I just saw “Spider Man 2” at the State, and although the refurbished decor is quite plain, the seats are new and comfy, the sound and projection are splendid. The village is lucky to have a nice place like this, within walking distance of so many residences.
“Here is a man who has insulted our troops, called Americans "dumb”, and put down Capitilism."
Not so. He has praised many individual soldiers and shows great compassion for those who suffered as victims of an unjust war. And I mean he does it IN THE FILM. He doesn’t deal with Abu Ghraib, but frankly the troops who treated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, deserve to be insulted. Heck, even President Bush was appalled by them! And we are appalled by the soldier we see in the film calling an Iraqi prisoner “Ali Baba” and grabbing the guy’s penis. There are good soldiers and bad, just as there are good people and bad. So let’s not generalize. Some Americans are indeed “dumb” if that is what he said. Some Germans are dumb. Some Chinese are dumb. There are dumb people everywhere on this planet. Why is America an exception? Depends who you are talking about. As for capitalism, there is good capitalism, and there is bad capitalism that makes things bad for the average man. Look at Enron…that’s capitalism run amok.
How ironic is the following! While some theatre chains (see above) refuse to show “Fahrenheit 9/11”, one theatre in New Haven, the York Square Cinema, near Yale, can’t get it because the distributor gives priority for its films to a nearby venue. They write on their website:
In response to your many questions:
WE ARE SORRY !
Michael Moore’s FAHRENHEIT 9/11
has been refused for showing at The York Square Cinema
This is another example of the situation which we have been
facing with our distributors, and illustrates the very case
which we have been pursuing in court, as shown below in
our letter from Robert Spodick.
Richard, many thanks. I want to check out that location soon. I can’t for the life of me remember if I ever went there, although I seem to remember an ad for Roman Polanski’s “What” (a.k.a. “Diary of Forbidden Dreams”) which may have played there around 1972.
Oh, I know it’s propaganda. And not unbiased. But whoa. Don’t dismiss it as UNFACTUAL. Bias does not of itself preclude factuality. That’s the whole point. Moore uncovered and underlined, in the opinion of many, some disturbing FACTS about the Bush administration. And he has challenged those who would to dispute those facts.
True, Mr. Fridley has no legal obligation to show the movie. But one would think he would show it simply because of its public demand and to make it part of a healthy discourse within our democracy. But his own bias has interfered with that notion. (In all courtesy, he’s probably a nice guy, but I don’t think what he has done is right.) It would be interesting to see if he plans to show Michael Wilson’s film “Michael Moore Hates America” (now there’s a biased title!) I think all the theaters showing F911 should indeed show that too and let the public benefit from the contrasting discourse. Discussion, not suppression!
In a way it is good that Mr. Fridley refuses to show the film, because now it will generate an intense desire on the part of many folks in his cinematic fiefdom to go out of their way to see it, despite his patronizing, backward attitude toward his customers. You cannot tell Americans for long what they cannot see or do before they will go out of their way to see or do it. Remember James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was once banned too. I hope folks will drive a distance to other theaters to see this gigantic landmark of a film or buy it when it comes out on DVD. It is worth the drive. It is worth the purchase.
To find out where it is playing in Iowa, Nebraska, or elsewhere, click: http://www.f911tix.com/
And to reach award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore’s website, click: www.michaelmoore.com
I believe I saw Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” here in 3-D during the 1980s series. The cinema had a distinctive history as a mostly second-run art house, although sometimes they did some first-run presentations.
A bit of esoterica follows. As a lover of Italian films, one of the “lost” movies of the 1950s I’d most like to see is something called “Alone in the Streets” (“Soli per le strade.”) It was directed by Silvio Siano and is kind of a minor-league “Shoe Shine,” about orphaned youngsters runnning wild in the Naples area. It had its New York premiere at the 8th Street Playhouse in June of 1956, got a glowing review from A. H. Weiler of the New York Times, was distributed for a time in 16mm by Audio Film Center, then descended into full oblivion in the U.S. as well as in Italy.
