Please, please, please shut your face!!

R

ryu_hindustani

New member
I realised the other day that I have not been to the Cinema to watch a "grown-up" film for nearly a year. I don't remember a time in my adult life when I have gone this long without a visit. It seems to me that there are two reasons why this has happened:

1) I have children so there's not much opportunity to go to an "adult" flick and if you do manage to acquire the services of a babysitter or relative to watch over the little darlings then the second and most important reason kicks in....

2) I HATE MULTIPLEXES!!

IGNORING the constant crackle confectionery wrappers and slurp of soft drinks; FORGIVING the audience members whose bladder is the size of an infant and have to get past you every 20 minutes to go to the toilet; PUTTING UP WITH the stream of adverts and look-alike trailers - I swear, I took my children to see "Cars" and all seven trailers preceding the feature were for cloned computer animated movies that I could not distinguish from each other. No, it's none of these things. Lets face it anyone would get peckish after 3 hours of "Return of the King" and incontinence is a dreadful thing. The main reason is people not giving a Tinker's cuss (when I find a Tinker I will report back on exactly what's made him so mad) about anybody else in the auditorium and TALKING ALL THE FRICKIN' WAY THROUGH IT! My last visit to the cinema ended with my wife (a much braver soul than I) getting so fed up with the people in the opposite row not taking heed of repeated pleas to be quiet (plus asking the staff lolling outside to do something about it) that she reached the end of her tether, stood up, threw a bucket of popcorn at them and screamed "shut the f*ck up!" before storming out. She then marched up to the manager and asked for our money back. When asked why, she replied "because your cinema is full of in-bred chavs and you lot don't give a toss so give me my money back, I wont be coming here again!". And she hasn't. She won't even come with me when I take the kiRAB - I figure if it's a kiRAB movie then there's bound to be some chattering so as long as the children don't mind it's okay.

Here's some advice - if you are a "talker" then shut the hell up! If you are the victim of a "talker" then kick off , walk out and ask for your money back. Enough of us doing this will make sure that Cinemas put someone in each screen with a backbone who will eject these people. Thirdly, if you happen to be accompannying or going out with a "talker" then dump them now. Anyone who cannot keep their gob shut for 2 hours or neeRAB to ask you what's happening during Scary Date Movie 17 is a moron and a liability - they will only drag you down.

These are not original observations but they are, I'm sure, the opinions and experiences of a significant movie-going section of the population. The Cinema is becoming an expensive and irritating alternative to DVD. I would rather spend my time and money improving the set up at home and enjoying a film in peace.

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying - I LOVE going to the cinema and would dearly love to go again for an evening out with my wife but my last few experiences have put paid to that.
 
That is the problem when you do not have ushers in the cinemas anymore. Mind you in the 70's when we used to go to the kiRAB afternoon film club,the usherette made more noise than the kiRAB!

I agree with the moron comments about talking during films. I have been whispered at quite a few times and with my ears whispering is hard to hear. A lot of the time it is a stupid question like "why don't the baddies wear black hats anymore?"
 
I was going to give the official line, which is: don't go to multiplexes if you can go to an independent cinema instead but...

On Saturday we had tickets to a paid preview of a film I was really keen to see plus a Q&A with the director. The bus took 55 minutes instead of the claimed 35 so we arrived a few minutes after the advertised beginning of the programme. Of course, at independent cinemas you don't get twenty minutes of trailers and adverts; they tend to play a couple of trailers and a few adverts but generally indie cinemas start the film very close to the advertised time.

So first of all the box office cashier took at least three minutes to issue me with tickets I'd already booked by credit card over the phone. By then the film had started. Then we walked into the auditorium to be given a "ssh" finger to mouth gesture by the usher(ette - is there a non-sexist term for the person who checks your ticket?) and told "sit anywhere". I'd specifically booked good seats but instead of showing us to the seats she repeated "sit anywhere" and refused to show us to the correct seats. We ended up sitting at the end of a row, where the view, although acceptable, was nowhere near as good as the seats I'd paid for. And as we struggled to find somewhere to sit, during a very dark scene, with minimal ambient lighting, my wife walked into a pillar and bruised her knee. It's still sore two days later.

Great film by the way: Tell No One, directed by Guillaume Canet who is a drole fellow and gave good Q&A afterwarRAB. But nil points to the Curzon Soho for customer service.
 
I was really looking forward to watching the new Die Hard movie until I found out that it's going to be rated 12a. So it's going to be full of KiRAB. I'm sure the other 3 movies were rated 18.
 
Many films are sacrificing the quality by dropping the age rate so kiRAB can get in.
Saw the Die Hard trailer but it looked like another film messed up by overuse of CGI.
 
