YESTERDAY, I discussed some of the ways film production and distribution are changing.
Film exhibition is also changing.
On the commercial end, bland-box multiplexes are giving way to fancier multiscreen quasi-palaces that attempt to bring back some of the old romance of moviegoing--and to squeeze still more bucks out of moviegoers' wallets.
On the DIY end, there's a growing international network of specialty film festivals, alternative screening spaces, film and video schools, streaming-video websites, and (in some towns) art-film video stores.
Somewhere between these two tiers lie some dinner-and-a-movie and drinks-and-a-movie experiments. The most elaborate around here are the cafe-pub-theaters in Portland run by McMenamin's. We've previously mentioned a Seattle bar, The Big Picture, that serves beer and wine along with second-run films; but that operation, so far, hasn't become the kind of joint I'd hoped (programming tends toward either safe boomer-nostalgia favorites or projector-TV sports).
Then, shortly after the Big Picture showed up, a national franchise called Cinema Grill took over General Cinema's Aurora III.
The new management likes to call it an "art deco" house. It's really just an ordinary concrete-cube building, stuck at the far corner of a minor, decaying strip mall that's lost two of its four main stores (Future Shop and QFC). It's been swamped in attendance by the flashy Oak Tree Cinemas a mile down Aurora Avenue. (It's almost impossible to even see the Aurora Cinemas from Aurora Avenue--it's located well behind drivers' sight lines, and doesn't have a street-visible sign.)
So it was a bargain for Cinema Grill to take over the joint; and, if it fails, it won't necessarily mean the concept wouldn't work here at a better site.
The Cinema Grill concept's quite simple. You pay lower-than-average admission prices to see movies (the projector-TV sports events are free). Instead of rows of seats, the three auditoria have tables. There's just enough house lights so you can read the menus at the tables; the movies are kept loud enough that you can hear most dialogue over other patrons' beer-enhanced chattiness. Waitresses bring your drinkables (beer, wine, cocktails, coffee, sodas) and eatables (sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, pizza, Buffalo wings) from a kitchen built between auditoria 1 and 2.
The food might be unspectacular but filling; but the films can be a little better than average. (Playing two weeks ago: The critically-acclaimed angstfest American Beauty.)
A more conveniently-located cine-diner, with just slightly more ambitious programming both on the screens and the tables, would likely work even better.
I can see it now: Special ethnic menus for foreign films. Wedding-feast movies shown with servings of the same entrees shown on-screen.
Cinematic drink menus: Thin Man rows of martinis; Trainspotting Scotch; Under the Volcano tequila.
Movie-related food, too: Eraserhead mini-chickens; Rocky raw eggs; Cookie's Fortune fortune cookies.
And, of course, Meaning of Life after-dinner mints.
TOMORROW: Klang and Context put the litter back into literature.
ELSEWHERE:
- Patio Culture (found by Tiara) lets you relive the good (?) old days of backyard BBQs, any time of year. I can smell the lighter fluid now....
- When you care enough to send the very worst, it's Dirty Works cards (found by Memepool)....
RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:
- Indie film's potential resurgence.
- Last-minute gift ideas with a twist.
- What might really be behind announced massive mass-transit cuts.
- Why digital cable TV ought to have more than just movies.
- Unadvisable holiday gifts and cards.
- The relics of bank merger-mania.
- Some bad beers I have known.
- In the Brave New Seattle, every new building must be monumental, "world class," and tastefully outlandish.
- Imagining life after Microsoft, and exploring the roots of the Gates personality cult.
- The first and second parts of our visit to an imagined Northwest theme park.
- Parts one, two, three, and four of our WTO protest post-mortem; a list of WTO-protest links; and the earlier preview piece.
- The "new secessionists" somehow think business still has too little power vs. government.
- The new Coldwater Creek store sells the fantasy of living on the land but not off it; while the new Ballard Fred Meyer hypermarket tries to look like the steel plant it replaced.
- Parts one, two, and three of a look back at Ed Bellamy's Looking Backward, which promised that by now we'd have complete socio-economic equality but not computers.
- Imagining a newspaper for the Net age.
ARCHIVES:
- 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
- Reviews of literature & art, monfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
- Longer articles and essays
- The origin and future of MISCmedia
