Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup
It has been approximately 12 years and a bit since we were all in the same continent (never mind the country or city). Lots of things have changed, obviously – like the nieces – but it’s nice to see that some things haven’t.
I’ve watched The Watchmen before. But not in Sri Lanka, and not with the crowd I usually hang out with here. So off to the cinema we went. The first time, it was the movie experience. This time around, it was the movie going experience. For the past decade or so, I’ve probably watched more movies in a tiny screen embedded into the back of an airplane seat than I have on a large screen.
False alarm of the day: Despite dire warnings, the national anthem was not played before the start of the movie. In retrospect, I can’t even articulate why the concept of having a national anthem played before a movie screening bothers me so much. Except it does and I was glad when it didn’t happen. Maybe the practice has fallen out of favour?
The movie itself: the movie rating system in SL confuses me greatly. Back in the day, you had your general audience movies, the “more suitable for adults” shtick (which in the late 80s really meant a proverbial flash of ankle and petticoat) and the “adults only omgz” which probably included a flash of mammaries at most. Now The Watchmen is rated R in the US and 18+ in the UK. There is violence (big deal, this is the country which repeatedly televised the bug eyed terrorist corpse face with much gusto, we’re sort of used to seeing pieces of limbs and lots of blood everywhere) and nudity. You’d expect it to be an adults only classification here, right? Even the permissive UK slapped a 18+ on it, right? Umm. No. The Watchmen was classified “more suitable for adults” in Sri Lanka. Go figure. I don’t know what people were thinking either.
Then there was the actual movie; which surprisingly enough featured very little in the way of creative editing by censorious morality police. Yes, so Dr. Manhattan’s nether regions were perpetually blurred out (prompting much sniggering from myself). In a blatant double standard, his magnificent blue buttcheeks (I can’t believe I just typed those words out) were left exposed to the cinema goer. The infamous, cringe inducing sex scene aboard the Archimedes was (almost) uncensored, which surprised me no end. All in all, the movie was left intact.
Finally, there was the saga of the beer. Yes, apparently beer can be purchased by cinema going folk (Ok, it’s been years since I was in a Sri Lankan cinema, ok? I don’t know these things). But as usual, there are caveats and rules which make the experience slightly less enjoyable than it could be…
First, no beer purchases before 1700 in the evening. Not unreasonable, you might argue – until you realize that the movie starts at 1630. Or it would have, if they had bothered starting on time (they didn’t).
Second, containers of beer cannot be taken inside the hall. Note that this does not apply to other beverages, which people happily carted in – but apparently beer is … umm … special. Ok, I can see the logic in that too (someone could easily be buying for minors in the cinema hall proper) except that this requires beer be purchased and downed during intermission.
Which brings me to the last element in this hideous trifecta of beerfail – for some inexplicable reason, the intermission was barely 5 minutes long. Ice cold beverage chugged down in 30 seconds or less because omg-the-movie-is-starting-up-again and this is the part where Manhattan is accused of giving people cancer?. Yeah, instant brainfreeze. Not fun.
But hey, it was fun. I probably wouldn’t do that again in a hurry though – if I want to pay for the privilege of sitting in an unpleasantly musty smelling hall; I’d go back to school or something.
The coffin corner is one of those concepts that I remember reading ages ago but forgot until a recent memory joggle. In this case, the jab to the memory came from a slightly sensationalist analysis of how Air France flight 447 may have been downed.
So while you are napping, eating or watching a movie on that flight to LAX, you should know the plane you are flying is cruising along at the ratty edge of its capabilities. Why? Money. The higher an airliner flies, the better gas mileage it gets.
With the slight caveat that going a bit too high can cause the airplane to do all sorts of things it shouldn’t be doing – like stalling. Actually, that is sage advice for pretty much anyone, including that dude called Icarus. But I digress. The point is, those kinds of tradeoffs are everywhere.
