keep the intervals in. There's one on Lawrence of Arabia, and in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, too.

The last one I remember at the cinema was during For Your Eyes Only, in 1981. It wasn't a scheduled interval. I think the cinema just stuck it in so they could serve tea.

Like you, I haven't been to the pictures for years. In fact the last film I went to see was Who Framer Roger Rabbit during a wet holiday week in Wales. But Mrs Axekeith tells me that when she has taken our 8 year old daughter along there have been no intervals. So no opportunity to sell kia-ora, popcorn, dubbin, bits of broken glass, albatross, gannet on a stick.......ah, those were the days. Smokers on the right, no smokers on the left and obviously, there must have been a magic force field down the centre to keep the smoke away from the non smokers.
Prepare to remortgage your house if you want to buy refreshments at the cinema and if you take in your own, hide it very carefully. Be ready to have someone sitting behind youo discussing anything but the film the whole way through but most of all, have a good time!

thinks its a bad idea and took the tiny local cinema in Penistone (nr Barnsley) to court for having a interval (well the screen guild directors soc or similar)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/apr/28/film.filmnews

Our film club has a suppporting feature and then a break to refresh your pint and have bite to eat but it is run in pub but it is most civilised.

Good to see Cottage Road is still going. The Hyde Park was at the bottom of my street when a student in Leeds.

Ah, Cottage Road cinema. I remember going to see ET there and sobbing my little 11 year old heart out.

Talking of sobbing at the flicks; when I went to see Magnolia, there was an interval just after the section where they take a look at all the characters and their respective miseries, soundtracked by Aimee Mann's 'Wise Up'. I was going through something of my own personal misery at the time so this all struck a chord. So there I was, having a good old snivel to myself in the dark, when the lights suddenly went up, and much to my embarrassment I seemed to be the only person in the entire cinema who had completely lost their composure.

I saw Magnolia at a little independent cinema, and it's about 3 hours long. I saw There Will Be Blood (again two and a half/three hours) at our local independent, and there was an interval. I can't remember having an interval in a big chain cinema since I was a kid. But perhaps I've just seen films of average length in my local Odeon/ UCI etc. Hmm...

Or maybe they just put intervals in Paul Thomas Anderson films.

Our local. Still has the bus-ticket type tickets which pop up from a slot in the steel counter. They also bring the lights up after all the ads and trailers and sell ice-cream from trays down the front of the cinema. Excellent.

We chose to go and see Avatar at the little Reel Cinema in Grantham rather than the neon and chrome monstrosity that is the Odeon in Lincoln.

There was an interval there. I found it quite quaint.

Deeply disappointed at the lack of usherette with a tray of sticky sweets and slowly melting ice cream, though.

was when I went to see DeNiro and Pacino in Heat. You could nip out to the foyer for a fag, seems like a million years ago now.

The wonderful Woolton Picture House in the south Liverpool suburbs* still shoehorns an interval into every film they show!

- - -

* "Nicknamed 'The Bug' by Lennon and other 'Quarrymen' band members, the cinema is situated next-door to St Peters church hall a place famed for the meeting of John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney", apparently.

Our local cinema, the Penistone Paramount, always has an interval. The lady comes out with the ice cream tray and there's even a bar. It's an old fashioned cinema that still has the old organ. In fact there's a big crowd every week for the organ recital (please, no jokes about the organ recital in Penistone!).

As it's a local independent cinema there's usually a delay in the films coming to us though, so in the school holidays we often have to take our 4 year old to the cinema in Barnsley instead, where she gets most miffed that there isn't an ice cream interval. This usually results in me missing a few minutes of the film to run to the foyer to get said ice cream!

..."Saving Private Ryan" with the then Mrs Geach one wet Wednesday afternoon. In the 800 seater cinema there was approx 6 other people there. We sat in two of the other plenty available seats, only to be verbally assaulted by two OAPs five minutes later, clutching their tickets in an aggitated manner, "you're in our seats. PLEASE MOVE!" Sad to say I did not have my taser with me, so we moved.

..more of an opportunity to flog shitty food to the punters, thus generating more profits, it makes me raise an eyebrow that they've not leaned upon the studios to make a suitable break-point in long films.

Anyway. Where did I put my pack of extra-strong mints? Ooh.. sorry, mate..

was Braveheart in the cinema in Stirling, which not only had an interval but also a round of applause at the end.

It was a midnight showing so the interval may have been a toilet break for the pub goers who had a few refreshments before the screening

had one for a showing at the cambridge arts centre in between smoke and it's 'brother' film with the same cast 'blue in the face'

and, what can I say, I'll go back... Proper cinema now in the same group as the Keighley Picture House mentioned above, and what do you know, 'still has the bus-ticket type tickets which pop up from a slot in the steel counter. They also bring the lights up after all the ads and trailers and sell ice-cream from trays down the front of the cinema'.

There were about 100 in an auditorium for 600, no chatty teenagers (although quite a few chatty adults early on) and it was a fine night out. And all for a fiver (or 50p more for 'Pullman' seats, which are bigger (but no more comfortable) and in prime position with a five foot wall behind you rather than talkative punters.

Our last local was in London and cost a darn sight more to get into. Mind you, I looked into watching the film in 3D at a local Vue/Odeon to find out it would have been £12 each (EACH!) including a *&^$ing 'booking fee'.

Film was better than expected too - all in all: Mighty.