List of things that have taken less time than the Newbury Cinema

I moved into the West Berkshire area in September 1997, near to the small town of Newbury. With a population of slightly under 30,000, the town is the largest to me outside of a 25 minute drive to Basingstoke or Reading. In 1997, Newbury had a 2 screen cinema; on Park Way, in what is now the LA Fitness gym & health centre. The cinema was closed in 1998, with the Lib-Dem run council promising a new one that would have more screens, better parking, and overall nicer facilities. The council then proceeded to waste a large amount of time and money fussing and fiddling about, doing absolutely nothing of any practical value. Meanwhile, everyone in Newbury and the surrounding area had to drive or take the bus to Reading or Basingstoke if they wanted to see a film - resulting in an hour long trip where previously it had been measured in a small amount of minutes. At the 2005 elections, the Newbury electrorate chose a Conservative MP for the first time in nearly 2 decades; and at the same time they kicked the Lib-Dem leadership off the town council, replacing it with a Conservative one instead. Finally, concrete results started to show. After a year or so of cleaning up the previous council's mess, a site was confirmed, building work actually begun and the new cinema started to take shape. Tomorrow, the replacement finally opens - 11 years after the old one shut down. The fact it's taken over a decade to do this frankly boggles my mind - and after reading a friend's Facebook post on how he was going to see a film at the new one when it opened, I started wondering when the old one shut. I then remembered about The Duke Nukem Forever List, a list of things that had taken place in the 12 years that failed project took. Although the cinema project has finally been finished, the idea had already been set in my head, and I just had to do it - my thanks in advance to Eli Hodapp both for making that list and for not complaining about me making this one - I hope. ;) So, dear reader, I present to you - a list of things that have taken less time than the Newbury Cinema. Enjoy!
--- Chris Douglas, 12th November, 2009

A brief overview of dates

The main problem I had when creating this page was figuring out the date when the old cinema shut. Because it had been so long since it happened, no-one can honestly remember the exact date - I thought it was sometime in 1999 before actually starting research but I couldn't honestly be sure. The internet has been far from forthcoming - several different sources have all pointed at 1998 however, a figure confirmed by the Newbury Weekly News when I attempted to get the date out of their archives (sadly the librarian was out on holiday for a week, and though very helpful, the lady I did get was unable to be any more specific than 1998). As I'm unable to go any more detailed than this (at least for now), I'm assuming the last active date of the old cinema to be the 12th of November 1998, for no other reason than it makes the time length a nice spot-on 11 years. I'm all but certain it was earlier in the year than this, but for now, this is the best I can do.

Historical items that have taken less time than the Newbury Cinema

The following things have been accomplished between the old cinema's closure on the 12th of November 1998 and the replacement opening on the 13th of November 2009...

World & Political Events

Films that have not only been on cinema screens but have made it to DVD since the Newbury cinema shut

Television

Technology

Finally, since I'm somewhat of a video game fan and as a homage of sorts to the original Duke Nukem list, here's a list of videogames that have launched in the inter-cinema period.

Video Game releases

Games Consoles
Games featuring Mario
An honourable mention goes to New Super Mario Bros Wii, which launched on the 20th November 2009 - a week after the cinema opened. It's entire development time was inside the cinema construction phase.
Legend of Zelda games
Games featuring Sonic the Hedgehog
Final Fantasy titles
Others

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some popcorn to buy. ;)

Brought to you by regionfreegamer.co.uk. Thanks to Eli Hodapp, CaptainPsyko, BonzoESC, n1ck, Fish, MrBrainsample, Skroob, stabby, Josh Taylor, v0idnull, wildfalkon, Joachim Blum, Mr.D., CellBlock, HeroinAllstar, Deathwind, minivanmegafun, mroach, Simon Howard, Pierre "Zacha Pedro" Lebeaupin, Premek, Robbie Schumacher, xkcd, Jetsetlemming and anyone else who contributed to the original Duke Nukem Forever List that I used as a resource while compiling this - please don't hurt me guys, I doubt my target audience for this is anywhere near the size of yours =P

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