The modern living has made us happy, giving us some of the newest technological discoveries and gadgets, that our grandparents, even parents never could imagine that will exist one day. But, it has also made us more complacent and more lazy because we are leaning on gadgets to pull us through our day, making our wishes true and lulling us in the false sense of happines.

Like everything else, the movie industry suffered too under the new technologies making internet pirates easy to steal movies, sometimes before they arrive in cinemas and uploading it on the web for everyone to have and watch. There is no righteous angel among us who read this, all of us sometimes used this pirated links and downloaded our movie or tv show, not to mention music albums.

When I was a boy, that was in the 1980-ies, there was one cinema in my hometown Čakovec, Croatia, called Dom(eng.Home) and I really felt at home there. We watched everything there except soft porn. We would see that too, but we werent allowed to. Since we lived in communist Yugoslavia, the school indoctrinated kids through cinema among other things, so they often took us there on Saturday morning to see some war movie about Yugoslav partisans, or some kid movie with subtle indoctrination underneath the storyline. In the evenings, we used to go see old Hong Kong karate movies or c-production of action and adventure movies. I still can remember the smell of that cinema, slight mix of cigarettes, stale leather, sweat and other nice odours.

Two events in this cinema stayed especially imprinted on my brain and memory cells. First, I remember my dad took me there to see Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back. The cinema was so full that they gave us some old wooden extra chair and I sat through the whole movie on my dads lap and I was pretty heavy for a kid back then. Imagine the hard time he had holding my fat little ass in his lap for more than two hours. The second time was I went to see Karate Kid 2 all alone. The cinema was full of soldiers and gipsies and after the movie the gypsies were trying the moves that they saw in the film on the kids in front of the cinema, so I had to run home not to get my ass kicked.

Then everything changed. Right in the middle of the main square of my hometown opened the new cinema/theater called Centar za kulturu(eng.Culture Center). We were shocked and could not believe our eyes and noses. This new cinema played mostly newer blockbuster movies and had wider space between the seats for your feet and it actually smelled good.

At first, we were very happy but there were times when a movie played in the old cinema that we really wanted to see, but at the same time something newer and more attractive was playing at the new cinema, so as we still can not be in two places at once, we decided that we go for the new cinema.

Then came the war and all that troubled and dark times, so cinema Dom closed its gates forever in the beginning of the 90-ies. Centar za kulturu still exists to this day holding many theater plays and of course showing movies, now in digital and 3D versions. We still go to the cinema but not as much as we used to, but we still manage to go see at least Star Wars, Marvel and DC movies. The modern age and technology progressed but also made us lazy to go see movies in the cinema. Do you guys still go to the cinema?