Beyond the Planet of the Apes Marathon
Filed Under: Film
 Jesse Hassenger on Movie Revivals Throughout Our Fair City
I've been thinking about film revivals recently, in part because the Ziegfeld Theater is finishing up their annual (or semi-annual; I'm not really sure because the Clearview conglomerate that owns the Ziegfeld makes damn sure that the web page is as uninformative as possible) Hollywood classics series. Part nostalgia kick and part tacit admittance that there isn't anything worth playing in a movie palace in the February-through-April corridor, the Ziegfeld takes a break from showing big summer movies or musical Oscar bait to screen old movies with loose categorizations like "Spielberg week" or "Go Ape Week."
In researching the Ziegfeld Classics series, I came across this page -- intended as a profile of the Ziegfeld in the context of other classic moviehouses, the comment section also functions as an internet thread that has run for approximately seven years, though the bulk of the thread has lasted for a mere three or four. This informal info-sharing regarding the Ziegfeld only underscores the relatively unhelpfulness of the official site, which drove me to movietickets.com to finally determined that "Go Ape" week is not, in fact, a series of classic ape-themed movies, nor even a marathon of Planet of the Apes movies, but rather a weeklong fortieth-anniversary revival of the first Planet of the Apes movie only, which I guess makes sense, but how often do you get to see Conquest of the Planet of the Apes on the big screen? Or Beyond the Planet of the Apes? (The answer to the second question is "never" because I made that one up. If the Ziegfeld ran a Planet of the Apes marathon you'd have a better shot at knowing that.)
The recent "Spielberg week," likewise, was not an overview of the director's career, but a small repertoire of his most famous movies: Jaws, E.T., and, uh, Back to the Future, which he only produced. If I recall correctly, at least two of those movies were offered up the last time "Spielberg week" came up in the classics rotation, as were West Side Story and The Sound of Music, both of which screened a couple of weeks ago. Next up, after a break for Shine a Light in April, is a bunch of old James Bond movies, for a cinematic experience so rare and elusive that it can only be captured here or on one of three Turner-owned cable channels several times a year.
This is not to say that I'm arguing for more obscure or experimental movies to play at one of the biggest capacity theaters in Manhattan -- just that the Ziegfeld's picks seem a little repetitive, like the campus film series that starts to cycle back to play a bunch of stuff you've already seen during your senior year. Love the idea -- of mainstream, accessible revivals, that is -- but not crazy about the execution. Spielberg week, for example, could feature more offbeat choices like Minority Report, A.I., or Empire of the Sun. Okay, maybe those would be sparsely attended at best, but why on earth isn't there an Indiana Jones series leading up to this Kingdom of the Crystal Skull business? As you may have guessed from my Planet of the Apes grousing, I'm a sucker for series, so I'd love to see the Back to the Future trilogy represented in full, or each and every Batman movie, even/especially Batman & Robin.
A more wide-ranging, comprehensive, and all-around delightful mainstream revival program can be found at the Film Forum as they get ready to present an anniversary series of United Artists films, including two-for-one admission on movies featuring artists as diverse as Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, John Wayne, Billy Wilder, the Beatles, Peter Sellers, Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin and, yes, James Bond. Still, the venue isn't as exciting as the Ziegfeld, where I did manage to see Raging Bull (playing this weekend at the UA retrospective) a bunch of years ago. Due respect to the Film Forum, but given their facilities, how different will the UA retrospective be from watching a film series curated in a church basement, except that maybe the Film Forum crowd is a little more self-righteous?
I kid, sort of. I do want to check out Manhattan, which I haven't seen since I was too young to really get it, or Some Like It Hot, which I haven't seen period, or Topkapi, which I've only seen in the sense that apparently every heist movie rips it off something fierce. In general, I haven't taken nearly enough advantage of the revival circuit since moving here; last fall, when I went to see the "final cut" of Blade Runner (also at the Ziegfeld), I was forced to admit to myself that the revivals most likely to get me into the theater (not counting aforementioned campus film series) are sci-fi: Blade Runner, 2001, THX1138. In other words, descendents of the Star Wars special editions: old movies that speak to my sense of nerdly duty.
Other revivals I've actually attended recently have been the midnight snows at the Landmark, which I like to imagine engaged in fierce rivalry with the IFC Center's Waverly at Midnights over who gets which old John Hughes and/or David Lynch prints. Both series lean towards some obvious hipster touchstones, but this spring that means a Sunshine slate including The Muppet Movie, The Wall, Blade Runner, Control, Alien, Blue Velvet, and Dazed and Confused. I attended Boogie Nights and The Royal Tenenbaums; I hadn't seen the former in a good ten years, and I've seen the latter more times in the theater than any non-Star Wars movies (and more than many non-non-Star Wars movies). That is to say that as happy as I was to see Raging Bull or THX1138 for the first time in a theater, maybe what I secretly crave from a revival is at least vague familiarity -- a movie I know I like but don't have on DVD. In that case, I am not-so-secretly disappointed in myself and my lack of drive to cineducate myself.
So I put it to you, hypothetical readers of this post: what's the right balance between fresh and familiar for trekking out to see a not-so-new release? What are your dream movie revivals in the DVD era? |
