There are a couple of movies that stand up to repeated viewings. Jaws. The Godfather movies, any and all of them. The first Rocky movie. Amélie. It’s a Wonderful Life. The Hangover movies are pretty durable, as well. Mean Girls, too, is pretty fetch. These films seem to improve with repeated viewings. I’m partial to anything with Tom Hanks in it, although after watching Apollo 13, Cast Away, Sully, The Terminal, and Captain Phillips, I’m not sure I’d like to travel with the guy.
All of these movies I saw were in a theatre and I’d have to say the setting contributed to the experience.
… the setting contributed to the experience.
COVID put a big dent in a lot of our routines. Movie-going is one of the things that suffered most due to the pandemic. I’m still not back in the habit of theatre-going, but I miss it. There was something special about sitting in a darkened theatre with a bunch of people all having the same experience at the same time. Every once in a while the film would go over so well that the audience would clap at the end even though there was no one there to receive the ovation. That was cool. The audience would exit the theatre carried on a wave of endorphins. You could pretty much count on running into someone you knew, some acquaintance that you rarely saw, and you’d have a nice little catch-up. And those trailers at the beginning of the film? They seemed like a bonus to me.
Post-pandemic, movie attendance has plummeted in Canada. The average movie-goer is someone the industry describes as a person who sees at least one film, theatrically, in a six-month period. When polled, these self-reporting moviegoers say that they expect to see about twice as many movies in theatres within the next six months than they saw in the past half year. This is good news for the industry but it still represents a decline in pre-pandemic attendance of around 40%. The golden segment of the movie industry are the moviegoers who see, on average, nine movies every six months. That’s over a movie a month. This segment is defined as being mostly men under the age of 35. These are the people theatre owners want to lure back into the dark.
El Salvador offers the cheapest ticket prices at .52 cents per ticket.
A standard lament about a trip to the cinema is the cost, but costs vary hugely depending on where you’re lining up. I scanned a map showing what movie tickets cost worldwide in US dollar equivalents in 2021. El Salvador offers the cheapest ticket prices at .52 cents per ticket. At 29.78, Lebanon has the highest movie ticket prices. Sweden, at close to $16 per ticket, also price their movie tickets on the high side of the scale. At approximately $12, it’s cheaper to see a movie in Canada than in Myanmar, where you’ll pay about $13.50. Both of which beat the $22 the Swiss have to shell out in order to see a flick.
In a lot of places, dinner and a movie is no longer an affordable night out. Especially if you’re paying for parking. And maybe a baby-sitter. Don’t even think about adding in popcorn. Yes, the argument for Netflix is a strong one. To offset that, lots of countries offer a ‘cheap Tuesday’ ticket opportunity. This clever strategy builds buzz around a film in addition to putting bums in seats on a night where those bums might have stayed home.
Outside of cost, another barrier to attendance is content. About four people in ten say that there’s a lack of appealing content to entice them into the theatres. The top four movies of 2023 include Barbie, Super Mario Bros. Movie; Spider-Man, Across the Spider-verse; Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. According to Telefilm surveys, the objective of the film industry is to lure back into theatres that heavy moviegoer who sees about nine movies every six months. That means content is skewed to males under 35. Like it or not, that’s where the growth is. So, don’t expect to see many adorable French girls looking for love or George Bailey’s coming to a theatre near you any time soon.
This week’s question for readers:
ARE YOU A MOVIEGOER? ANY FIRSTS OR FAVES?
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Submissions to last week’s question:
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE SCENT? FOR MEN? FOR WOMEN? WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST FRAGRANCE?
We were high school sweethearts for five years. After we graduated we drifted apart, had families and good lives. Then, after never seeing or talking to each other for 29 years, we met again. All it took was one hug. My nose caught her spellbinding pheromones and I was instantly back in love with my darling. In that fraction of time, magic happened, and my mind went, “That’s what I have been missing”. From that moment on, we couldn’t resist our rekindled love, and now, have been very happily married for over two decades. The sense of smell is powerful, indeed.
Roger Bryant
One of my favourite fragrances is that of freshly brewed coffee. Another is exotic pipe tobacco smoke. Be that as it may, my main objective in contacting you is to ask the question: If, as you suggest, the sense of smell is the most evocative, try to imagine the total sublimation that dogs and other animals must feel due to their enormous olfactory sense.
René Doyharcabal
When I was a child, there was no perfume in the stores to choose and buy. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even have shampoo to wash our hair. Many people used laundry soap for everything. I was born and grew up in Shanghai, where we had more choices than people in other parts of the country. When washing my hair once a week, I used sandalwood-scented toilet soap, which always made me feel happy and sophisticated. Later on, I used many famous branded perfumes, but sandalwood is still my favourite fragrance.