Jakorns, for the record, “Bowling for Columbine” was highly praised by reviewers and public alike and went on to win an Academy Award. Many people, including myself, didn’t find it slipshod at all but very much on target about the nature of violence and gun-deaths in America.
Re: reading “My Pet Goat.” It is naive to think that the man we saw in those crucial minutes, including AFTER he is told a second plane has struck, was concerned with causing panic and confusion in the classroom. Puh-leeze! The man himself was panicked and confused. That’s what my eyes tell me. I don’t think students would have been trampled if Bush had simply left the school with his aides and went to immediately deal with the crisis. That would not have been acting on impulse. In regard to your allusion to Clinton acting on sexual impulse and lying about it: Bush has lied over and over about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about a presumed Iraq-Al Quaeda connection. His lies led to an irrational war against the WRONG ENEMY when he should have been going with equal vigor against Al Quaeda. And we see the results: the death of so many Americans and Iraqis in a bloody war of folly. Tell me, for these lies and deaths of which he is guilty before his country and his God, will he be impeached? How many deaths did Monica cause? Despite his sexual indiscretions, Bill Clinton was a brilliant president. George W. Bush is a dangerous ignorant fool who must be fought tooth and nail. If “Fahrenheit 9/11” will help more of the American people acknowledge this truth, it will have performed a valuable patriotic service.
What could have been “left on the cutting room floor,” I wonder, that would have made Bush’s response to the attack on the World Trade Center appear more presidential? He just sat there for 11 minutes, reading “My Pet Goat,” bewildered, lost, not knowing what he should do. Utterly appalling. It is an apt symbol for a clueless president, out of his element, who governs via cliches, not intelligence. This is one of Moore’s salient points, and yes, it reflects Moore’s feelings and those of many millions of Americans. The movie is an op-ed documentary. A documentary can reflect a particular point of view. It does not have to encompass all points of view. It is meant to sway. And the issue of the war is larger than whether someone in particular is comfortable with what America is doing there. We were all lied to about the reasons for going there (WMDs), and now the administration, in the absence of those weapons, is forced to find new justifications, but polls show that the American public is catching on. And I hope that Moore helps them catch on even further.
But I ramble and rant…sorry!
No, Mr. Moore has achieved an enormous amount of respect for his work and he has a great deal of integrity. Read all the Imdb.com comments that praise him (as well as those that damn him, of course) and the Cannes Film Festival top award counts for something as well. I believe he has a cover feature in Time Magazine this week. Only a true artist can stir up such passions. If the responses had been tepid, he would not have done a good job. But clearly he has. As for Michael Moore clones in the future, why shouldn’t there be more? If they have the talent to do good work, then God bless them. There is a long tradition of constructive political muckraking in America, a la Upton Sinclair. I see Michael Moore as a constructive muckraker, not a destroyer.
Good to read your comments, and best of luck to you as well.
For the record: “The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which books films to be shown on military bases around the world, has contacted Fahrenheit’s distributor to book the film,” TIME reports.
If this movie chain for military bases can show the film, it’s a bit absurd for civilian theater chains to avoid programming this award-winning work of monumental importance that millions have wanted to see and that is breaking boxffice records everywhere.
Klebrun speaks of a Moore “credibility problem.” Come now. Isn’t the credibility problem with the lying Bush administration which brought us into a war for spurious reasons, i.e. “weapons of mass destruction?” Moore is not a liar; he is an exposer of the Bush administration’s lies.
What Kelbrun says about documentaries is not true. Documentaries have often, throughout the history of cinema, advocated a particular point of view, from Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series to Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County, U.S.A.” Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is no different.
The old Trocadero (Palais de Chaillot) auditorium entrance can be seen in Bernardo Bertolucci’s recent film “The Dreamers,” which deals with young film-buff/radicals in Paris in the late 1960s. In the summer of 1970 I myself had a grand time going to movies at this legendary Valhalla of cinema and even seeing Henri Langlois, the equally legendary director of the Cinematheque, milling about the place every day.
