Crazy Day at the Hospital
October 30th, 2006 by PotatoAll the crazy people are making a break for it today. We’ve had a code red (fire), two code whites (violent person) and two code yellows (missing patient).
Our Halloween party this year was pretty lame. Wayfare, formerly renouned for throwing THE Halloween party to addend, had hardly anyone respond to her invitation. Of those who did come, none really dressed up, and no one wanted to go out as per the original plan (not even to Rol San, which is extremely surprising for Joce). There was lots of junk food, though, and Shaun of the Dead, so it wasn’t a complete write-off.
Worst of all, though, is that we ended the party so early that we never got around to getting our extra hour, which was half the fun of having a Halloween Saturday party night!
The next day, Wayfare & I had completely forgotten about the time shift, and hadn’t changed any clocks (oddly enough, my laptop didn’t give me that “your time has been changed…” popup). We wanted to see Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, so we rushed out to the theatre, and it was only when we were in the car that the radio reminded us about the whole daylight savings thing. That gave us some time to hit the Shoppers Drug Mart for some discounted candy and more Halloween decorations (I believe we are now up to 11 file boxes full of Halloween decorations. Our apartment is fairly thickly decorated, and we’ve only touched 4 of the boxes; none of them was completely emptied).
Anyhow, so eventually we get to the theatre in the middle of nowhere to see NBC3-D. And I’d like to say that it was really, really dumb of the theatres to not release this cult Halloween classic on any screen in the downtown area on Halloween weekend. Even way up in Woodbridge the theatre was packed for a Sunday matinee: how much business could they have got from the pre/post Halloween Saturday club crowd if they showed it at Paramount? But nnoooooo, Paramount was showing Open Range in 3-D instead. I wonder if anyone bothered to go…
Back to the point, the theatre was fairly full. Wayfare & I sat near the back and watched the show. There were two empty seats beside us, but garbage had been left there from the last show, so no one wanted to sit there while the lights were up. 40 minutes late (just about the halfway point for NBC), two people show up and plop down beside us with a tonne of food. They had nachos, burger king, popcorn, and a strong smell of beer (though I couldn’t say for sure whether they were just unshowered from the night before, or had snuck beer into a matinee). They talked through the whole movie, and made a giant mess of their seats when they left, right down to spilled nacho cheese. It was just astoundingly rude, and I was really close to actually telling them off, except the kids behind us were kicking their seats with reckless abandon, which was pretty entertaining (until they started kicking mine, too).
A day later though, and I’m still left wondering: why show up to a 2:30 movie at 3:10? Why not just wait until 4:45 and actually see both halves of your $13 movie? And if you walk into a theatre that full, that late, and with that much food, why not bite the bullet and plop down in the neckbreakers up front rather than running up and down the stairs for an aisle seat, or pushing past people who are trying to enjoy the movie?
As for the movie itself: I don’t think the 3-D aspect added anything to it. It was already claymation which does tend to “look” 3-D even on flat screens (at least, a bit more than much cel animation), and those 3-D glasses are a little nauseating when worn overtop of my regular glasses. However, it was nice to see it up on the big screen for Halloween weekend, and I’m rather surprised that sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. Rocky Horror gets shown every year like clockwork, but fall is usually a somewhat slow time for the theatres (usually they see the desperate, re-edited/re-shot dregs that couldn’t quite manage a summer release), so I think they might actually do better putting some classic Halloween movies like this (and other horrors) up on one or two screens of the multiplexes… and in areas that are actually close to the demographics that enjoy that sort of thing (i.e.: not woodbridge).