As Oscar Night approaches, Raleigh will be part of the festivities with an Oscar Night party sanctioned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Each year, the Academy selects 50 cities that allow local charities to host glamorous Oscar viewing parties while raising money for their organizations. Raleigh’s will be at 7 p.m., Feb. 22, to benefit the Theatre In The Park’s Annual Fund for Community Arts and Education. For details, click here.

As talk of movies circulates, I’ve been thinking about how they’ve shaped my childhood imagination and my husband’s. We’ve shared similar realities by going to drive-in theaters, although we grew up thousands of miles apart. Now, we’ve adopted a family tradition on Friday nights of sharing some of the weird, zany and wonderful movies we enjoyed with our kids. Friday night is family movie night at our house, a chance for us for us to step back in time and take our kids along for the ride anywhere from the 1960s to the ‘90s.

Some of the movies we’ve watched over the past few months include: The Computer That Wore Tennis Shoes, the World’s Strongest Man, That Shaggy Dog, What’s Up Doc; Flubber, Back to the Future, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Ghost Busters, Monkeys Go Home; The Cat from Outer Space, old Herby The Love Bug movies and Journey to the Center of the Earth (The old version).

What I like about these movies is that they’re often funny and not violent. By the way, remember Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? It’s coming to Raleigh as a play, and auditions will be held for six children to play the role of orphans. Chitty, the play, makes its debut at Memorial Auditorium on March 31 and will be performed nine times through April 5. Auditions will be held at Fletcher Auditorium on Thursday, Feb. 26 at 4 p.m. For details, click here.

So, if your kid has star quality, hop on over there. If not, make room on your couch, and you could still take them on an imaginative ride with you to your favorite childhood movie. What’s your favorite childhood movie? Share it with us.