Interesting article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/movies/05metropolis.html?ref=movies

It's almost like Spielberg or Lucas revamping one of their own movies every few years...only Lang is doing it from beyond the grave....

It's just too bad the Senator Theater (where the last Big Damn Metropolis Restoration played in Baltimore back in 2001) went bankrupt last year. There's just no substitute for 70mm film and a screen as wide as my house when it comes to watching a movie like Metropolis.

1upmushroom, that place went bankrupt? My cousin was always saying I should check it out when I came to visit, but we never got around to it.

It's complicated. The theater still exists, and it's still open after a fashion, but the current owners have more or less given up attempting to run it as a regular movie theater. These days, it's almost like the Norris Auditorium with no college to support it-- a venue for one-off presentations that require a big room with a stage, a decent PA system, lots and lots of seats, and a projection booth.

There's an oddly large number of similar theaters in disrepair or disuse near me in New Jersey that, when I drive by them, are almost audibly begging me get rich somehow and buy them so I can show odd/independent/"B-" films in them with financial gain being of minimal importance. Instead, they host weird community children's theater productions of Disney movies or musical acts that I've never heard of (nor do I desire to see them). I guess, by definition, they're more financially viable than just being a single screen movie house anymore.

Too bad. All of the rep theaters up here that were still extant when I moved to Boston (1995) seem to be going, but they are all now "non-profits" who badger you for donations, NPR style.

I'm all over that like...erm...Moloch on crispy workers? I don't know. All I know is more Thin Man is a big upside!

Interesting the other "lost" films that are coming out of there, including another Anna May Wong film. As they sort through, who know what'll turn up?

I personally am hoping for La Voluntad del Muerto, Universal's Spanish-language export version of The Cat Creeps (which was their talkie remake of The Cat and the Canary). Lupita Tovar, who played Eva Harker in the export version of Dracula, has the Linda LaPlante role, and the modern world needs a hell of a lot more Lupita Tovar.

I really hope this version helps me not break out in hives over the schmaltz. Metropolis is like the perfect video version of a Charles Dickens novel - it has fascinating and compelling evil characters that are so fun to watch, you root for them to win, and the good people that are soooooo gooooood you want to mow them over with the mega-bladed decapitation contraption from Caligula.
That ending .... oh man, that ending.... *shudder*

Yeah, that's my one big problem with Metropolis, too. I much prefer Mechamaria to the real thing, and my rooting interest always winds up being with Rotwang on the one hand and the communist troglodytes on the other.