{"id":117,"date":"2007-01-05T06:31:35","date_gmt":"2007-01-05T12:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2014-09-06T15:01:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T21:01:19","slug":"castle-theatre-shuts-its-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=117","title":{"rendered":"Castle Theatre shuts its doors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">In a newsletter sent out yesterday, January 4,\u00a0owner <strong>Ben Slotky<\/strong> confirmed that the <strong>Castle Theatre, 209 E. Washington, Bloomington, IL<\/strong>, has closed. &#8220;This was a really hard decision to make,&#8221; writes Slotky, who spent two years refurbishing the Castle before launching it as a &#8220;brew-and-view&#8221; venue in 2003. &#8220;The Castle has been a huge part of my life for the past seven years, and it&#8217;s just really unbelievably hard for me to close this place down &#8230;\u00a0I couldn&#8217;t throw in the towel until I knew I did every single thing I could possibly do to make it work.&#8221; The message offers no further explanation for the closing.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Originally programmed to counter the Hollywood offerings at Bloomington-Normal&#8217;s multiplexes in hopes of attracting a diverse crowd, including the student bodies of <strong>Illinois State University<\/strong> and <strong>Illinois Wesleyan University<\/strong>, the Castle had become increasingly reliant on family-friendly movies over the past year. (The last two features to play the\u00a0Castle, <strong>FLUSHED AWAY<\/strong> and <strong>THE NATIVITY STORY<\/strong>, are indicative of this direction.) Slotky also experimented with his line-up by scheduling live bands and stand-up comedians during weeknights as well as presenting television broadcasts as big-screen events, including <strong>Chicago Bears<\/strong> football games and the annual <strong>Academy Awards<\/strong> show.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">According to <strong>Anthony Zoubek<\/strong>&#8216;s book, <strong><u>P.O.V.: Reaction Shots from the Brew and View Balcony Seats<\/u><\/strong> (AuthorHouse, 2006), Slotky purchased the Castle building in June 2001 from an eccentric who had overrun the premesis with garbage and knick-knacks since its prior closing in 1988. The new owner envisioned a return to the &#8220;main event&#8221; status that moviegoing once enjoyed, without kowtowing to nostalgia &#8211; the Castle dates back to 1916 &#8211; or resorting to a bargain-price, second-run M.O. (The proprietors of the &#8220;brew and view&#8221; that briefly inhabited Urbana&#8217;s <strong>Thunderbird Theatre<\/strong> in the mid-Nineties operated under the latter mind-set.) Slotky opened for business in May 2003 with the\u00a0ensemble comedy, <strong>A MIGHTY WIND<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&#8220;Don&#8217;t think for a second that you&#8217;ve seen the last of me just yet,&#8221; promises Slotky in the newsletter.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&#8211; Jason Pankoke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Castle Theatre in Bloomington, IL, has closed for business according to owner-operator Ben Slotky, who revived the single-screen movie house in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatres-venues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}