So mad about the people at the movies!

[ADoyle90815]

Sometimes even going to the matinee showing isn't enough to avoid people who talk during the movie, text, or "forget" to turn off their cellphone so it rings. Even then, I still wait several weeks before I see a movie, but with Avatar, even waiting a month wasn't enough to avoid the crowd and standing in line before the scheduled time. At least this time, nobody talked or texted during the movie. The only real issue was that someone had on a strong perfume that when they walked down the aisle, it was like walking into the perfume section at a department store.

[Shalom]

"Can we go? This is getting boring; I don't like the movie, etc. etc." was the expected monologue. I seem to remember being quiet enough to not bother the other people who were somehow enjoying the picture.

Oh lord, that brings back memories. My family went to see a double feature (remember those?) Two Walt Disney films: Alice In Wonderland and Fantasia. Now bear in mind that I was maybe six.

Alice I enjoyed immensely. Fantasia bored me literally to tears. I kept going out to the bathroom, the water fountain, the bathroom again, etc. and asking my mom "Is this going to be over soon?" If I'd somehow managed to sit still until the Paul Dukas segment with Mickey Mouse came on, I might have enjoyed that part, but classical music, even Beethoven, wasn't my forte at that age, and Stravinsky is definitely not for six year old children, dinosaurs notwithstanding. We bailed in the middle of the Rite of Spring, as best I remember. Probably a good thing too, as the Moussorgsky would have scared the piss out of me.

As an adult, of course, I wanted very much to see the film. It had been out of theaters since 1981, and I'd been waiting for home video, or even for it to come back to the theaters, for years, but no dice, Disney wasn't relaxing their grip on that property for a moment. Fantasia was like the holy grail of hard-to-get films; it never even went on TV once (except for small bits), etc. There was a mystique surrounding that film.

I even signed up for Film Studies at Brooklyn College because rumor had it that they had a old 16mm print of Fantasia that they would show during the 13th week of class. (Although the colors were said to be rather faded, and without the stereo sound it loses a lot of the effect.) Unfortunately when week 13 rolled around they "couldn't find" the print. I found out later that it wasn't lost, just hidden, because with all the 50th Anniversary Of Fantasia hype going on at the time, they didn't want to call the Mouse's attention to themselves. God knew how or from where they'd acquired that print, or whether they were even supposed to have it in the first place.

Fortunately I was able to catch it in the theaters after that. I wound up seeing it three times (once each with a different family member, including once with my brother the classical music major: at the end of the Bach segment which led off, I looked over there and he was literally . I'd thought that was only a cliché, but he was literally sitting there with his jaw hanging open), and bought the VHS and later the DVD when they came out.

[marder]

I avoid going to movies as much as I can, if I go it's for the children or the wife. I have a big flat screen at home and a good 7.1 surround system so I can watch movies at home with a much better convenience and better sound.

What I hate at movies, besides the waiting and the 30 min. of advertisement, is that I feel like I am in a restaurant rather than in a theater.

Come on, if I wanted to have the noise and smell of people eating next to me, I would have gone to a restaurant, not to a theater ! Why is it that you HAVE to eat and drink when you watch a movie ? This completely ruins my enjoyment.