I was delighted to see the theater reopen at Briarwood a couple of years
ago. I enthused about being able to see new indie films without having to
pay the downtown A2 parking jackpot. But part of my problem was moving
away from Ann Arbor. Another part was how little they did to update the
actual screening rooms from the UA Briarwood days [the new lobby was
great but once you get in the screening room it was mostly the same pink
and blue of the latter-day UA]. The third problem was
that most of the films they booked weren’t that compelling to me. What
did I wind up seeing there? Stuff like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Two
Towers, and 13 Going on 30. That may say more about me and my friends’
tastes than the theater, though. Not sure. But I can say this: we had
to drive out to Royal Oak to see
Ho-Tep. I don’t know if Landmark got an exclusive on it or what,
but as far as I know, Bubba played only one night in Ann Arbor. If
Madstone missed out on that opportunity, maybe their business plan
I feel bad for Madstone for
being able to make a better go of it,
and I feel even worse for the always-pleasant employees, especially the
one guy who introduced the shows and even told me whether a given film
had credit cookies I should stick around for. Was he the manager? I’m
not sure, but he was the chief executive of AWESOME. They should just
give him the theater and let him run it and the mall could take a cut of
the refreshments money.
Briarwood may not want to do this, as they seem to be trying to upscale a
bit with the new renovations, but I bet that theater would make great
money as a bargain second-run house. You don’t need to compete with
Showcase and the Qual on the luxeness of your accomodations when your
tickets are two bucks.
