This is the theater where we saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (which, by the way, was awesome).

And this is what it looked like about fifteen minutes before the show started.

So, not only did the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace offer a pleasantly uncrowded movie going experience (unheard of during the opening weekend of any Harry Potter movie) in a graceful art deco theater, but also many other amenities not standard to the popcorn scented cattle corrals I’m used to seeing movies in.  If you’re going to pay $17 for a movie, which is pretty standard out here for any movie, not just the IMAX or special screenings one might pay that much for LA or NY, it might as well be here.
Instead of standing in line so long you inevitably sink to the rash producing carpet below, and spend your time contemplating how much uglier the dizzying pattern could possibly get, you instead sit on a velvet couch under the flattering light of well proportioned stained glass fixtures, and sip a glass of wine while you wait for the theater doors to open.  No one was playing the white piano perched in the corner of the room while we were there, but I’m sure the theater finds occasion to use it.

As you walk into the theater, you can take the time to appreciate the decor, instead of stomping off the shoes of several small children in your attempt to beat them to the good seats.  And once you’re in a well appointed seat,  you won’t be subjected to the same loop of badly animated ads and movie trivia questions (Yes, I already knew that Whoopi Goldberg worked in a funeral parlor).  For pre-show entertainment, the Orpheum opts for songs masterfully played on the impressively complicated Wurlitzer pipe organ.  I was already impressed by the decoration, so the fact that the organ rose from the stage, and the sound beat out of pipes built creatively into the proscenium, was just icing on the cake.  Did I mention the organ was complicated?  Mad props to Neil Jensen.

We still had to sit though a loop of pretty bad television style ads (the standards of which are lower in Oz than those played during daytime cable re-runs in the States) and the screen size would not have satisfied my super-sized American standards if I had sat much further back, but the experience was calm, classy and fun.  This is where I will be seeing all the movies from now.  It’s a good thing I found a new source of entertainment, since a third of my TV screen just went black.