This theater/building has a very interesting history (as noted in Robert K. Headley’s book: “Motion Picture Exhibition in Washington, D.C.”). Built in 1907-1908, the Masonic Auditorium began showing movies (and vaudeville) from 1908 (!). The first floor auditorium which ran the entire first floor was able to seat almost 1,800 people. A second auditorium was located on the fifth floor that seated about 700 patrons. When the building was converted into the museum, the first floor was remolded into a grand hall and a new 200 seat auditorium on the third floor.
This does not need an IMAX laser install – a top of the line 4K laser projector is the least it would need to be state of the art – pop in a Dolby Atmos system, the theater could and should feature the modern amenities of most chain theater ‘premier’ screens. Folk literally have no problem dropping $20 on average at Tyson’s for Dolby Cinema, and other luxury theaters in the area, there’s no reason why if another film exhibitor were to resume operation HAS to include laser projection and immersive audio when it’s become the norm. Reading the Post article was just depressing, sure running a one screen theater is a challenge, but it needs the community to back it and give some voice to the neighborhood if it truly wants it back, and it comes at a terrible time, when theaters nationwide and internationally are having a significant drop in attendance due to the coronavirus pandemic. Booking Pixar’s ‘Onward’ there, which was Pixar’s second lowest grossing movie, and then having it’s next movie, the new James Bond, bumped to November, and then the sudden audience no-shows, just gave AMC the more excuses to just throw in the towel, just sad and unfortunate.
I find it fascinating that no one here has been to this theater and made any comments. What DID happen to the former ‘IDX’ screen, I would assume AMC kept the 7.1 surround sound setup, but corporate didn’t invest the time, money, or interest to upgrade it to ‘Prime’ or ‘Dolby Cinema’. Also, the theater’s name is just “AMC Loudoun Station 11” the ‘Starplex’ has been dropped.
The soft-opening of the theater happened on February 28th, with the official opening on March 6th. ICON-X auditorium(s) One seats 226, auditorium Two: seats 200, nine and ten seat 225. I saw ‘Rise of Skywalker’ last Sunday and ‘Birds of Prey’ yesterday; and I have to say the audio calibration and specifically the Dolby Atmos sound are acoustically top notch. I also like the plush seats, that only offer the ability to shift into a one’s comfortable seating position, but also offers ‘heating’ – tres chic!
This is my first time to a Showcase ICON theater and I have to say, I really like the fact the company policy has four trailers max before a feature – not the standard over twenty minutes at the other movie theater chains.
Off the top of my head, I know that Mazza does side horizontal masking for ‘flat’ movies on screen 1,2 and 4. The Uptown to my knowledge has also done this for 1.85 AR movies. They really screwed up last year’s presentation of ‘Missing Link’ which was a scope movie, but side masked off the left and right sides of the image. For ‘Missing Link’, in April, there was no assigned seating but by the time I saw ‘The Lion King’ in July they had added seat numbers/assigning
actually the most recent movie screenings here was in August 2016 for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain exhibited a traveling roadshow showing of the “Star Wars Trilogy: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi”
sorry this isn’t about the upstairs theaters, but a comment about the prior basement ‘Paris’ theater/screens. I just got from a friend an email of the original Washington Post advert for ‘Aliens’ (1986) and while I know that the 70mm engagement was at the KB Fine Arts, I didn’t realize it was also it’s sole in-town run. I for some reason, saw it when the popularity and box office success moved it to more theaters and specifically to upper Northwest DC to here. Even the largest screen was on the miniscule side, but man what an audience, the scene when the face hugger scuttles across the floor towards Newt and Ripley, everyone, including myself and a friend just completely lost it – oh the memories.
Recent New York Times / By Alex Vadukul (article about Lincoln Plaza Cinema and New Plaza theater)
Published Dec. 13, 2019
Updated Dec. 16, 2019, 8:47 a.m. ET
During a recent screening of “Mr. Klein,” the 1976 World War II psychological thriller starring Alain Delon, volunteers at New Plaza Cinema scrambled to operate their upstart independent movie theater on the Upper West Side.
