YESTERDAY, I discussed some of the ways film production and distribution are changing.

Film exhibition is also changing.

On the commercial end, bland-box multiplexes are giving way to fancier multiscreen quasi-palaces that attempt to bring back some of the old romance of moviegoing–and to squeeze still more bucks out of moviegoers’ wallets.

On the DIY end, there’s a growing international network of specialty film festivals, alternative screening spaces, film and video schools, streaming-video websites, and (in some towns) art-film video stores.

Somewhere between these two tiers lie some dinner-and-a-movie and drinks-and-a-movie experiments. The most elaborate around here are the cafe-pub-theaters in Portland run by McMenamin’s. We’ve previously mentioned a Seattle bar, The Big Picture, that serves beer and wine along with second-run films; but that operation, so far, hasn’t become the kind of joint I’d hoped (programming tends toward either safe boomer-nostalgia favorites or projector-TV sports).

Then, shortly after the Big Picture showed up, a national franchise called Cinema Grill took over General Cinema’s Aurora III.

The new management likes to call it an “art deco” house. It’s really just an ordinary concrete-cube building, stuck at the far corner of a minor, decaying strip mall that’s lost two of its four main stores (Future Shop and QFC). It’s been swamped in attendance by the flashy Oak Tree Cinemas a mile down Aurora Avenue. (It’s almost impossible to even see the Aurora Cinemas from Aurora Avenue–it’s located well behind drivers’ sight lines, and doesn’t have a street-visible sign.)

So it was a bargain for Cinema Grill to take over the joint; and, if it fails, it won’t necessarily mean the concept wouldn’t work here at a better site.

The Cinema Grill concept’s quite simple. You pay lower-than-average admission prices to see movies (the projector-TV sports events are free). Instead of rows of seats, the three auditoria have tables. There’s just enough house lights so you can read the menus at the tables; the movies are kept loud enough that you can hear most dialogue over other patrons’ beer-enhanced chattiness. Waitresses bring your drinkables (beer, wine, cocktails, coffee, sodas) and eatables (sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, pizza, Buffalo wings) from a kitchen built between auditoria 1 and 2.

The food might be unspectacular but filling; but the films can be a little better than average. (Playing two weeks ago: The critically-acclaimed angstfest American Beauty.)

A more conveniently-located cine-diner, with just slightly more ambitious programming both on the screens and the tables, would likely work even better.

I can see it now: Special ethnic menus for foreign films. Wedding-feast movies shown with servings of the same entrees shown on-screen.

Cinematic drink menus: Thin Man rows of martinis; Trainspotting Scotch; Under the Volcano tequila.

Movie-related food, too: Eraserhead mini-chickens; Rocky raw eggs; Cookie’s Fortune fortune cookies.

And, of course, Meaning of Life after-dinner mints.

TOMORROW: Klang and Context put the litter back into literature.

ELSEWHERE:

• Patio Culture (found by Tiara) lets you relive the good (?) old days of backyard BBQs, any time of year. I can smell the lighter fluid now….
• When you care enough to send the very worst, it’s Dirty Works cards (found by Memepool)….