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CBS News
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Oakland's theater make Variety's list of "Coolest Movie Theaters in the World"
The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland has been named one of the "Coolest Movie Theaters in the World" by Variety and is the only Bay Area theatre to make the cut. Allen Michaan has run the theatre since 1980, even purchasing the property a few years ago, which will be a century old in 2026. "It is a splendid survivor of the movie palace era," Michaan said. Most of the original interior remains intact with minimal remodeling. "Let's start with number one, the main auditorium," Michaan said, showing off the facility. When you walk in it feels more like you're going to see a Broadway show than a blockbuster movie. It quickly becomes clear why the theatre just made Variety's list of the "Coolest Movie Theaters in the World," alongside the oldest theatre in the world, one owned by Quentin Tarantino, and another that survived Nazi occupation. "It was a complete surprise when I saw it in my email from the Daily Variety," Michaan said. Michaan has poured his heart and soul into this place for more than four decades. He believes it made the list because they've maintained the original feel of the theatre, which once was the home of Vaudeville shows. "It harkens back to what it was like going to the theatre in the 40s and the 50s," Michaan said. The curtain weighs 2,000 pounds and was used at the old Fox Theater in San Francisco. It pulls up to reveal a movie screen, and in front of it is another surprise. "We have a magnificent Wurlitzer organ which is played on the weekends before the Friday and Saturday night shows," Michaan said. Before some showings, they played "Over the Rainbow" as guests filtered into the auditorium. "This is what we call the new wing," said Michaan walking into a side theatre. "We created this space in 1985 out of the storefronts." Michaan turned retail space into two more unique theaters, one has an Egyptian theme. "So the illusion of watching a movie here is to be in an outdoor courtyard under a twinkling star sky," Michaan said as he pointed at the ceiling. It's an atmosphere people can't find anywhere else. Gerald Price has been attending showings here for decades. "I was born and raised in Oakland so I would say, 50 years," responded Price when asked how long he has been attending movies at the theatre. He says if he can, he'll keep coming for another 50. "Local businesses need all the support that they can get," Price said. "The popcorn is better than some of the other theaters, easy to park, good restaurants down here too in case you want to get something to eat afterward." Price was seeing a film upstairs in the original theater's mezzanine, which has been converted into an independent theatre. While much of the original structure remains, Michaan admits there were some needed upgrades "This is actually one of the seats from the theatre. So in those days, it wasn't quite as comfortable as what we have now in our theaters," Michaan said as he pointed to a wooden chair with just a small amount of cushioning on the seat. They've also continued to maintain and upgrade the iconic Grand Lake Theatre sign that illuminates the street below. "We get a lot of compliments and our customers are very loyal," Michaan said. A piece of living history is on the corner of Lake Park and Grand Avenues.
Los Angeles Times
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A Reagan-era Oakland of punks, basketball and rap battles comes to life in ‘Freaky Tales'
'Freaky Tales,' a choppy curio from the writing-directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck ('Half Nelson,' 'Captain Marvel'), is an ode to the Bay Area as a boy might remember it, showcasing three semi-true stories set on May 10, 1987, that gild facts into myth. 'Oakland in '87 was hella wild,' gloats rapper Too Short, the film's narrator. Too Short is onscreen too, in a cameo as a cop. (There's also a version of his younger self played by DeMario Symba Driver.) 'Freaky Tales' gets its title from Too Short's nine-minute song of sexual braggadocio from his 1987 gold record, here foreshadowing a gender-war comeuppance he deserves. That summer, Fleck was a 10-year-old in Berkeley. He was too young to have experienced Too Short's rap battles first-hand, but old enough to lug the energy of that time around as part of his own identity. Fleck and his longtime collaborator Boden translate the feeling of that excitement — that super-sized, should-have-been-there high — into snapshots of a beaten-down city that can, on occasion, fight back and win. Most of the places and some of the people are real. But the star is the movie's hyperactive, even overwhelmingly contradictory nostalgia. Not only does the film feign to be on VHS with white static tickling through the segment breaks, it also has cigarette burns on the upper corners of the frame to pretend we're also simultaneously watching it on a 35mm reels at the local theater. Sometimes action scenes are juiced up with cartoonish doodles and sound effects; sometimes, the action is all cartoon. I'm sure the filmmakers know that Oakland's Grand Lake Theater wasn't showing 'The Lost Boys' that May. (It wouldn't open until July.) But I'm pretty sure they don't care. It's all about the vibes, dude. The movie is divided into four sections with three groups of heroes: punks, rappers and the Golden State Warriors who were in the NBA playoffs against the Los Angeles Lakers, the 'Showtime' team that would go on win the championship. On this particular night, however, game four of a potential Lakers sweep, Golden State point guard Sleepy Floyd (here played by Jay Ellis) refused to lose. He scored 29 points in the fourth