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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Lincoln Plaza the latest theater to close

...In an interview with Deadline, owner Dan Talbot and his wife said that they have done “everything we could ask for the lease to be extended,” but building owner, Milstein Properties, is only “looking to make money.

This one hurts. The Lincoln has an excellent selection of movies, good food, nice seats; some of the auditoriums have beams that obscure your view depending on where you're sitting, but not by much and not that many. The owners say this closure is only to make renovations, but no one knows for certain what the timetable for that will be.

On a personal level, I don't know if everyone else in our film club feels this way, but I know I had come to think of it as almost "ours." Vija and Lynn and Andi like going there for Woody Allen movies (although this year they saw Wonder Wheel across town at the City Cinemas), but we like seeing all kinds of movies there too. This was one venue we all agreed on for a long time.

The neighborhood is upscale; Lincoln Center is a stone's throw away, so the restaurants and shops cater to that particular crowd, but if we have time to spare, we'll occasionally go to a diner on Columbus Avenue, a little further over.


The online reaction has been big. This is more than a neighborhood theater, like Cinemart; it's a nationally-known venue that has a tradition of providing a home for indies and foreign cinema. Plus, a number of people see this as another sign of developers having their way with city planning at the expense of cultural institutions.

A petition to attempt to stop this from happening has already been formed; I've signed it. If you live in the New York metropolitan area and you care about indie film, I hope you will too. I'll keep an eye on this and provide any updates.


(Thanks Debbie and Lynn for telling me!)

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Related:
More NYC theaters facing the wrecking ball
What if more movie theaters were non-profit?

Movies I saw at the Lincoln:
Loving Vincent
Menashe
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
Cafe Society
Les Cowboys
45 Years
Whiplash
Blue Jasmine
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Blue Valentine
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

2 comments:

  1. The LP had a great run, but visionaries cannot be replaced. With Daniel Talbot in poor health, it is ludicrous to think that anyone can take the place of this captain at the helm. LP will go down in cultural history as a giant not only locally, but globally.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I tend to agree about Talbot, but a lot can happen between now and the end of January.

    ReplyDelete

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