The world's oldest picture gardens

I've whiffed on some of my recent attempts to see a movie in the theater while on vacation. In a town that boasts "the world's oldest operating picture gardens," I wasn't going to whiff again.

The cinema in Broome is unique in a number of respects, as you will see with the pictures I'm including below in the post. But I'll list them here as well:

1) It's old as f**k. Sun Picture Gardens was opened in December of 1916, and has been operated continuously since then. It was converted for sound in 1933. Apparently it was regularly flooded under, which did not stop them from showing movies. Legend was that you could catch fish during a movie.

2) It's partially inside, partially outside. About half the seats are outdoors while the other half are under the protection of the beams above. This unique exposed situation must mean that you can hear the movie from the neighboring businesses, which doesn't really matter because most businesses in town close before the 6 p.m. start time of the first movie. Yes this area is dead as dead can be at night. Something about the layout of the place reminded me of a makeshift cinema for troops serving in Vietnam or something like that. In addition to playing during floods, the movie plays rain or shine. 

3) It is basically directly under the landing strip for the nearby airport, so planes fly over during the movie. Unlike most major cities -- and Broome only qualifies as such by the local standards of the northern part of Western Australia -- the airport is basically right next to downtown. When planes land, they fly over the town's main street just before landing, a sight which never ceases to be awesome. Because Broome is not a common destination for travellers, these planes are only landing at most every 30 minutes by this time of the night, but several did land during the movie, a truly enthralling spectacle.

A friend of mine told me he'd seen Jungle Cruise in this theater when he and his wife travelled around Australia in 2021. That seemed especially appropriate, given what I've already said about the theater reminding me of a ramshackle Vietnam War cinema. Their friend, my friend told me, had seen Dunkirk here, and the planes landing made for a mind-blowing three-dimensional experience for that particular film. 

Both great choices. Ours was not as great, on the surface. You may recall I posted last week that I hoped The Blue Beetle would be playing, but had already determined that it was not. I guess I didn't look enough further to determine that an equally satisfactory kid-friendly option, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, was playing during school holidays instead. Not thematically fortuitous, perhaps, but a movie my kids could see that I also was curious about. From what I had seen of the trailers, the animation reminded me of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, always a good thing.

As it turns out, only one of the two kids wanted to go. The older one would have watched literally any other movie playing there -- which included Barbie, Oppenheimer, The Meg 2 and The Equalizer 3 -- so much is he over "baby things" like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So he opted not to go at all. Same was true for my wife.

But the nine-year-old and his auntie both were thrilled by the idea of watching a movie here, and the best of two TMNT showings while we were in town -- the other being programmed for the later, rather than the earlier, of two nightly time slots -- was that very evening, Wednesday evening.

The experience was great, all the more so because the movie was really fun. It is a bit Into the Turtle-Verse, but to be honest, it was pleasantly uncluttered when compared to this year's Spider-Man sequel. And there's some really respectable talent behind the camera, so to speak, including writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Plus a great array of vocal talent, from the unknowns who played the four turtles to stalwarts among recognizable names, particularly Ice Cube as the villain, Superfly.

In short, see the damn movie. It's way better than you might expect.

And there was even an appropriate thematic element. No jungle setting, no planes flying through the movie to play off the air traffic overhead, but early on in the movie, the turtles do go see a movie screening outdoors in their New York neighborhood. (They watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one of only a few parts of the movie that isn't animated.) 

The experience of watching the movie was a real vibe, too, to quote my absent older son. There were plenty of kids there, some of whom were twirling around down front, with only a little bit of running up the aisles, minimal enough to come off as charming rather than annoying. They were able to drag down big beanbag chairs to sit in the front if they so chose. (One group was a camp, we found out while the group leader was buying tickets in front of us, and sent her colleague off to get 22 cans of soda from the snack bar.) 

A pair of less-TMNT-enthused adults in the row in front of us considered the setting informal enough to start chatting at normal volume near the climax of the movie, which threatened to really annoy me. In such situations I'm only willing to make increasingly louder "shhh" noises, but still quiet enough that the hope is they don't identify where exactly the shushing originated, and would get it almost subliminally. My sister-in-law had no such concerns. She basically openly told them to shut up, and to their credit, they did.

