Latest news with #Eraserhead
CBS News
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District raises funds to buy its building
Roxie Theater getting close to raising enough funds to buy its building Roxie Theater getting close to raising enough funds to buy its building Roxie Theater getting close to raising enough funds to buy its building The Roxie Theater is working to cement their position San Francisco's Mission District by purchasing the building they've been in for more than 100 years. It's one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the country. For Matt Sigl, it's become home. "It means everything to me," Sigl told CBS News Bay Area. Sigl moved to San Francisco almost five years ago, and quickly discovered the theater. "Walked down the street, I didn't even know I was in The Mission at the time, I looked in the window and I saw that they had a poster for 'Eraserhead.' I said, that's the movie theater I'm going to be going to," said Sigl, remembering the first time he encountered the theater. He did go to the theatre, he saw a movie and applied for a job his first time visiting. "It's a labor of love for me. These are the kind of movies I love, these are the kind of people I like to interact with and engage with," Sigl said, thinking about his experiences there over the last few years. He's now a manger. The marquee outside the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District. CBS Last week, Roxie staff announced they have been working on a $7 million capital campaign called "Forever Roxie" to buy their building outright. Sigl believes as long as they are renting, their future will always be uncertain, and they want to become a permanent fixture in The Mission. "We're still at the mercy, in theory, of the landlords and the real estate market or whatever," said Sigl. "If we own the space, it's ours, and we can secure the Roxie for generations to come." Zappa Johns was seeing "Freaky Tales" at the Roxie on Sunday night. He's being seeing movies at the theater for years. He says he's hopeful that the purchase will happen. "Giving the Roxie a little bit more control over their own space, I think, is a fantastic idea," said Sigl. "Having a real movie house like this, especially as part of the neighborhood, is a fantastic part of San Francisco's cinema legacy." Theater staff already privately raised about $5.5 million. With less than $1.5 million left to raise, they're asking the public for donations. Sigl said with so many movies being released online, it makes place like this more valuable. "It's a special experience that I think people seek out now in an active way, as an almost affectionate relationship to movies that you just don't get in your home cinema," said Sigl. With the Forever Roxie campaign they plan to do some upgrades, such as replacing projectors, screens and sound systems. But they plan to do it in a way that will stay true to the historic location. Sigl says he doesn't want to ever have to imagine The Mission without this place. "It's a gem, it's a landmark. We've been here 110 years so it's just the physical embodiment of this place has been here since The Mission grew and developed into what we know it is today," said Sigl. The Roxie already has an agreement with the owners of the building to purchase it, so raising this money is the final step to secure the location.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Two historic Roc theaters host Lyttle Lynch Series honoring iconic late filmmaker David Lynch
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Movie lovers have a range of options to soak in the silver screen in the Rochester area, after all motion pictures wouldn't be where they are today without the influence and technology of Kodak. But even for non-movie lovers – there are new and exciting experiences to explore film history and impact. When iconic filmmaker David Lynch passed away in January, two historic art houses teamed up to give way to an expansive tribute, ergo, A Lyttle Lynch Series. From 'Eraserhead' to 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Lost Highway,' 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,' and 'Blue Velvet,' David Lynch is known for his surrealist and experimental style as an artist who has spanned decades and media. The impact of his film and art is described as 'immeasurable.' Now through the next several months, the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman Museum on Park Ave. and The Little Theatre around the corner on East Ave. will take turns showcasing films from this resounding and legendary artist. 'We've gotten a lot of feedback from Lynch fans who are excited for this series but it's also a great opportunity for anyone who has not seen any David Lynch movies but is curious to come out and check them out for the first time,' says Scott Pukos, Director of Communications at The Little Theatre. Where possible, the films are show in their true intended format: 35 mm print. Part of the work done at the George Eastman Museum not only covers conservation of these prints, but also preservation and restoration, as explained by Anthony L'Abbate, Preservation Manager of the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum. 