Noted patron of the arts and theater lover Abraham Lincoln would be honored by his namesake Lincoln Center’s sparkling new expansion. The Eleanor Bunin Monroe Film Center, just across from the Walter Reade Theater on West 65th Street, is now open with a cafe and two snazzy new screening rooms with comfy seats, ample legroom and a small but painfully equipped detention center/dungeon for people who text during movies. (I made up that last part, but a fellow can dream.) There is also an “amphitheater,” an open space featuring wooden benches, facing a large plasma video screen where panel discussions will be held. The video screen apparently has 3D capability, which brings up the question: If I pay a little extra, can I watch it in 2D? Please?

I don’t quite see the point of the amphitheater (or panel discussions in general, come to think of it) and suspect it won’t much be used but the 144-seat and 87-seat theaters on either side of it are comfy, hushed little chapels of cinema in which to watch revivals or arthouse films without trekking out to Queens’s the Museum of the Moving Image, which has also spiffed itself up considerably this year. To celebrate the soft opening, this weekend The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be showing a series of classics round the clock. Tickets are “free,” meaning you pay for them with time and effort rather than cash, and of course all of them have already been snapped up. But since the people who hold the tickets didn’t pay for them, who knows whether they will show up or not? Leftover seats will be distributed on a standby basis 30 minutes before each show. See you in line for the 4:50 a.m. showing of “Day For Night” tomorrow! Oh, wait, I think I already have that on DVD. Never mind. Next week the new Center opens for reals, with showings of “Page One,” a documentary about The New York Times. Come pay $12 to watch journalists make phone calls, type and attend meetings! Yes, it is doubly exciting when these are not ordinary mortals but actual Timesmen we are peeping at.