Thursday, May 22, 2008

Indy Cinema


Tune in tomorrow for my review of the new Indiana Jones movie. My birthday present to myself is a night at the Ziegfeld in Midtown for the real premiere (the one where you don’t have to be named Turtle or Drama to get in).

The Ziegfeld is probably New York’s last single screen movie palace; most of the others have been either torn down, converted to other uses or made into multiplexes. Radio City is still operating, but hasn’t shown a regular schedule of movies since 1979. If they had held on a few more years they might have been able to ride the second wave of Disney animation, or they might have shut down entirely.

I’ve been to the Ziegfeld twice. Once for The Phantom Menace and again for Hannah Montana in 3-D. In retrospect Hannah was better. At the time I hoped the Star Wars prequels would improve instead they only sucked more.

Let’s hope that Lucas has done a better job with Indiana Jones. I saw the original and loved it; I even brought my then six year old brother to see The Temple of Doom- he was probably about six. Watching Amrish Puri rip someone’s still beating heart out might not be the best thing for a six year old, but since he never tried it out on any of the neighborhood kids no harm no foul. The third movie with Sean Connery was cool; the best part may have been River Phoenix playing the young Indiana where we learned exactly why he hates snakes (and where Indy got his fashion sense).

Anyway, will post a review tomorrow.

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