Movie Theaters

Acting Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Barksdale has ordered increased patrols around movie theaters as a precaution following the mass shooting at a Colorado screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," police said.  At least 14 people were killed and 50 wounded after a gunman burst into a theater in Aurora, Col. and opened fire on moviegoers. Police have charged a 24-year-old James Hunter in the crime.  "We have no intellignece to suggest that anything horrific like that would take place in Baltimore, but at the same time we realize the propensity for copycat incidents tends to be high," said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

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.

United Artists, racing to keep pace with the bevy of movie theaters being planned in Baltimore County, has signed an agreement to put 11 new screens in the Hunt Valley Mall.The $5 million cinema project is also being touted as a major step in the redevelopment of the Cockeysville mall, which has suffered for three years in the wake of a defection by an R. H. Macy & Co. department store."We see this as a great attraction for evening and weekend shoppers, giving them a reason to come back to the mall," said Lloyd Miller, vice president of leasing for Kravco Corp.

Towson Marketplace -- where a $20 million renovation plan sparked controversy among neighbors -- will become the area's next power strip center, with warehouse-style stores but no movie theaters, its developer said yesterday.James A. Schlesinger of Talisman-Towson Partnership said he will not include theaters in the redevelopment of the 38-year-old mall, even though a recent Baltimore County zoning decision allows him to build six movie screens with 1,500 seats.The Florida-based developer -- who wanted to build a 16-screen multiplex with 3,500 seats -- also said he will not appeal the zoning commissioner's ruling.

I recently went on a movie-watching spree, seeing four films in a little over a week -- for $7.50.tTC No, I wasn't hanging out at my local video store, waiting for the latest release to arrive, then popping it into my VCR and watching the images on the 27-inch television screen in my living room.I'm talking real movies in real movie theaters -- on a big screen, with stereo sound, and fresh popcorn and Raisinets on sale in the lobby.To be sure, the films I saw weren't the ones everybody is talking about this holiday season -- "JFK" and "Bugsy" and "Star Trek VI."

The movies were usually good, but the seats and the sound frequently weren't; the film occasionally snapped and sometimes you could hear the sound bleeding in from the screen next door. But the Loews Rotunda Twin Cinemas was a going theater in a good location in a city with precious few, and now it's no more. The two-screen theater specializing in the more arty fare produced by big studios ran its last movies on Thursday and went dark, creating another vacant space in the north Baltimore shopping center and leaving two movie theaters in Baltimore City not specializing in triple-X material.

Seeing that the Maryland Film Festival will be bringing a series of rock 'n' roll movies to the beautifully renovated and refurbished Hippodrome Theatre next week - and kudos to anyone who brings movies back to that grand old movie palace - brings to mind a continuing sore point that tarnishes Baltimore's growing reputation as a great place to be a movie fan. Why can't something be done about all the wonderful old movie theaters that lie abandoned and...

Muvico Egyptian 24 Theaters made more money than any movie house in the country last weekend, according to a company that tracks ticket sales. The Egyptian-motif theater at Arundel Mills mall in Hanover brought in the nation's top gross sales from Friday to Sunday, according to A.C. Neilson Entertainment Data Inc., which tracks daily box office revenue at theaters nationwide. It has 24 auditoriums. Muvico wouldn't release how much money the theater brought in, but said the success of the Disney film Finding Nemo had a lot to do with the long lines at the theater.

If such golden oldies as "Maniac," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and, of course, "Flashdance… What a Feeling" still run through your head, there's a show heading to Baltimore ready to scoop you up in a wave of feel-good nostalgia. Those songs played an integral role in a 1983, critic-proof Paramount Pictures release called "Flashdance," about a young woman named Alex who worked as a welder in Pittsburgh, but dreamed of being a professional dancer. Three decades later, along comes "Flashdance - The Musical," complete with the famous water-dousing dance scene that got many a teenage hormone racing in movie theaters.