You oughta be in pictures

Charles C. Labenz Arizona Daily Wildcat Christine's Motion Picture screening room offers a pleasant atmosphere for customers to relax and enjoy their favorite classic films. Christine's is also a clothing store, gift shop, deli and bar which is offering $2 drafts until Dec. 15.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine saw an ad in the Yellow Pages. It was for some mysterious place called, "Christine's Motion Picture." This place was to have a theater, cafe, retail store and I don't even remember what else. We excitedly called the phone number. All we got was an answering machine with the infamous words "coming soon."

Christine's Motion Picture has been "coming soon" for four years. Located at Park Avenue and Ninth Street , across from The Rock, it's one of those places you drive by and wonder "What in the hell is that place?"

The building that houses Christine's is an old firehouse, built in 1923, so it has that classic Tucson adobe wall and hardwood floor feel. You walk in and suddenly you're in a high-fashion retail store, ½ la Santa Monica Boulevard. The hippest and trendiest gifts can be purchased for 40 to 70 percent off regular retail price (don't go getting all excited - keep in mind that regular retail price is often as much as one month's rent). For the impending holiday season, there are cool things like a block of cedar that you put in your shower that makes it smell nice ... well, maybe a little like a hamster cage, but the idea is still novel.

The next room is the movie theater. Rows of theater seats form an inconspicuous frontage for the bar. You can get yourself a glass of wine and kick back in the seats to whatever is playing, or you can chill at the bar tables or you can even venture into the next room ... the cafe.

It's your typical cafe - coffee in classy mugs and tables pushed up against the walls. You can buy candy cigarettes and sugar-free Bubble Yum (which is apparently very hard to come by in this part of the world). Christine is planning on having a drive-thru window, opening Jan. 1, where you can purchase your morning paper, coffee, cigarettes and even condoms all at once. Out in front is a comfy smoking couch. Indoors, board games are abundant, in case you are bored by whatever is playing on the screen.

Speaking of the movies, I should emphasize that they are FREE. Until Jan. 1, the debut movie schedule consists of musicals, but look forward to seeing various independent and miscellaneous flicks. The movies show at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11:30 p.m. showing on Fridays and Saturdays.

Christine's Motion Picture is classy yet comfortable: so Hollywood, yet so Tucson. Christine herself has worked in the film industry and she wanted to create a place that combined entertainment with retail, a place that was "not a bar, not a coffee house, but somewhere in between ... less about booze and more about atmosphere." A place where people could "have a quiet conversation, watch a movie at the same time and have a drink while doing it," Christine says.

And it only gets better. Christine says she wants to have "Gospel Brunch" on Sunday mornings - she plans on inviting gospel choirs into the cafe to sing while brunch is served.

Christine's is like a little bit of Hollywood in the comfort of our single-freeway pseudo-metropolis - a breath of recycled celebrity oxygen in this town of over-priced movie theaters and the same old coffee houses. This semester break, put a little glamour in your life; you don't even need to endanger yourself by driving on I-10 late at night to do it, thanks to Christine's Motion Picture.