Publisher’s Note: If you haven’t been to the Howard Theater in Taylor lately you are in for a treat! Comfy seats, digital projection and awesome sound is waiting for you. All shows, all times are only $6.50 but they just started “Monday Night at the Movies” and admission is . . . drum roll please . . . FREE!

The following is from the Howard Theatre website: 

This week’s “Monday night at the movies:”

JURASSIC PARK   (PG-13  1993….yeah, 20 yrs ago)

Monday night at 8:30pm  admission if FREE

Movies that need to be seen….again.

We all have certain favorite movies which we really enjoyed, they were phenomenal at the time but have since been pushed aside in our minds by more recent amazements ( Squirrel! )

We can always revisit these old friends by renting a DVD (if you can find it) and plopping down in front of the tube; But some films need a bigger screen. And some films need to be shared. And some films need to be seen by audiences who might not have seen them in the past, and might not be willing to give it a second glance.

The American Film Institute has a list of the top 100 films of all time. The are considered the most important and most influential movies ever made. They are amazing movies. I don’t disagree with anything on the list. BUT…the AFI is a bunch of old fuddy-duddies. Their list seems to stop in the early 80’s. Lots of good stuff has happened since then. And lots of good stuff happened before that, but didn’t make their list. And many of those classic films move at a pace that is more reflective of the times in which they were made and some of our current audiences lack the patience to sit through dialog without frequent explosions or frantic CGI eye-candy. I’m not complaining, that stuff pays the bills. But every now and then I really want to run a GOOD movie, and not just a POPULAR movie…huge difference.

We will soon begin doing “Monday-night Movies” where we will play two classic or modern-classic movies. Yes, we will still have our current releases playing on Mondays, but we will have those showings earlier in the day, around 3pm. The “Monday-night Movies” features will be free admission. And since I fully understand, respect, and appreciate that not everyone will or should agree with my taste in what constitutes a “good movie” we will develop a process of having yall suggest and then vote on which films we will show.

Yes, I want to play the classics like “Citizen Kane”, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. But there are also some westerns out there which are entertaining and informative, like “How the West Was Won”, “Cimarron”, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Cowboys”. There are entertaining and informative war movies like “The Longest Day” “A Bridge too Far” and “Saving Private Ryan”, There are fantastic family features like “Dumbo”, “Pinocchio”, The Apple Dumpling Gang”, “Gremlins”, “Labyrinth” . There are musicals like “Oklahoma”, “South Pacific” and “Paint your Waggon” (Yes, Clint Eastwood can sing) and “My Fare Lady”. There are films that could just best be described as….weird…”The Jerk”, “Blazing Saddles”, “Young Frankenstein”, “Clockwork Orange” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “2001 Space Odyssey”, “Spaceballs”. And, of course, there are modern wonders of cinematic perfection like “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”, “Fried Green Tomatoes”, “Forrest Gump”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” , “Amadeus”, “Jaws”, “On Golden Pond”, “Ordinary People”.

Ohhhhh so much to choose from…..

So stay tuned for further developments. This is gonna be fun.