Ann Logan, 71, yelled directions to customers as she sat in her walker; Norma Levy, 76, sold tickets from rolls of red paper stubs and stashed money into a little metal box; Rita Lee, 88, helped sell refreshments at a foldout table. When the movie ended, ushers hurried to wheel walkers and rollators back to older guests waiting in their seats.
It wasn’t a sellout, but it was a decent showing for a 43-year-old French film on a chilly Saturday night.
New Plaza is a newcomer to the city’s independent cinema scene, and it’s trying to establish itself at a time when independent theaters are in a death struggle with streaming video and a generation of moviegoers demanding in-theater craft brews and plush recliner seats.
New Plaza also has something of a chip on its shoulder.
Two years ago, Upper West Siders mourned the closing of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the dingy art house theater where New Yorkers came to worship Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Satyajit Ray. A cultural institution from the early 1980s, its concessions stand sold lox sandwiches, water leaked from its ceilings, and quarrels broke out among hard-of-hearing customers during foreign movies.
And ever since its landlord, Milstein Properties, declined to renew its lease, the theater has sat in a ghostly state on 63rd Street and Broadway with a blank marquee.
But as the city marched on with cold indifference, a band of seniors and retirees who live in the neighborhood refused to accept its demise and founded New Plaza Cinema just across the street.
They operate their nonprofit theater in a generic auditorium that they rent out twice a month from the New York Institute of Technology. A sandwich board on 62nd Street announces their presence. On weekends, they set up a volunteer recruitment table on Broadway beside a handwritten board that reads, “Do You Miss Lincoln Plaza Cinemas?”
Barry Schulman, 72, a retired television executive who helped found the Sci-Fi Channel, was selling candy bars from a wicker basket at the “Mr. Klein” screening. He explained why he joined the cause. “After I retired, I didn’t move to the Upper West Side just so I’d have to get on the subway and go to the Angelika,” he said.
The ultimate goal is lofty: unsatisfied with New Plaza merely being a pop-up cinema, the organizers want a full-time theater of their own, but securing such a space would probably cost millions. A strategy meeting was recently held over banana bread at the New Plaza president Norma Levy’s apartment in Lincoln Towers. Their big hope is that wealthy donors will bankroll their movie house.
“This city is full of wealth,” said Ms. Levy, a retired lawyer. “Three million dollars is nothing to some people. We only need one of those people. Maybe two. We’ll let them name the place. ‘The Mike Bloomberg Theater.’ Whatever. All we need is the theater, and we’ll do the rest.”
It won’t be easy. The city’s old art houses and independent theaters have been vanishing. Recent closures include the Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side, the Beekman Theater on the Upper East Side, City Cinemas on 86th Street, and the stately Paris opposite the Plaza Hotel. They close because of high rents, expired leases, and shifts in modern moviegoer habits.
Tellingly, as of a few weeks ago, the Paris will now be getting a second life, but only because Netflix leased the refined single-screen theater as a showcase address for its prestige releases.
As the old guard institutions fade, a slick new era of art houses is rising. The revitalized Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village sells organic wine at its bar, and the Metrograph on Ludlow Street has a restaurant that serves koginut squash salad. Last year, possibly sensing change in the air, the longstanding Film Forum on Houston Street underwent a $5 million dollar face-lift.
New Plaza’s single-screen auditorium seats 259 people. Recent screenings have included “Pavarotti” and “Tel Aviv on Fire,” and they’ve shown classics like “My Dinner With Andre” and “The Conformist.” After Philip Roth died, they ran a marathon of movies adapted from his books.
Ms. Levy declined to detail the operating costs and revenue of New Plaza, but she said they break even with their ticket sales, and that senior tickets make up the bulk of their revenue.
“Do we need younger faces?” she asked. “Yes, we do. But right now, we have an army of bright and dedicated people who have life experience. It might be time as a society to look at older people differently in terms of what they’re capable of and can create for society.”
In this brutal environment, they have one idea that might get them attention.
