Went to see Oceans 13 tonight. Pretty good. I liked it.
My wife treated me to it as part of a Fathers Day present.
Yes I have kids. Three. My youngest turns 22 TODAY! (No kidding). No Grandchildren yet.
But I raised 3 kids. So I know a few things about being a parent, especially a new parent. I know it’s exhausting. I know you’re tired. I know you want to get out of the house. I understand.
BUT YOU DON’T BRING A FUCKING INFANT TO A LOUD, RATED PG-13 MOVIE, ASSHOLES!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
And if you do, when the baby starts crying & screaming, you should regain your sanity and realize what a stupid, rude, self centered mistake you made and get the fuck out. And stay the fuck out. Not cuddle the baby, loudly shushing it. And you certainly shouldn’t get shitty at the manager when she comes and tells you shes had too many complaints about you! One of the people that poor manager had to deal with was my wife. Trust me, you do not want to be on the receiving end when my Italian Love Doll is pissed. And don’t hand me the “we needed to get out and couldn’t find a baby sitter” bullshit! Been there, done that, 3 fucking times. What that means is, YOU STAY THE FUCK HOME!!! Welcome to parenthood you inconsiderate, immature fuck stain! If you don’t like it, next time suck dick!
Geezus Chrysler! I’m going to bring my fucking dog to the theatre next time and get pissy whenever someone complains about his barking.
On the plus side, we did get 2 free passes for another movie from the manager for our inconvenience.
Maybe this movie is cursed. I also had a bad experience at Ocean’s 13.
First of all, the dick in front of me was on his phone for three lengthy cell phone calls during the movie. Meantime, his tweenage son was in and out, presumably trying to see two movies at the same time by bounding back and forth. A few rows behind me were three other tweener boys who had moved away from the parent who had brought them, and alternated talking and tramping around in the back of the theatre.
As for the latter situation, the parent finally came up and bitched them out, and they settled down. Happy Ending.
As for the former, I called management from the phone outside the theatre to report the problem, but they never showed up. I resolved that if he took one more call, I was leaving and asking for movie passes to return another night. I guess he ran out of friends to have call him, though, because he stayed off the phone.
So, tweener boys, if you’re going to text your friends from the first row throughout the whole movie, do you mind holding the phones down where the flashing glare is not visible from the fourth row?
I’ve got a suggestion for the people who run movie theatres: take complaints from people in your theatres via text messaging, and respond to them (with an actual person, not just a text response) in real time.
The theatre managers make no attempt to police their theatres, and I can understand the logic of it: the point of having a 24-screen multiplex is to minimize costs per screen. There isn’t an usher in every theatre like there was an eon ago when I was growing up in a pre-multiplex era, nor will that ever happen again. The only time you get an usher into your theatre at the multiplex is if you leave the theatre, walk down to the front, speak to the people at the ticket counter, and get one of them to come back with you.
By the time you care to go to that much trouble, your moviegoing experience has already been ruined, of course. Sure, they can give you a free pass to another movie, but by that point, that hardly squares the account. What you need is a way of dealing with problem moviegoers before they ruin your evening.
Hence the text message. If you could text the people at the ticket desk with your cellphone from your seat in the theatre, explaining what the problem was, which theatre you were in, and where in the theatre you were, they could send someone in to politely ask the parent to take their crying baby into the lobby, or ask the cellphone talker to end their call, or whatever. You wouldn’t have to leave your seat, so you could text the ticket desk before your blood pressure went sky-high, and the problem would be dealt with while you could still get back to enjoying the movie.
There’s probably some flaw in this idea that I don’t see, but I haven’t heard any other brilliant ideas, so wtf.
Free passes to another movie does me no good unless the manager is also willing to pony up 40 bucks for another night of babysitting. Because I, you know, leave my kids at home when I go to a movie.
The night I saw Zodiac, there was a woman who schlepped all of her kids to the movie. Now, keep in mind that the movie was violent in parts and pretty confusing unless you were taking notes, and between the scared kids and the constant “what happened?” questions, I was getting annoyed. I went out and found the manager, told him about her, and he came in to the auditorium to speak to her instead of asking her to go to the lobby. She got loudly indignant about it, further ruining it for me. Zodiac is now in my Netflix queue, because that’s the only way I’ll really get to see it.
You’d have someone three rows behind you whipping out their phone to send a complaint text to management about the schmuck three rows in front of them who isn’t considerate enough to leave their phone put away during the movie, and then someone three rows behind them … etc.
