Movie Theaters

GRAPEVINE, Texas -- The web of highways between Dallas and Forth Worth glows with enough strip mall and fast-food neon to make Maryland's Ritchie Highway envious.The two rapidly growing cities have spread outward so that their suburbs overlap, creating what Texans call the "Metroplex" -- a hot dog-shaped metropolis with dual anchors 30 miles apart and, cradled inside the bun, more people (5 million) than than are found in 31 entire states.This Dallas-Fort Worth swath of humanity is also home to the nation's third-largest movie-viewing population, behind Los Angeles and New York.

I will admit to knowing little about the inner workings of the movie industry, from Hollywood to film distribution to the big screen complexes and smaller screen venues, such as Baltimore's much-loved Senator Theater . But I think I know what I want as a movie-goer. As I drove by the Senator last weekend, I noticed that it was closed for renovations. The new owners are planning three screens instead of just one, and a restaurant. That sounds nice. I can't wait to see what they do with the place.

ANNAPOLIS -- "And now a word from our sponsors. . . ."If Delegate Paul G. Pinsky, D-Prince George's, has his way, moviegoers may be spared the questionable pleasure of hearing those words within the sanctuary of the cinema.Mr. Pinsky's bill, debated before the House Economic Matters Committee yesterday, would make Maryland the first state to "draw a line in the sand," as Mr. Pinsky put it, beyond which advertisers may not tread.The bill would prohibit commercial advertising in movie theaters, unless the advertised product is being sold at the refreshment counter.

One of the nation's largest movie theater companies will anchor the Towson Circle III development, becoming the first announced tenant of a delayed project officials hope will spur revitalization in the heart of the Baltimore County seat. Cinemark plans to open the state-of-the-art movie complex in the fall of 2014, featuring 16 wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling screens and 3,200 stadium-style seats, county officials and developers said Friday. They hope the $85 million Towson Circle III — located on four acres bounded by East Joppa Road and Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia avenues — will drive other development in Towson's center.

WASHINGTON - When Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry character sneered, "Go ahead - make my day," the line became such a cultural phenomenon that President Ronald Reagan repeated it in daring Congress to pass a tax increase he could veto. But John Stanton and millions of other deaf Americans did not recognize the reference. The line comes from a 1983 movie that - like virtually all other American movies released since the end of the silent film era - had no subtitles or captions for the hearing-impaired.

Irwin Robert Cohen, an attorney who owned a chain of movie theaters and had been in the entertainment business for more than seven decades, died of Alzheimer's disease complications Thursday at the Jewish Convalescent and Nursing Home. The Pikesville resident was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised near Druid Hill Park, he got into the movie exhibition business at the age of 8, when his father began running the old Leader Theater on South Broadway. "My husband started watching the back door so no one could sneak in," said his wife of 56 years, the former Betty Wagner.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- All derrieres are not created alike, say a group of fat activists who have launched a campaign to equip Santa Cruz movie theaters with special seats for people of plumpness.The problem, says Mary Atkins, a 300-pound film buff, is that squishing everything into those one-size-fits-all movie seats can be a pain.vTC "It's like when you go to school for a parent conference and sit in a children's chair," says Ms. Atkins, 51. "That's what movie theaters are like for the super-sized."

I heartily agree with a fellow Columbia resident who wrote recently about films that do not come to our theaters here in Columbia. If my husband and I don't go to Baltimore to see foreign and independent films, we wait for Netflix to offer them on DVD. How great it would be if our movie theaters showed movies outside the mainstream pop culture! I believe there are many people here that would support these types of films. Kathy Guerin Owen Brown

LOS ANGELES -- Marvel Productions will produce cartoons for movie theaters that will be shown prior to Twentieth Century Fox releases, the two companies said.The studio said that the cartoons, to be called "Fox Toons," should be ready for Fox summer movies in 1991.The studio's deal with Marvel follows a similar effort by Walt Disney Co., which has packaged Roger Rabbit cartoons with "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and "Dick Tracy."The company did not say how many cartoons Marvel will produce. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Fox said that it will retain rights to the cartoons after Marvel delivers them.

LOS ANGELES -- "Citizen Kane," considered by many critics to be the greatest American film, will be reissued for commercial theatrical release on May 1, exactly 50 years after it was first shown in movie theaters.The film, the story of a newspaper tycoon's rise to wealth and power, was directed, written and produced by Orson Welles, then 25 years old, who also starred as the publisher, Charles Foster Kane.Though widely seen on television and in film school courses, "Citizen Kane" has not been given an unlimited run in movie theaters in more than 30 years, said executives at Paramount Pictures and Turner Entertainment Co., which are releasing the film.

