Considering how easy it is for any smallish local business boasting emotional ties to their neighbourhood to seek out mass media sympathy when the cash register doesn’t ring like it used to, the sudden announcement by Festival Cinemas that The Kingsway (3030 Bloor St. W.), The Revue (400 Roncesvalles Ave.) and The Royal (608 College St.) screens will go dark after June 30 seems uncommonly blunt. A report in the Toronto Star cited the exasperation of the offspring of cinema entrepreneur Peter McQuillan, who died in October 2004, what with limited interest in catching the latest Hollywood dreck for $3 less during the three-week window between the multiplex run and DVD debut – even though the remaining theatres in the formerly sprawling local chain, The Fox (2236 Queen St. E.) and The Paradise (1006 Bloor St. W.), will presumably continue to offer that service not unlike how the old-fashioned bijou experience has remained intact in two independent places along Mt. Pleasant. A picture show aesthetic built on the recycled rotation of Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show couldn’t sustain forever, so it’s remarkable enough that the sentimentality surrounding these movie houses endured for three generations – and beyond, if the right buyers are found. A 2001 picture book by John Sebert, The Nabes: Toronto’s Wonderful Neighbourhood Movie Houses, shows a city that once seemed to boast a glorious neon marquee on every other retail strip, in spaces since taken over by some of the fugliest exteriors in town, prior to more recent preservation-minded efforts like the retrofit of The Runnymede (2225 Bloor St. W.) into a Chapters store. And after a melodramatic change of proprietorship in the late 1990s, the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.) has done a pretty astute job of serving a wide range of distinct sensibilities, something which might’ve gotten lost when the Festival Cinemas perfected the formula of sending gently-used blockbuster reels on a tour of the city, alongside the occasional art house smash deemed too dangerous for Cineplex. Nonetheless, the idea of these three surviving old-school projectors switching off on the exact same day is melodramatic enough for the movies: The Royal’s beacon status in Little Italy is contemplated in comments on Torontoist; the disappearance of The Revue is noted on the North Ronces Blog in contrast to a Starbucks invasion a few steps away; and journal-keeper Dave Collins, who was taking tickets at the opening of the reincarnated Kingsway, mourns the closing with photos, including two old theatre seats now planted in his garden.
UPDATE: Paradise is also no more; Fox is up for lease. [BlogTO]
1 response so far ↓
blamb // May 21, 2006 at 11:04 pm
It’s no wonder they’re going broke, I stopped sending $$$ their way when they quit programming for the community and film buffs and began loading the schedule with second-rate Hollywood crap.
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