Woody Allen’s new film, “A Rainy Day in New York,” hasn’t had a New York premiere, and there are no current plans for its release in the United States. (It opened in September in Paris to lines spilling down the street.)
“No one in town wants to touch it,” said Gary Palmucci, 64, New Plaza’s film curator. “We did a show of hands here, and about 85 percent of people were in favor. I think we’ve decided we’re not so worried about picketers and we think it would be worthwhile to show.” He added: “We’re all over 50. We’ve lived in this world a lot. We view certain transgressions differently than college students.”
As the second anniversary of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas’ closing approaches, there lingers the thorny and awkward matter of the shuttered art house itself, which seems tantalizingly available.
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas was opened in 1981 by Dan and Toby Talbot. The pioneering couple is credited with helping start the art-house-revival movement in the 1960s with their bold programming at the The New Yorker Theater on 89th Street and Broadway (Woody Allen and Diane Keaton argue in its lobby in “Annie Hall”).
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas was the fourth and last theater the Talbots operated, and the first film to play there was Federico Fellini’s “City of Women.”
For years, Howard Milstein, who owns 30 Lincoln Plaza, has been the landlord of the cinema. Mr. Milstein, who is the chief executive of Emigrant Savings Bank, is a member of a New York real-estate dynasty that Forbes once ranked the 90th wealthiest family in America.
In December 2017, Milstein Properties declined to renew Lincoln Plaza’s lease, saying that the theater required vital repairs. In a statement the company suggested that it would reopen the space again as a cinema, although it said little else.
Outrage quickly spread through condominiums on the Upper West Side. Critics and journalists wrote odes to the cinema’s leaky ceilings and stiff seats. But the closing date held firm. Mr. Talbot, who had been ill for some time, died later that month at 91. Lincoln Plaza Cinemas’ last day of operation was Jan. 28.
“We initially called him and asked to rent the space and keep running the cinema on our own,” Ms. Levy said. “A couple days later, a lawyer called us up and said, ‘Mr. Milstein is a very generous man. But not when it comes to money.’ He explained we’d need to come to the table with lots of money for anything to happen.”
A spokeswoman for Milstein Properties said that the company is still searching for a new tenant and that its “vision is still to reopen the space as a cinema.”
These days, Toby Talbot, 91, has been busy finishing her husband’s memoirs at their sunlit apartment on Riverside Drive, which is filled with posters of movies by directors like Bernardo Bertolucci and Claude Chabrol that once premiered in their theaters.
The closing of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas remains a sore spot. “He keeps our name on the marquee,” she said. “What nerve.”
She’s rooting for New Plaza. “I give them my blessing,” she said. “I want them to succeed. This was our life’s work. Dan and I were educating people, and why should that education have to stop?”
If a recent Saturday night at New Plaza was any indication, word about the cinema was getting around. An eager crowd entered to see “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles,” a documentary about “Fiddler on the Roof.” Two ushers, Naomi Rossabi, 83, and Ruth Mucatel, 91, took tickets. During their downtime, they groused about going to the movies today.
“We hate reserved seating,” Ms. Rossabi said. “What if we’re stuck behind a tall person?”
“Young people are used to getting everything easy,” Ms. Mucatel said. “We know what it means to have to wait for things.”
But a gloomy note soon entered their conversation.
“I heard the New York Institute of Technology is selling off their property in the area,” Ms. Rossabi said. “We don’t know if this space will always be here for us. Some of us are worried.”
In fact, the school recently put a 12-story campus building on 61st and Broadway up for sale, just down the street from New Plaza’s auditorium. But a spokesman for the university said there’s no cause for alarm: those plans don’t involve their space, and New Plaza’s arrangement is secure at least until May.
But considering the travails of New Plaza Cinema, perhaps it still felt like too close a call.
“I hope this isn’t all just a pipe dream,” Ms. Rossabi said. “Because something magic still happens when you go to the movies.”
yeah, I found that rather odd the exclusion of the ‘Fantasound’ system; and for a two hour movie, the evening screenings beginning at 8:30pm – that’s on the late end if you ask me.
