NYC locals might want to check out the schedules at the Ziegfeld and at Jersey City's Loews Journal Square. Planet Of The Apes (the real one) is showing this weekend at the Ziegfeld, followed soon after by Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert flick Shine A Light, and a classic James Bond fest in the second half of April.

Coming Soon at NYC's Ziegfeld

The Loews Journal Square is showing The Princess Bride tonight, followed tomorrow by a double feature of White Mane and The Red Balloon, Cocteau's Beauty And The Beast, and the 1939 Hunchback Of Notre Dame.

Good stuff, William, thanks for posting. I must make it to the Loews JC someday. And I now know where I'll be seeing INDIANA JONES in Manhattan... :)

Someone mentioned to me that Apes is a newly restored print, although I don't see any mention of it on that link. Anyone know if this is true? And if so, is it actually a print or digital? It's my favourite movie and I'd love to think that the 40th anniversary would be marked with the opportunity to see a restored version digitally projected. In fact, I'd be very excited indeed.

Given the contempt that Fox seem to have for the franchise though, I don't expect much from them.

Seems to me, the whole series is rather well represented on DVD. A shaky start with initially non-anamorphic transfers before Fox had gotten on board with 16:9 (a problem with *all* their releases up to a certain point), but they corrected each entry subsequently.

And the series-spanning "Behind The Planet Of The Apes" documentary was pretty darn terrific, I thought.

Well, I finally got myself down to the Journal Square Loew's on Saturday and I can't properly articulate what an experience it was! This place is huge, I mean HUGE. An utter anachronism to the Jersey City architecture around it, this place looks more like something out of Dick Tracy or Sky Captain. This is one of those grand old movie palaces, the kind that my generation onward could only read about or see faked in movies. Both the lobby and cinema are titanic works of original archetectural art, a bit crumbling and cracked here and there, but still inspiring... such awe. How can I describe it? I haven't been this overwhelmed by the inside of a building since Vatican City.

By the time the organist had finished "Tootsie Goodbye" and he and the organ slowly rotated down into the stage, I silently wished David Tennant was there so I could thank him for the awesome ride.

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame was still the delightful grand old fairy tale I had remembered. And presented quite nicely by the staff, some of them kids, helping out Mom and Dad staffers... a real volunteer family sense of enthusiasm all around. I think this is the first time I was ever aware of a slight echo of the movie's sound, purely because the damn cinema is so enormous. There was a commentator and Q&A afterwards, which perhaps dragged on a little too long, but I appreciated the extra effort.

Upcoming screenings include All About Eve with Celeste Holm appearing on April 12th, Duck Soup, The Bank Dick, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, King Kong, plus others. No matter what film you go see, I think any movie enthusiast in the area should go here at least once. $6 admission.

THE LANDMARK LOEW'S JERSEY THEATER site (with YouTube clips and interactive photos of the building)

I thought it was funny when they rereleased PLANET OF THE APES on disc a few years back, the packaging had graphics from BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES all through it - in fact I don't think any of the images on the packaging were from PLANET at all... :lol:

Indeed... better that than splattering the image from the end of the film all over the packaging mind you.

I should have qualified that a lot of my grumbles about Fox's treatment of the franchise come from anally retentive fan issues (I'm a total POTA geek) that most people outside of fanzines, POTA websites etc. probably wouldn't know or bother about.

That said, I think they made the barest minimum of effort with their previous releases - firstly releasing them non-anamorphic (which they corrected for those of us here in the UK at least), the aforementioned crap packaging, the tiny amount of supplementary material and the fact that the only real interesting extra was the documentary (which I do admit was terrific) but even that was, firstly, limited to the US release and, secondly, worthless when compared to the 2-disc special edition of the documentary which was released by Image, doing the kind of job that Fox should have been doing all along.

These are just some of my grumbles, but there are other fans even more into it than me who could rattle off a list of all manner of issues with picture/sound etc. on even the original movie, never mind the lesser-thought-of sequels.