embassy. His far-fetched plan: Create the illusion of a movie company scouting for locations. The Hollywood and Washington scenes are played very effectively for laughs, while the Tehran scenes provide equally-effective thrills. But in the final half hour, Affleck and his screenwriters provide three saved-in-the-last-second moments that might work with Indiana Jones, but are two too many for this allegedly true story. Another complaint: The real hero of this story, Tony Mendez, is Hispanic and looks it. Affleck is unquestionably white.

My wife and I (I saw all six of these films with my wife) caught Argo at the UA Berkeley. This former movie palace has been broken up into so many many auditoriums that only the lobby retains any grandeur. We saw Argo in a tiny hole in the wall down a long hall.

A logo before the movie proudly proclaimed a Sony 4K projector. I turned around and, sure enough, two stacked light sources told me that they hadn’t bothered to remove the 3D lens for this 2D movie. Thankfully, the image wasn’t horribly dark, suggesting that they at least removed the 3D filters. Still, Argo didn’t look as good as it might have.

A-/B Lincoln
What? No vampires? And how much a movie called Lincoln wasn’t about me?

Seriously, I liked most of Lincoln very much. Tony Kushner’s intelligent screenplay concentrated on the struggle to get the 13th amendment through the House, ending slavery before the South was defeated. That made Lincoln a film about the political process, showing us the arguments, backroom deals, and compromises behind one of the most important and idealist laws ever to go through the American government. The script doesn’t shy away from moral ambiguity, either–Lincoln is clearly prolonging the war, leading thousands of young men to an early grave, in order to end slavery. The acting is uniformly excellent, especially Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. But director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams occasionally overdo it, bashing us over the head with whatever emotion they want us to feel.

For what it’s worth, this is the only picture of the five shot entirely on film, and it’s also the best looking. But Janusz Kaminski’s camerawork is occasionally too beautiful, distracting us from the story.

We saw Lincoln at the Shattuck soon after it went all digital. However, the particular auditorium we saw it in has been digital for over a year. I have absolutely no complaints about the projection or sound, but there was nothing exceptional about it, either.

A/B+ A Late Quartet
Artistic collaboration is always a tricky business. A string quartet that’s been playing together professionally for decades begins to come apart in Yaron Zilberman’s musical drama. The problems start when the cellist (Christopher Walken, for once not playing a psychopath) tells his partners that he has Parkinson’s disease, and will not be able to play for very long.This sets off various chain reactions, as personal and creative differences that have long been simmering for years bubble to the top. People get hurt, they get angry, and they sleep with the wrong people. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener are brilliant (aren’t they always?) as the frustrated second violist and his violist wife. Like the Beethoven piece that gives the film it’s title, the picture is slow, deliberate, and rewarding, with the joy coming primarily from the performances.

Like Hoffman’s character, I’m married to a violist, so seeing A Late Quartet was inevitable. We saw it downstairs at the Albany. This was our first experience at the Albany since they went digital.

Before the movie, an employee came down to the front of the theater and welcomed us. The movie itself It looked and sounded great. No complaints.

A-/D Life of Pi
I came in wondering what Ang Lee could do without his major collaborator, writer/producer James Schamus. Pretty darned good. Told in flashback and shot almost entirely in a studio water tank, Life of Pi tells the story of an Indian boy who’s shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific ocean, sharing his lifeboat with a full-grown tiger. Clearly, this is meant as a parable, as the boy gains skills and discovers abilities he didn’t know he had, while wrestling with fate, God, and a companion who wants to eat him. The computer-animated tiger, I’m glad to say, behaves like a real beast, not an adorable Disney creation. The digital effects aren’t always convincing, and the story occasionally drags, but the film’s best parts easily outweigh the weak ones. What’s more, this is the best use of 3D I’ve seen since Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

I wanted to see Life of Pi in 3D, on a really big screen. In the East Bay, by the time we got around to seeing it, that meant the AMC Bay Street 16 in Emeryville. Yes, the screen was big, and the sound was terrific, but the left side of the image looked slightly blurry, with a sort of double-vision effect, as if the two parts of the 3D lens weren’t properly aligned.

