People, I’d like your opinion on this - there is a movie called CLOVERFIELD to be released on January 18, 2008. From what I can make out from the trailer, it is about a monster that destroys New York City and is filmed from the point of view of an amateur film maker (a’la Blair Witch Project).

The movie poster for this depicts a headless Statue of Liberty in the foreground and a shot of downtown Manhattan in smoke and in ruins (forgive my computer ignorance, but I did not know how to attach a shot of the poster for this commentary. Search the web and I’m sure you’ll find it easily).

In my opinion, I find this poster incredibly offensive and insensitive to not only those who lost their lives in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, but also to the surviving family members who must live with the horror of that day for the rest of their lives.

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Almost everyone has experienced excessively loud trailers before the feature. There have been concerted efforts at NATO conventions to correct this perpetual problem. Still, probably every cinema in the world continues to receive extra loud previews. The consequences include frustrated patrons finding yet another reason to give up on movie-going and theater managers time and again fielding hostile complaints. Despite posting a projectionist/staff person in the booth to adjust the sound, down for trailer & up for feature, the likelihood a picture in a multiplex will be off at the start or even during the meat of the show is unacceptably high.

We all know television commercials are generally louder than television programs.  This is not as obnoxious because remote controls facilitate tweaking the sound level. Heck, my saintly elderly mom just mutes the darn ads.

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As the 6th Anniversary of September 11, 2001 approaches, I find myself reflecting on the weeks that immediately following those horrific events.

What I specifically remember regarding Hollywood was not only their (rare and temporary) sensitivity to violence (the release of COLLATERAL DAMAGE was postponed until the following spring) but their sensitivity to try and raise the spirits of the United States - nearly every comedy released by every major studio that summmer of 2001 had been immediately re-released for the public’s escape and enjoyment.

My wife (fiance at the time) and I were not exempt. As soon as we were able to leave New York City, we headed out to Westhampton Beach, Long Island to try and put our heads back together. It was there we went to see SHREK for the second time at the Hampton Arts Theatre. For 90 minutes of our lives, there was no better way to forget the recent events than to laugh along with the insanity of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy.

Unfortunately, the brief sensitivity Hollywood displayed was not to last long.  Before we knew it, movies like THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, WAR OF THE WORLDS and TRANSFORMERS were out there showing just how exciting it can be to destroy society as much as possible.

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I came across an interesting article in the Toronto Star. Apparently, your choice in film can affect your comfort in the theater. And we’re not talking about size of screen and number of seats.  Science was never my best subject in school so I clearly hadn’t thought about how temperature in a room depends on the number of people in it.

Have you ever gone to a movie - say, Nancy Drew or Hostel: Part II or some other box-office dud - only to find yourself sadly alone and even more surprisingly, freezing your ju-jubes off?

I recently attended one so-called blockbuster and within the first 15 action-filled minutes, I slowly began shivering until my mind drifted off, focused on only one thing: the woolly cardigan in my closet at home.

Of course, cool theatres are part of the appeal of going to the movies in summer. The relieving chill of air conditioning in a dark theatre can be a soothing break from sweltering, smoggy, 35-degree Ontario heat waves.

But sometimes cinema houses are so cold I wonder if the theatre is trying to beef up their revenue by hanging meat in the projectionist’s booth.

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When the Metropolitan Opera announced last year that some of its productions were going to be beamed to movie theaters, you could count me as one of the skeptics. With attendance down, an artform that’s rather commercially stuck in the past didn’t seem like the proper antidote.

Then, I realized exactly how little I know about anything. I started hearing about packed houses all across the country. Even the more modern pieces were drawing well. Now, Playbill Arts just announced that the Met will be beefing up its schedule even more this year.

The Metropolitan Opera is set to present its high-definition simulcasts on up to 400 movie screens in the United States during the coming season — nearly triple the number of venues from last season.

The company announced today a renewed and extended deal with National CineMedia (NCM) to present the live Saturday afternoon broadcasts at between 300 and 400 cinemas across the country. The operas will be shown at participating AMC, Cinemark, Georgia Theater Company, National Amusements and Regal theaters; according to the Met and NCM, more affiliate locations are being added to NCM’s digital high-definition network.

The movie theater simulcasts were seen as a bold but risky venture when the Met launched them last season. In the event, they proved an enormous success, with more locations and screens being added over the course of the year and repeat presentations added at some locations. The program attracted press coverage all over the world, and the broadcasts themselves were extended during the season from the U.S., Canada and Great Britain to seven countries on three continents.

Good for them. It’s great to see not only supporting their local movie theaters, but opera as well. What does this mean for the future of movie theaters though? With a more obscure idea like this working, what will come next?

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Bitter about the price of your local theater? Sick of all that noise from annoying patrons? Want to go to a place where you can see a quality film on the big screen?

