Movies find their niche

They got to the theater almost an hour before the movie was scheduled to start. They were worried there would be a big crowd and they wanted to make sure they could get tickets and seats.

“Can we have two for ‘Jurassic Park,’ please?” he asked.

Steven Spielberg’s popular dinosaur movie came out in 1993, but it was playing at The County Theater in Doylestown last week.

“When this came out in theaters, we were not old enough to see it. I was 5,” said Wyeth Taylor, of New Hope. “How many chances do you get to see it on a big screen?”

Taylor knows he could get “Jurassic Park” on DVD from Netflix and watch it a dozen times for less than the cost of his movie ticket. But, he said, “This is the way movies were meant to be seen — in a dark room with an audience. There’s something that takes you away from it when you watch it at home.”

“If you can see it this way, this is how you’re supposed to see it,” said James Ippoliti, 40, of Newtown, who arrived a few minutes later. Ippoliti said he believes movies are art and the screen is a canvas, so much so, he said, “That I deprive my child — my son, Nicholas, he’s 9 — of seeing these movies until they come out on the big screen.”

And a movie like “Jurassic Park” is “much more intense” on the big screen, John Kelly said. Kelly, 24, of Lansdale, was seeing the movie with three friends.

Russ Collins, chairman of an annual conference for independent movie theater operators called The Art House Convergence, believes there will always be people who feel the same way Taylor, Ippoliti and Kelly do. He believes the cinema will always have an audience — no matter how many new viewing methods come along.

“I think that Hulu and Netflix and video on-demand just have the opportunity to create more and more and more cinema lovers. Some of the cinema lovers aren’t gonna go to the theater. That’s their loss,” Collins said.

Digital viewing hasn’t really affected movie attendance — at least not in the way the invention of the television did. Collins said movie theaters in the U.S. sold about 4 billion tickets each year until the 1950s, when people started buying televisions and stopped going to movies. Attendance dropped drastically to about 1 billion admissions per year by 1964.

“Up until the ‘50s, the movies were what we think of as television. It was what you did when you didn’t have anything else to do. You’d just go to the movies and you wouldn’t even care what was playing. There’d be a travelogue, a news reel, an animated short, and the feature film. It was variety programming,” Collins said. Television now provides that same variety at any time of the day or night.

Free Printable: Peanut Butter & Jelly Popcorn Recipe Card | Home ...

My latest offering is a free digital scrapbooking recipe card download for a Peanut Butter & Jelly Popcorn recipe. When I was a kid, my mom had a cookbook with LOTS of popcorn recipes in it and she made this for us several times. I searched online for the recipe, but couldn’t find one, so I played with the ingredients a bit and came up with this version. It’s a fun change of pace from the usual popcorn and if your kids love PB&J sandwiches (like Mattie does), you should give this a try. 

Download a printable version of the Peanut Butter & Jelly recipe card HERE .

Enjoy!

Home Cooking Memories cherishes the memories associated with food and cooking. In my blog, you will find my own daily life, mostly as it associates with food, and my recipes, but also information that will help you preserve your own home cooking and food memories.

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