Did I complain? No. It was the AMC Bay Street 16. Why bother.

B+/D Hitchcock
Don’t go to this movie expecting to learn anything about Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho. From the opening scene, where Anthony Hopkins appears in a fat suit and addresses the audience directly, Hitchcock is clearly what Sir Alfred would have described as "only a movie."  Helen Mirren is far more glamorous than the real Alma Reville–Hitchcock’s wife and major collaborator–but that doesn’t hurt the picture an iota. The story, part of which actually happened, shows how Hitch and Alma got the idea for Psycho, struggled to find funding, cast and shot it, then did brilliant work in the editing room, and all the while with Hitchcock suspecting that his wife was having an affair. Fun escapism disguised as film history.

Just one warning: Don’t see Hitchcock if you haven’t seen Psycho. It contains spoilers.

We saw Hitchcock upstairs at Berkeley’s California Theatre–our first time there since it went digital. Made up of what was once half of a balcony, the auditorium was small and oddly shaped.

And familiar. We’d been there many times.

But this time, there was an audio problem. The California’s other two auditoriums were both showing The Hobbit, and the theater isn’t sufficiently soundproofed to block out such a loud movie. Battles and explosions did not improve Hitchcock.

Filed under: 3D, Action Movies, Digital Projection, New Films, Technical, Theaters | Leave a Comment »

The Coming PFA Schedule

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

The new Pacific Film Archive schedule arrived in the mail today, and it left me wanting to move into the screening room for a few months.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible, and not only because it lack beds and showers. I’m directing a one-act play to be performed on February 23, and my time will be restricted.

But here’s some of the highlights. I hope I can catch a few.

Alfred Hitchcock: The Shape of Suspense
January 11 – April 24
Running well beyond this two-month calendar, this series will screen 28 of Hitchcock’s 53 films, concentrating primarily but not exclusively on his American work. It includes all of his major films (unless you count The Lodger and Blackmail), and quite a few lesser but still interesting one. My top priority here: Under Capricorn, which I’ve never seen, in an imported print, on March 3. The series also includes all of my personal favorite Hitchcocks: The Lady Vanishes, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, and Psycho.

The Hills Run Red: Italian Westerns, Leone, and Beyond
January 10 – January 27
I’m not really an expert on spaghetti westerns, especially when you get beyond Sergio Leone. In fact, this six-film series contains nothing I’ve seen, including Duck, You Sucker, the one Leone title in the bunch. I’m hoping to find time to rectify this.

Film 50: History of Cinema: The Cinematic City
January 23 – May 1
Marilyn Fabe’s usual Wednesday afternoon film class (open to the public) concentrates this semester on urban environments. Features include Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Metropolis, The Bicycle Thief, The Third Man, and Do the Right Thing.

Werner Schroeter: Magnificent Obsessions
January 19 – March 31
Until I opened the schedule, I’d never heard of this German experimental filmmaker, who suddenly appeared on the scene in 1967 (a major year for experimentation), and went on to influence Fassbinder and Wenders. Maybe I’ll have time to acquaint myself with his work.

African Film Festival 2013
January 23 – February 5
I should learn to expect this one, since it happens every year. I’ve never heard of any of these films, but that’s basically the point. I’m sure there are some wonderful gems here.

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The Grand Lake Theater

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

I promised in yesterday’s post that I’d write about Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater, the only place in the area screening The Master in its ideal format, 70mm.

One of the few great remaining movie palaces in the Bay Area–at least one of the few still showing first-run movies–the Grand Lake combines classic architecture with top-notch projection and audio. Although it has been converted from a single-screen palace to a four-screen multiplex, it retains it’s opulent design.

It does that two ways: By respecting the original lobby, and by keeping the main, downstairs portion of the original theater intact. With its high roof, giant proscenium, and sweeping design, that auditorium is not just a place to screen movies, but a temple of the cinema. There’s even a pipe organ, and we were treated to a concert before the movie.

