magic movie box

If you were born circa 1952 then you have seen a lot of changes in the way we watch movies. My first and favorite memory of going to the movies was the Drive-In Theater. My mother would dress my sister and I in our PJ’s. We would climb in the back seat of the family car, an aqua and white ’57 Chevy and go to the Drive-In movies. I loved the little box speaker and the tray that attached to the car window.  And there was a person who brought popcorn and cokes to the car. Usually the next thing I remembered was waking up in my own bed the following morning, not the end of the movie. Then there was panovision or something like that and “How the West Was Won”. We dressed up to go to that new theater with three projectors on three screens. You felt like you were in the movie. I covered my eyes when Debbie Reynolds was almost trampled by the stampeding wagon train. Going to the movies meant going downtown to theaters like the Empire, the Melba and the grand dame of them all, The Alabama Theatre. They are all gone now except The Alabama. If you have never been there,     GO now! alabamatheatre.com/ It still has balconies, a stage and an organ that comes up out of the floor. It has gilded boxes where I was sure the Queen mother sat and where your children surely will expect Kate and William to sit when they visit. It is still magical. This is where I saw Gone with the Wind, on a screen 40 ft high. In high school, a movie date was the ultimate.  We all sat together in the balcony to watch “Our Man Flint”.   Then came movies on TV and the new smaller and louder theaters, 12 crammed into the space of one old one with sound systems that shake your teeth. There was VHS then DVDs, and movie playing machines in your own home. And there were the video rental stores where I discovered Foreign Films and left children crying in the aisle when they could not agree or when I refused to rent all of the movies at once.  And on to online options, everyone watching what they want on their own laptop or cell phone or whatever. But I have found a new way, well new to me this week. It is a red box outside the door of my local WinnDixie. So as I leave with my groceries, there is this DVD rental that looks like a coke machine. With your email address and a credit card, it will hand you a recent movie that you take home with the milk and bread. It immediately sends you a confirmation email and one the next day when you return it, and all for just one dollar. How cool is that? redbox.com

So however you go to the movies, enjoy. A good movie can still be magical.