Where I Go and How I Get There

Seems like I must have discussed my carlessness on an earlier post, but if I can't be bothered to track it down, then why should you? In brief, to the extent that that's possible, given my chronic logorrhea, for a couple of decades I drove a red 1985 Celica, which I loved. But after a few years as a city boy, particularly when I became a divorced city boy, I came to realize that my need for a full-time vehicle had passed. So I donated the car to Kars-4-Kids (which I thought was pretty hilarious until a friend told me she'd once given a car to the Society for the Blind), planning to rent maybe one weekend a month to visit Costco, Wine and Liquor Warehouse, Trader Joe's, etc., and to hit the suburban multiplexes. That would cost less than I'd been paying on insurance alone. (That brevity shit is already in big trouble, ain't it?)

In the event, the New Haven bus system and my walking-distance supermarket have left me needing to rent maybe every other month on average, and being carless has been beautifully liberating--except when it's a pain in the ass 'cause some movie is playing somewhere I need a car to get to. But far more often beautifully liberating (hey, neighbors: don't forget to swap sides this week for streetsweeping, hahahahahahahahahahaha! and good luck finding a place to avoid getting towed on the snow route!), plus it installs me on about the highest moral ground imaginable among my kneejerk liberal treehugging friends (oh, you got a new Prius? That's terrific--that's what I'd buy if I were ever to get a car again, though of course I won't).

Where the hell was I? Oh, right--this is the movie blog, isn't it? And carlessness is important why? Oh, right, because going to movies requires some adaptation from the days when I could just decide 20 minutes ahead of time, hop into the car, and drive to Orange. So the "how I get there" matters. Well, to me anyway.

Downtown New Haven

• Criterion (abbreviated as Crit in reviews), Temple and George Streets. Standard clean, slick, modern theater, with some pretensions to charm (red carpet, mediocre mural of actors à la Sgt. Pepper), but most of the genuine charm comes from its simply being a comfortable and convenient place to watch movies--and from the friendly-except-for-the-one-dude-I-think-must-have-Asperger's staff, and from the real butter on the popcorn (though currently I'm in a whalish, butter-eschewing phase). Opened late 2004 as a five-screen art house; has since added two screens and gone to a more hybrid booking philosophy, which is OK by me, as I'd rather get my Pirates of the Caribbean fix downtown than have to take a bus to the 'burbs. Currently charging $10.50 with a $7.50 bargain matinee (first show only), and if you have a Criterion Club Card (need you even ask whether I do?), you get a free admission after paying for 15. They also have Friday and Saturday late-night Insomnia Theater shows (typically cultish action fare--Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is this weekend's pic, I believe; Donnie Darko and Raiders of the Lost Ark are among the relatively few I've gone to) and Sunday morning Movies and Mimosas (mostly classics, Manhattan and Annie Hall the past two weeks, and often farther-back classics, though unfortunately they are either unable or unwilling to leave the sides of the screen blank, so pre-widescreen films get projected off the top and bottom [see earlier rant], but anyway . . . ), both of which are $5, or $4 for us cardholders; and on Sunday a.m., you can buy a mimosa made w/ decent prosecco for $2. Oh, and the $4 admissions also count toward your next free ticket, which, unless you're an idiot, will be at a $10.50 regular-admission show.
• York Square Cinema (YSC), Broadway west of York, but RIP. Died a few months after the Criterion opened, but the owners blamed not the arrival of a new downtown arthouse so much as the long-whined-about refusal of the studios to book a blockbuster in a dingy, ill-managed house where a few hundred Yale students would see it rather than in a suburban multiplex on an interstate highway. When it finally closed, it was like the hypochondriac's epitaph: See, I told you! Still, they showed some fine arthouse fare--generally edgier stuff than the Criterion is showing now (wouldn't have shied away from 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, e.g., I'm confident), and regardless of what pains in the asses are running it, any movie theater's death diminishes me.
• Whitney Humanities Center (WHC), Wall Street between Temple and Church. This is a June 2008 update: my recollection of the place, from Film Fests New Haven long past and a few free campus screenings, was of a beautiful 35mm projection system in a godawful room: no rake, butt-killing seats, and impossible to simultaneously darken and ventilate, so hellishly hot in season. Well, now it's air-conditioned and the seats are new and reasonably comfortable, and while there's still no rake, I've discovered the small balcony than ensures no heads in the way. Projection is still excellent, though the sound is barely adequate.