I recently saw a Washington Post ad for ‘Arachnophobia’ (1990) that denoted that it’s 70mm run was here at Union Station; that bit of information totally went unnoticed by me – who knew?!
Can someone clarify this – are there three auditoriums featuring Dolby Atmos sound, or are there six?
Giles
commented about
Cinemaon
Jun 2, 2019 at 6:59 pm
^ I also would assume ‘The Hunt for Red October’ would have been a 70mm presentation as well. I just remember being utterly riveted by the soundmix (movies set in submarines, have ALL had excellent sound design in my opinion) and the music, specifically the choral parts of the score sounding epically grandiose.
This comment is more reference to JodarMovieFan’s comment way back in 2004 in mentioning the HPS-4000 sound system installed for ‘Fantasia’ as a re-release in 1985; and I also remember the Richard Dreyfuss/Emilio Estevez comedy pic ‘Stakeout’ being presented as such here.
What’s interesting in doing research over the system online, is that a variant and progression of the system actually never fully went away but merged and reconfigured to newer digital systems and theaters:
2010:
The HPS-4000 theatres at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor are converted to digital cinema. John F. Allen upgrades the sound systems with all new processors as well as amplifiers and personally supervises the soundtrack preparation.
and nearer on the East Coast close to the Washington DC area:
2017
The National Museum of the the United States Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia opens a new large format theatre. High Performance Stereo is chosen to provide the sound system. John Allen designs a new 15 channel sound system that employs 11 channels behind the 70 by 50 foot screen, plus four surround channels. This marks the first time such a large screen image has had an equally large sound image behind it. This installation has the acoustic power of 36 symphony orchestras and is the most powerful HPS-4000® sound system in the world.
https://www.hps4000.com/pages/history_.html
Anyhow, I just thought this was interesting cinematic ‘sound’ history, part of which included the Avalon Theatre.
Giles
commented about
Cinemaon
Jun 2, 2019 at 1:44 pm
honestly I should have just looked up to the ‘Showcase Presentation’ list to the answers of the couple of questions I had. In regards to two specific movies with accompanied question marks, I seem to recall both ‘The Hunt for Red October’ and ‘The Godfather III’ both being shown here.
I gather when IMAX did the retrofit, someone in corporate also had the red floor lighting removed from the Dolby Cinema screen, and while the red lighting is now gone, the ever so slightly blue light on the screen, is the new flaw but is nowhere as visually distracting as the ‘red’ lit lower corners.
Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ on the Dolby Cinema auditorium sounded loud and boisterous, but it was the first movie where the displayed image lacked a sharpness and heightened color range that Dolby Cinema is known for.
After a brief closing of the IMAX screen the last month or so, the auditorium reopened today having been upgraded to IMAX-laser projection, 12-channel sound, new seating and new interior wall lighting.
DisneyNature’s ‘Penguins’ looked fantastic even with predominant colors of blue, black, and white, the occasional introduction of a vibrant color really added tremendous pop and clarity. The extra speakers placed to the rear corners, side walls and above really dropped you into the middle of the various animals with it’s cacophony of animal vocality.
The seats while not recliners are super comfortable and have a slight bounce to them.
Giles
commented about
Cinemaon
Apr 14, 2019 at 10:36 pm
Unless it happened during the “02/18/76 (repertory film festival showings)” or the latter end of the 1970’s, I remember my dad taking me here to see ‘Camelot’– at a young age I was very entertained.
The 1989 engagement of ‘The Ten Commandments’ was aptly impressive here, but I can’t seem to recall if it was a 35mm print or 70mm print, I think it was the former.
Out of curiosity, when DID the Cinema get it’s 70mm projector and what was presented as such, every bit of info I’ve noted seems to suggest that ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was the debut of the system – is that true?
