Monday, September 05, 2005

Slightly different...

On a day off when one is feeling pretty rough...the only thing for it is to go to the movies....

I wander over to the MegaMall and go to the cinema..."Must love dogs" is on...I go to buy a ticket....I ask when the next showing is...."5:10" she says, "But it's 5:40 now" I say...."It's ok...it just runs continuously...go in whenever you like" she says......

Now that has to be the oddest system I have ever come across....basically you can go in and watch the movie from half way in until the end...and then just sit there and watch the beginning up to when you came it....quite bizarre....

It was a huge cinema...there must have been about 7 people in there - total. Two women came in and sat right in front of me....and talked the whole way through....eventually I couldn't stand it anymore....I leant forward,,,,,"Excuse me, there's a very nice coffee shop downstairs, maybe next time you want to chat you could go there".....I was on the receiving end of a couple of filthy looks....but it worked....

Last time I go the cinema at MegaMall.....Shang Mall cinema for me from now on....much more civilised!!!

Oh, and whilst I am on a MegaMall rant.....the people who own PowerBooks should now that pairing a book store with Tower Records is a spectacularly bad idea.....book shops should be at least vaguely peaceful....not pounding, ear blasting pits of noise.....

Not a great afternoon!!!!

So home to The West Wing...Season 1....Good stuff!!!

6 Comments:

Blogger Spike said...

That's actually the way movie theaters were run in the US 30 or 40 years ago, no big surprise that it's carried on that way in the Philippines. The theaters at Greenbelt are state-of-the-art and beautiful, there are some others around Makati with new digital projection systems. Far better than any of the crap shoeboxes in HK.

12:33 pm  
Blogger Madame Chiang said...

OK next time will try out one of the ones at Greenbelt...thanks for the tip.

12:44 pm  
Blogger Killea said...

The Megamalls in Hong Kong freak me out. I had never seen anything like it until I went there. The sheer size! Though I'm surprised that the movie theatre there was run that way. I was surprised and somewhat amused at the cleanliness and formality of the movie theatres there. The places I've been to in the U.S, I always check my seat to make sure I don't sit on something mysteriously sticky.

6:10 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some Filipinos have a theory that catching the movie halfway through it is best way to deconstruct the plot. Knowing the end, you can trace the paths to it more clearly when you watch the beginning. It's not a skill I have mastered.

Do you know about the guys delivering film reels? Keep your eyes peeled in the malls and from time to time you will see people dashing around carrying huge reels of 8mm film. You can see them on the street too, with the film taped to the back of a motorcycle. The way it works is that the owner of a cinema chain puts a film on at four cinemas. By staggering the times and shifting the reels from cinema to cinema, he is often able to get away with renting a couple of prints of the film. Seems a rather nervewracking way to save a couple of bob, but there you go.

7:20 am  
Blogger Madame Chiang said...

Torn,
I haven't seen this in action yet...but will start to look out for them....given the traffic in Manila I would have thought that it is an extremely stressful way of doing business!!

8:03 am  
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12:07 pm  

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