I heartily agree with a fellow Columbia resident who wrote recently about films that do not come to our theaters here in Columbia. If my husband and I don't go to Baltimore to see foreign and independent films, we wait for Netflix to offer them on DVD. How great it would be if our movie theaters showed movies outside the mainstream pop culture! I believe there are many people here that would support these types of films. Kathy Guerin Owen Brown

Parents taking your kids to "Harry Potter" tonight, don't fret. If you go to Landmark's Harbor East Cinema, at least you won't have to watch the movie sober. The theater's bartender, Ginny Lawhorn, has come up with a "Harry Potter"-themed cocktail menu to coincide with the movie's release. Not that the movie's bad. In fact, reviews have been ecstatic . But who can keep up with all that nonsense about muggles and mudbloods? Now, when your kids - or maybe your significant other with the Harry Potter obsession - is blathering on about Horcrux or Quittich or whatever, you can tune out for a couple of hours with one of Lawhorn's anesthesizing cocktails.

Four decades ago, "Company" opened on Broadway, putting Stephen Sondheim firmly on the music theater map. The show left an indelible impression on a young person who saw the premiere in 1970. "I was taken to the show when I was 11 years old for my birthday," said actor and director Lonny Price. "'Company' has one of the best collections of theater songs ever. This show never gets old for me. It never disappoints me. " Back in April, Price directed a starry concert version of the Sondheim classic presented by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.

Nearly 20 years after opening, the eight-screen movie theater at Towson Commons that once seemed the center of the county seat's downtown will be closing this month. "I think it was pretty inevitable the movie theater was going to close," said David Marks, the county councilman who represents the Towson area. Still, he said, "It's a sad ending. I remember going there in the early 1990s. It was the cornerstone of Towson. " According to an article in the Towson Times, the owner has terminated the lease with AMC, and the theater will show its last movies on Sunday, May 15. The theater has been expected to close for some time, as crowds had dwindled in recent years and other businesses left Towson Commons one by one. For years the three-story shopping center at York Road and Pennsylvania Avenue has been vacant but for the movie theater, which has struggled since theaters with stadium seating opened at Hunt Valley and White Marsh.

Regal Cinemas will open a theater at Waugh Chapel Towne Centre, a planned mixed-use development in Gambrills in West Anne Arundel County, project developer Greenberg Gibbons said Monday. The theater will offer digital projection and will be the first IMAX cinema in the area. The 52,000-square-foot theater will join anchors Wegmans, Target, Dick's Sporting Goods and Petco in a 1.2 million-square-foot center with 650,000 square feet of shops, 125,000 square feet of offices and 380 apartments.

Roy Wagner's musical treasure requires considerable space, with its 500-some pipes, its floor-to-ceiling relay panel filled with thousands of tiny pneumatic devices and a cumbersome blower with huge, noisy fans and belts. The instrument's elegant console, white and trimmed in gold leaf, dominates any room. And the sound that emanates when a musician tackles its double keyboard, numerous controls and floor pedals is equally grand. Believed to be the last remaining theater organ from a Baltimore movie house, the 1927 Wurlitzer has captured Wagner's fancy since the 1960s, when he used to borrow a key to the old State Theatre on Monument Street to play the shuttered playhouse's 2.5-ton wonder.

THE MOVIE directory section of The Sun lists only two movie theaters in Baltimore city, together showing a total of six films. Five movies are shown at the Charles Theater downtown on Charles Street and one is shown at the Senator on York Road. Earlier this year, the Rotunda, a movie theater on 40th Street, closed. Baltimore's population, according to the 2000 Census, is 651,154, so if there is a hit in town a lot of people are going to stand in line or go to one of the counties. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone just opened at the Senator and should pack them in. A dearth of movie theaters is an odd statistic for a city that has a symphony, opera, theaters, museums, professional teams and some snappy restaurants and wants to appear sophisticated and inviting.

MOTION PICTURE theaters have changed along with the movie business and the way we see movies. Compared to the movie theaters of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, today's theaters are unadorned, with straighter, cleaner lines. They have wall-to-wall screens and very little interior lighting -- by design. We attend movies in shopping-center "cineplexes," as Thomas Cripps noted in his review here yesterday of "Seeing Through Movies": "We settle into our seats surrounded by walls so thin that we pick up the crack of Indiana Jones' whip next door while we are watching 'Mystic Pizza.

Old friends Virginia Stein and Gretchen Hathaway welcomed back another old friend Friday afternoon. The two women were among the 50 or so movie fans who showed up for the quiet reopening of Baltimore's 71-year-old Senator Theatre , which had been dark for nearly three months. With just a few minutes to go before the movie started, they agreed the day offered a genuine cause for celebration. "I've been coming to this theater all my life, and that means back to the 1940s," said Stein, who lives in Gardenville.

The tempest brewing around the fate of Baltimore's sole surviving single-screen movie theater continued to churn Monday, with one potential operator denying it had been forced to withdraw from consideration while another revealed an unexpected, last-minute appeal to take over the building. Towson University and its radio station, WTMD, dropped out of the running to operate the Senator Theatre because of economic concerns and not because of pressure from the Baltimore Development Corp.