Wednesday, December 24, 2014

No more shows

There was a news report about Pilot theatre in Royapettah planning to shut down. It certainly had a lot of people groan about how standalone, single screen cinemas have become scarce and unviable, and about the romance of going for a movie in the old days. 

Pilot was certainly one of those old-world theatres. It was opened sometime in the 1950s and was going strong through the next few decades, screening English films for most of its life. Sometime in the early 2000s, though, the theatre lost its charm as a go-to place for watching movies and it was reduced to screening dubbed versions of slash-and-gore Hollywood movies which even Hollywood had forgotten about. 

Despite its recent setbacks, Pilot claims a couple of firsts to its credit. It was apparently the first widescreen in the city, and a novelty when it was inaugurated. The other was something called a 'thread-screen'; what that is, I have no idea. But those innovations were a long time ago and while there was some nostalgia, there was really little surprise about Pilot having had to shut down. But surprisingly, it seems to have got itself a new coat of paint on its facade - is there some kind of a revival in the works?


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