Directors Guild of America Theater
110 W. 57th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
110 W. 57th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
15 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 84 comments
Teenage boy comic book blockbusters? Yes, I’m sick of seeing them, or being given scant choice besides them. I saw Stealth last week and almost threw up from the vapid, stupid emptiness. Artie indie? Well, “artie” can be a put-down. Artistic? I’d actually love to see more movies that are truly so. Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband with the great Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. It wasn’t exactly “pleasure” or “entertainment” in the conventional sense, but it was joy, enrichment, and a challenge. What a change after all the summer pap and pablum, a movie that presumes I may have an iota of sensibility, of intelligence. It’s an unusual feeling.
Teenage boy comic book blockbusters? Yes, I’m sick of seeing them, or being given scant choice besides them. I saw Stealth last week and almost threw up from the vapid, stupid emptiness. Artie indie? Well, “artie” can be a put-down. Artistic? I’d actually love to see more movies that are truly so. Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband with the great Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. It wasn’t exactly “pleasure” or “entertainment” in the conventional sense, but it was joy, enrichment, and a challenge. What a change after all the summer pap and pablum, a movie that presumes I may have an iota of sensibility, of intelligence. It’s an unusual feeling.
Aren’t people sick of artie indie movies? And Hollywood teenage boy comic book blockbusters? What happened to just good entertaining movies for adults that if you wanted to you could bring your children to(in other words the kind of movies I went to when I was a kid in the 60’s.)
I hated, absolutely hated, BROKEN FLOWERS. Given all the accolades it was received with at Cannes, I had high expectatins, but they were quickly dashed. I’m apparently in the minority though because A.O. Scott in The Times (on the front page of the Weekend Arts Section, praised it. Murray’s ennui did not work with Jarmusch’s ennui. Combine the two and not too much happens.
What was interesting was the crowd reaction because there was lots of laughter through the first two-thirds of the film and then no more laughter as the film kind of got serious. I didn’t notice much difference between the first two-thirds/“laughing” part of the film and the last third/“serious” part of the film, but the audience reacted differently.
I drove past there last night and saw the line. Just curious: what did you think of “Broken Flowers”? As much as I like Murray, his indie thing (to me) is starting to wear thin. “Rushmore” and “Lost in Translation” were fine and good for a change of pace. But this is the guy who did “Meatballs” and “Stripes” for God’s sake!
I was at the DGA Theatre last night for an advanced screening oF BROKEN FLOWERS. It looks like the DGA is sprucing up the theatre. They seemed to have pulled some seats out in the front and added some in the back or did something to the back of the theatre. That snack bar in the basement is also gone. It was circular and free standing.
Directed by and starring Paul Henreid, “For Men Only” received the advertising tag “… and the women who love them. It’s every woman’s picture!” I never knew that it concerned frat boys. It opened at Loew’s State on 15 January, 1952.
A film festival in 2003
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In October 1976 near the end of it’s life as the Playboy Theatre it was $1 at all times except Sunday $1.25. Odd that Saturdays were not higher priced. The double bill was “The Shootist” and “Three Days of the Condor”.
The Christmas of 1971 had the then Playboy Theatre showing Roman Polanski’s “Macbeth”. The daily showtimes were 2:30, 5:45 and 8:45.
This theatre was unique. I remember descending the escalator to a spacious lobby in the basement where the snack bar, rest rooms and that neat, circular coach/sitting area was located.
This house always seemed larger then 586 seats.
The official web site of the DGA: http://www.dga.org
Seating capacity of the NYC DGA Theatre is 484.
As the 57th Street Playhouse there were 586 seats.
In July of 2003, long-simmering plans to sell the DGA building to a developer who planned to construct a 40-story, mixed-use luxury apartment tower on the site fell through; instead, the property was renovated by the present owner.
What’s the seating capacity of this theater? Does anyone know?
Can someone confirm that a 1984 re-release of Lang’s great “Metropolis” played here? It had a horrible rock track added to it but the movie was still spectacular.
But it’s the theater I remember well. It was small but very art deco and the bathroom/lounge was downstairs.
If this was it, this is a GREAT theater and I’m glad it’s still around.
The 2 Cinemeccanica Victoria 8 35mm/70mm projectors and the Dolby mag-stereo equipment from the then-closed Murray Hill were brought over here and installed for ‘The Last Emperor’ when the film moved over from Cinema I.
I’m sure that the Music Hall had already viewed Streetcar when they booked it and knew that it would have been a perfect film for them with Brando and Leigh. I’m also sure that the Hall staff was familiar with it during its Broadway run. According to Kazan it was pulled after the catholic chrch threatened to give it a C rating. Too bad. It would have been a great Music Hall film and a nice break after all those months of MGM technicolor musicals.
Right—that was the same year that “The Great Caruso” broke records with a nine-week run at RCMH. The latter had booked “A Streetcar Named Desire” for Fall, then withdrew it (no doubt after viewing it belatedly with lips together, teeth apart) on the grounds that “Caruso”’s hold-over had preempted it. “An American in Paris” ran seven weeks, and the “Too Young” filler opened on Thanksgiving Day. With a schedule like that, what box could they have stuffed “Pandora” into?
Pandora I believe was supposed to open at Radio City as the Thanksgiving film. For some reason it was cancelled and for two weeks they presented Too Young to Kiss which did pretty poorly in what was all around a great year there. They should have just kept American for another two weeks. (So why didn’t Pandora go into a major Times Square house like the Loew’s or the Capitol?)
I saw many moveovers here, I think the last one being The Little Emporer. I liked the theatre alot, it was comfortable and well run.
As the Normandie, this theater opened on 6 December 1951 with MGM’s arty “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” (Ava Gardner, James Mason; dir and writer Albert Lewin). For the next fifteen years, it had a spotty record of showing minor-Hollywood/flashy-EuroTrash. I remember it as a comfortable theater when I saw a reissue of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in the late ‘50s. That was a terrific program on 31 March 1964. There was an Automat next door, where one could have grabbed a bite in between the reels, no?
At the time that “I Am Curious Yellow” played there, the NYTimes noted that the box office take outgrossed Radio City Music Hall showing of “Mayerling”, the remake with Omar Sharif.