Having to spend time sorting through incoming traffic to find the actual legitimate complaints amid the dozens of bullshit messages sent by smartass jackholes who made note of the address during a movie and now cheerfully spam the in-box whenever they’re bored and not actually at the theater — that could be a problem.
Possible solution: set up a thousand in-boxes. Put up an LED in each theater advising which address is operative for this screening. Disregard all messages sent to “inactive” addresses during that period. Alternatively, set up only as many addresses as you need but establish some sort of dynamic filter so the visible address rotates and then expires after each movie. Otherwise I guarantee yo-yo teenagers will engage in pointless mischief and make the system unusable.
Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.
I have about given up on the idea of movie theaters at this point (ironically, my breaking point also came during Ocean’s 13). A bunch of teenagers throwing shit at each other up and down 10 rows of seats, spilling drinks, reading their text messages - seriously, who the fuck pays $8 a ticket to sit in a darkened room so they can read their text messages?
I think I’m just going to save up my money for a decent HDTV. Sitting 4 feet from a 32" LCD is probably just as good as sitting 100 feet from a multiplex screen, and if anyone tries to read their text messages in my living room, I can just toss them out my front door. The popcorn’s better at home, too, and it doesn’t cost $16.
Good point - if anyone could send them a text message, then anyone would, but especially the pranksters.
Another alternative to your ideas would be this: you know those airline clubs where you pay a few hundred bucks a year for the privilege of waiting for your plane in a quieter, more comfortable room than the hoi polloi? The major movie chains could have a movie-theatre version of that, for maybe $20-30 a year, or whatever seems to be sufficient to screen out the pranksters.
For your money, you’d get a username and password which you’d need in order to send the text message. That would be it. Oh, maybe they could toss in a couple of coupons for half-price popcorn, just as a cheap perk to help sell the idea, but that’s not a necessity.
That sounds like a case of “my children are equal to adults so I’ll take them to see an R rated movie”. :mad:
Reminds me of When we went to Vegas. We made 2 retarded decisions: First, we went in JULY :eek: :rolleyes::smack: , Second, we stayed at Circus Fucking Circus:eek::eek::rolleyes::rolleyes::smack::smack:
2am in the casino. People are gambling, drinking, smoking, swearing, making out, all sorts of ADULT vices. And some assholes are hanging around with their waste of sperm 5 year olds! In a casino!!! And then they got pissed when the managers told them the kids have to stay on the yellow path and not be near the games! 2AM! WTFUCK?
They have a variant of this at a theatre in south FL. It’s called the “premeire level”. You pay a lot more a ticket, 15.00 or 20.00 I think, but you get balcony seats in giant overstuffed la-z-y boy type chairs, alchohol, free popcorn and ushers throught the movie to get you whatever you want. It’s awesome.
We’ve something very similar to this in KC. I’ve not been, but am reminded why I like the idea every once in a while. I usually go see smaller, independent films, but there was a woman who had her 8ish year old at a screening of Hotel Rwanda.
The Arclight Theater in Los Angeles doesn’t have this type of seating, but it is definitely geared towards people who want to enjoy movies in peace.
You pay anywhere from $10 - $14 for a ticket, but the theaters are extremely well-kempt, and the movies are very well policed – not only for troublemakers, but also for problems with film quality and sound. They take a lot of pride in taking care of the theater and their customers. So even though it’s a solid 35-mile drive for the wife and me, we see the majority of our films there rather than put up with the brats (young and old) at the AMC down the street from us.
We’ve got those over here in Aus too, they’re usually called “Gold Class” cinemas. $30 a ticket, food, dedicated ushers, audience sizes of about 20 people and best of all - Nobody under 18 allowed.
Between the age limit and the ushers, it’s heaven. The pity is that where there was one right near my house in Sydney, the only one in Adelaide is on the other side of town, and I can’t be arsed to use public transport to travel that far for just a movie.
A guy brought his dog to the theater once while I was at a movie. Hand to god. But, it was amazing, the dog seemed to laugh at the funny parts, and got serious at the touching parts. He was really well behaved. Afterwards, I talked to the dog owner and commented on how surprised I was that his dog seemed to enjoy the movie, and the guy says, “I was surprised too because he HATED the book.”
(sorry, just an old joke that my uncle always tells to rapt listeners)
