Welcome to “Practicalities,” a limited series in the Mjoksiglandi universe. (I’ve been reading a lot about comic books recently, can’t you tell?) I suppose if I’m going to discuss practical, everyday issues in a foreign country, I should start with something like public transportation or grocery shopping. But today I will be talking about something even more important: going to the movies.
Here in Tisovec there’s a cultural center where we have a lot of school events. On Tuesdays at 7 PM there’s often a movie. These aren’t brand-new movies, but they’re usually only a few months old. It’s more like Temeku than the theater at the mall. The Tisovec kino shows mostly American movies, with a Slovak, Czech, or French movie every month or so. American movies here are either dubbed or subtitled, of course. If the movie is specifically aimed at kids or families (“Madagascar 2,” for example), it’s usually dubbed; but if it’s for older audiences, it’s usually subtitled. Sometimes the dubbing/subtitling is in Czech, sometimes Slovak. The drawbacks of the kino are that it’s often cold, it occasionally smells noxious, there are no concessions, the bathrooms are usually locked, and there have to be at least ten people for them to show the movie. When I wanted to see “Death Race,” only two other people were there, so I didn’t get to see it. Enough people came to see "Max Payne," which was ridiculous, but couldn't show up to see "Death Race," which had Jason Statham in it. It makes no sense. But I digress. The good things are that there is a movie theater, and that it only costs about €1.70 (less than $2.40) for a show. I’ve seen “Wanted,” “Sex and the City,” “Max Payne,” “High School Musical 3,” and “Twilight” here. “HSM3,” for those curious, had dubbed dialogue and subtitled songs. It was hilarious.
Last week was a very important event in my life, because “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” came out. I’d been looking forward to this movie for probably close to a year, since I’d heard it was coming out. It was scheduled to be released in the US on May 1, and this was significant cause for concern for me. I wasn’t sure when it would come out in Slovakia, and I didn’t think it would still be on in July, when I got home; but I needed to see it. Imagine my surprise when IMDb told me that the movie was coming out in Slovakia on April 30. Furthermore, last Friday was some kind of national holiday, something like Labor Day, so we had no school, and even further more, “Wolverine” was playing at the theater at the mall in Banská Bystrica. So I and an intrepid coworker headed off to see it (well, M wanted to look for shoes, too).
The first thing we discovered was that the movie theater didn’t open until 2:30 on weekday afternoons. When we returned to buy our tickets, we were able to choose our seats, like you would in a real theater. That way we (by which I mean I) didn’t have to wait around and fight with people to get the seats we wanted. As at any normal cinema, there were concessions, and I bought a medium Coke, which was the size of a “small” Coke at Regal. You could also get nachos and candy and popcorn. The door to the theater was locked until maybe ten minutes before the show started. Inside there were nice stadium seats, and some music playing when we first went in. Then the lights went down and we saw three trailers, all with subtitles: “Terminator Salvation,” “17 Again,” and “Star Trek.” After that the movie started. My major problem with the theater was that there’s an extra scene at the end of the credits, and when it started, they turned the film off, so I didn’t get to see it. That was unfortunate. Other than that, it was a good experience.
So that’s my report on movie theaters in Slovakia. The next issue of “Practicalities” will be something actually practical, like why it takes ten hours to get from here to Krakow when it should only take about four.
Footnote: "Star Trek" was bomb and "17 Again" was good, too.
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