Cinema Musings

Not much has happened since my last post, mostly just me watching a whole bunch of TV on my computer trying to catch up with everything that I'm missing. I know, this should definitely be on my priority list when in Ireland...Oh well. But I did go to the movie theater (or cinema) for the first time yesterday to see "He's Just Not That Into You." It was Valentine's Day. What did you expect a whole bunch of girls to do? And so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the Irish version of a movie-watching experience.

The theater itself was a lot better than 75 percent of theaters at home, by my standards at least. And this is coming from a spoiled, AMC-loving movie gal. But besides for the chairs that needed to be about six to 10 inches higher in the back, it wasn't that bad. The screen was about 1/3 the size of the big screens back home (in good ol' theaters 11-14 in KC - so many memories it's kind of sad). The student ticket cost €7.50, which was the same price as the adult ticket. Thanks for the spectacular discount there Storm Cinema (and what's with the tacky name?).

I bought a bag of Starbursts to go along with my smuggled-in water bottle, and here lay the biggest disappointment of the entire experience: in Ireland apparently they don't believe in supplying customers with lemon-flavored candy. It's lemon-lime. But what about those of us who dig through the bag to find all the yellow ones and ditch all the other colors but orange? What about us? Needless to say, I'm kind of an artificially-flavored lemon fanatic. The discovery that my desire for lemon candy was not to be fulfilled was almost more than my taste buds could stand.

And thrown into the mix of the flavor tragedy was the odd tasting strawberry (do they grow them differently over here or something because no strawberry I've ever had tasted like that...) and the addition of Blackcurrent. It's everywhere I tell you! The Lodge doesn't have cranberry juice but black current cordial to mix with your vodka. The markets don't have grape jelly but black current (not that I care all too much since grape jelly is the most disgusting thing since baby food). And now Starbursts are in on the scam too? If I didn't know better I'd say black current was attempting to take over the world. Or at least Ireland. Next thing you know all the green grass is going to be replaced with purple, black current flavored artificial turf. Enter Willy Wanka already. It fits too, since Willy Wanka always disturbed me as much as this black current fettish is now.

But back to the movie theater. They didn't have ads before the previews started, and obviously the music being played wasn't supplied by MovieTunes. I found it a little weird to be sitting in a theater not watching the same five ads/movie quiz questions being repeated over and over again. And the music they played was different from the type of music they play at home. Not that I didn't like the music. In fact I loved it. So much so that Brittany, Katie and I all went home and Googled it to find out who it was: Elbow. It's a British rock band that's been around since 1990, and apparently inspired Gary Lightbody and the rest of Snow Patrol. No wonder I liked them.

There was the usual copyright infringement warning before the movie, and a warning that trying to record the movie on any sort of device was also illegal, but no ad telling people to turn off their cell phones. No Martin Scorsese directing a mom on how to put her child to bed. No garbled collection of people talking, babies crying and cell phones ringing. Nothing. This was also a little disappointing, as normally these are either so rediculous or so familiar that I look forward to them every time. I'm normally that annoying person fake crying along with the baby in the AMC warning. Sorry. Instead it went straight from the proclamation that stealing this film could result in a heafty fine and 5 years in jail to the movie.

The movie that is rated "15A" in Ireland, meaning that someone under the age of 15 has to be accompanied by someone over 18 in order to see it. And the movie's PG-13 at home. Hmm, this may say a lot about why the whole world thinks we have our priorities wrong. Even though the movie wasn't even that bad. At all. I mean, besides for the swimming pool scene that's in every preview for the movie and one slip of the F-word by Jennifer Aniston's character, the movie was pretty clean. And I personally don't think one utterance of the F-word is as big of a deal in Ireland as it is in America. Since the average Irish person probably uses the word more than almost any other word in the English language. But that's just me.

But once the movie started, it was home sweet home. The lights never turned on once the credits started rolling, which I thought was odd and resulted in us stumbling down the steps in darkness to exit, but other than that everything was the same. I guess that's to be expected. I mean how do you expect them to change the actual movie?

Even though all in all it was enjoyable, I'm still going to be happy to be back at home, within easy access to my baby, AMC Barrywoods 24. It's sad but oh so true.

Kim