Last year, I did a Top 6 for the dead-tree version of the prairie dog talking about some memorable moments from Cinema Under the Stars’ shows in Victoria Park. A lot of them were either cute kids or strange people related. Last night, they had the first screening of 2012 and it was all the former and none of the latter. No one threatened any of my friends for singing; no shoeless people ran off with someone’s blanket. None of that. It was all delight.
They’ve improved the event in one big way — they moved the big screen over to the corner of the park next to the main branch of the Regina Public Library, an area dark enough to show a movie but well lit enough to never feel sketchy. Having the plaza right there helps this event 100 per cent, F.Y.I.
There’s still a lot of goofy fun to these events. They raffled off blankets with Sasktel’s Little Red on it at an anemic pace. Little kids danced to Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”. One girl was dressed as Dorothy in honour of that night’s movie, The Wizard of Oz. Tiny inline skaters were everywhere, in open defiance of the law. And apparently, though I haven’t tested it out, I can now order food from places like Flip and Beer Bros. and the Copper Kettle and the staffers from Regina Downtown will run and fetch it for me. Oh, and so many puppies.
The one thing: for an all-ages event, this goes late. If memory serves, the movie wrapped up at 11:15 p.m. and by then a lot of families had been forced to leave. I of the 5 a.m. start time at work the next day stayed all the way through, although I may have been a little curt when I bumped into prairie dog‘s John Cameron. He seemed intent on giving me the conversational equivalent of the last 20 minutes of Return of the King, with constant false endings, whereas I just needed to get to bed so bad.
I don’t know what you do about the start time for an outdoor movie, of course. I guess if you want free entertainment on an inflatable screen, you just have to take it when it comes.