Stephanie Yang
Years ago when life was extremely chaotic, with a just turned two year old and newborn twins, someone suggested that I wear perfume and use a touch of the same perfume in the boys’ cribs to give them a familiar scent and help them settle at night. The challenge was to find a cheap inexpensive perfume that I could wear and also use a touch in their cribs. Thank you Coty Wild Musk! It helped to settle the boys to sleep and weirdly I used to get lots of positive unsolicited compliments on my perfume choice!
Deb Creighton
My favourite scents are Guerlain’s Shalimar and Bulgari’s GreenTea, both of which I have loved forever although I rarely wear scent anymore due to the problems they cause for many individuals in social situations. I associate Shalimar with a boyfriend’s mother back when I was around seventeen. She was a complicated and exotic woman and I thought her fragrance suited her personality and style. Green Tea, now discontinued, unfortunately, was my favourite light, sweet fragrance – the antithesis of all those heavy disco era perfumes. For men, well, dad set the standard with the classic Old Spice. While in my 20’s, however, I worked in a cabaret in Nanaimo and a very quiet and unassuming gentleman came in for drinks quite often. I was always charmed by his scent. I finally asked him what he wore and he said Tabac. But, when I tried it out in anticipation of buying it for my man I discovered it didn’t smell the same so I think it was a case of body chemistry affecting how it presented. Definitely a case of where the olfactory sum is greater than the parts.
Terri Clark-Kveton
In 1953, I was 30 years old and, much to my surprise, my very shy boss gave me a bottle of Estee Lauder Youth-Dew Body Lotion for Christmas. (His wife must have picked it out!). I have worn it ever since, for 53 years when it first came out. It is apparently their oldest and least expensive scent.Throughout my life, I have received endless compliments wearing it, even from strangers standing beside me on the street or an elevator, asking “What’s that?”
Clara Shamanski
My eye was caught by the word, Tweed – my very first perfume bought in my teens in the fifties. I moved on to stronger stuff and remember Tigress and Poison but all have bitten the dirt. When Winners started to bring back a few I checked but no luck. I remember when I married my new husband bought it for me for Christmas – now in a seniors home, no perfume!
Sheila Gair
In grade 10 I was smitten by my English teacher. Raised in a religious home and a nondancer I went so far as to ask her onto the gym floor during a school dance she was helping to chaperone. She always wore a scent I discovered was called “In Love”. I seem to remember it being one that Queen Elizabeth used as well. The smitten will do their research. She broke my heart the following Summer by getting married. Ah, but memory of that scent.
Jonathan Myers
Many decades ago, I felt a need to find something to ‘brighten-up ” my husband. The answer, I thought, would come in a beautiful bottle of perfume. Thus, I went shopping at the Bay, in Vancouver. In presenting my desire to the saleswoman, she was certain that she could offer a solution. Looking me straight in the eye, she slowly slid a stunning bottle of Fendi perfume towards me. “This,” she said, “is downright naughty!” She proved correct.
The bottle still sits on my vanity.
Gale Lindenthaler
Some 40 years ago I was driving to a meeting in southern Ontario. As I entered the town of Leamington, with the car windows down on a warm summer day, I was hit with smell of tomatoes cooking at the Heinz ketchup plant. In an instant, I was five years old again and saw my mother in our kitchen as she canned tomatoes for the winter. What a wonderful experience!
Doug Charles
At this time of year, the most evocative scent for me is the smell of burning leaves. Having grown up in a time and place where leaf burning was an annual fall ritual, that smell never fails to snap me back to my childhood and our elderly neighbour (Charley Brown!) feeding leaves into his “burning barrel” while my mother scrambled to bring in her still-wet laundry, muttering profanities.
Glen Taylor
My mum loved fragrances and one of her faves that we, as teenagers, could afford was called “Heaven Scent” by Helena Rubinstein. I see why she loved it – the packaging was in a pale teal colour, adorned with an angel and had a soft, innocent smell. When I googled the smell, it lists top notes of bergamot, apple blossom and mandarin orange, with middle notes of rose, jasmine and lily of the valley and base notes of oakmoss, musk, sandalwood and patchouli; which makes sense to me. This smell, along with my mum’s nature, always calmed me that everything was going to be okay. One Christmas in the late ‘70s, I bought mum a bottle of her fave scent and as she opened it, she exclaimed “Look, I got Heaven Scent!!”. My dad, who was opening his present of English Leather aftershave, responded immediately and said “Look, I got ‘Go to Hell’!”. I will never forget that Christmas and laugh even now thinking of it.
