CAPA Summer Movie Series

It's that time... Well, not quite yet. The movies don't start until July, but the cycle starts the moment I pick up my pocket-sized, accordion-style pamphlet at the Columbus Arts Festival.

I love the summer movie series. For those of you who don't live in Columbus, or who are unaware of this awesome phenomenon, every year CAPA selects a couple dozen classic films to be screened at the grand Ohio Theater downtown. My mom used to take my brother and I growing up. I do not remember my first film, but the most memorable was Gone With the Wind and not simply because it is a quintessential film. This was 1980 and Columbus experienced a mild earthquake that few people could even feel unless they were in a tall building. [I'm not lying here, you can look it up...] We were in the balcony, under the giant chandelier that shook slightly, but being directly under the two-ton glass fixture was pretty un-nerving. I thought the building was falling down. But then it stopped. And we continued to watch the last hour of movie, only discovering what had happened when the paper arrived the next morning.

I've had other great experiences there too - a terrific first date with a significant boyfriend seeing An American in Paris, seeing Some Like it Hot for the first time and being positively spellbound by every bit of it. Kip and I saw Animal House one year and a group next to us had come in full toga regalia. Dad and I saw Young Frankenstein, his absolute favorite film, and I sat there delighted to watch him laugh so hard and lines he's heard hundreds of times.

I love the recent inclusion of "crowd classics" - films that are not critical darlings but crowd favorites. Last year they screened Top Gun which I missed because I was out of town. But that would have been so great. Top Gun is perhaps the perfect date movie ever made.

Every year, I get my list and plan to see about ten and end up getting to go to maybe two or three. Here's the list. The ones highlighted are the ones I really want to see and am available for. If anyone wants to go, let me know and I'll make some group plans. Especially if you've never been. It's the best $4 you'll spend all summer.

July 17 - 19 = Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
July 22 - 23 = The Awful Truth
July 24 = The Day the Earth Stood Still
July 24 (late night) = Slap Shot
July 25 - 26 = Show Boat
July 29 - 31 = Dirty Harry
Aug 1 (10 AM) = Cartoon Capers
Aug 1 - 2 = King Kong (1939)
Aug 5 = Rebecca (Hitchcock)
Aug 7 = Dirty Dancing
Aug 8 -9 = The King and I
Aug 12 = The Male Animal
Aug 13 - 14 Wings (Silent film, 1st Academy Award Best Pic)
Aug 15 - 16 = Raiders of the Lost Art
Aug 19 - 20 = Spellbound (Hitchcock)
Aug 21 = Gold Diggers of 1933
Aug 21 (late night) = Evil Dead II
Aug 22 (10 AM) = Cartoon Capers
Aug 22 - 23 = Ben-Hur
Aug 26 - 27 = Road to Bali
Aug 28 = Steel Magnolias
Aug 29 - 30 = South Pacific