Let's all go to the lobby

Remember when movie theatres were actually theatres? When they had only a handful of screens? When they were designed by architects rather than retail design firms? When they blended in with downtown storefronts and facades rather than suburban strip malls and big box commercial developments? When they didn't have arcades and Pizza Huts? When they had unique names instead of brands?

Neither do I. I'm only twenty-three so I don't really remember any of that. But I know it existed. I know there was a time when the movie theatre was a place to dress up for, to appreciate not for its automated ticket kiosks and ample parking, its twelve screens or its 52-speaker surround-sound earthquake machine, but for its sophistication, class, its authentic experience.

It seems now that movie theatres are designed with the same principles as a Walmart Supercentre.

On the other hand, playhouses, God bless them, have for the most part managed to maintain their classic aesthetic. I marvel at stages like the Avon and Festival Theatres in Stratford, the Royal Alexandria, Princess of Wales, and Canon in Toronto. These theatres are still beautiful. And why shouldn't they be? The theatre is an icon of class and cultural sophistication. But so was the cinema once...

What happened?

Even from watching a film like Tarantino's Iglourious Basterds or "The Gum" episode of Seinfeld, I get small glimpses into the cinematic past - before multiplexes and big box-suburbia, before Judd Apatow and Michael Bay pumped audiences full of lowest common denominator-comedy and helicopters at sunset, before the popcorn and drink cost more than the ticket, when movie theatres were still theatres and not retail distributors of movies, butter, and Dance Dance Revolution.

Even in today's conglomerated, Wall Street, big-budget, digital-Hollywood, the cinema is still an art. And art needs a proper home. And there is something wrong when paintings still have their galleries, plays still have their theatres, but movies are forcefully-herded into these gaudy, warehouse multiplexes.

In 2010, the prevailing retail model is the Walmart one - high volume, low overhead, cheap product, cheap prices. On your next night out to the movies, ask yourself if your local Cineplex monstrosity is any different.