Leigh Bulizuk
A very dear friend gave me Chant d’Aromes perfume by Guerlain when I was a young woman living in London in the 1960’s. It was new, came in a pink box, with a green velvet ribbon tied around its neck. To say it was pure magic is an understatement and remained my absolute favourite for most of my life. Alas, we grow old but that fabulous scent brings back wonderful memories of youth.
Angie Keeping Brodkorb
I would love a bottle of Ester Lauder body lotion! It was my favourite and I was so disappointed when I could no longer buy it. I’ve tried others over the years but nothing compares. However I won’t be purchasing the part bottle being offered on eBay. I’ll just remember that beautiful scent and my memories wearing it.
Joan Apel
I started selling fragrance in a drugstore when I was 17 and fell in love with Chanel Number 5 -.so much classier than Evening in Paris, Wind Song or Chantilly. I continued selling for Woodwards, Eaton’s, Sears and the Bay. I can smell a fragrance and memories come flooding back of who I worked with and where. So true about the part of the brain that fragrance connects with. Not the same part that you use to remember names or a movie you just saw. I can’t always remember a customer’s name but I do remember what fragrance she bought – ha! I wear a fragrance every day – not at Fitness class – but have a day fragrance and an evening fragrance and still love Chanel after all these years, now Coco Mademoiselle.
Patty Clerkson
I was amazed to read in your article that some of the old perfumes are still highly coveted. My favourite perfume was Hermes Caleche which I first started to use 60 years ago. The reason for this is because my best friend went to Paris to work as an au pair to one of the Hermes family. I went to visit my friend in Paris for the weekend ( I lived in the UK then) and the Hermes family not only allowed me to stay with them but also included me at a family dinner. We also visited the Hermes store in Paris – everything Hermes seems to be more expensive these days. Due to this visit, Hermes Caleche became my favourite perfume. I rarely wear perfume now but when I open the bottle, still half full, it smells wonderful and, yes, it evokes the most wonderful memories of my youth and the fun we had that memorable weekend.
M. Jill Horn
I am from Europe and at a young age I loved CHARLIE. My now husband (60 years) introduced me to CHANEL No. 5, and I still use this. I love, love love it! I could eat it! It evokes nostalgic memories for sure.
Carla Van Velze.
My long term love affair with travel began with a few whiffs of plumeria leis, hawaiian white ginger and gardenia. These scents are closely entwined with other senses. Visualize sitting on the terrace of the Kona Joe Coffee Factory, overlooking the Pacific Ocean; smelling the intoxicating flowers and sipping a cup of Kona Joe’s roasted coffee. Time to put on our home video of Hawaii with Israel Kamakawiwo’ole singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. Hawaiian flowers complete the scenery palate. Also don the printed plumeria muumuu dress, enjoy a coffee in Kona Joe mug and a macadamia nut chocolate.
Truly the romance fragrant flowers can bring.
Vivian Jervis
My scent memories are way stronger than my visual and auditory memories. Women’s scent: my sister’s Armani Code for Her; man’s scent: my late Dad’s Tabac; my scent: Lise Watier Capteur de Reves.
Eva Schmieg
When I was ever so much younger, I thought “White Shoulders” was the ultimate in grown up perfume -heady with gardenia, sexy and full of allure. I was a teenager and had a date with a “great prospect” and my mother’s friend Loretta let me wear her treasured scent. Unfortunately, during the date I developed a severe headache and sadly determined that this was not the guy for me. I realized many months later that the heavy gardenia scent was the problem, not the guy. I was allergic to “White Shoulders”.
Judy Wilbee
4711 Cologne from Köln was distributed since 1792. With my heritage it’s inspiring to read your article. I have a bottle here, not worth millions, except that my mother gave it to me. My grandmother and all the family used it. It was sent in many parcels over decades or brought as gifts. I was showered by my ex-husband who was French with appreciation for scents.My mom loved YSL’s Opium, which I love too. I like Chanel 19!
Margaret Dutilloy
I fell in love with the scent of oud when I was back-packing in SE Asia. Oud is essentially ‘agarwood oil’ and has been the foundation of perfumes and incense across Asia forever, and now around the world. Even the French use oud in some of their best recipes.
Personally, I love the scent of ‘Aoud Legend’ by Montale. While most agarwood for commercial use is grown on plantations, wild agarwood is still hunted and poached in the SE Asian jungles.
Ron Austin