Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from the local news teams of the ACM network, which stretches into every state and territory. Today's is written by ACM executive editor James Joyce.
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Do you love the town where you live? Does it have a cinema?
Well, do as Arnold Schwarzengger would tell you: "Run! Go! Get to da moofies!"
After you finish reading this, of course.
For mine, nothing beats plopping yourself down in the dark with strangers to escape together into the silver screen. It's the second-best way you can spend your time and money - downloading your favourite ACM newspaper's mobile app and enjoying great local journalism being the best, of course.
Hint. Hint.
Last year I bemused (and I like to think secretly impressed) friends and colleagues by doubling down on the headline-making "Barbenheimer" double feature of Margot Robbie's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer by adding same-day cinema viewings of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 5 and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 7.
In at 10.15am and out at 10.33pm, it was a grand, popcorn-fuelled, bladder-straining, bum-numbing marathon big-screen binge - and it was bliss. And yet, strangely, my hashtag #ImpossibleBarbieIndyheimer did not trend.
I tried it again in February: a day of shiny spy spoofing (Argylle) and unsettling Natalie Portman-Julianne Moore seduction (May December) and sublime Paul Giamatti melancholy (The Holdovers) and the bittersweet B-side of Elvis (Priscilla).
On both occasions I scheduled a leave day from work for cinema club member discount ticket day, calculated my best start and finish time options, lined up for my tickets and plopped myself down in the dark with strangers to escape into four very different worlds.
Don't try this at home, folks.
By which I mean, snacking on YouTube clips on your phone or streaming endless Netflix guff on TV while working, Homer Simpson-style, on your couch arse groove ain't gonna come close to matching the true magic of motion pictures enjoyed communally at the movies.
Walter Murch, Oscar-winning editor of such landmark films as The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, put it best: "If we could somehow render visible the emotions and thoughts of an audience in the sway of a good film, it would probably resemble the beautiful arching loops we see with large flocks of birds or schools of fish".
The shared social experience of the cinema was underlined for me during a recent conversation with Bob Mason, proprietor of Lake Cinema, which has just celebrated 50 years in showbusiness in the Lake Macquarie suburb of Boolaroo near Newcastle in NSW.
You can read the full interview for ACM's Newcastle Herald here.
As a boy growing up in Newcastle I queued with family at the little single-screen picture theatre to see films like Paul Hogan's Crocodile Dundee - the movie pretty much every Australian went to the pictures to see in 1986.
Back then, Mr Mason's quaint and cosy cinema stood in the ominous shadow of Pasminco's Cockle Creek lead and zinc smelter. The plant closed in 2003, and the Boolaroo area now houses a bustling Bunnings and a crammed Costco.
Lake Cinema has also seen VHS and DVD come and go, survived the rise of cinema multiplexes in surrounding suburbs and now competes with the endless entertainment options of streaming.
Australia's cinemas have certainly been up against it since the pandemic lockdowns, which helped boost the streamers. Most recently it was the Hollywood writers strike. Independent regional chain Majestic, for example, was forced to close its cinemas in some towns and restructure its operations just to stay in business.
Industry stalwarts like Mr Mason say it's the communal atmosphere that will hopefully keep people coming back to the movies - the shared sense of excitement and anticipation that cannot be replicated at home on the couch.
To mark his five fabulous decades of choc top memories over the Easter weekend, Mr Mason showed a nostalgic rerun of Singin' in the Rain, the classic MGM musical that Lake Cinema screened on its very first night way back on March 29, 1974.
It was an apt choice.
As movie-lovers know, some films only truly come to life when viewed with an audience. It's the shared reactions and interactions - laughter or tension or tears - as everyone submits to the spectacle and emotion that create the tangible effects of a movie and connect us to something bigger than ourselves.
As dance man Gene Kelly sings in the joyous title song of Singin' in the Rain - one of the most replayed moments in film alongside Rhett telling Scarlett what he really thinks in Gone With the Wind and Humphrey Bogart's noble goodbye to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca - what a glorious feeling!