Edge of New Haven

People sometimes ask me, "How big a geek are you, exactly?" Perhaps the question is intended rhetorically, but I'd like to take this opportunity to cast some light on it: the most exciting thing I learned today is that a new bus route, the D13, makes the Cine 1-2-3-4 routinely bussable for the first time.

• Cine 1-2-3-4 (Cine), some little side road off of Middletown Ave. north of Route 80, or in other words, the middle of nowhere. I call this The Little Movie Theater That Could: a mom-and-pop operation originally carved out of the corner of Mom & Pop's farmland. Used to be kinda mildew-smelly, with sticky floors, but last couple times I've been there, they seemed to have addressed those issues. But who cares? It's just such a good place. Mostly it gets the 'plexes' leftovers, so mostly I don't go there much (plus, as I suggest above, it was until just recently a bear to get to via bus), but sometimes--as with I'm Not There, which I saw there on a car weekend in December, it opens something simultaneous w/ the 'plexes, and then on rare occasions, like this weekend, it gets a Greater New Haven exclusive. Which is a beautiful thing. Currently $9, $6:50 for bargain matinee. Oh, and by the way, the sign on the building now says Ciné 4, but to me, it'll never have that pretentious aigu.

Suburban Multiplexes

• Cinema De Lux 14 (Post), Connecticut Post Mall, Milford. Upscale multiplex, player piano in the cavernous lobby, Ben & Jerry's and Nathan's stations in the food court, stadium seating in all auditoriums, and a couple of reserved-seating, higher-priced theaters, for no particular reason. I take the O bus from downtown, which creeps along the Post Road (U.S. 1, which here is itself basically a ten-mile strip mall) and drops me off at the opposite end of the mall from where the theater is, meaning that I have to walk through hell to get there. The cinematic fare is standard blockbuster, rarely anything with a hint of the arthouse about it. Tickets are $10.75, but $7.50 for all shows before 6, which is pretty much all shows I go to in the 'burbs. (Same prices for the Showcases, which are, like this, part of the National Amusements chain.) Bargain matinee used to be first show only, but before the policy changed, Costco sold me a bunch of 2-for-$13.99 passes for the later shows; I still have a bunch, since I refuse to use 'em to save just a half-buck when I can save $3.25 for the occasional nighttime show I see. This plex replaced two earlier ones, the Showcase Milford (Mil) and the Fourplex (Four).
• Showcase North Haven (NoHa), Universal Drive. Same movies, less glitz, C bus, and now also reachable via the D13 that will take me to the Cine.
• Showcase Orange (Orange), Marsh Hill Road. This generally shows slightly more cerebral fare, including some arthouse stuff. Pain in the ass to get to via bus, though: I have to get off the O and walk about 3/4 mi. along a pedestrian unfriendly (no sidewalks, little shoulder, and genuinely marshy grass and fields after rain or snow) connector road between U.S. 1 and I-95. So the threshold for a single film to get me there is high; I'll sometimes double-feature something I'm not enthusiastic about just to make the trip worthwhile.

Outer Limits

• Madison Art Cinema (Mad), Main Street, nearly 20 miles from home, so reachable only by car, but a two-screen jewel box of an arthouse managed by Arnold Gorlick, who managed the York Square until his prickly personality and the owners' prickly personalities caused a prickle overload. Arnold is a real movie lover, though, and one of my few regrets about carlessness is an inability to patronize his place more.
• Regal Branford Stadium 12 (Bran), car only, and basically only when I have a free pass, as I did once. Movie hell: huge, noisy lobby, the highest concession prices around, standard blockbuster fare. With luck, I've seen the last of it.

Champaign, Illinois

When I go visit my family, these are the places available, all by car:

• Boardman's Art Theatre, Church Street, downtown: true to its name, one screen. Recently renovated, so the seats are reasonably comfortable, and the concessions are inexpensive and quirky--Lemonheads, e.g. Was one of two downtown porn theaters when I first moved to Champaign in 1974, but it was reclaimed a few years later, as simply the Art. Boardman's owns one other area theater that I know of.
• GKC Beverly 18, North Prospect, in the most hellish of hellish commercial areas. Standard blockbuster fare. Shows exactly the same films as . . .
• Goodrich Savoy 16, South Neil, in a somewhat less concentrated commercial hell. This one strikes me as a little dingier inside than the Beverly.

And that's it. The two smaller edge-of-town multiplexes, plus two beautiful downtown single-screen houses, plus another in downtown Urbana, plus a chopped up triplex and a newer two-screen on the UI campus in Urbana--all gone. One other downtown Champaign survivor is the palatial Virginia, which is the venue for some theatrical perfomances and a few classic movies, plus local boy Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival.