It was a beautiful night and easily one of the most memorable experiences on the trip. I think my sister-in-law and I even liked the movie more than the nine-year-old.

Oh, here are the pictures I promised:

Please note the plane landing in the upper right-hand corner of this next shot. This was the better of two attempts to capture how close the planes are as they are landing.

The circumstantial acceptance of an Odd choice

I've been scheming to see a movie at the Rustic Theatre in Idyllwild, CA for about four years now.

When my wife extended me the opportunity on this, our third trip since 2008, I told I'd see whatever was playing, as long as I hadn't already seen it.

And had to put my money where my mouth was when she told me a couple days ago that The Odd Life of Timothy Green -- a movie that was released on August 15th, mind you -- would be beginning its run on the Friday we arrived.

Not Looper. Not Hotel Transylvania. Not even Trouble With the Curve, its opening time-shifted by a week for this small artist community in the mountains above Palm Springs.

No, a movie that was already gone from most theaters in L.A.

Darn.

As I've told you a couple times before -- here, for one -- I love seeing movies in single-screen theaters nestled into towns that seem like they should be too small to have a movie theater. On our trips to Idyllwild in 2008 and last year -- both on visits related to my wife's job -- I would walk longingly by the theater, like a kid walking longingly by the toy store window displaying the toy he couldn't afford.

See, on neither of those trips was a movie going to be possible for me. I don't remember what was playing in 2008, but last year it was Contagion, a movie I hadn't seen but desperately wanted to. Especially in the unusual setting of this little mountain town, which would make the experience all the more memorable. But I was on babysitting duty, so it just wasn't going to work.

This year, when my opportunity arose, I was not so lucky to get a movie in my wheelhouse. In fact, I'd found the trailers for The Odd Life of Timothy Green to be painfully shmaltzy, and the only review I'd read of it was one I'd heard: Kenneth Turan on NPR, confirming with prejudice the movie's tendency toward preciousness.

But I said I'd go, so I was determined to go.

The experience got off to a rough start. This theater is literally a three-minute walk from the cabin where we're staying, which just contributes to the sense of intimacy of this small town center. But I was still on the verge of being late due to a last-minute crisis on the home front. I won't go into details, but it was one of those situations that could have forced me to skip the movie out of my husbandly duty to support my wife in times of stress -- which the start of this work weekend certainly is for her.

But at about three minutes before the movie's one 7 p.m. showing, she unleashed me with her blessing. The crisis wasn't exactly resolved, but it was close enough to it that there wasn't anything else I could do for her.

The lingering stress I felt was only heightened by the scene I was met with at the theater. I arrived to find a crowd of mostly old people streaming out of the exits. Had I somehow gotten the time wrong? It's an odd sensation to know that the movie you're supposed to be seeing is supposed to be starting right now, yet people are heading out of the theater rather than in.

I picked my way against the flow of traffic and found a single counter just inside the door with only a single person ahead of me buying a ticket. Well, it wasn't exactly a ticket -- "buying admission" is perhaps the more accurate thing to say. You see, this theater is so small and so quaint that they don't even bother with the formality of giving you a physical artifact that demonstrates you paid.

Still under the impression that I might be late to the movie, I hurried over to the concession area to buy my popcorn, since I wouldn't be getting a proper dinner until after the movie. Except, there was no one there. I quickly realized that the same person who sold me the ticket was also manning -- or not manning, as the case was -- the concession stand. After bustling around the theater for a few other urgent responsibilities, she arrived behind the counter, almost out of breath, with a knowing sense of the absurdity that she was doing this unusual double duty. She filled my popcorn hurriedly (but with a smile) and then disappeared again.

It was then that I noticed that the lobby full of people (full = about seven people) were not just sitting there for their health. They were waiting for the janitorial staff (a single dude with long hair) to finish cleaning from the previous performance. Whatever that performance may have been, because there had been no previous showing of the movie advertised.

