By Neal Wooten
I’m a big movie buff. And there’s nothing like seeing a movie on the big screen. But I haven’t been to the theater in almost a decade. Even with my hearing aids, I miss half the dialog while the music is so loud, it hurts my ears. Not to mention, you need a small loan to buy popcorn.
I’ve always thought theaters could do well to bring back old movies, especially from the 70s and 80s. movies a lot of remember from our youths. Maybe just one night a week, have a retro night. I would think these flicks would also be a lot cheaper for the theaters than new releases. I would definitely go see movies like Smokey and the Bandit, Jaws, and Christine on the big screen again.
There are places in the country now where you can go every summer and watch Jaws at night on the big screen while floating on the beach on innertubes, air mattresses, or whatever. How cool is that? I saw it at the theater when I was eleven, and that night, every time I started to drift off to sleep, my bed started moving like the swells of the ocean and I kept hearing that music.
That’s why on Sunday, I drove to Scottsboro to the Cinemas. They were showing Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee. What made it even more exciting is the fact that I have never seen this movie on the big screen because it came out when I was seven years old. And it wouldn’t matter if the dialog was too low for me to hear or not because I know it by heart. I’ve only seen it 147 times.
But alas, it wasn’t to be. The air conditioning had gone out in one of their theaters, which was showing a new release, so they bumped Bruce and moved the new movie there. I felt like I had been judo chopped in the gut. I’m going back Wednesday night at 7:00 and trying again. Let’s hope, for their sake, they show it. I don’t wanna go all Return of the Fat Dragon on them.
I actually never got into martial arts, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate Bruce Lee’s skills. He will always be the master. I did try to learn the nun chucks when I was a young man. I lost interest though after a miscalculation and the nun chucks hit me in the…Well, suffice to say I’m still not sure I can have kids.
So, here’s to the age of real movies, before computer-generated everything, when Hollywood still relied on a simple little cinematic technique called – having a plot.
