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“The Omen” and Movie Manners

It’s 06-06-06, bitches! Everything about today’s been freaky as hell so far, with the weather being unnaturally chilly and cloudy, the air thicker than usual and the collective paranoia paying its toll of people early; a friend of mine at the office called in sick today and he doesn’t know what’s got him so ill. F-r-e-a-k-y. So, as you all might or might not know, not only is June 6th the day the Antichrist is born but it’s also the day one of his most important memoirs goes out to movie theaters worldwide: “The Omen.” I went with Smoth to watch a midnight show, and I don’t have much to say about the movie itself other that if you saw the original with Gregory Peck, you’ve seen this one. It’s so faithful that in a way it’s kind of pointless. Also, I’ll be seeing it again because a) I want a technical shot at watching the movie and b) there was a herd of fucking idiots sitting in the row behind us being loud and obnoxious to no end, and around halfway thru the mark the loudest one knew it and was trying to shut the others up, yet in such a way that it was just as bad. They had a fucking rooster ringtone cuckling every other 10 minutes, for crying out loud… and that, my friends, is what I’m gonna talk about today: movie theater etiquette.

We went to this theater, Extreme Planet. Smoth likes going there because the place has this frequent customer card where he pays a monthly free and he gets to watch all of the movies he wants for free, discounts for companions, tokens for the arcade, donuts, popcorn, bitches and anything else your cinema-loving ass desires. It’s a pretty fine deal, actually, and I don’t blame him for wanting to go there… but god damn, you get what you “pay for,” I suppose: this place is smack dab in the middle of what you could call the posh area of the city… the people who are the most well off without being ridiculously rich (though there are some of those there too) all live around this area, called Marbella, and this is the movie theater they go to, and whenever they wnt to get rid of their kids for a couple of hours it’s the theater they send them to. Ever since it opened it’s always been like that: obnoxious kids in packs of anywhere from 5 to 10, all of them more into their posse than the movie they’re “watching” making noise and being assholes. I’ve NEVER liked this aspect of the place… but I think that’s because my tolerance for stuck-up behavior charts in at a -12… even though that back in my high school days there wasn’t a weekend that wouldn’t pass without me and my friends going there to watch the latest releases. Hell, I saw The Matrix, Spider-Man, Episode 1 and other seminal films there. But I think we went because at the time, it was the best cinema experience you could get in Panama; of course eventually other places opened and we migrated, yet Extreme Planet has somehow survived admist having 2 other movie theaters in less than a 1000m radius, and there are a couple of reasons as to why that is, in my opinion.

They have these sexy V.I.P theater rooms where the regular leather seats (oh, yes… leather) are upgraded from your regular stadium grade to flat-out La-Z-Boys, reclining seats so that you fall the fuck asleep while the movie plays. The seats are numbered so you can choose beforehand where you want to sit (usually you just buy the ticket and get there early so you can pick the best seats possible… kind of like a free-for-all; it gets brutal, but I’ll get to that in a minute) and you can of course bring food from the place’s Bennigan’s restaurant and, this being my favorite, alcohol from the mini bar. Also, the nationally-regulated ticket fees only help their case; $3.99 a pop, children and senior citizens half price. Wednesdays is half price for everyone ($2.00). For leather seats, insane THX/Dolby/TheOtherOne sound ans stadium size theaters. Not bad for a semi-3rd world country. V.I.P rooms are 6 bucks, but that’s only at Extreme Planet, as well as the food and booze and the like that make the place stand out on it’s own and my hat’s off to them. But FUCKING mierda, I don’t go to the movie theater to listen to some fucking idiots ask about the movie and laugh at it to try and overcome the need to overcome their fear. We were watching the movie and, this was after the flick’s halfway mark, one of the girls in their group (the loud, obnoxious one) was laughing with her clown-shoes boyfriend or whatever and the guy who saw we weren’t appreciating the commentary track they were doing behind us asks her (mind you, this guy was easily 6 seats away from her, so he was talking the same way you talk to a friend at a party):

“Hey! What’s so funny, huh? Why are you laughing? I don’t think it’s funny.”

“Huh?,” she replies, trying to calm down her giggles.

“What’s so funny, ‘fire crotch?’ (sorry, he said her name but I forgot so I just gave her a more appropiate name to illustrate my point) Is this thing funny to you?”

“Shit, man… I laugh because if not I’ll be scared as hell, dude!”

Oh, how lovely. She doesn’t want to be scared… watching a scary movie. Seriously, this crap boggles the mind. Only in Panama would you go into a scary movie and have the audience screaming at random to scare audience members, giggling and laughing to overcome their own fears while watching a scary movie and simply being obnoxious little brats. Seriously, if you’re gonna go watch “The Omen” or any other scary movie just to laugh so you don’t have to deal with the fact you’re shitting your pants in fear, do me and everyone else who wants to enjoy the fucking movie a favor and stay the fuck home. The last thing I want in my midnight showing of Antichrist action is some fire crotch asking shit and giggling because she’s scared of a movie she can’t understand. Seriously… what assholes. That’s why I don’t go there anymore; the time prior to watching “The Omen,” I saw “X-Men” with Smoth as well, and that was acceptable.. a rarity around those parts. “The Da Vinci Code?” The movie reel fucked up and there was no movie for 5 minutes. That’s happened before, too; no sound sometimes, 1/3 of the picture’s on the wall to the side of the theater, and other random shit like that that just mindfucks me every time I set foot in one of those theaters. If I hadn’t seen the original “Omen,” I’d be pissed as hell.

These assholes also take cell phone calling to a whole new level. For some reason they forget to put the frickin thing on silent or turning it off so whenever there’s an important serious scene the thing is fucking ruined when I hear the Animaniacs theme song blazing from some cell phone 5 rows behind me only to hear in on this douche bags fucking conversation about buying diapers and tampons for the wife who I can hear perfectly well, screaming on the other side of the line as if her hubby was in a bus or something and he can’t hear well in the dead silent movie theater. This happens everywhere, but in Extreme Planet it’s so obvious it’s borderline obscene. Like, seriously… can’t people just be a little more considerate? But of course not, and specially not here, since a lot of the people who come here are either used to not being told they’re acting like dicks, or haven’t been taught to be anything other than bratty shit eaters. Dude, I know I’m loud and rattle cages around my vicinity by default but fucking mierda if i don’t know when to shut the fuck up when I have to. In a way I believe it’s great that most of these assholes go to Extreme Planet though; that way I can enjoy my movie over at Cinepolis without worrying about some asshole ruining my movie.

Gonna take a crack at it again today. Maybe SwissDoll still wants to go.

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