Mr. Fridley’s attitude is a sad one, but the film is playing to box-office records at about 1700 theatres nationwide right now. To find out where it is playing in your area, click on: http://www.f911tix.com/
The presence of Ms. Lipscomb in “Fahrenheit 9/11” and her telling of her story provided some very moving moments. Mr. Moore’s film is brilliant, and it is important that every voting American see it, whether at a “cinema treasure” or the nearest multiplex.
Some movies I’ve seen here that were very much worth the trip from Providence were the Spanish “El Bola,” “Postmen in the Mountains” from China, revivals of the gorgeously-photographed Russian classics “The Stone Flower” and “Sadko,” “I Am Taraneh, 15” from Iran and most recently “The Clay Bird” from Bangladesh. They are all typical of the kind of programming you get at Real Arts. Although I didn’t see it here, “Spellbound,” the spelling-bee movie, was a big success, and a retrospective of Kurosawa films attracted interest. I hope movie buffs in Hartford realize what they have here with this unique theater and the Cinestudio at Trinity College as well.
This was a place I frequently visited to see first run films during its two-decades-plus of operation. “E.T. – The Extra -Terrestrial” was a major seat-filler here in 1982. The auditoriums were long bland bomb-shelter style with funnel-type screens with no black masking, as I recall. It was similar to its sister cinema in Warwick, the now-also-gone Warwick Mall Cinemas, also run by National General, and the programs were often identical. A third member of that group was the Garden City Cinemas in Cranston. I remember enjoying William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer,” his remake of Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear” at the Lincoln Mall Cinemas in 1977.
This is the famous theatre where Luis Bunuel’s 1930 surrealist film “L'Age d'Or” premiered and provoked a scandal. At the showing of October 3, there were demonstrations within the theatre by members of the Patriots' League and the Anti-Jewish League. Some shouted, “We’ll see if there are any Christians in France” and “Down with the Jews!” There were stink bombs, the screen was splashed with purple ink, seats were torn, paintings in the lobby were slashed. Authorities forced cuts to be made in the film. The film was banned on December 11 and all copies were confiscated by the police on December 12. The movie remained unseen for decades thereafter.
Those extraordinary revivals of 35mm prints (often studio vault copies unseen in decades) were really without parallel on the East Coast. They attracted large, passionate, rapt audiences. Alas, no more, no more!
Doesn’t anyone else have any comments on this wonderful old theatre? There were certainly plenty of people in this packed house where I saw Michael Moore’s devastating “Fahrenheit 9/11” last Saturday!
I’ve visited this theater for over forty years, although much more in the 1960s and 1970s when it was an ample single-screen cinema. I believe it used to be run by the same outfit that ran the nearby repertory cinema, the Brattle. One recollection: on October 3, 1973 I went to a showing of Francois Truffaut’s “Day for Night” (“La Nuit americaine.”) Director Truffaut himself made a personal appearance in this Harvard-sponsored event and fielded questions from the audience. I remember that Francophone members of the audience were being very tetchy because the translator was giving imprecise translations of Mr. Truffaut’s comments!
I do not live in San Francisco but whenever I am in town I make it a point to visit the Castro at least once. It’s more than a movie theater. It’s a nostalgic dream, a vision that transports us back to what used to be but which sadly in most places is no more. There are not too many other places where you can find a movie palace doing what it was meant to do…show movies! And what programming and showmanship! Clearly San Franciscans, especially from the Castro district, worship this place. May it survive as long as the cable cars do. Forever.
I have been coming to this place for over 35 years, frequently but not religiously, because it is a short drive from where I live. There is no magic here. The place has no real character, just a bunch of nondescript screening rooms built around a concession stand, and hardly any lobby. It is a tad bit spiffier since they put in new seats a while ago. I had a bad experience with CHICAGO here a while back. The auditorium where it was being screened had the most awful tinny sound imaginable, which could ruin a musical like that one.
I just saw “Spider Man 2” at the State, and although the refurbished decor is quite plain, the seats are new and comfy, the sound and projection are splendid. The village is lucky to have a nice place like this, within walking distance of so many residences.
