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The Crowd is on at 6am EDT - for those on the west coast 3am - I screened the first reel at the library of congress many years ago and it looked great - library of congress only stores the copyrighted work so there was no musical accompaniment- which is essential for any silent film - TCM will have one - so looking forward to it

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Sep 9, 2022Liked by Ty Burr

As you are my go-to movie guy, I'm hoping I can change the topic for a moment.

I am SO bummed out by this! My local theater, The Landmark Embassy in Waltham, closed for good. I started going again last year when it reopened, though nowhere nearly as often as I used to.

I liked that theater an awful lot. There were the great virtues in it being not far from where I live, and easy cheap or free parking. They had a very good booking policy. Foreign and independent films and some of the blockbusters.

The screens and sound were good, and REALLY important to me: the seats WERN'T those damn massive reclining seats that most theaters have now, which I HATE and have mostly stopped going to anywhere that has them (and: I am a movie fanatic). The reclining seats are really uncomfortable for me, hurting my legs and back.

They were shut down for covid a long time, but I started going there agin last summer. Nowhere as often as I used to, but sometimes.

And I worried about it because: no matter when I went, and what the movie was, it was NEVER crowded. I mean, I tend to go at the moments when I think there won't be many people, but often, there are...but it was always nearly empty. I wend to some movies and there were only 2 or 3 people in the theater. Once, I think I was the only one. I wondered how they could stay open. And indeed, they were only open, towards the end, five days a week, two shows only a day (for each of the five films). And now: it's no more. I am seriously sad about this. The few other theaters I've been to don't seem to be doing very well either.

So I am really wondering: are movie theaters doomed? https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/video/waltham-movie-theater-closes-after-nearly-100-years-in-business/#x

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