Movie Showtimes

Here's a few of the best:

• Hollywood.com - movies, movie showtimes, movie reviews, celebrities, photos and more.
• Zap2it.com - television, movies, showtimes, reviews, discussion boards, you name it.
• IMDB's showtimes - the Earth's biggest movie database helps you find a flick.
• Fandango.com - review movie trailers, search showtimes, buy tickets online.

Movie Matinees

Ah, the matinee. From the French word 'matin', meaning 'morning', a matinee is a theatrical performance during the daylight, as opposed to evening or night. Since the evening performances are usually the most sought-after, the matinee performances are typically cheaper, to fill the empty seats.

The very phrase 'movie matinee' is redolent with imagery - sultry summer days, dusty roads and a few bucks in your pocket as you barefoot down to the theater to loll in the air conditioning for a few hours. Musicals were good movie matinees fare, and Westerns were always popular.

Today, the movie matinee has degenerated somewhat into simply a lesser-cost earlier movie showtime, and for newly-released blockbusters, theater chains don't even offer matinee prices. Still, most chains will offer a few bucks off for most movies during the afternoon showings.

Midnight Movies

In the Olden Days, Midnight Movies meant 'creature features', bad B monster movies with cheesy special effects, shown two at a time at a midnight showing at the local theater on Halloween. Vampires rising out of plywood coffins, stalking robots that were clearly men in tin suits, bats flying across a painted moon... These were great. You got dropped off at the theater by your yawning folks, you threw popcorn at the screen and howled, and by the time they swept you out of the theater with hundreds of other kids, you were so wired on sugar that you couldn't sleep for days.

In televison's pre-cable days, midnight movies were also what your local affiliates put on to fill the time until they went off the air, usually at 3 AM. Hosted by some local character in bad Dracula makeup, these old black and white films were the rejects from the movie theaters' Midnight Movies. Of course, if you watched them while home alone... BOO!

During the seventies, college towns started a new kind of Midnight Movie craze - any 'cult' movie shown at midnight to mainly college students. Walt Disney's psychedelic musical, Fantasia, was an early favorite at college Midnight Movie events. The Rocky Horror Picture Show owes its lasting fame to its transformation into an audience participation vehicle during this time.

Now midnight showings are taking on a new meaning, as long-awaited blockbusters scheduled to be released on a certain day open at 12:01 AM of the release date.