It was then that I strolled over to peruse the gallery of DVDs, at least a thousand of them, on shelves in the lobby. At first I couldn't imagine their purpose, then decided that this movie theater rents videos by day. Double duty for everyone.

I guess we started finally entering the theater before it was all clear, because the guy was still going through the aisles with his broom as we entered. This guy was some kind of character, I thought -- good willed, but definitely odd (there's that word again) in some way. Seeing the torrent of 11 theatergoers entering the theater, he made a strange kind of flourish with his broom and announced "I ain't cleaning the front row" before exiting stage left.

It was then that I noticed that this theater of about 100 seats wasn't cooled by air conditioning, but ceiling fans that were lazily going through their rotations.

The trailers got started and the movie followed. The only other comment I'll make about the place is that it was one of those theaters where the seats have almost no give, meaning if you're trying to insert a leg between two of the seats in front of you, you're out of luck. Much shifting and repositioning ensued.

For about the first 30 minutes of the movie, I was nodding along with Turan's dismissal of the film. It was just as shmaltzy as I could have imagined.

And then I slowly started to realize that The Odd Life of Timothy Green is up to something a lot more profound under this sheen of excessive sweetness. I started to realize that the whole story is basically a metaphor for the trials, tribulations and uncertainties of becoming a parent. It was just masquerading as a precious bauble about a boy who emerges from a garden, born during a magical rainstorm, because the grieving couple inside who just learned they can't have kids got drunk and buried a box of little sheets of paper, which have the character traits of the child they can never have written on them, in said garden.

Maybe the movie eventually won me over because I am a parent, so I understand the mistakes parents can make, and the mistakes they can make trying to fix those mistakes. (I'm paraphrasing a line from the movie there.) But it's actually got a lot more to say than that, grappling with the way we place unrealistic expectations on our children that have to do with our own unfulfilled dreams, and the way familial bonds can be complicated in all families. (Each of Timothy's parents has a strained relationship with one of their own family members.) There's also a lot to be said about how we try to make children "normal" when they appear to be "different."

The brilliant thing is that it's feeding us these ideas with the kind of aesthetic that buries them deep in the subtext. You can also appreciate it (or be scornful of it) as a bauble that pulls on your heartstrings in obvious surface ways. Only by digging a little deeper do you realize the more genuine points it's making, which deliver a more genuine sense of emotional catharsis.

Okay, if you still don't believe The Odd Life of Timothy Green might be worth watching, well ... you may be right. It does have its moments of real shmaltz. But what can I say, in the end it worked for me.

Or maybe it was just that I was charmed by the quirks of a small town movie house in the mountains, where the ticket girl is the popcorn girl and fans scrape the ceiling of the theater.

End of the road

Everywhere I look, there are signs of the old ways being killed off by the new.

First it was Friday, when driving to my company's closest satellite office in Torrance, about a 10-15 minute drive from my office. My route takes me past the Redondo Beach Cinema 3, now the former Redondo Beach Cinema 3.

Granted, I'd never been to this second-run theater. But it served a role in my life nonetheless: I liked noting what was playing as I drove by. That's a favorite game of mine in any theater whose marquee is visible from the street. I always like to imagine a scenario where I'll drive by with precisely one hour and forty minutes to kill, and there'll be a 100-minute movie starting right at that moment. And so I see what movie I'd watch if that theoretical scenario actually came to pass.

This theater in particular interested me, because I always imagined there would be a time when I'd finish my day at our Torrance location, and run on over for a second-run movie that started 15 minutes later. There were occasionally some choices that interested me, but just lately they'd become kind of third-run. The last time I drove by, maybe two weeks ago, they were still playing Twilight: New Moon, and some other choices that may have been even older. A theater slips from second- to third-run when it stops playing movies that came to theaters a month ago, and starts playing movies that came to DVD a month ago.

So all the signs were there that the Redondo Beach Cinema 3 was on the verge of going under, but it sill saddened me when I drove by to a blank marquee on Friday. It wasn't just that they sent their marquee letters in for a cleaning -- the place was officially closed. A look to the right showed me this sign, which confirmed it. Later, I came back and snapped a few photos.

