The Two Boots Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which opened in February 2000, quickly developed a track record of supporting niche interests. It’s where the Donnie Darkocult was born, via midnight screenings that began four months after Richard Kelly’s film had opened in mainstream theaters and lasted for 28 consecutive months. It’s also where a number of recent indies we’ve supported at Spout had their first and/or only New York engagements, including Dance Party USA, LOL, Jones and Kamp Katrina. And now it’s gone, the victim of a rent increase and general economic fatigue.
The theater had its last screening on Halloween night (of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, natch) — but with no direct competition in the area (we love Anthology Film Archives, but while they are a reliable home for spelunked jems past and present, they don’t roll with the lowbrow very often), it won’t be easily forgotten. So if you’re in the neighborhood tonight or can easily be, come out to the Pioneer’s going away party. It starts at 6pm, and the theater’s website (which you should check out regardless of whether you’re looking to attend the party, to see testimonials/triubutes to the theater from the likes of Bingham Ray and In The Soup director Alexandre Rockwell) promises “free movies, popcorn and reminiscences.” I’m going to try to stop by a little later in the evening — hopefully right when the reminiscences are starting to get smutty and incriminating — so if you see me, come say hi.
Preston Miller’s Jones offers an outsider’s perspective on contemporary New York rarely seen on film, and almost never acknowledged by natives. As the camera tracks star Trey Albright strolling the streets in real time, through neon-overlit Times Square and streetlamp-orange midtown side streets, Miller transforms some of the most personality-devoid sections of the city into a kind of paradise of anonymity. Times Square may be a sanitized tourist trap to you and me, but in Jones, it’s a blank screen for an actual tourist’s fantasies of liberation.
Opening tomorrow night for a one-week run at the Pioneer Theater in New York, Jones is the kind of lo-fi, no budget, non-traditional narrative that, without the support of a festival like SXSW, has an extremely difficult time making waves. But Miller finds a few ingenious ways around his limitations, and the unprofessional look of the video is actually one of my favorite things about it. It’s shifty and unstable and, particularly in the eerie brightness it captures on real NYC streets, never film-like but often very pretty.
News of a number of can’t-miss events has flown into my inbox over the past 24 hours. In chronological order:
This Saturday, The Pioneer Theater in New York is presenting a six-film, 584 minute werewolf movie marathon. $25 buys tickets to the whole affair, or if you really just want to show up at 4 AM to catch Teen Wolf (and who could resist, after seeing the poster to the right?), individual shows are $5 each. For more information, visit The Pioneer’s website.
The Denver Film Festival runs November 8-18. There are many reasons to be excited about this festival (and Mark Rabinowitz has and will continue to list many of them on his blog), but here’s a new one: I’m going to be speaking on a panel about film blogging, alongside Mark, James Israel from indieWIRE, and director AJ Schnack. For more info and tickets, go here.
Alas, because I’ll be in Denver that weekend, I won’t be able to head up to Cambridge for the Futures of Entertainment conference, which is happening November 16-17 at MIT. Organized by the Convergence Culture Consortium of the school’s Comparative Media Studies program, the conference will bring together academics and industry experts to discuss a variety of new frontiers of form and content, from mobile distribution to fan labor and the “architecture of participation.” There are only 200 seats available, so if this sounds good to you, register now.
From the “Yes, I do occasionally leave my house” file: tomorrow I’m looking forward to seeing Trigger Man, which is screening at the Pioneer Theater, which is screening for one week as part of their Fourth Annual Month of Horror, Terror, and General Mayhem. Someone, at some point described Trigger Man to me as “Mumblehorror”; it’s also been spun as “a low-budget twist on a Michelangelo Antonioni film” and “Old Joy with guns.” If just one of those descriptors proves accurate, I’ll be happy. Check out the crappy-quality (but still sufficiently creepy) trailer, embedded above.
Yes, seriously. Those cheeky bastards at the Pioneer Theater here in New York are capitalizing on our apparently inexhaustible appetite for Paris’ prison stint by programming a series of women-in-prison flicks throughout the summer. “See The Horrors Paris Hilton Saw!!!” promises the event’s website.
So far two films have been programmed, with more apparently on the way. Caged, screening on July 14 and 16, stars Eleanor Parker as Marie, whose “harsh experiences turn her from doe-eyed innocent to hard-nosed con.” Then, come back the following week for Shadow: Dead Riot. The trailer, embedded above, promises “cellblock vixens vs. a legion of carnal crazed zombies!” Nathan Lee, writing in the New York Times, blurbs Shadow as “obviously the greatest zombie flick ever set in an experimental women’s prison.”
I’m absolutely positive Paris would be able relate to such horrors, and so is the Pioneer. The website also promises that “two seats reserved at each screening for Paris Hilton, if she would like to join us - and perhaps hold a q&a after the screening.”
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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The Two Boots Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which opened in February 2000, quickly developed a track record of supporting niche interests. It’s where the 
