I’m slightly ashamed of myself. On Friday I wrote about a bunch of film-related activities on TV and in New York that people should take advantage of this past weekend, and somehow I managed to completely forget that the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street also meant a brand new start for MoMA Film. If you missed Saturday’s New York Times, then you didn’t see Times film critic Manohla Dargis’ great piece “Putting the Movies Back Into the Modern” with a little taste of what MoMA is planning for the next few months. (My only question is, doesn’t Dargis still live in LA? While it may be one thing to review movies from LA, does it make sense to have her writing about museum programming at a place she will rarely visit.)
Both the 112 Years of Cinema and Premieres series include some great films. Hopefully, the new theater spaces were made to block out some of that F train rumbling that used to distract from the films if you were sitting in the back rows.
For all of you who are dismayed by the MoMA’s new $20 ticket price, keep in mind that you can still go to films there for only $10, you just can’t go anywhere else in the museum. If you’re like me and try to go to the MoMA at least a couple times a year on top of attending their film programs, you really might want to just buy the annual membership for $75, which is completely tax deductable. If you visit the museum four times or go to eight movies, it pays for itself.
Out of Focus 