I've written about this before, but there's something tragic to me when a theater closes. I know from talking to a friend of mine, who was considering buying a small theater, that any theater with fewer than four screens is an unsupportable business model. They can stay open, alright, but if they do, it's because the owner is taking a loss. The owner is some rich cinephile who cares more about the ongoing existence of the small American theater than he does about the way that theater puts a dent in his bank account. He can afford to care about that because the dent is so small.

I also can't help but notice the contrast between this and the high-end theaters becoming more high-end, especially with the current craze to make more and more screens capable of playing 3D. Playing 3D at the Redondo Beach Cinema 3 would have been unheard of. That's what happens to dinosaurs, unfortunately -- they die.

Then there was yesterday. I've written about Blockbuster's woes numerous times -- here, here, here and here, to name a few -- but yesterday marked yet another landmark moment in my understanding of just how much trouble the company's in. I've heard the potential bankruptcy rumors, and I've heard the announcement of store closings. But when the one store closed that I talked about here, while the other one equidistant to my house appeared to survive, I figured Blockbuster was just decreasing its geographical density, not noticeably scaling back its presence. You know, like if there are Starbucks on two adjacent blocks, and one closes, you don't really worry too much about the health of the company. It's when they both close that you worry.

Kind of like yesterday.

I left my house to go swap out a mail rental with a new release from the store, so my wife and I would have something to watch last night. (It turned out we didn't need it, since we observed Earth Hour from 8:30 to 9:30, and she went to bed soon afterward.) But when I got to the store, I immediately saw (how could you miss it) the STORE CLOSING banner above. That meant no more rentals, and that most things in the store were at a steep discount. Most depressing in these scenarios? The signs that tell you to talk to a manager if you are interested in buying the fixtures.

For the first time, my Blockbuster life flashed before my eyes. I started to seriously consider the fact that canceling my Blockbuster subscription, which has been my primary source for rentals for the last five years, was both imminent and inevitable. (And many of you have argued that it should have come long ago. If you want to look here, you'll see the benefits I considered it to have over Netflix -- benefits that have all but dissipated now.)

Now, the only Blockbuster that I've ever really frequented in this area was the one in the sleepy downtown El Segundo. That's the one I visit when I go during lunch from work. But it's too inconvenient to visit from my house, and I need a Blockbuster I can visit on the weekends. Plus, I'm really surprised the El Segundo store survived this round of store closures -- any time I go in there, I'm the only one in the store.

A sign on the outside of this Blockbuster referred me to a fully functioning operation at some other address, but I wasn't even familiar with the location. Great -- I'll have to get on mapquest to find the next closest Blockbuster to me.

I went into the store and poked around for a few minutes. At least it was near the beginning of the sell-off. There was plenty of merchandise and plenty of people picking through it. I briefly flipped through some HD DVDs -- we have an HD DVD player, if you can believe it -- that were in blank cases and selling for $1.99. They had The Untouchables, which I really like. But I didn't buy it. Moments later I was out the door. And I don't even remember what the last movie I rented there was.

I shouldn't cry for Blockbuster -- they're a faceless corporation most people root against. But I cry for the changing times. I mourn the fact that the days of physical videos are coming to an end. I guess when you compare the sentimental value of buying a CD with the sentimental value of renting a video, the one that stings more is the end of the CD-buying era. But I liked something about the idea of walking into a video store, browsing the choices quickly and efficiently, being introduced to something you might want to see just by laying eyes on it, and then walking out with it.

At the same time, I'm part of the problem. As it so happens, on Thursday night I took a twirl on my wife's Netflix account, whose password was saved on my computer from when I watched Big Fan back in January. I couldn't believe how many choices were available for instant, random viewing. After flipping through them for awhile, I found a truly random choice that had actually been deep on my Blockbuster queue, a movie I wanted to see for a really strange reason: I remembered seeing it on a movie marquee when I was a kid, back in 1981. For some reason, the title stuck with me: First Monday in October. And so I watched it right then and there. And immediately demonstrated why Netflix is making Blockbuster obsolete.

