Yelling in the theatre

So over the weekend, Maria and I went to go see a Bollywood movie. Specifically, this one. By the way, if you want to read a horrid review of the movie, that's it. I've never seen a reviewer in need of so much chapstick.

I think this movie only opened in maybe less than 20 theatres across the nation. This is rather typcial. We wanted to see it Friday night, but it was sold out. They opened it at the Imax. We were relegated to a regular theatre, but it was completely packed with anxious brown people. And their kids. Now, here's the thing. This wasn't exactly a kid's movie. It could have had almost an R rating. And it certainly didn't seem appropriate to bring say, your six-year-old. But whatever.

People in the theatre started applauding when the film started -- impressively on time. I said to Maria that nobody who was involved in making the film is here, so what the hell is the point of applauding?

Anyway, after intermission -- oh, you didn't know Bollywood movies have intermissions? Yeah, well, when you don't leave anything on the cutting room floor and the film goes to 192 minutes, there's an intermission. Anyway, they play previews after the intermission before the second half starts. That's right. Previews. At one point, the screen wasn't lined up right. That is, a black line cut through the middle of the screen. Top half on the bottom, bottom on top. The movie started. There were some noisy murmurs because the picture was still messed up. I was getting annoyed. ($10 tickets will do that). So, I finally boiled over, turned around and yelled, "Hey asshole! Fix the picture!" Of course, the second that I turned around, the picture was fixed, so the yelling turned out to be just for entertainment purposes.

Saturday was somewhat busy; Sunday quite relaxed. Saturday evening we tried the Mongolian Barbecue, which was a fun experience. You basically pick your meats and vegetables, present them to a cook, and he tosses them on a giant wok and grills them right there.