How many movies have I seen on that screen? I don’t remember, but they include No Nukes, The Princess Bride, Jurassic Park (my first movie with digital sound), Schindler’s List, The Lion King, Shrek, The Mask of Zorro, the last Star Wars movie, and Peter Jackson’s King Kong. In 70mm, I saw ET, Ghostbusters, and a revival of the original Star Wars.

In 1981, the balcony was walled off and turned into a separate auditorium, also with a huge screen and 70mm capabilities. A few years later, two small theaters were carved out of neighboring stores, without hurting the existing theaters. Although they were given palace-like designs, and one of them even supports 70mm,  their small screens make them less than idea when you want that big picture experience.

Appropriately, they’re currently screening The Master in the big, downstairs screen. The theater was nearly sold out Saturday night.

But I saw something that disappointed me when I stepped into the theater–the screen. The beautiful curtain from past visits was gone.

I also noticed, as I walked passed the projection booth, that it had two film projectors (yes, the Grand Lake can do changeover) but no digital projector.

Before the movie started, I was lucky enough to run into Allen Michaan, who has owned the theater since 1980. He told me that the theater is losing money. Despite the very big business that night, people just aren’t going there to see movies much.

This puts him in a bad spot about digital projection. He’s installed it in the two small theaters (one of them has two digital projectors for the best possible 3D). He doesn’t know how he’ll pay for it in the bigger theaters, or what will happen if he can’t. The Grand Lake may be one of those theaters killed by the digital conversion.

About the missing curtain: It’s still there, permanently open. They need to fix the rigging before they can lower it again. That will cost about $11,000 that they don’t have.

So now you have four reasons to patronize the Grand Lake. First, it’s a wonderful theater. Second, it’s the only place in the area screening The Master in 70mm. Third, they need the money. And finally, you may not have a choice before too long.

Photo copyright: Tom Paiva 1991

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Wonderful Movie Theater Discovery in Hawaii

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

Monday night, while vacationing on Hawaii's big island, I happened upon a great old movie palace–still showing pictures, and still using 35mm changeover projection. I'm talking about Hilo's historic Palace Theater.

Wandering through the streets of Hilo with my family on a rainy evening, I spotted the theater and detoured to check it out. The smell of popcorn told us that it was still active. They were showing Bernie, which I had already seen and liked, but the rest of the family had not yet seen. The price was right–$7 ($6 for students and seniors over 55), so we went in.

The deep, ornate lobby felt comfortable and friendly. The popcorn smell came from a small food stand in the corner, that sold real food (including vegan chili) as well as popcorn and candy. A few tables allowed people to eat in comfort.

The theater itself was large, terraced, and also ornate. (I didn't take photos; I would have needed a better camera than my phone for that.) The proscenium was tall but not that wide; just the right shape for movies of the pre-widescreen era. Since they were showing modern, widescreen films, they didn't use the full height.

After taking seats near the front, I made my way to the back of the theater and talked a bit to the projectionist, who had been working at that theater for 40 years. He told me that they still used 35mm film, doing changeover with two projectors, and didn't have the money for digital conversion. He didn't know what the theater would do when distributors stopped making prints. The theater specializes in independent and indiewood movies (After Bernie, they'll screen Moonlight Kingdom; they also screened trailers for Take This Walz and A Cat in Paris), and he's hoping that those distributers will continue with film a bit longer. Or let them screen films on Blu-ray, which they can currently do.

The movie went off without a hitch. The large and enthusiastic audience, combined with the flawless changeover projection, made it a wondeful moviegoing experience.

The Palace opened in 1925. It's on the National Register of Historical Places, and the State Historic Register. In addition to movies, its used for concerts, educational events, and film festivals.

 

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SF Film Society Cinema to Close

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

Bad news. The San Francisco Film Society Cinema will close at the end of August.

I first heard about this, as a rumor, at the Silent Film Festival. But a Society spokesperson confirmed the rumor, and so I’m posting this announcement.