Like all new ways of doing things, I will come to fully embrace these as well. But as I've written before, it doesn't mean we shouldn't pause to acknowledge the passing of the baton, and quietly weep for the change, even if just for a second or two.

An exception to every rule

Just as I rushed to explain having watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop in this post, I figured I ought to hurriedly explain why you're seeing Valentine's Day listed among my Most Recently Seen movies.

Simple: It was an out-of-town movie. And when the stars align for you to see a movie when you're out of town, the novelty is such that you hardly care what it is.

Especially if the setting is something as cute as the Ojai Playhouse in Ojai, California, about 30 miles from Santa Barbara and 80 miles from LA.

But the Ojai Playhouse isn't just cute. In fact, it's state-of-the-art, which is a true rarity among the breed of financial losers known as the single-screen movie theater. Because I bemoaned the apparent approaching extinction of these theaters in this post, I was glad indeed to find one that doesn't seem to be teetering on the verge.

Which means the owner is probably taking a bath on it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

From the outside, it looked like it might indeed be one of those theaters -- dumpy, continuing to exist mostly because they haven't spent any money on upkeep since the 1970s. The movie titles (they had a couple features sharing one screen) were displayed in those letters you hang on the sign using one of those magnetized poles. Having stepped inside, I now recognize it as a retro touch, but at first it struck me as a sign of datedness.

I'm kind of surprised we even got to the point of stepping inside. We were only in Ojai in the first place as a quick, low-cost road trip for my wife's birthday, and I expected we'd spend more of our time exploring the small town's offerings than sitting in a movie theater. Then there was the little matter of the movie playing two hours after our arrival, at 1:30: Valentine's Day, the romantic comedy that had been ripped by critics from northern Maine to southern California. But she found there to be something potentially charming about the theater as well, and surprised me by saying she would be willing to venture a viewing of Valentine's Day. I didn't realize she'd be quite as eager as I was to let circumstances obliterate our standards.

Stepping inside, though, we discovered a theater lovingly kept up by its owner. The snack bar and ticket counter were quaintly gathered into one shared area, raised about a foot above the rest of the lobby. The snack offerings were written out tastefully on a chalk board, with different colors of chalk, and a professional level of chalk calligraphy. The lobby had nice new burgundy carpeting, and posters of several movies coming soon to the theater, in shiny new frames.

The man from whom we bought our tickets was almost certainly the aforementioned owner. He was a smiley man with black hair in his late 40s-early 50s, and he had the math skills of a person who certainly didn't have to sweat every penny. When my wife handed him a twenty for two $8 matinee tickets, he handed her back three fives and two ones. Now, we are trying to save money, but she was too honest to let him charge us $1.50 per ticket. When she told him he'd undercharged us, he took back one of the fives. Which still meant we were getting two tickets for the price of one. We didn't feel the need to correct his math a second time.

The theater was simply stunning. The seats were new and comfortable, leading to the conclusion that the theater had been gutted and refurbished sometime within the last three years, maybe even more recently than that. Along the walls were giant, stately black and white portraits of movie stars -- a young Robert Redford, a young Jane Fonda, a young Omar Sharif. It was all extremely elegant and tasteful.

I needed to relieve myself, and the next surprise was the restrooms. I can't vouch for the little girls' room, but the little boys' was astonishing -- marble counters, black and white tile, fancy soap, immaculately clean. The only -- and I mean only -- reason I was glad that Valentine's Day was just over two hours long was that it allowed me to visit the bathroom again afterward.

On my way back into the theater, I saw a framed, oversized screening schedule for the Ojai Film Society, complete with a picture and a blurb about each film. All very nicely done. And good taste, too. It appears that every week this theater gets a new, acclaimed independent feature, which has a single Sunday afternoon screening in addition to the feature that plays regularly. The Maid was the current selection. They may be a couple months old -- films like Broken Embraces and A Single Man were on there -- but if you're a local in this small artsy community, you'll probably tolerate that wait, perhaps not even notice it. My wife told me she'd seen an ad up for the film society while I was in the bathroom. For a yearly investment of $125, you got to see 36 films. That's right, (basically) first-run features in a beautiful theater for an average of $3.47 per movie, all year long.