'If the film was originally on nitrate or acetate films which both decompose, then we're putting it on a more stable film stock, which now is polyester; and then we could also, from these new film elements make scans to have a digital version of the film that could be shown in theaters that can no longer show and exhibit films,' L'Abbate says. The prints are stored in what's called 'The Vault' which has specific conditions set to ensure longevity. '40 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% relative humidity — cool and dry which will slow down any of the aging process and any of the decomposition,' L'Abbate specifies. In a world where digital is often king, the effort of preservation and restoration are essential to documenting history so it can be shared with future generations. 'You can't have a streaming if you don't preserve or restore the film – you still need to go back to a source that gets transferred somehow. To make digital files you have to have an original and you want to keep those around as long as possible, even for like a 100 year old film that's on nitrate stock that has the potential of burning or exploding – we don't throw it away, because if its still in good shape, even if we preserved it 15 years, 25 years down the road, there might come along something that is a better way of preserving it then, then we have now,' adds L'Abbate. The delicate nature of working with film requires meticulous attention to detail, especially when it comes to the final stop before the print is showcased. Enter Sheryl Smith: the Chief Projectionist at the Dryden Theater. She outlines the lengthy procedures required before any type of screening can be accomplished. 'That inspection is to make sure that the print is going to make it through the projector safely and also we're gathering information and filling out a report: what will the projectionist need to know in order to project the film and have a great show — which is identifying sound tracks, identifying aspect ratios and cue-marks have to be at a certain place so we have to make sure those measurements are correct. And also there's a countdown at the beginning of each film and that needs to be measured into a certain way so that when we do the changeovers the countdown timing and the changeover cues are matching up with the film,' Smith says. 'Being a projectionist is great because you're at the final finale of everything that went in to make that film and you're able to share it with an audience and communal experience and that part of film preservation is really exciting for me – that's what I enjoy – sharing what we do with the community on the big screen,' she adds. The first showing in the series already happened featuring 'Eraserhead' (an original print the George Eastman Museum acquired in the 80's from a collector) and had a turnout of more than 250 audience members. Next up, it's The Little's turn – with e a presentation of 'Mulholland Drive' on Saturday, April 12th at 7:30 p.m. 'There are reasons that people still go to the Louvre to see the paintings, there are reasons that people still go to Statue of Liberty to touch it. There's something about being in the same space as that iconic object, that piece of art that still makes the cinematic experience special,' says Jared Case, Curator of Film Exhibitions. The remainder of the film series presentations (with 35 mm specifics) listed below: The Short Films of David Lynch (Various, 55 min, DCP)Saturday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. at The Little Theatre Wild at Heart (David Lynch, US 1990, 125 min, 35mm)Wednesday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Dryden Theatre Lost Highway (David Lynch, US 1997, 134 min, 35mm)Friday, June 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Dryden Theatre The Straight Story (David Lynch, US 1999, 112 min, 35mm)Wednesday, July 16 at 7:30 p.m. at The Little Theatre Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Edvard Munch Portraits review – in search of the master of jealousy, neurosis and despair
In the autumn of 1908, Edvard Munch admitted himself to Dr Daniel Jacobson's private clinic in Copenhagen to be treated for acute alcohol-induced psychosis. Over the next eight months, Jacobson helped him give up nicotine as well as drink. Of the stream of images Munch painted in the clinic – never paralysed by any setback – one is a towering portrait of the doctor that appears about halfway through this new show. Jacobson stands tall, feet widely planted, hands on hips in his three-piece suit. His face is all sharp-eyed intelligence, equal to any crisis. The sitter thought the picture loopy, perhaps because of all the pulsating energy that radiates around him in swift strokes to rival his vigour. But a photograph of the two men, the painting between them, shows it was an excellent likeness. It is quite surprising, therefore, to read the wall-text assertion that this was Munch's act of 'revenge'. That the words do not match the image is an early difficulty with this long-awaited exhibition, the first in Britain to focus exclusively on his many portraits. That Munch (1863-1944) was no outsider but a garrulously social being may come as news to those who associate him solely with his screaming little hominid, hands to cheeks as if receiving some salacious gossip. The Norwegian painter travelled all over Europe, recipient of any number of honours and bursaries, painting portraits of plutocrats, politicians and bankers, hostesses, collectors and diplomats en route, in addition to many portraits of fellow artists back home. This show includes some tremendous visions. Here is Felix Auerbach, German physicist and Bauhaus patron, all blood-red mouth and flaming eyes, a smouldering cigar between his fingers, against a crimson background flecked with stars (Munch had been looking at Van Gogh). Hand, sleeve and arm all flow into one continuous shape, so familiar from Munch's expressionist