I saw countless movies here, but the first one I remember seeing as a kid was the ‘Pippi Longstocking’ movie that came out in 1973.
updated in the photo section to include the 70mm 1989 re-release Washington Post advert for “The Ten Commandments”
This theater/building has a very interesting history (as noted in Robert K. Headley’s book: “Motion Picture Exhibition in Washington, D.C.”). Built in 1907-1908, the Masonic Auditorium began showing movies (and vaudeville) from 1908 (!). The first floor auditorium which ran the entire first floor was able to seat almost 1,800 people. A second auditorium was located on the fifth floor that seated about 700 patrons. When the building was converted into the museum, the first floor was remolded into a grand hall and a new 200 seat auditorium on the third floor.
This does not need an IMAX laser install – a top of the line 4K laser projector is the least it would need to be state of the art – pop in a Dolby Atmos system, the theater could and should feature the modern amenities of most chain theater ‘premier’ screens. Folk literally have no problem dropping $20 on average at Tyson’s for Dolby Cinema, and other luxury theaters in the area, there’s no reason why if another film exhibitor were to resume operation HAS to include laser projection and immersive audio when it’s become the norm. Reading the Post article was just depressing, sure running a one screen theater is a challenge, but it needs the community to back it and give some voice to the neighborhood if it truly wants it back, and it comes at a terrible time, when theaters nationwide and internationally are having a significant drop in attendance due to the coronavirus pandemic. Booking Pixar’s ‘Onward’ there, which was Pixar’s second lowest grossing movie, and then having it’s next movie, the new James Bond, bumped to November, and then the sudden audience no-shows, just gave AMC the more excuses to just throw in the towel, just sad and unfortunate.
I find it fascinating that no one here has been to this theater and made any comments. What DID happen to the former ‘IDX’ screen, I would assume AMC kept the 7.1 surround sound setup, but corporate didn’t invest the time, money, or interest to upgrade it to ‘Prime’ or ‘Dolby Cinema’. Also, the theater’s name is just “AMC Loudoun Station 11” the ‘Starplex’ has been dropped.
The soft-opening of the theater happened on February 28th, with the official opening on March 6th. ICON-X auditorium(s) One seats 226, auditorium Two: seats 200, nine and ten seat 225. I saw ‘Rise of Skywalker’ last Sunday and ‘Birds of Prey’ yesterday; and I have to say the audio calibration and specifically the Dolby Atmos sound are acoustically top notch. I also like the plush seats, that only offer the ability to shift into a one’s comfortable seating position, but also offers ‘heating’ – tres chic!
This is my first time to a Showcase ICON theater and I have to say, I really like the fact the company policy has four trailers max before a feature – not the standard over twenty minutes at the other movie theater chains.
Off the top of my head, I know that Mazza does side horizontal masking for ‘flat’ movies on screen 1,2 and 4. The Uptown to my knowledge has also done this for 1.85 AR movies. They really screwed up last year’s presentation of ‘Missing Link’ which was a scope movie, but side masked off the left and right sides of the image. For ‘Missing Link’, in April, there was no assigned seating but by the time I saw ‘The Lion King’ in July they had added seat numbers/assigning
actually the most recent movie screenings here was in August 2016 for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain exhibited a traveling roadshow showing of the “Star Wars Trilogy: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi”
sorry this isn’t about the upstairs theaters, but a comment about the prior basement ‘Paris’ theater/screens. I just got from a friend an email of the original Washington Post advert for ‘Aliens’ (1986) and while I know that the 70mm engagement was at the KB Fine Arts, I didn’t realize it was also it’s sole in-town run. I for some reason, saw it when the popularity and box office success moved it to more theaters and specifically to upper Northwest DC to here. Even the largest screen was on the miniscule side, but man what an audience, the scene when the face hugger scuttles across the floor towards Newt and Ripley, everyone, including myself and a friend just completely lost it – oh the memories.
update to include Washington Post advert for premier of ‘Fantasia’
Recent New York Times / By Alex Vadukul (article about Lincoln Plaza Cinema and New Plaza theater)
Published Dec. 13, 2019 Updated Dec. 16, 2019, 8:47 a.m. ET
During a recent screening of “Mr. Klein,” the 1976 World War II psychological thriller starring Alain Delon, volunteers at New Plaza Cinema scrambled to operate their upstart independent movie theater on the Upper West Side.