With all these expectations, why give your local theater a chance when you can DIY it! A new craze called MobMov (short for mobile movie) is catching like wildfire all over the world. Clubs of people in different cities bring a projector to a random location containing a large wall, usually an abandoned warehouse, and literally create a drive-in experience. I’d never even heard of it before I read this story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The crescent moon over the Bay Bridge was a stunning twinkle of lights through the windshield, but all eyes were sharply focused on the flickering projections on the warehouse wall. We’re parked in a vacant lot in what must remain an undisclosed S.F. location. We are MobMov for the next few hours - a brief and nerdy flash mob of drive-in enthusiasts gathered to view the night’s feature presentation from the comfort of our bucket seats.

With bags of popcorn and Hot Tamales on the dashboard, about 15 cars nestle like sardines and tuned to the same radio frequency - the short-term sound system that serves as the modern-day speaker attached to the window ledge from drive-ins of years ago. The other reminder that this isn’t 1957: As we prepare for the feature presentation, the projected image is the familiar interface of Microsoft Windows, and the whole event is being fueled by the car battery of a Toyota RAV4.

Has anyone been to these? Does it indeed preserve the experience like they say it does?

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Are you kidding me? So I was reading this New York Times article about Disney for the most part banning cigarette smoking in their films. It’ll be completely banished from their family films and discouraged from their others.

Disney’s action comes amid increasing pressure from advocacy groups and regulators for media companies to purge movies of cigarettes. In May, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that portrayals of smoking would be considered alongside sex and violence in assessing the suitability of movies for young viewers. Films that appear to glamorize smoking will risk a more restrictive rating.

Mr. Iger said in a letter to Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, dated July 25 that Disney would also “discourage depictions of cigarette smoking” in pictures released by its Touchstone and Miramax units. Last month, Mr. Markey, chairman of the subcommittee on telecommunications, held hearings on the effects of movie images on children.

Now, let me get this straight. I’m not about to advocate cigarette smoking in any way, much less in a medium that touches millions. My problem is with the idea that this is being addressed in this manner. 

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One of the hot topics on this site has always been the importance of maintaining a premium moviegoing experience. Even if that doesn’t always amount to superior sight, sound and seats, I think we’ll all agree that helpful employees is a big part of reaching that next level.

Talk of the quality of the average theater employee typically elicits scorn in these parts so I thought you’d appreciate this Allied News story about a kid truly earning his paycheck at his local theater. Christopher Payne carefully observed a possible movie pirate and used all means necessary to take him down. How about that?

For Marquee Cinemas employee Christopher Payne, being nicknamed the “pirate slayer” by co-workers has little to do with one-eyed, peg-legged treasure hunters and more to do with stopping what experts call “the biggest threat to the motion picture industry.”

Payne interrupted the illegal pirating of the movie “Pride” in May — a federal crime — helped recover the camcorder used, and also received a $500 reward along the way. Not bad for the 16-year-old Woodrow Wilson High School junior.

More than the billions of dollars lost by the growing trend, it’s the theater owners that suffer the most with this practice. While studios have other sources of revenue to tuck them in at night, theater owners have nothing if no one shows up.

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With so many classic theaters in danger, just saving one is enough to be a hero. But what if you saved a bunch? What if you become a leader in preservation even when faced with a tough market and an age where movies are no longer the focal point they once were?

I’ve always admired the Chicago-area Classic Cinemas chain for their championing of such treasures as the Tivoli, Lake, and York Theatres and thought it was about time to see how they managed to put it all off. This morning, I got on the phone with the chain’s owner and founder, Willis Johnson, and he gave me some insights.

MZ: What got you into the theater business?

WJ: I owned the Tivoli building and one tenant happened to be a theater. Around June 1978, the person running the theater, Oscar Bortman, walked away from the lease. I needed the theater to operate in order to pay the rent so I started looking for someone to run it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too happy with the prospective tenants until Ed Doherty came to me and told me he’d run the Tivoli but only if he could just do the theater side, but not the business end. That was fine by me because all I knew was the business end. We reopened in August 1978.

MZ: There are many classic theaters in the Chicago area, many long since gone sadly.  What are some of your childhood memories of those theaters?

WJ: Surprisingly, movie theaters weren’t really a big part of my life growing up. I’m sure I went. I just don’t remember much of it. There was the Don Theater in Downers Grove. They showed westerns. I don’t think I went though.

MZ: When did you know that your business was on the right track?

WJ: We got a good reception from the start. All it took was seven months and then we went from red to black.

MZ: When did you start acquiring other theaters?

WJ: After the Tivoli came the Park Forest on Christmas 1980. That was a great one cause it opened in 1950 so it was the last of an era. The York came after that, then the Lindo, all by 1982.

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Opening up my e-mail yesterday, I came across a feature that Ross Melnick had contributed to on Forbes. It highlights some notable theaters still standing with almost all still doing first-run business. Don’t get too excited because most are the usual suspects.

When I go on trips, even if it’s just for the weekend, I always lookup the local theaters of note at my destination as well as on the way. With the next two months, a lot of us here in the Northern Hemisphere will be taking summer vacations and maybe coming near such a theater.

So I ask you, what one theater should have been included on this list? Forget about the fact that most of their choices were in major cities and that one was even a multiplex. What single-screen theater, anywhere in the world, is still showing first-run films and is worth the trip there to see it, even if you’re only remotely nearby (or worth a trip of its own if you’re really THAT HARDCORE! Oh yeah!)?

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