masterworks. Here is the Swedish writer August Strindberg leaning on a tabletop, one powerful pink fist at the centre of the picture. His fierce face, with Eraserhead hair, stares out from loose, darting strokes that angle steeply down the canvas, rippling through his suit. Alison Smith, in her superb catalogue, suggests that the shadowy presence behind Strindberg is surely some kind of psychic double. Tiny gaps of white canvas burn through the face; never forget, the artist insists, that this is a portrait before it's a person. The painting of Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth, rolling straight towards us as if by some unseen mechanism, the whites of her eyes as blue as her formidable dress, is a terrific image of force. Something stormy hangs in the yellow emanations around her. But the text needs us to know, instead, that Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was increasingly nationalist and antisemitic during Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s, even though this picture is from 1906. We are also told that Munch talked incessantly through the sitting so that she could not; but his sitters rarely got a word in edgeways. He controlled the scene. It is brave, if conventional, to open the show with a portrait of the artist as pouty young aesthete, not least because it is among the worst of Munch's many, many self-portraits. The painting of his hellfire father is equally unfulfilled. The early work picks up with Munch's sister squinting into the evening sun, with its intimations of thunderous Scandinavian shorelines to come, and his brother studying anatomy at a desk. Before him lie two skulls, one sheared open like a pie dish, the other eyeing him with deadly attention. There's the Munch we know and love, you might think – master of jealousy, mortality, neurosis, despair. A bleary picture of two figures in a darkened bar looks nearly tense (though the text goes on about women's liberation). There is a shadowy lithograph of the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé staring out of half-light, and Munch's celebrated portrait of Ibsen crackling in the dark fug of the Grand Cafe in Kristiania (now Oslo). But pretty soon you may find yourself looking for Munch. Not the worm, the amoeba, the violent radiowaves or the lone figures hunched on darkling shores, not the vampire madonnas or syphilitic lovers, shadows leaking like stains from their bodies; just something to connect these deathless archetypes with the portraits on show. Take the lithograph of violinist Eva Mudocci (born Evangeline Muddock in Brixton, London). Munch propped the litho stone on an easel, like a canvas, to draw her directly from life. Long black hair in swirling continuum around a pale face, with its large dark eyes, the image irresistibly invokes the more famous series of Madonnas it inspired, with their lassos of undulating hair. So why not mention, or even show, a Madonna? Perhaps because Munch and Mudocci were introduced by the composer Frederick Delius, there's a scrappy little litho of him instead. To ignore the way Munch transformed even formal, full-length portraits into universal visions of anguish is bizarre, especially given the exemplary accounts in the catalogue. But the show's definition of portraiture is determinedly narrow. It sometimes seems as if a work qualifies for entry because there are supporting anecdotes or documents; as if biography trumped image. And though Nietzsche is regularly mentioned, Munch's stupendous portrait of the philosopher on a bridge beneath a Scream-style sky is not here in any of its versions. It can't be because the likeness was imaginary – the two never met – for Munch's self-portrait as a corpse is included. And here the show havers, incomprehensibly. Munch with a skeleton arm gets in, but none of the great self-portraits are here in all their exuberant miserabilism. Not even the astoundingly poignant painting of himself – or anyone facing their end – standing between the clock and the bed, time ticking down to zero. Of course Munch is intermittently here in the brilliant primary colours, the blinded eyes and vibrating haloes; in the double portraits where characters are opposed; in the skeins of brushstrokes that flow like tidal currents around the outlandish shapes he coined. He is also present, it must be conceded, as a member of this affluent society of sitters, always well known, well collected. With only around a 10th of Munch's 400 and more painted portraits here, the emphasis is on the sometimes baffling selection of loans. Surely the show could have been larger, stronger, with more significant works from Norway, or at least some concession to the scale of Munch's imagination that put wild portraits of the mistress who shot him, for instance, over tediously traditional portraits of his chauffeur. Edvard Munch Portraits is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 15 June
Axios
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Experience David Lynch's iconic films on the big screen
The Salt Lake Film Society will pay tribute in April to the work of the late-filmmaker David Lynch. Context: The visionary director, known for his dark and illusive films, died in January. He was 78. How to watch: Broadway Centre Cinemas will screen his popular movies throughout April, with two showings planned for each film. Tickets are available online. The films include: "The Elephant Man" - 7pm April 4; 9pm April 5 David Lynch shorts - 9:30pm April 4; 7pm April 5 "Eraserhead" - 7pm April 11; 9:35 pm April 12 "Mulholland Drive" - 9pm April 11; 6:45pm April 12 "Lost Highway" - 9:30pm April 18; 6:45pm April 19 "Blue Velvet" - 7pm April 18; 9:30pm April 19 "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" - 9:30pm April 25; 6:45pm April 26 "Wild At Heart" - 7pm April 25; 9:30pm April 26
