{"id":6,"date":"2006-08-28T23:29:59","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T13:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/?p=6"},"modified":"2006-08-29T01:52:41","modified_gmt":"2006-08-28T15:52:41","slug":"cinema-ettiquette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=6","title":{"rendered":"Cinema Etiquette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Normally you see a film in a cinema to revel in the atmosphere of the darkness, and an audience: you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a coalition of the willing. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen Brick<\/a><\/i> twice now, and the first instance boasted the kind of audience that you want: quiet and attentive. The second Brick<\/i> did not go so well: I went on a Saturday night, not a normal movie night for me and, about fifteen minutes in, there came a gaggle of teenagers. They helped to make this film boast the actively worst audience ever; not just an annoying audience like that which had rendered the already interminable mess that was Wedding Crashers<\/I> even more excruciating.
\nThese teenagers came into the film and they talked. I hate coming late to a film, and Brick<\/i> is one where you really can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t afford to miss the first minutes. They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t whisper quietly like one might do when trying to figure out what was going on.<\/p>\n

For them, it was a cotillion. They came in and out of the cinema with alarming frequency, with some of them coming and going as many as three times. They chose to use the theatre as a reunion ground, standing up and stepping over each other so that they could hug and say something along the lines of “omigod how have you been omigod omigod” or some crap. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m making up that dialogue, but it was probably as vapid as all of that.
\nAs my friend Liz and I stepped out of the cinema, the culprits were standing around the stairs. One of them was heard to remark “That was a waste of time”. Yes it was, my friend, but the subject of our thoughts may have been different indeed. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come to the most subterranean of George Street\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cinema screens for an extended social gathering. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a good idea.<\/p>\n

Now this may not have been as inappropriate as when I came out of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days<\/i> and one of my friends chose to say “Heil Hitler!”, but it was still bad. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve generally got nothing against teenagers, having only left that era myself, but the vapid ones do no favours for the rest of them. <\/p>\n

So, I ask that you remember the golden rules: <\/p>\n