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February 21, 2006
Rocket's redglare: an arthouse simply died
Small cities continue to have mixed success with arthouses: the Quad City Times' Tory Brecht reports, "Less than a year into its reincarnation, the Rocket Theater in downtown Rock Island will fall dark again, a victim of growing competition in the independent film market." Owner-operator Devin Hansen says, however, the screen may reopen as "a dinner-beverage-and-movie theater." "The type of films shown at the Rocket — and Hansen’s former theater business venture, Brew & View, which closed in August — began to be shown at Showcase Cinemas 53 in Davenport and Great Escape Theatre, Moline, taking away much-needed business from the theater that operates on narrow margins. "March of the Penguins and Brokeback Mountain became big hits in multiplexes across the country... Had we landed one of these films, our future may have been different.... We might have been able to survive as a music-only club had we not had so much debt from both movie theaters... Movies were always our main focus, our bread-and-butter, and that simply died.”
Posted by pride at February 21, 2006 11:07 AM
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