When I was looking over the blog posts for Day 22 – Day 28, it suddenly hit me that over the course of that week, I only actually managed to see two movies!
Part of the reason was that I decided I deserved a weekend to sit at home and finish watching Battlestar Galactica, part was that the weather was awful for most of the week, part was that I wasn’t feeling wonderful on the Monday, and part was that the closer to payday it got, the further from it got from the previous payday!
On Day 22, the Friday, I took the easy option and went down to a late showing of Jane Eyre in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Done Leery). I wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered about seeing a movie on my lonesome on a Friday night, but I was wondering if I’d be the only person in the audience who wasn’t part of a couple. As it turned out, I was actually the only man in the audience.
After a quiet weekend and a day off work sick, I went to Cineworld the following Tuesday on the Northside of Dublin City with a list of screens that I had yet to see a movie in and a list of movies that I’d be happy enough to see. But with no screen information available on the website and no help on the phoneline either, I had to go through the process of asking what was showing on the screens which I hadn’t used yet. It was a torturous process and when I came across Real Steel at a doable time in a new screen, I jumped at it. Of course, I have since discovered that the screen number is actually displayed pretty prominently. But I discovered that on Day 32, so we’ll come back to that next week.
I enjoyed Real Steel again, and I enjoyed watching the reactions of the crowd as the movie played. There was a great crowd there considering that it was a drab Tuesday evening but they all seemed to really dig the movie. But one thing that actually annoyed the crap out of me happened as I was exiting the screen, going in to the main are of the cinema. There are screens and speakers all over Cineworld advertising movies and the cinema itself on a constant loop. I pretty much tune it out a lot of the time, but when I heard the start of the Moneyball trailer I started paying attention. Moneyball isn’t out here until the end of November and I am absolutely dying to see it. I’m a huge Aaron Sorkin fan and I’m hearing great things from anyone I know who’s seen it. But for some reason, the powers that be at Cineworld decided that the standard trailer was too strongly worded for the general public. So they bleeped out the word “crap”. This, I think is going too far to protect from naughty things. Instead of a huge tirade about censorship, I’ll just say that bleeping out an innocuous word like “crap” seems heavy-handed and pointless, especially considering the fact that the line which the word was used in is basically the same line that Jennifer Aniston used in Friends about a decade ago. And it wasn’t bleep-worthy even then. There are no such things as bad words, only bad intentions.
Around the time that I started out on this adventure, I entered a competition and then promptly forgot that I did. The competition was for some Red State goodies, and almost two weeks after actually seeing the movie, I got an email telling me that I had won the competition. When the prizes arrived, they consisted of a theatrical poster, a Red State t-shirt, and a Red State USB memory key fashioned to look like a cross. If someone had asked me a few weeks ago what it would take for me to carry a cross around with me, I think that a movie tie-in memory key would have been the answer I’d have given them.
As always, I’ll be updating as I go on the Blog Site at www.simon-fitzgerald.blogspot.com
About the Author
Simon FitzGerald isn't your average Irishman. He has an unhealthy addiction to TV, movies and comic books and uses the word "awesome" far too much Though he does enjoy a pint as much as the average Irishman.Born in Dublin city in 1979, his first real exposure to nerdery was in 1986 when he was given a copy of the first issue of John Byrne's "Man Of Steel". Since then, he's absorbed all of the fiction he can get his hands on.
In order to offset all the time spent with fictional characters in make believe worlds, Simon works in the banking system. But that's becoming more unreal each and every day.
Simon also co-hosts the Pubcast, available on iTunes.