I don’t know what will happen to the theater, which is located in the basement of the New People building across the street from Japantown, Although a bit on the small side, the theater boasts excellent projection and sound equipment, and very comfortable chairs. I hope someone makes good use of it.

What can you see there before it closes? It’s currently showing A Burning Hot Summer. Coming up, along with other obscure current films (none of which I’ve seen), they’ve got some revivals, including Antonioni’s Love in the City, James and the Giant Peach, and a new 35mm print of  Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably.

The theater’s run (or at least it’s run as the SFFS’s year-round home) will end–appropriately enough, with a couple of disasters. On August 28, they’ll screen a global pandemic double bill of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and Elia Kazan’s  Panic in the Streets.

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Discount Movies in Newark

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

Rena Dein of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum just informed me of a real deal. The Cinedome 7 in Newark is now a discount theater. Top ticket price: $2.00.

Tickets are only .75 cents on Mondays, if you buy a minimum of three tickets.

I’ve never been to this theater, and have no opinion of its quality as a showplace.

It looks like what used to be called a second run theater. It’s not showing the latest films, but it’s not a revival house, either. It’s showing Hollywood (and some indiwood) fare that’s a bit on the old side. John Carter, The Lorax, The Artist, and so on.

But it’s a bargain!

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Roxie Fundraiser Brings in $50,000

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

As I noted in my May 25 newsletter, the Roxie had a fund-raising dinner at the Verdi Club on May 31st. I got a press release this morning announcing that it was a big success.

Rather than trying to report on an event I didn’t attend, I’ll simply copy and paste the bulk of the press release:

Last Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 the Roxie Theater was taken out for a night on the town by a throng of 170 San Francisco cinephiles and filmmakers who gathered in support of the city’s oldest continuously operating cinema. Hosted by board members Diana Fuller, Owsley Brown and Jane Reed, the event represented the inauguration of what is to be an annual Spring Fundraiser for the benefit of the Mission District based non-profit by it’s recently established Board of Directors.

Upon walking through the Verdi Club doors, guests were welcomed with champagne, and the warm glow of San Francisco based films projected on the banquet room walls. Each table paid tribute to the Roxie’s projection booth, as the flowers were surrounded by 35mm and 16mm reels and celluloid. A large framed print of the Roxie’s Marquee taken in 1996 by photographer Michal Venera stood prominently in front of the stage, while the “The Duchess,” Bay Area jazz legend Gini Wilson band played songs like Moon River to harken back to cinema past.

The 45 filmmakers in attendance included John Waters (Hairspray, Pink Flamingos), George Csicsery (Songs Along a Stony Road), Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Ballet Russes, Something Ventured), Amanda Micheli (Double Dare), and Peter Bratt (La Mission) as well as Carlen Altman who co-wrote and stars in The Color Wheel which the Roxie premiered the following Friday, June 1.

Executive Director, Chris Statton, welcomed the guests by thanking them for helping to keep the cultural institution an integral part of our community. Rick Norris, who has worked at the Roxie since 1989 and both programs and heads publicity for the Roxie introduced the merits of the Roxie’s programming by highlighting two key staff members, Director of Repertory programming, Elliot Lavine, and “wunderkind” Mike Keegan. Keegan than summed up the Roxie as presenting the best of the underrepresented and far-out cinema you can’t see anywhere else.

After enjoying the culinary works of chef Leif Hedendal, Owsley Brown led a riveting Kentucky style auction that raised over $20,000 to enable advancements in the Roxie’s projection booth. Jane Reed provided the first “Heart Award” to Brown, and the first “Spirit Award” to Diana Fuller, who addressed the guest by saying “The Roxie is a reflection of you, and it takes a village to keep us going!”

The event raised a total of $50,000. Statton remarked “we couldn’t have ever imagined a better first Spring Fundraiser.” Fuller said “we learned a lot and are ready to be even bigger and better next year!” The Roxie’s Spring Fundraiser Dinner Party is intended to be an annual Board-led event in support of the Theater.

Good for them!

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