Movies is hell

As a recent commenter to my post Reading Is Hell pointed out, movie watching also suffers from the travails of internship, from the slings and arrows of outrageous offspring. We have been to the cinema twice in the last two months, which is remarkable because before that it had been more than two years since we'd been to the movies.

Apart from our non-existent cinematequing, we've been subsisting on offsite backup copies of movies provided by my Smaller Half's brother who obtains them in a manner unknown to us but which almost certainly involves the paying of royalties to any and all copyright holders in accordance with international treaties, arrrrr.

This has been quite good, except my poor old computer struggles a bit with the concept so every 15 minutes I have to pause the movie and persuade my computer not to reboot itself. Also, some films have such a low sound level that the dialogue is frequently interrupted by one or the other of us saying, "What? What did he say? He's going to buy a duck?" Fortunately these two disruptions are complementary so whilst I am fixing the computer we attempt to mutually reconstruct the dialogue.

Also fortunately, in our impoverished mental state, our viewing tastes veer more towards The Avengers and less towards Gosford Park. It's much easier to figure out that the Hulk probably screamed out, "RAAAAH! HULK SMASH!" than it is to decipher the intricate household intrigues of the Edwardian aristocracy, so the audio issues aren't as much of, well, an issue.

We finally did make it to the cinema. The first time, we ruthlessly bunged the Hatchling into the care of the brutal misanthropes at her childcare centre (note: this is obviously a lie. Her childcare centre is fantastic.) and took off into town. We saw an incredible film. The people in it had faces as large as a house. Their voices boomed out like thunder. Not once did the screen try to reboot itself. I think it might have had Richard Gere in it as well but I'm unsure of that.

The second time, we ruthlessly bunged the Hatchling into the care of the brutal misanthropes who are my Smaller Half's brother and mother (note: The childcare centre really is fantastic.) and took off into town. This worked a lot better than when my own brutal, misanthropic mother visited and said, "I really should offer to babysit so you can go to the movies but I'm not going to." Sad trombone.

We went to see the new Bond flick, Skyfall. As mentioned previously on this blob, I was unreasonably gobsmacked by the opening credits, largely because they were colourful and moved around a lot, as movies have tended to in general since the 1950s. Still, regardless of the objective merit of the film, it was a relatively novel experience for me, if I may be permitted to use such a bookish adjective in relation to a movie. So I think in 2014 I might go to the movies again, if they still exist.

I didn't have any instant coffee though. The choc-top is eternal.