And what price did we have to pay for all this opulence, and getting to see a newly released movie for only $4 apiece? We had to pretend we liked it. Upon exiting the theater -- with bleary expressions on our faces, caused by 123 minutes of keeping track of 45 different characters we didn't care about -- we found the man in the exact same place, behind the ticket counter/snack bar.

"So, did you have a good time?" he asked, huge smile still on his face. Not did we like the movie -- but did we have a good time.

"Yeah, thanks," I said. And then, more honestly: "Beautiful theater!"

Would that every small theater could be owned by rich people with poor math skills.

Celebrating times past

When my wife, a friend and I went to see Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock last night, I didn't realize how many ways it would be a flashback to the days of yore.

That thematic element was obviously present in the movie, but I didn't know until I descended on the single-screen Westwood Crest theater in Westwood how much of a throwback experience that would be as well.

Moments before our friend arrived, I snapped this shot on my blackberry. The quality isn't great, but it gives you some idea what this theater is about. It has a full marquee, which includes both the movie title and a recreation of the poster art. It's got plenty of neon and flashing light bulbs lining the various architectural features. What's more, it's got a beautiful spire launching up into the night above.

But just wait until you get inside.

This is the art I'd really like to show you -- but even if I could find it online, I'd hold it back out of respect to the owner of the theater. It's worth the price of admission just to see the walls inside this lovely reminder of how moviegoing used to be. And lord knows, owners of any single-screen theaters still out there need your $11 like you wouldn't believe.

Simply put, the inside of this theater contains one of the most beautiful -- and beautifully luminescent -- cityscape murals I've ever seen. It wraps around the back and both side walls, and it's chockablock with Hollywood landmarks: famous buildings, the Hollywood hills, miniature recreations of quintessential boulevards, and plenty of those famous dueling searchlights that used to herald great events in old Hollywood.

Something like this could be really cheesy, but the Westwood Crest is just the opposite. The art is an amazing feat in a number of ways. Not only does it have clear layers and dimension, actually creating a vivid 3-D effect, but the paint glows ever so faintly while the movie plays. So even if you decide what you're watching is a turkey, you could spend those 100 minutes just losing yourself in the fine details of the interior design.

It's no secret that the single-screen theater has fallen on hard times. Westwood, the area near UCLA, is known for its historic single-screen theaters, which used to be some of the crown jewels for watching films in Hollywood's early days. Two of them have recently closed, and if the 25 or so people scattered throughout the available seats last night, for the 7:30 show just six days into this film's run, are any indication, the Westwood Crest might not be far behind.

In talking with my friend, I was relieved to learn that the Westwood Crest is not indeed living on borrowed time, at least not as of now. He knows the owner, and assured me that the owner's got most of his eggs in other baskets. Even though he's losing money on the Crest, he keeps it going out of a sheer love of cinema. That's what all small-theater owners need -- an ability to absorb losses without blinking an eye. It's the only way some of these old theaters will stay afloat in today's world, where my friend informs me that any theater with fewer than four screens is bound to be a financial loser.

Me, I vow to see as many films as I can here, to support this man as much as I can, even if he doesn't need my $11 to put food on the table for his family. It's not a far drive from my house, and even if the movie stinks, I'll always value the opportunity to soak in more of the lovingly detailed walls that take me back to the Hollywood of yore.

Oh, and did I mention the simulated stars on the ceiling, which twinkle and reflect the movie stars on the screen below?

Taking Woodstock was not all I hoped it would be, but it did achieve certain moments of transcendence, moments that made me indulge in a strong wistfulness for times I never experienced.

I'm pretty sure I have the Westwood Crest to thank for putting me in that mindset.

Give or take an S

Or, "How to tell if a theater is on its last legs."