“Here is a man who has insulted our troops, called Americans "dumb”, and put down Capitilism."
Not so. He has praised many individual soldiers and shows great compassion for those who suffered as victims of an unjust war. And I mean he does it IN THE FILM. He doesn’t deal with Abu Ghraib, but frankly the troops who treated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, deserve to be insulted. Heck, even President Bush was appalled by them! And we are appalled by the soldier we see in the film calling an Iraqi prisoner “Ali Baba” and grabbing the guy’s penis. There are good soldiers and bad, just as there are good people and bad. So let’s not generalize. Some Americans are indeed “dumb” if that is what he said. Some Germans are dumb. Some Chinese are dumb. There are dumb people everywhere on this planet. Why is America an exception? Depends who you are talking about. As for capitalism, there is good capitalism, and there is bad capitalism that makes things bad for the average man. Look at Enron…that’s capitalism run amok.
How ironic is the following! While some theatre chains (see above) refuse to show “Fahrenheit 9/11”, one theatre in New Haven, the York Square Cinema, near Yale, can’t get it because the distributor gives priority for its films to a nearby venue. They write on their website:
In response to your many questions:
WE ARE SORRY !
Michael Moore’s FAHRENHEIT 9/11
has been refused for showing at The York Square Cinema
This is another example of the situation which we have been
facing with our distributors, and illustrates the very case
which we have been pursuing in court, as shown below in
our letter from Robert Spodick.
For full story, see their website: http://azothgallery.com/yorksquare.html and check them out on Cinema Treasures.
Richard, many thanks. I want to check out that location soon. I can’t for the life of me remember if I ever went there, although I seem to remember an ad for Roman Polanski’s “What” (a.k.a. “Diary of Forbidden Dreams”) which may have played there around 1972.
Oh, I know it’s propaganda. And not unbiased. But whoa. Don’t dismiss it as UNFACTUAL. Bias does not of itself preclude factuality. That’s the whole point. Moore uncovered and underlined, in the opinion of many, some disturbing FACTS about the Bush administration. And he has challenged those who would to dispute those facts.
True, Mr. Fridley has no legal obligation to show the movie. But one would think he would show it simply because of its public demand and to make it part of a healthy discourse within our democracy. But his own bias has interfered with that notion. (In all courtesy, he’s probably a nice guy, but I don’t think what he has done is right.) It would be interesting to see if he plans to show Michael Wilson’s film “Michael Moore Hates America” (now there’s a biased title!) I think all the theaters showing F911 should indeed show that too and let the public benefit from the contrasting discourse. Discussion, not suppression!
In a way it is good that Mr. Fridley refuses to show the film, because now it will generate an intense desire on the part of many folks in his cinematic fiefdom to go out of their way to see it, despite his patronizing, backward attitude toward his customers. You cannot tell Americans for long what they cannot see or do before they will go out of their way to see or do it. Remember James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was once banned too. I hope folks will drive a distance to other theaters to see this gigantic landmark of a film or buy it when it comes out on DVD. It is worth the drive. It is worth the purchase.
To find out where it is playing in Iowa, Nebraska, or elsewhere, click:
http://www.f911tix.com/
And to reach award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore’s website, click:
www.michaelmoore.com
I believe I saw Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” here in 3-D during the 1980s series. The cinema had a distinctive history as a mostly second-run art house, although sometimes they did some first-run presentations.
A bit of esoterica follows. As a lover of Italian films, one of the “lost” movies of the 1950s I’d most like to see is something called “Alone in the Streets” (“Soli per le strade.”) It was directed by Silvio Siano and is kind of a minor-league “Shoe Shine,” about orphaned youngsters runnning wild in the Naples area. It had its New York premiere at the 8th Street Playhouse in June of 1956, got a glowing review from A. H. Weiler of the New York Times, was distributed for a time in 16mm by Audio Film Center, then descended into full oblivion in the U.S. as well as in Italy.
Jakorns, for the record, “Bowling for Columbine” was highly praised by reviewers and public alike and went on to win an Academy Award. Many people, including myself, didn’t find it slipshod at all but very much on target about the nature of violence and gun-deaths in America.
