Willy Wonka and That Old-Time Theater Show

I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today. It was a fun ball of fluff, and since I am unencumbered by any sentimental attachment to the Wilder version with the hippie, psychedelic ode to ganja, LSD, and hideous fashion sense, I enjoyed it. Depp was delightfully weird as usual, and for once the child actors didn't make me want to chew wood and beat them insensate with their own leaden stage presence. It was sweet and funky and a quirky mix of voyeuristic schadenfreude and cinema schmaltz, and I had a good time.

We went to see it at the dilapidated Regal Cinema in town. It's smaller and seedier, and the crushed cricket in the box office window didn't bode well for the cleanliness of the concession stand, but it has an ambience the newer AMC theaters can't match. Their theaters remind me of the ones I went to as a little girl, in the days when going to a movie was an event and not just a ho-hum time-killer. The theaters are draped with heavy, red curtains, and the marquees outside each have hand-lettered showtimes instead of the digital readout. It's cheesy and gritty and a lumbering mammoth surely on its way to extinction, but I prefer it to the high-gloss, thickly carpeted megaplex across town. Maybe it's because they get so little custom, but the staff always perks up when I roll in.

Of course, now that I've grown comfortable with the relic, the parent company will promptly go belly-up and the city will raze it to the ground to make way for a gentlemen's club, where men in polyester suits and toupees like a Wookie's fruit bowl will leer at naked, gyrating women and attempt to cram cocaine-laced dollar bills into their sweaty buttcracks.

I've a week to finish hexannacht's "drabble", which long ago left the accepted parameters of that ficcing form bleeding in the dust. Sorry.

There is also a week until the beginning of my "Waxing Lyrical HPfic Challenge." If you intend to enter, do so by the 29th. Prompts will be distributed at 9PM EDT on the 30th. First prize is a year of LJ time. Full instructions can be found at bitterbarbs.