Juno always agreed with my stance on reality TV, that it is a far more enjoyable and informative pastime to sit and read the paper instead…

However, being an indoor cat she never got to experience the joy of cinema. Perhaps just as well, as on a recent foray around the old haunts of Cardiff, I became painfully aware of the impact of the recent trend for the multiplex. It is heart-warming to hear of year-on-year increases in cinema attendances, the video/DVD/Blu-ray predictions of the death of cinema are clearly premature. However, this is not the full story, and nostalgics and history lovers have some causes for concern.

Cinema, as some of us old gits originally knew it, has certainly suffered in recent years. The ‘joy’ of cinema is hardly exemplified in the outward projection of the ‘Gaiety Cinema‘ on City Road in Roath…

Having first seen ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines‘ here as my first evening visit to a cinema back in 1966, I was saddened when the old place succumbed to a subsequent wave of cinema > bingo transformations. Clearly, the continuing appeal to a youthful demographic by converting the place to a venue for bowling, music and a bar seems to have secured its future!

Then, as I walked along Pearl Street in Splott, or Adamstown (that’s a geographical debate yet to be had), I was reminded of the dangerous outcomes of what you might put up on the big screen. ‘Splott Cinema‘ may have seen better days…

… but with all the explosive action movies that have been the rage in recent years, it is my guess that ‘The Towering Inferno‘ was a film too far for this grand old local community cinema…

As Juno used to often say to me, until we speak again “I’m watching you!”