Kinder Kino

Who could have guessed that microcinema was the intersection of the NYRA–New York Post Venn diagram? In an all-caps “EXCLUSIVE” pegged to the soft launch of Low Cinema, the tabloid paid tender ode to Ridgewood’s first new movie theater in nearly a century. The forty-four-seat screening room was founded by John Wilson, Cosmo Bjorkenheim, and Davis Fowlkes, who kicked things off with a double bill co-presented with Urban Omnibus and Romantic Urbanism: the silent short Rube and Mandy at Coney Island (1903) and the Bullock-buttressed, Grant-guaranteed rom-com Two Weeks Notice (2002).

The thematic parallels with the underdog, punching-above-its-weight kino hall were particularly pointed in the latter movie. Sandra Bullock’s lefty legal activist blocks a wrecking ball to save a beloved movie palace, only to become romantically entangled with Hugh Grant’s billionaire developer, who wants to replace a Coney Island community center with condos. A jump-scare cameo from The Donald—directly followed by a Norah Jones Seaport concert— primed the postscreening panel to indulge in s…