Couldn't agree more, that's the reason why I stopped going to the cinema. When my wife and I went to see Return of the King basically for the 3 hours there was a woman behind us who talked non stop (oh isn't he cute, oh you can tell thats a child from behind etc). So have only been once since then to see Sin City, otherwise I buy region 1 DVD's and watch them at home.
 
When i went to see Hot fuzz which was a 15 certificate, two women sneaked in a six year old girl. Actually they didnt even "sneak" her in. They just waltzed past the ticket collector and the little girl openly swanned in behind them. Of course they had not paid for a ticket for her as they would not have got past the first hurdle then as she would have been refused for being underage. I was queing up behind these two women with the little girl and thought it strange as Hot Fuzz was the only film starting withing the next hour. When I saw them openly go in with her i felt like saying something to the ticket collector but then you think "dont get involved". I was sitting near these three and of course the inevitable happened. The little girl started playing up. Also the language and violence in the film was totally unsuitable for a child. Suddenly after an hour two ushers came in and told them to leave. One of the women became very offish and said "Ok you dont have to stand over me, were going". But really they musy have known what they were doing. Someone obviously did complain in the end. What a bare faced cheek by these two women. To openly take a child into an adult film and then moan when they get found out!
 
You forgot the ultimate in 'annoying at the cinema', the mobile phone.

No matter how many trailers they have before the film telling you to switch it off, or posters around telling you the same, there are always a group of little shits with it out texting or calling their mates, or looking at pictures or in one instance, listening to songs on it during the film. The light they emit alone makes you look at them and they can be quite distracting, even if someone is just waving one about, but for those who dont even have the manners to turn the sounRAB on it off, so on the off chance that they NEED to take their phone out, they can use it descreetly and not have it interrupt everyone elses viewing, particularly in the middle of important or climactic scenes.

Paddy :D
 
We don't have an independent cinema that shows mainstream films but there is an arthouse about 15 miles away and I have to agree that the people who go there don't blather their way through the films.
 
Actually I find that the problem with my local multiplex is the ushers themselves are a bunch of spotty teenagers and they are the ones letting their mates cruise from one screen to the next.
 
When we go to the cinema in the boyf's local town there are seats that you can book and pay extra for as they have more leg room which we always try to get if possible. When people come in with "ordinary" tickets the ushers say to them "you can sit anywhere but those four rows in the middle" and every time some stroppy teenagers will completely ignore them and plonk themselves down with their nachos and popcorn and their feet over the seat in front. Inevitably the people who have actually booked and paid for the seats will turn up and find said teenagers ensconced and an unholy row will start. Its sometimes more fun watching them than the film itself!!!
 
Another plus for the indie/arthouse cinemas is they are often licensed so you can buy a glass of wine or bottled lager and take it in with you. For some reason a cinema full of red wine drinkers is a lot more pleasant than one full of cola and popcorn addicts.
 
We had a similar experience - we bought our tickets from the box office for a later performance so that we didn't have to wait in line just before the film started and could enjoy the rest of the afternoon doing other things. The guy behind the counter asked if we wanted "premier seats" which is reserved seating in the best part of the house and with bigger, plusher seats. Fine, I thought, will save the bother of having to arrive 10 minutes before screening to find good seats so I buy them. When we arrived later on (yes, you guessed) somebody in our seats, no difference in seating and had to ask the people to move. What a rip off. I could have sat anywhere I wanted for the same price as it wasn't a different, distinct section either.

Beware of this for anyone who goes to Odeon Printworks or any Odeon that is doing this in the country. It's just a way for getting another couple of quid out of you.

If it's not the public then it's the Cinema owners!
 
Completely agree with most of these observations,especially mobiles. I once politely asked the kid in front of me to stop playing with his mobile as it was distracting,he told me to 'f**k off and sit somewhere else then',and then threatened to take me outside!

And it's not just the cinema,go to gigs/concerts,especially in the smaller clubs/venues like Dingwalls or The Borderline and you'll get the muppets who spend the entire evening standing at the back of the room or by the bar drinking and talking and paying little or no attention to what's happening on stage. Saw one gig where the artist actually stoped playing in the middle of the song and told everyone nattering to 'kindly shut the f**k up',which got a good cheer and response from those of us who were actually LISTENING.
 
The story goes that a famous jazz musician was playing in a club where the some of the audience were more interested in talking and drinking than listening to music. As the evening went on, the noise of chatter and the clink of glasses got too much for one fan, who turned and angrily said "ssshh!" to the talkers.

"But we're playing as quietly as we can," replied the musician.
 
I really fancy going to see Oceans 13 - come on, the first one was a great caper movie even if the 2nd was dire - I might have to take a midweek afternoon off work to avoid the crowRAB. Pity I have to do this just to go to the flicks.
 
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