CINEMA COMPLEX

Well, I had a kind of a novel experience this weekend when I actually got up off my sofa, headed out of the house and went to the cinema for the first time in I don’t know how long. I’m pretty sure whatever movie it was I last went out to see had actual sound, and I’m fairly sure it was in colour, so it can’t have been that long ago, but I can’t be precisely sure which film it was and when it was.

It could have been a tale of the boy wizard from when the actor playing him was actually still a boy, or maybe it was some strange new spin on the “Star Trek” franchise where William Shatner was played by somebody else, but, whatever it was, it quite obviously had something about it to dissuade me from entering the hallowed portals of a picture house for quite a few seasons.

No matter. If I was interested enough to go out and watch it there’s a fair chance that I’ve since bought it on shiny disc, so if I go and look for it, I might very well work out what it was, although whatever it was, it seems that it was not all that memorable. It’s sad really, because I really used to enjoy going to the cinema a lot and still have my subscription to “Empire” magazine although I rarely sit down and read it. Instead it arrives once a month and, after flicking through it, it is returned to its ripped formerly vacuum-packed packaging and is placed on top of the pile with all the others waiting for that oft-expected and possibly never-to-come day to come when I find the time to read it.

Every so often, I think that I really should cancel that subscription but then an issue turns up with an “unmissable” feature that restores my faith and so I let it carry on, no doubt causing much grief to the loyal old postie and then removing about 312 cubic centimeters of room from my living space each and every month. Perhaps I am still a completist at heart, or perhaps I’m still working on building that film library I once thought so vital, but realistically I may very well be either too lazy or too stupid to be bothered looking into how to cancel the standing order. After all, pretty much every other subscription I’ve ever taken out has been to a magazine that has since folded, so why should this one prove to be quite so tenacious?

The film that finally dragged me back into the world of public movie watching was the new version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” which I’d heard very good things about, and, to be fair, it was a pretty good film, although, at times, its two-and-a-bit hour running time managed to somehow seem longer than the six-hour version that the BBC made with Sir Alec Guinness way back in 1979. Nowadays, it’s a period movie. When the old version was made, it was (almost) contemporary. I guess that this sort of thing happens a lot when you start to pile on the years as much as I have.

The plot was pretty much the same though, and it was fun trying to work out which actors were playing which parts from the original. The tall, pipe smoking one, played in the original by future “Last of the Summer Wine” stalwart Michael Aldridge, was now played by a very short actor, and the foppish one played so memorably by future René prototype Bernard Hepton, had transformed into a bald actor, although I suspect that the bow tie was common to both. More fascinating was the range of office accoutrements on display, from ancient PABX units to stationary lifts, you really do start to wonder how we got anything done back in those days.

What I particularly liked was the understated nature of the whole piece. I kept on realising that there were moments that in a typical modern Hollywood spy movie would have to be overstated. The brutal deaths on display in this movie were generally only really seen after the fact, without any writhing close ups of the type more typical nowadays, and even I started to wonder where the snipers – and subsequent slo-mo leap to safety in a shower of glass - were whenever someone stood in front of a window. There wasn’t even one helicopter gunship to be seen, either.

I guess it’s just not that kind of a movie, and thank the Lord for that.

Nevertheless, there’s the cream of British acting talent on display, playing at the top of their game, although if you ask me (and I’m not really sure anyone actually did), the boy Cumberbatch steals the movie right out from under the lot of them.

The cinema experience had other things that I had managed to forget, or possibly just block out. One ticket cost more than a month’s DVD rental contract does. It would appear that cinema managers really do believe that the only form of music that they can possibly pipe into an auditorium as it fills up is techno, whilst I sat longing for just the merest hint of some Bach to mellow me into the mood.

The adverts remain as annoying and never-ending as ever, although the biggest laugh of the day came with “The Science of Awesome”. I snorted derisively and very loudly at that one, I’m not too proud to admit. Strangely, the advertised times for films to begin screening never seem to warn you that you have a good twenty minutes grace because of all that clutter, except for the one time you do allow for them and turn up whilst the movie’s well under way.

Bitter…? Me…?

Trailers came and went for a forgettable stack of nonsense, mostly with one-word titles, and they are now punctuated with little “blipverts” for cinema passes between each trailer which was new to me, although, amid all the bonkersness and trying to quietly boo at a trailer for something claiming Shakespeare didn’t write anything (shame on you for taking part, Sir Derek…) I did spot a horror movie that seemed to have been shot in Lyme Park, which is slightly interesting for someone who pays no attention of any consequence to local affairs. The seats were at least comfortable, the floors were not as sticky as I remember they used to be, and I wasn’t sat in front of a noisy idiot or behind someone in a big hat, and when I got outside, my car was still in the car park and it wasn’t raining.

All-in-all then, a pretty satisfying trip out.

I wonder what will persuade me to go back next time…?