There's still one place left, in today's increasingly expensive society, that can transport you to places far away whether in time, space or mind, and all for under 20 dollars per person. This place is the local multiplex, where you can view the latest or catch vintage movies. To me, movies are one of the best invention that the human mind has created. For it allows a collective of people to put into visual, musical and spoken form what the mind thinks and sees.
You might find the particular movie entertaining, simply awful, inspiring, funny, tragic, and many other descriptions -- but it always engages you. It transports you out of your little world, and into a new perspective, and another way of perceiving the many different sides of reality.
Naturally, depending on the multiplex you go to, that reality can be influenced by the size of the screens each particular movie is assigned to. I discovered that at my local multiplex. To my reckoning, they have about 10 screens, ah -- but all screens are not created equal! After many visits to the place, I discovered that they have different screen and viewing room sizes, depending on how popular -- the owners think -- a movie will be.
For example: when we went to see what is commonly called a low-budget, indie movie the screening room, was not much bigger than a living room, and the screen was about the size of one of those large, flat-screen TV. Really, there were -- I would say -- about enough seats for maybe only 60 to 80 persons... tiny. But for the big-budget, latest expected summer blockbuster, they dedicated about three screens in the larger auditoriums, made to hold about two to three hundred persons, and the screens there were really panoramic in size.
It was a bit disconcerting to find yourself exiled to the smaller auditoriums, if your movie did not meet the criteria, set by heavy advertising on the studios part, of being the next big thing. No matter, you still could enjoy your escape out of the mundane and into the made-up world or reality of the particular movie. And since that is what you wanted to do in the first place, the screen size really didn't matter.
But, you say, why should I go there, when I can catch whatever I want on the Internet. Because, yes you can watch endless choices on the Internet, but nothing can replace the feeling of shared fun that you can get a a movie theater. I have been to movies that at the end, the audience is clapping or cheering. And it's that feeling of camaraderie with our fellow human beings, of being part of that crowd, in person, that not even the Internet can duplicate or replace. Otherwise movie theaters would have all closed a long time ago.