Ann Logan, 71, yelled directions to customers as she sat in her walker; Norma Levy, 76, sold tickets from rolls of red paper stubs and stashed money into a little metal box; Rita Lee, 88, helped sell refreshments at a foldout table. When the movie ended, ushers hurried to wheel walkers and rollators back to older guests waiting in their seats.
It wasn’t a sellout, but it was a decent showing for a 43-year-old French film on a chilly Saturday night.
New Plaza is a newcomer to the city’s independent cinema scene, and it’s trying to establish itself at a time when independent theaters are in a death struggle with streaming video and a generation of moviegoers demanding in-theater craft brews and plush recliner seats.
New Plaza also has something of a chip on its shoulder.
Two years ago, Upper West Siders mourned the closing of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the dingy art house theater where New Yorkers came to worship Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Satyajit Ray. A cultural institution from the early 1980s, its concessions stand sold lox sandwiches, water leaked from its ceilings, and quarrels broke out among hard-of-hearing customers during foreign movies.
And ever since its landlord, Milstein Properties, declined to renew its lease, the theater has sat in a ghostly state on 63rd Street and Broadway with a blank marquee.
But as the city marched on with cold indifference, a band of seniors and retirees who live in the neighborhood refused to accept its demise and founded New Plaza Cinema just across the street.
They operate their nonprofit theater in a generic auditorium that they rent out twice a month from the New York Institute of Technology. A sandwich board on 62nd Street announces their presence. On weekends, they set up a volunteer recruitment table on Broadway beside a handwritten board that reads, “Do You Miss Lincoln Plaza Cinemas?”
Barry Schulman, 72, a retired television executive who helped found the Sci-Fi Channel, was selling candy bars from a wicker basket at the “Mr. Klein” screening. He explained why he joined the cause. “After I retired, I didn’t move to the Upper West Side just so I’d have to get on the subway and go to the Angelika,” he said.
The ultimate goal is lofty: unsatisfied with New Plaza merely being a pop-up cinema, the organizers want a full-time theater of their own, but securing such a space would probably cost millions. A strategy meeting was recently held over banana bread at the New Plaza president Norma Levy’s apartment in Lincoln Towers. Their big hope is that wealthy donors will bankroll their movie house.
“This city is full of wealth,” said Ms. Levy, a retired lawyer. “Three million dollars is nothing to some people. We only need one of those people. Maybe two. We’ll let them name the place. ‘The Mike Bloomberg Theater.’ Whatever. All we need is the theater, and we’ll do the rest.”
It won’t be easy. The city’s old art houses and independent theaters have been vanishing. Recent closures include the Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side, the Beekman Theater on the Upper East Side, City Cinemas on 86th Street, and the stately Paris opposite the Plaza Hotel. They close because of high rents, expired leases, and shifts in modern moviegoer habits.
Tellingly, as of a few weeks ago, the Paris will now be getting a second life, but only because Netflix leased the refined single-screen theater as a showcase address for its prestige releases.
As the old guard institutions fade, a slick new era of art houses is rising. The revitalized Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village sells organic wine at its bar, and the Metrograph on Ludlow Street has a restaurant that serves koginut squash salad. Last year, possibly sensing change in the air, the longstanding Film Forum on Houston Street underwent a $5 million dollar face-lift.
New Plaza’s single-screen auditorium seats 259 people. Recent screenings have included “Pavarotti” and “Tel Aviv on Fire,” and they’ve shown classics like “My Dinner With Andre” and “The Conformist.” After Philip Roth died, they ran a marathon of movies adapted from his books.
Ms. Levy declined to detail the operating costs and revenue of New Plaza, but she said they break even with their ticket sales, and that senior tickets make up the bulk of their revenue.
“Do we need younger faces?” she asked. “Yes, we do. But right now, we have an army of bright and dedicated people who have life experience. It might be time as a society to look at older people differently in terms of what they’re capable of and can create for society.”
In this brutal environment, they have one idea that might get them attention.