quarter, a post-season record that still stands despite future Warriors like Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant trying their damnedest to knock it down. Floyd's big night is real and you can find archival footage of it online, including Floyd's court side interview with a local sportscaster who describes the player's success in mystical terms. Floyd, the newsman says, played so tr\nscendently it was like he was 'unconscious' — he went to 'another realm,' 'that other zone.' The filmmakers have taken that idea of metaphysics and spun it into a phony religion with Floyd hosting TV commercials for Psytopics, a mindfulness camp where fellow Bay residents can train their brain to battle both 'inner and outer demons.' For him, that presumably includes Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, although the script will eventually have its fictionalized Floyd beheading more hostile bad guys with a ninja sword. Three of the story arcs follow a simple plan: An underdog fights and wins. The fourth section, wedged in the middle, is a fabricated tale about a hit man, Clint (Pedro Pascal), who tries to retire, assuring his pregnant wife (Natalia Dominguez) that his fist of fury is now 'just a hand.' Pascal goes about it sincerely, but the mini-tale is so grim that it only accomplishes two things: getting Pascal on the poster, and totally scrambling the movie's tone. Otherwise, these interconnected plots are rousing pulp fictions — the Quentin Tarantino film is an obvious inspiration. Characters criss-cross each other's paths in ways that are cute but don't aspire to cosmic coincidence beyond Pascal's Clint advising two punks, Tina and Lucid (Ji-young Yoo and Jack Champion), the most vulnerable place to aim a spiked bracelet. Tina and Lucid's segment is the opener and establishes that we're in for chipper stories of success (with as much blood as possible). It's inspired by a real-life showdown between the hardcore collective 924 Gilman Street, an all-ages music venue that's still head-banging, and a group of racist rednecks. We're hurled into the atmosphere with a great tracking shot down the club's sidewalk and into a concert where teens and 20-somethings are moshing so hard that the camera gets knocked down and stumbles back to its feet. Later, when Tina and Lucid kiss, we soar above the action as pogo-ing dancers blur into a lovely romantic swirl. The costume department must have used every safety pin in town. Still, these tough-looking kids abide by a principle of nonviolence — until they decide they're so sick of getting attacked by neo-Nazis that they're willing to fight back. There's geysers of gore and a skinhead who gets turned into a tiki torch. It's rousing stuff and a bit glib. The film refuses to dampen the mood: all cheers and no arrests, even with Ben Mendelsohn's loathsome police officer skulking around and harassing two Black girls, Entice and Barbie (Normani and Dominique Thorne), at the nearby ice cream shop where they work. In a smart detail, Mendelsohn's unnamed racist shoots the other white guy in the store a complicit wink. That man is wearing a Jesse Jackson for President hat, but he's too intimidated to step in. Entice and Barbie's section is the most realistic. It's also my favorite, with the duo challenging Too Short to a rap battle in which both sides take hilarious verbal aim at each other's genitals. (When the music kicks in, you might recognize Entice and Barbie from the Too Short track 'Don't Fight the Feelin',' in which the actual girls, just 15 at the time, took down the more established artist with both barrels.) Normani and Thorne nail the performance, spitting the tight, overlapping insults about Too Short's height, girth and dental hygiene with malicious glee. Meanwhile on Floyd's ads for Psytopics, green light beams from a believer's eyeballs and goes on to light up all corners of the movie. Minty lightning bolts zap down in moments of tension. Pea-soup hues leak out of Entice's microphone, the Oakland Coliseum and yes, that spiked bracelet. The green glow seems to imbue people with extra courage — or cause bloody noses. And it's never acknowledged by the script. It's for debate what it means. Over the course of the film, my guesses included telekinesis and algae blooms wafting from Lake Merritt. But the mystery adds to the sense that even though Boden and Fleck are pivoting away from Marvel and back to their indie roots, they've made a superhero movie, after all: a street-smart update on the Toxic Avenger. Either way, they've done their research. The soundtrack of Evelyn 'Champagne' King and Public Image Ltd. and modern punk acts reworking the classics is fantastic, as is the proper score by Raphael Saadiq of Tony! Toni! Toné! Every frame is filled with details, down to the T-shirts for small regional bands like Sewer Trout. There's even a reference to rocky road ice cream, invented in Oakland in 1929. So these 'Freaky Tales' are fun, if not quite satisfying. You get why so many Bay Area-born stars agreed to pop into the film for a scene, from the real Too Short and Sleepy Floyd to other locals including Marshawn Lynch as a bus driver, Rancid's Tim Armstrong as a Psytopics devotee and Angus Cloud in one of his last roles as a criminal thug. The biggest coup is a cameo from Concord native Tom Hanks, already kind of famous at the time even if none of the other characters remember his name. ('Big' would come out the following year.) What they do know about Hanks is that he used to sell hotdogs at the Oakland A's ballpark. Here, he plays a garrulous video-store clerk named Hank who challenges customers to name the best movies about underdogs. 'The underdog believes we can achieve the impossible,' Hanks says with a grin. This film does it too, in bold neon, for a quick and cheap smile.
