Back to the Future

By Robert Wilonsky Tue., Sep. 5 2006 at 1:19 PM

Categories: From the RTF Dept.

See Lawrence of Arabia the way it was meant to be seen--no, not in your underwear, but in a theater on a big screen.

Dallas has many things a moviegoer should love: expansive state-of-the-art-house multiplexes, dozens of high-rent googolplexes playing first-run product, a film festival taking place every other weekend (though one is about to change significantly...) and one of the best specialty video rental outlets in the country (Premiere Video, for which this is a shameless plug for no apparent reason). What it doesn't have and hasn't had in decades is a decent revival house where you can see old movies as they were intended to be seen--on a screen bigger, oh, the one you're reading this on. The Granada was the closest thing Dallas had to a revival house, but that was forever ago--like, uh, the 1980s.

Not that this changes anything dramatically, but beginning Friday and running through the entirety of next week, the Regent Highland Park Village will begin screening classic films, beginning with Lawrence of Arabia. Dawn Quiett, the publicist for the Preston Center-based chain and production company, says it was the brainchild of Regent's VP John Lambert, who used to book art-house films into the long-gone UA Cine on North Central Expressway. "It's not going to be every week, but it will be monthly," Quiett says. "They're checking to see what films they can get and how well they do. If people come, they'll run more of it."

Right now, only two more films have been booked: Gone With the Wind and Giant. But Regent is taking suggestions; I've already begged for a Marx Brothers movie, preferably Duck Soup. --Robert Wilonsky

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