Woody Allen’s new film, “A Rainy Day in New York,” hasn’t had a New York premiere, and there are no current plans for its release in the United States. (It opened in September in Paris to lines spilling down the street.)
“No one in town wants to touch it,” said Gary Palmucci, 64, New Plaza’s film curator. “We did a show of hands here, and about 85 percent of people were in favor. I think we’ve decided we’re not so worried about picketers and we think it would be worthwhile to show.” He added: “We’re all over 50. We’ve lived in this world a lot. We view certain transgressions differently than college students.”
As the second anniversary of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas’ closing approaches, there lingers the thorny and awkward matter of the shuttered art house itself, which seems tantalizingly available.
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas was opened in 1981 by Dan and Toby Talbot. The pioneering couple is credited with helping start the art-house-revival movement in the 1960s with their bold programming at the The New Yorker Theater on 89th Street and Broadway (Woody Allen and Diane Keaton argue in its lobby in “Annie Hall”).
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas was the fourth and last theater the Talbots operated, and the first film to play there was Federico Fellini’s “City of Women.”
For years, Howard Milstein, who owns 30 Lincoln Plaza, has been the landlord of the cinema. Mr. Milstein, who is the chief executive of Emigrant Savings Bank, is a member of a New York real-estate dynasty that Forbes once ranked the 90th wealthiest family in America.
In December 2017, Milstein Properties declined to renew Lincoln Plaza’s lease, saying that the theater required vital repairs. In a statement the company suggested that it would reopen the space again as a cinema, although it said little else.
Outrage quickly spread through condominiums on the Upper West Side. Critics and journalists wrote odes to the cinema’s leaky ceilings and stiff seats. But the closing date held firm. Mr. Talbot, who had been ill for some time, died later that month at 91. Lincoln Plaza Cinemas’ last day of operation was Jan. 28.
“We initially called him and asked to rent the space and keep running the cinema on our own,” Ms. Levy said. “A couple days later, a lawyer called us up and said, ‘Mr. Milstein is a very generous man. But not when it comes to money.’ He explained we’d need to come to the table with lots of money for anything to happen.”
A spokeswoman for Milstein Properties said that the company is still searching for a new tenant and that its “vision is still to reopen the space as a cinema.”
These days, Toby Talbot, 91, has been busy finishing her husband’s memoirs at their sunlit apartment on Riverside Drive, which is filled with posters of movies by directors like Bernardo Bertolucci and Claude Chabrol that once premiered in their theaters.
The closing of Lincoln Plaza Cinemas remains a sore spot. “He keeps our name on the marquee,” she said. “What nerve.”
She’s rooting for New Plaza. “I give them my blessing,” she said. “I want them to succeed. This was our life’s work. Dan and I were educating people, and why should that education have to stop?”
If a recent Saturday night at New Plaza was any indication, word about the cinema was getting around. An eager crowd entered to see “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles,” a documentary about “Fiddler on the Roof.” Two ushers, Naomi Rossabi, 83, and Ruth Mucatel, 91, took tickets. During their downtime, they groused about going to the movies today.
“We hate reserved seating,” Ms. Rossabi said. “What if we’re stuck behind a tall person?”
“Young people are used to getting everything easy,” Ms. Mucatel said. “We know what it means to have to wait for things.”
But a gloomy note soon entered their conversation.
“I heard the New York Institute of Technology is selling off their property in the area,” Ms. Rossabi said. “We don’t know if this space will always be here for us. Some of us are worried.”
In fact, the school recently put a 12-story campus building on 61st and Broadway up for sale, just down the street from New Plaza’s auditorium. But a spokesman for the university said there’s no cause for alarm: those plans don’t involve their space, and New Plaza’s arrangement is secure at least until May.
But considering the travails of New Plaza Cinema, perhaps it still felt like too close a call.
“I hope this isn’t all just a pipe dream,” Ms. Rossabi said. “Because something magic still happens when you go to the movies.”
yeah, I found that rather odd the exclusion of the ‘Fantasound’ system; and for a two hour movie, the evening screenings beginning at 8:30pm – that’s on the late end if you ask me.
can anyone confirm if Auditorium #13 is getting the makeover/upgrade to ‘XD’ ?
