Movie night

A rare occasion indeed, this evening. Watching DVDs in Carl's Kino is pretty much a commonplace occurrence by now, but actually going to the cinema to see a real live film is something that happens only very, very infrequently. Over a year ago, when I first saw the teaser, I decided I had to see WALL-E. I met Carl when he finished work, we had a quick pint (these people reflected in the mirror in Weirs pub may or may not have been movie-goers also), then an equally quick bite to eat, and then caught the 8.30 showing in the IMC in Dún Laoghaire. Carl has this thing about preferring to watch DVDs at home rather than go to the cinema, and this evening's experience can only have reinforced this preference. I don't know if this is normal now across all cinema complexes, but we were both taken aback by the lack of an actual ticket kiosk. There were ticket vending machines for credit cards only, but apart from that the only way to buy an actual ticket to get into a cinema was to join the queue in either the drinks-and-snacks or the sweets shops. I couldn't imagine a more blatant example of the actual movie experience now being secondary in cinemas: it's more about enticing the audience to spend more money on drinks and popcorn and nachos and sweets. Not a nice start to the movie-going experience.

And what about WALL-E? I have to say we were in agreement in our disappointment. The animation is wonderfully good, but the plot and the characterisations are sadly lacking when compared with the truly wonderful Ratatouille. I'm glad I saw it, and it's good to have it out of my system, but our score out of ten is only seven, I'm afraid.