My wife and I finally saw Baz Luhrmann's Australia last night. She's Australian, so this was long overdue. In fact, we made a thwarted attempt a few days before Christmas, but failed to check the showtime on the actual day, and by that time they'd changed it. We had heard it was bad, but for my wife, seeing the movie was part of the duty of being an Australian ... or something to that effect. Me, I just like big spectacles.

We waited long enough that now it's only playing in the second-run theaters, which is how we found ourselves at one particular second-run theater in downtown Culver City last night. It's actually probably the closest theater to our home, but there are a number of reasons we usually don't go -- many of which were confirmed last night.

I ended up liking the film fine -- or in any case, I could find no reason to get all up in arms about its poor quality. It was a giant throwback Hollywood epic, some very cheesy stuff happened, and it looked really good. What else were you expecting?

But maybe I liked it because I actually saw Autralia, minus the S. That's what it said on my ticket: Autralia. When I noticed this, I shared a story with my wife about having come here last Memorial Day weekend, which I chose to kick off via an after-work movie on Friday. The movie I saw then? Baby's Mama. That's right, Baby's Mama. While I commended them on what would ordinarily be a correct usage of grammar, that was not, in fact, the title of the movie. Then my wife came up with a real zinger: The S wasn't available for Autralia because it had already been expended superfluously on Baby's Mama. It really wouldn't surprise me if this theater actually did have a finite supply of the letter S. And don't think it was just that they didn't have enough characters to fit the whole title on the ticket. Baby's Mama is two characters longer than even the complete word Australia, counting the apostrophe and the space.

The funny thing is, I've seen one other film at this theater since it became a full-on second-run joint sometime in 2007. That film was Religulous, and in that case -- when the word was entirely made up -- they spelled it correctly.

Other ways we can tell they've basically given up at this theater ...

1) The men's bathroom has no mirrors. Oh, it's not like there isn't any space for them -- it's that they were actually removed. You can see the little splotches of putty where they used to adhere to the wall. Either the mirrors broke and they were just too cheap to replace them, or they actually feared that the mirrors would be vulnerable to vandalism, so removed them as a preemptive strike. Either way, I'd bet some guys on dates are pretty bummed not to be able to primp themselves in the bathroom. Then again, maybe they don't care that much if they were taking their date to a second-run theater in the first place.

2) There are only six other people in the theater, no matter what movie you see. Maybe it's the fate of a second-run theater that you never get big crowds, but it's really unnerving to be in a theater that only has a smattering of people in the lobby at any given time, and then even fewer at your particular movie. I guess I don't usually go on Friday nights, but I feel like I can make an educated guess about this. The silence is deafening.

3) And speaking of silence ... They don't play music or even a rotating slideshow in the theaters before the movie starts. Yeah, those trivia questions are brainlessly easy -- but at least it's something to look at. The silence, of course, is much worse than the lack of visuals. I've been at times when everyone there was seeing the movie by him/herself, which means there wasn't even an undercurrent of chatter -- just thick, soporific silence. And if you do have someone with you, talking is difficult anyway because your every word is picked up by everyone else in the theater. Unnerving.

4) They've let the place go. Not only were there things just stacked randomly and left in full view of the public, but the actual screen on which we watched Autralia was in dire need of repair. There was a worn-through patch to the lower right of the center of the screen, and whenever the film stock was bright, that flaw was really distracting. I did get used to it -- eventually.

5) Moviefone can't even get their listings right. Granted, it's a little confusing, because there's a first-run theater just a couple blocks away. But when I went to see Religulous the day before Thanksgiving, I had actually been intending to see Role Models. And I swear I read the moviefone.com page correctly. Nonetheless, Role Models was not playing at this theater -- and I probably should have known, considering that it was released only 2-3 weeks before that. But who am I to question what I see online? And I was extra cautious to make sure I was right, because when I went to see Baby's Mama, I had actually been intending to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- and it too was playing at the nearby first-run theater. I think in that case it might have been my fault, but it did have the effect of making me extra cautious on my next attempt -- as it turned out, to no avail. I did eventually see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but have yet to see Role Models.

I think I've taken up enough of your time for today. Tune in bright and early tomorrow morning to see my top ... however many it will be ... of 2008.