I recently saw a Washington Post ad for ‘Arachnophobia’ (1990) that denoted that it’s 70mm run was here at Union Station; that bit of information totally went unnoticed by me – who knew?!
Has anyone got the specs on the theater’s sound and projector systems. No one from their Facebook team is or has imparted any info in this regard.
Can someone clarify this – are there three auditoriums featuring Dolby Atmos sound, or are there six?
^ I also would assume ‘The Hunt for Red October’ would have been a 70mm presentation as well. I just remember being utterly riveted by the soundmix (movies set in submarines, have ALL had excellent sound design in my opinion) and the music, specifically the choral parts of the score sounding epically grandiose.
This comment is more reference to JodarMovieFan’s comment way back in 2004 in mentioning the HPS-4000 sound system installed for ‘Fantasia’ as a re-release in 1985; and I also remember the Richard Dreyfuss/Emilio Estevez comedy pic ‘Stakeout’ being presented as such here.
What’s interesting in doing research over the system online, is that a variant and progression of the system actually never fully went away but merged and reconfigured to newer digital systems and theaters:
2010: The HPS-4000 theatres at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor are converted to digital cinema. John F. Allen upgrades the sound systems with all new processors as well as amplifiers and personally supervises the soundtrack preparation.
and nearer on the East Coast close to the Washington DC area:
2017 The National Museum of the the United States Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia opens a new large format theatre. High Performance Stereo is chosen to provide the sound system. John Allen designs a new 15 channel sound system that employs 11 channels behind the 70 by 50 foot screen, plus four surround channels. This marks the first time such a large screen image has had an equally large sound image behind it. This installation has the acoustic power of 36 symphony orchestras and is the most powerful HPS-4000® sound system in the world. https://www.hps4000.com/pages/history_.html
Anyhow, I just thought this was interesting cinematic ‘sound’ history, part of which included the Avalon Theatre.
honestly I should have just looked up to the ‘Showcase Presentation’ list to the answers of the couple of questions I had. In regards to two specific movies with accompanied question marks, I seem to recall both ‘The Hunt for Red October’ and ‘The Godfather III’ both being shown here.
although this wasn’t never a problem here, AMC added blue floor lighting like they have done at Tyson’s Corner Dolby Cinema screen.
new news story has confirmed that the originally planned theater will not be integrated into the building complex:
https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/development/wisconsin-avenue-developers-drop-movie-theater-from-project-proposal/
I gather when IMAX did the retrofit, someone in corporate also had the red floor lighting removed from the Dolby Cinema screen, and while the red lighting is now gone, the ever so slightly blue light on the screen, is the new flaw but is nowhere as visually distracting as the ‘red’ lit lower corners.
Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ on the Dolby Cinema auditorium sounded loud and boisterous, but it was the first movie where the displayed image lacked a sharpness and heightened color range that Dolby Cinema is known for.
After a brief closing of the IMAX screen the last month or so, the auditorium reopened today having been upgraded to IMAX-laser projection, 12-channel sound, new seating and new interior wall lighting.
DisneyNature’s ‘Penguins’ looked fantastic even with predominant colors of blue, black, and white, the occasional introduction of a vibrant color really added tremendous pop and clarity. The extra speakers placed to the rear corners, side walls and above really dropped you into the middle of the various animals with it’s cacophony of animal vocality.
The seats while not recliners are super comfortable and have a slight bounce to them.
Unless it happened during the “02/18/76 (repertory film festival showings)” or the latter end of the 1970’s, I remember my dad taking me here to see ‘Camelot’– at a young age I was very entertained.
The 1989 engagement of ‘The Ten Commandments’ was aptly impressive here, but I can’t seem to recall if it was a 35mm print or 70mm print, I think it was the former.
Out of curiosity, when DID the Cinema get it’s 70mm projector and what was presented as such, every bit of info I’ve noted seems to suggest that ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was the debut of the system – is that true?
Theater also has a Dolby Cinema auditorium and IMAX (laser)