Re: reading “My Pet Goat.” It is naive to think that the man we saw in those crucial minutes, including AFTER he is told a second plane has struck, was concerned with causing panic and confusion in the classroom. Puh-leeze! The man himself was panicked and confused. That’s what my eyes tell me. I don’t think students would have been trampled if Bush had simply left the school with his aides and went to immediately deal with the crisis. That would not have been acting on impulse. In regard to your allusion to Clinton acting on sexual impulse and lying about it: Bush has lied over and over about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about a presumed Iraq-Al Quaeda connection. His lies led to an irrational war against the WRONG ENEMY when he should have been going with equal vigor against Al Quaeda. And we see the results: the death of so many Americans and Iraqis in a bloody war of folly. Tell me, for these lies and deaths of which he is guilty before his country and his God, will he be impeached? How many deaths did Monica cause? Despite his sexual indiscretions, Bill Clinton was a brilliant president. George W. Bush is a dangerous ignorant fool who must be fought tooth and nail. If “Fahrenheit 9/11” will help more of the American people acknowledge this truth, it will have performed a valuable patriotic service.
What could have been “left on the cutting room floor,” I wonder, that would have made Bush’s response to the attack on the World Trade Center appear more presidential? He just sat there for 11 minutes, reading “My Pet Goat,” bewildered, lost, not knowing what he should do. Utterly appalling. It is an apt symbol for a clueless president, out of his element, who governs via cliches, not intelligence. This is one of Moore’s salient points, and yes, it reflects Moore’s feelings and those of many millions of Americans. The movie is an op-ed documentary. A documentary can reflect a particular point of view. It does not have to encompass all points of view. It is meant to sway. And the issue of the war is larger than whether someone in particular is comfortable with what America is doing there. We were all lied to about the reasons for going there (WMDs), and now the administration, in the absence of those weapons, is forced to find new justifications, but polls show that the American public is catching on. And I hope that Moore helps them catch on even further.
But I ramble and rant…sorry!
No, Mr. Moore has achieved an enormous amount of respect for his work and he has a great deal of integrity. Read all the Imdb.com comments that praise him (as well as those that damn him, of course) and the Cannes Film Festival top award counts for something as well. I believe he has a cover feature in Time Magazine this week. Only a true artist can stir up such passions. If the responses had been tepid, he would not have done a good job. But clearly he has. As for Michael Moore clones in the future, why shouldn’t there be more? If they have the talent to do good work, then God bless them. There is a long tradition of constructive political muckraking in America, a la Upton Sinclair. I see Michael Moore as a constructive muckraker, not a destroyer.
Good to read your comments, and best of luck to you as well.
For the record: “The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which books films to be shown on military bases around the world, has contacted Fahrenheit’s distributor to book the film,” TIME reports.
If this movie chain for military bases can show the film, it’s a bit absurd for civilian theater chains to avoid programming this award-winning work of monumental importance that millions have wanted to see and that is breaking boxffice records everywhere.
Klebrun speaks of a Moore “credibility problem.” Come now. Isn’t the credibility problem with the lying Bush administration which brought us into a war for spurious reasons, i.e. “weapons of mass destruction?” Moore is not a liar; he is an exposer of the Bush administration’s lies.
What Kelbrun says about documentaries is not true. Documentaries have often, throughout the history of cinema, advocated a particular point of view, from Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series to Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County, U.S.A.” Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is no different.
The old Trocadero (Palais de Chaillot) auditorium entrance can be seen in Bernardo Bertolucci’s recent film “The Dreamers,” which deals with young film-buff/radicals in Paris in the late 1960s. In the summer of 1970 I myself had a grand time going to movies at this legendary Valhalla of cinema and even seeing Henri Langlois, the equally legendary director of the Cinematheque, milling about the place every day.
