bloor cinema
Photo credit: this guy
Kim, Rick and I went to Bloor Cinema tonight to catch a one-night-only showing of Repo! The Genetic Rock Opera, a kind of gothy, rocky, musical of a movie.
Bloor Cinema is an interesting place. A movie theatre from the golden age of films, so it feels, with its small box office outside of doors that open onto the street (not into a mall), its singular screen, balcony seating and the kind of weird red carpeting I remember seeing in theatres when I was a kid, too young to go to the movies unaccompanied. It reminded me a lot of Capitol Theatre, an old cinema in London I had only the chance to visit once before it was closed down with the intention of conversion into a parking lot.
If only for the novelty, the three of us grabbed some seats up on the balcony. The seats were old and a bit rickety, their frames made from actual wood. I noticed an older man (probably in his 70s) sitting near us, I think he was alone. I imagined he was the type who'd lived in the area for decades, the Bloor Cinema being one of the simple neighborhood pleasures that he'd be indulging in since a time long before anyone knew what a MegaPlex was. The only ads that ran on the screen before the movie were for the cinema itself, just a rotating slide show of the theatre's upcoming schedule. There was no 20 minute string of trailers. In fact, I don't think they ran a single one. They went straight into the movie - during which people applauded, people laughed, people cheered. People clapped at the end of it.
After the movie, on the landing between the stairs to the balcony and the stairs to the main floor, I saw the older man sitting on one of the couches there. His friend approached, another man of about the same age. They were both smiling widely. I might not have expected to see a 70-year-old man so delighted by a such a gothy film, but maybe it's not so hard to see why they were smiling after all.