Manhattan

See my post on M4s for the getting-to-Grand Central part. Then . . .

• Landmark Sunshine (Sun), on Houston between First and Second Avenues. Standard clean, modern art house multiplex with stadium seating. Bonus points for real butter on the popcorn. Current ticket price $11.50. From Grand Central, take the downtown 6 train to Broadway and Lafayette, transfer to the downtown/Brooklyn-bound V or F for one stop, to Lower East Side/Second Av (the V's terminus). Note that you can't return the same way if you end the day here, because you there's no transfer to the uptown 6; if you're set on the 6, you have to leave the station, walk a short couple of blocks northeast to Bleecker and Lafayette, and pay another fare. (This is the only place in the entire New York subway system where such a condition prevails, and they sometimes talk about fixing it, but I'm not holding my breath.) The one-fare alternative is taking the uptown F or V to 42nd Street/Bryant Park, then walking the half-mile or so east to GCT, using the illuminated Chrysler Building spire as your guide. You could instead transfer to the Queens-bound 7, but the underground walk for the transfer is half as far as the aboveground walk to Grand Central, so unless the weather is absolutely foul, there's no point.
• Angelika (Ang), Houston and Mercer, just west of Broadway. Standard slightly grungy art house multiplex with little to no rake. Points deducted for asinine policy of salt distribution: no shakers, just little carry-out restaurant packets. More points deducted for the periodic subway rumble. Not coincidentally, it's a block west of the Broadway/Lafayette 6 stop.
• Film Forum (FF), Houston west of Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas). Three-screen art/revival house with some charm (and, in my experience, the city's most cramped men's room). Times Square Shuttle or 7 train to Times Square, transfer to the downtown 1 train, and FF is a half-block east of the Houston stop. If you're returning late at night, though, note that the Shuttle sometimes stops running, so the 7 may be your only choice.
• IFC (IFC), Sixth Avenue at 3rd Street. Three-screen art/revival house with little charm but clean and spacious bathrooms and stadium seating in two rooms and a moderate rake in the third. Not sure how much a plus this is, but Old Bay seasoning is available for your popcorn; also cinnamon sugar. $11.50 tickets. Historical note: this is the site of the old Waverly, which my generation remembers from the song "Frank Mills" in Hair. Same subway caveats as for the Sunshine, but to get here you transfer from the 6 to the uptown B, D, F, or V one stop to West 4th Street, which exits right by the theater. (And going back uptown, you also have all four options to get to 42nd/Bryant.)
• Quad (Quad), 13th Street between Sixth and Fifth Avenues. Standard urban art house with the best popcorn in town. I'll usually just walk the half-mile between here and the Union Square stop for the 6 (or, better, the express 4 or 5: nonstop GCT to Union Sq.), but if you must get as close as possible underground, transfer to the L train and take it one stop west to Sixth Avenue, then walk a block south and an avenue half-block west. Or you could do the Times Square transfer to a downtown 1 (or express 2 or 3), getting off at 14th and Fifth and walking south, then east.
• Cinema Village (CV), 12th Street just west of University Place (an avenue that runs from 4th to 14th between Fifth and Broadway). Art house with three of the tiniest screens not in somebody's den. Just a couple blocks southwest of the Union Square stop.
• Regal Union Square (USq), Broadway and 13th. Big, noisy multiplex, but every now and then . . . First thing I saw here, e.g., back in the visiting-my-wife-in-Brooklyn days, was Titus.
• Village East (VE), 12th Street and Second Avenue. Hybrid multiplex showing blockbusters and just enough art house fare to keep its Village bona fides. All the theaters but one are standard chop boxes, but screen 1, facing the unused 12th Street entrance, is obviously the original: a movie palace with a big screen, Egyptian decor, and two balconies. A pleasant walk from Union Square, or you can take the L to either Third or First.
• Two Boots Pioneer (2 Boots), 3rd Street just east of Avenue A. One-screen quirky house, with an excellent pizza joint on the corner. No early shows, so I never start here; when I finish here, the closest subway is Bleecker, about a half-mile west.
• Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Broadway between 62nd and 63rd. Upper West Side art house that I haven't been to in ages, 'cause I can always see whatever they're showing downtown. Everything's underground, way underground. If I were going there directly from New Haven, I guess I'd get off the Metro North at Harlem/125th Street, catch the westbound M60 bus to St. Nicholas Av. (Central Park West), then transfer to a downtown A, B, C, or D to 59th Street. Basically, there's no easy way to get there from the East Side, so it's best to just take a Lexington Avenue train and a nice stroll across Central Park.