Mr. Fridley’s attitude is a sad one, but the film is playing to box-office records at about 1700 theatres nationwide right now. To find out where it is playing in your area, click on:
http://www.f911tix.com/
The presence of Ms. Lipscomb in “Fahrenheit 9/11” and her telling of her story provided some very moving moments. Mr. Moore’s film is brilliant, and it is important that every voting American see it, whether at a “cinema treasure” or the nearest multiplex.
Some movies I’ve seen here that were very much worth the trip from Providence were the Spanish “El Bola,” “Postmen in the Mountains” from China, revivals of the gorgeously-photographed Russian classics “The Stone Flower” and “Sadko,” “I Am Taraneh, 15” from Iran and most recently “The Clay Bird” from Bangladesh. They are all typical of the kind of programming you get at Real Arts. Although I didn’t see it here, “Spellbound,” the spelling-bee movie, was a big success, and a retrospective of Kurosawa films attracted interest. I hope movie buffs in Hartford realize what they have here with this unique theater and the Cinestudio at Trinity College as well.
For many years this theater was a showcase for Russian-language films imported by the Russian distribution service, Artkino.
This was a place I frequently visited to see first run films during its two-decades-plus of operation. “E.T. – The Extra -Terrestrial” was a major seat-filler here in 1982. The auditoriums were long bland bomb-shelter style with funnel-type screens with no black masking, as I recall. It was similar to its sister cinema in Warwick, the now-also-gone Warwick Mall Cinemas, also run by National General, and the programs were often identical. A third member of that group was the Garden City Cinemas in Cranston. I remember enjoying William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer,” his remake of Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear” at the Lincoln Mall Cinemas in 1977.
This is the famous theatre where Luis Bunuel’s 1930 surrealist film “L'Age d'Or” premiered and provoked a scandal. At the showing of October 3, there were demonstrations within the theatre by members of the Patriots' League and the Anti-Jewish League. Some shouted, “We’ll see if there are any Christians in France” and “Down with the Jews!” There were stink bombs, the screen was splashed with purple ink, seats were torn, paintings in the lobby were slashed. Authorities forced cuts to be made in the film. The film was banned on December 11 and all copies were confiscated by the police on December 12. The movie remained unseen for decades thereafter.
Those extraordinary revivals of 35mm prints (often studio vault copies unseen in decades) were really without parallel on the East Coast. They attracted large, passionate, rapt audiences. Alas, no more, no more!
Doesn’t anyone else have any comments on this wonderful old theatre? There were certainly plenty of people in this packed house where I saw Michael Moore’s devastating “Fahrenheit 9/11” last Saturday!
I’ve visited this theater for over forty years, although much more in the 1960s and 1970s when it was an ample single-screen cinema. I believe it used to be run by the same outfit that ran the nearby repertory cinema, the Brattle. One recollection: on October 3, 1973 I went to a showing of Francois Truffaut’s “Day for Night” (“La Nuit americaine.”) Director Truffaut himself made a personal appearance in this Harvard-sponsored event and fielded questions from the audience. I remember that Francophone members of the audience were being very tetchy because the translator was giving imprecise translations of Mr. Truffaut’s comments!
In September of 1970 I saw the film “Don Giovanni” of Carmelo Bene here. It was an avant-garde work by that idiosyncratic/hermetic Italian director.
I do not live in San Francisco but whenever I am in town I make it a point to visit the Castro at least once. It’s more than a movie theater. It’s a nostalgic dream, a vision that transports us back to what used to be but which sadly in most places is no more. There are not too many other places where you can find a movie palace doing what it was meant to do…show movies! And what programming and showmanship! Clearly San Franciscans, especially from the Castro district, worship this place. May it survive as long as the cable cars do. Forever.
I have been coming to this place for over 35 years, frequently but not religiously, because it is a short drive from where I live. There is no magic here. The place has no real character, just a bunch of nondescript screening rooms built around a concession stand, and hardly any lobby. It is a tad bit spiffier since they put in new seats a while ago. I had a bad experience with CHICAGO here a while back. The auditorium where it was being screened had the most awful tinny sound imaginable, which could ruin a musical like that one.
I believe this was the theater where I saw Joseph Losey’s “The Go-Between” in 1971 when it was a twin.