CBS News
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Local all-star orchestra pays tribute to iconic director David Lynch at Great American
Veteran bandleader and keyboard/trumpet player Marc Capelle brings his Red Room Orchestra to the Great American Music Hall Wednesday to pay tribute to the group's inspiration, the late television and film auteur David Lynch. Capelle still occasionally sets backsides in motion as the leader of local all-star R&B revue Marc & the Casuals, in recent years the busy keyboard/trumpet player has focused his attention on another far more ambitious project: the Red Room Orchestra. The ensemble was initially formed to perform the music featured in "Twin Peaks," the surreal '90s television show by iconic director Lynch that saw a revival with "Twin Peaks: The Return" on Showtime in 2019. Lynch's unique cinematic creations have always put music in the spotlight, from the singing Lady in the Radiator from the director's 1977 debut Eraserhead and the bizarre visage of Dean Stockwell lip synching to the Roy Orbison hit "In Dreams" in his Oscar-nominated breakthrough Blue Velvet through his use of both '50s and modern rock in Wild at Heart and Lost Highway during the '90s. Lynch made music a cornerstone of "Twin Peaks" and its 1992 cinematic prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, collaborating with his longtime composer Angelo Badalamenti on original songs like the hit "Mysteries of Love" sung by Julee Cruise -- who would release a full album of Lynch/Badalamenti tunes and appeared in both the series and film. Sadly, both Cruise and Badalamenti passed away in 2022. The film world was gripped with grief after the beloved director died on January 15 following a long battle with emphysema at age 78. In the summer of 2017 after an initial more stripped-down performance in the Chapel bar with a smaller ensemble, Capelle gathered a high-powered group of San Francisco musicians including Dirty Ghosts guitarist Allyson Baker, Persephone's Bees guitarist Tom Ayers, drummer Todd Roper (Chuck Prophet, Cake), percussionist Larry Mullins (aka Toby Dammit, who has played with Iggy Pop, the Residents, Swans and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), bassist Peter Straus (the Dwarves), singers Karina Denike (Dancehall Crashers, NOFX, the Cottontails), violinist/vocalist Dina Maccabee and saxophonist Tom Griesser (New Morty Show, Brass Monkey, the Cottontails) to play the music of "Twin Peaks" and more Lynch-related offerings at the music venue, taking the stage with an expanded group that was christened the Red Room Orchestra in front of a packed house for a transporting night of atmospheric music. The positive reception of that show would lead the group to partner with SF Sketchfest in 2018 for the first time to perform soundtrack-related music at the Chapel. The first night -- scheduled to coincide with a tribute to "Twin Peaks" featuring cast members from the original show held at the Castro earlier in the day -- featured onstage appearances by many actors from the series including Sherilyn Fenn -- who helped judge an Audrey Horne dance contest -- and actual song performances by "Twin Peaks: The Return" star and local product Chrysta Bell (who brought down the house with her rendition of the Jimmy Scott song "Sycamore Trees" from the original series), James Marshall and Ray Wise, who stepped into his Leland Palmer character to sing "Mairzy Doats." Since then, the group has presented additional nights of music paying tribute to the creative musical curation of director Wes Anderson -- playing the songs used for his films Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and more with a variety of special guests -- the soundtrack to the Cohen Brothers' cult favorite The Big Lebowski and the music from Paul Thomas Anderson's breakout film, the '70s porn industry period piece Boogie Nights. For the 20th anniversary edition of SF Sketchfest, the ensemble paid tribute to the iconic punk film Repo Man with a bracing evening of hardcore classics that included appearances by director Alex Cox as well as major soundtrack contributor Tito Larriva and Circle Jerks bassist and cast member Zander Schloss. Last year, the group celebrated two films with tribute nights to the 1987 comedy cult classic vampire flick The Lost Boys (complete with an appearance by guest saxophonist Tim Cappello, who performed a show-stopping cover of the Call's "I Still Believe") and the 1971 Hal Ashby comedy Harold and Maude in addition to a special evening of music and scene readings with Special Agent Dale Cooper himself, Kyle McLachlan. While this year's SF Sketchfest was the first in years not to feature one of the group's soundtrack or "Twin Peaks" tributes -- the group is instead played a special show spotlighting the music of legendary Canadian sketch comedy show "The Kids in the Hall." However, the SF Sketchfest has partnered with Noise Pop to bring the RRO back to the Great American to celebrate the life of David Lynch. The group will perform songs from the director's work alongside a few of Lynch's personal favorite tunes in what is sure to be a heartfelt and emotional tribute to the visionary director. The show will also serve as a benefit for "Twin Peaks" actor Carel Struycken ("The Giant" in the series), who lost his home in the Eaton Fire.
