Arclight Hollywood

As it turns out there is a pretty exceptional movie theater not too far away from us. Perhaps to the folks around here it's just another movie theater, but to a couple of Mainers this place is quite sweet and even worth a $15 ticket during peak hours, $12.50 for matinees.

For starters you can get your tickets online. Now I know you can do this back home too, but here you can actually pick your seats. So there's no rushing around and hoping you get good seats.

There are a few levels to this theater. This is where you buy tickets. The theater we went to is located downstairs.

I remember several years ago when Cinemagic opened its Grand & Bistro theater in South Portland, ME. Tickets were $9 instead of $8, the seats were leather and the screenings were all in HD. There was  a baby grand piano on loan from Starbird Music in the lobby, and you could choose your seats. I thought this was the best idea ever, but unfortunately so many people whined about it Cinemagic ended up doing away with all that. I say let them go to the Cinemagic in Westbrook if they couldn't dig their heads out of their you-know-whats in time to get suitable seats. People complaining ruined a real good thing. But isn't that Maine? Ten years behind everything else?

Well there is no complaining at Arclight Hollywood. You get your tickets at home or in-person via a sometimes long line. You choose your seats and you have to be in the theater on time. They have no in-house advertisements, and an usher comes into the theater, tells the audience how long the movie will be and reminds everyone to turn off the ringers on their cell phones. Once the show has started no one else is allowed into the theater. Pretty sweet right? I mean who wants to see a movie after it has already started anyway? Ryan is a huge fan of this. He can't stand it when people crawl into the theater after the movie is playing, but he's kinda crazy like that :) He also doesn't like talking, candy wrapper noise or folks taking bathroom breaks.

Now let's talk Arclight popcorn! It's gourmet, and believe you me it really is gourmet. I couldn't even stop gorging myself on it even when it felt like the seams of my belly would burst. Not to mention I had a pretty sweet, yet very tiny bucket of caramel popcorn that they make at the theater. It was divine! Washed down with some Barq's root beer who could ask for anything more?

All the fixings! XOXOXO

Caramel popcorn. Ingenious!

Now onto the movie...

We went to see The Master. We missed seeing it back home because we had gone to see Looper instead and then got caught up with our moving here (to LA). The Master was really good. Philip Seymour Hoffman is always spectacular and Joaquin Phoenix was so good I kept forgetting it was him playing the part.



The movie is apparently loosely based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. I've read elsewhere that it was also based on old drunken war stories Jason Robards shared of his experience in the Navy. Now by no means do I plan to become a Scientologist. Nor do I know enough about Hubbard's actual life, works, or beliefs, but in terms of the movie I would say the Hubbard-esque character was ahead of his time.

In the early 1900s I am sure it was difficult to find believers in time travel. Time travel is a concept that some say psychics supports. Nova dedicated an hour long program to delving into the inner workings of time travel, which is quite interesting and a concept I can't say I don't believe in because all things are possible, but I just can't quite wrap my head around it.

Other beliefs the Hubbard-esque character had were of living many lives over "trillions" of years. He also had a lot of beliefs that embodied the laws of attraction. A lot of his beliefs seemed to be rooted in a lot of other ancient religions, and sometimes he put his own twist on these beliefs like the trillion year bit, and stuff about spaceships. All-in-all it made me think he had some pretty good ideas that weren't necessarily kookie, but just ahead of his time. Of course I know the movie was fiction, and I know too little about the real L. Ron Hubbard, but the movie was kinda moving and even a little enlightening.

There was a scene when Amy Adams' character tells a very broken and troubled man to imagine something he really wants, to see it in his mind, and then to go and get it when he is ready because it is his. Simply put that is the law of attraction, which made me smile. This is a concept everyone should come to understand and truly believe. As the Moody Blues so aptly put it, "just what you want to be, you will be in the end." But this is a blog entry for another time.

I look forward to more visits to Arclight - comfy seats, great customer service, delicious popcorn...this is a good thing for movie lovers.