Us men (myself, Brett, Josh, Dominik and Aleksi) went to see 300 for what was to become our inaugural Manday Movie Night, an opportunity to see stupidly macho films that ooze testosterone from the screen. And even though there was a female in our presence (looking at you Grace!), the fairer sex is allowed to attend, providing they enjoy explosions and shouting. We'll see how far it goes, but the concept behind it was buoyed by the fact that the same cinema is showing all three previous Die Hard films next week to gear people up for Die Hard 4.0. So we're going to see Die Hard (to my mind, the greatest American action film ever made - I wouldn't go as far to say the world's best as there's always Hard Boiled) on the big screen! For cheap! With Japanese subtitles! Tempted to go see Die Hard With A Vengeance as well, but we'll see. Still, it was such a wonderful sight to see I couldn't stop thinking about it all through 300, and made me fall in love with the cinema in an instant.Anyway, so not only is there an arcade a couple of floors below, but we also got tickets for 1000 yen thanks to our student cards. Yet we haven't worked out why that is the case, as the official price list states the student price is 1500 yen. Maybe we have special gaijin treatment, or they just consider us to be in the handicapped category. Then there's the store, selling all kinds of movie merchandise and relevant programs, like the one I'm holding in the picture, and the snack counter. I got myself a beer set with chicken nuggets. Yes, a beer! To drink at the movies! And they served it to me on a tray I could bring in with me. How convenient. What's more, there's no denying that this is a Japanese cinema, from the faux-traditonal robes the staff are required to wear, to the bamboo encased in glass and zen garden beneath the floor as you head to your screen. Wacky and marvellous in equal measure.
This isn't all to poo-poo the Movix in Shijo, my regular multiplex. It's perhaps a more convenient location and is perfectly functional (the digital lens projection screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End looked stunning and perhaps increased my enjoyment of the film), but the Toho Cinema just seems a little more...magical. Maybe I'd just been missing the pre-screening notices missing from the Movix, which instead has a series of short stop-motion animations featuring a couple of bunnies and their carrot nemeses. But Toho had a non-sequitorial Shrek ident (with the green ogre chancing the 'S' of 'Toho Cinemas' to resemble the 'S' of 'Shrek'), a Dolby ident featuring the recycled-rubbish stylings of Stomp (weren't they big, like, ten years ago?), and a hilariously awful song telling you not to smoke/talk/kick the chairs in front. It's not like I liked these teeny segments, but they were part of the cinema experience I'd been missing.
Of course, we got the usual trailers, with some of the worst cases of voiceover announcing I've ever heard. Gone are the hallowed vocals of Don LaFontaine, Hal Douglas and Redd Pepper, hello completely inappropriate Japanese guy! For Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, they just subtitled the original moody and mysterious voice, only to have a completely different voice cheerfully announce "HAREE POTAA to Hushichou no Kishidan!". Similarly, the trailer for The Messengers had it's creepiness completely quashed when it was announced it had been renamed "GOSUTO HAUSU!" (maybe alluding to absolutely nuts 70's J-horror Hausu). But at least we got Bruce Willis introducing the Die Hard 4.0 trailer in partial Japanese (even if he's no match for his Japanese double). However, it has to be Japan's anti-piracy "Save Our Movies" campaign which provides the biggest laughs. An overly sincere voice advises us on the dangers of piracy coupled with wonderful paintings of dodgy looking men taping films in the cinema or selling bootleg DVDs, as onlookers scream and cry in despair. Best part has to be the painting of the teenager downloading a film off the internet while his friend/brother/playmate sleeps in the bed opposite. The maniacal grin on his face and his non-mouse-clasping hand in claw-like contortion is just so over-the-top, it's hard to take seriously.
Speaking of things that are hard to take seriously, I should probably actually talk a little about 300. And yes, it is perhaps the most ridiculously overblown slice of hard men doing hard things since the Stath killed a lot of people very well in Crank. It all looks rather nifty, a lot of people die in slow-motion, and there's plenty of flesh to keep both boys and girls happy (see, Manday Movie Night doesn't discriminate). Xerxes is perhaps the silliest villain in recent memory, and sometimes it's earnestness is just plain daft, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It also makes you wish everyone nowadays went around talking in clever ye-olde-speak-style quips, and the lines from the trailer have become so instantly legendary, I was giggling in anticipation when they finally got round to saying them. The controversy surrounding it's historical inaccuracies and supposed anti-Iranian agenda was completely out of proportion - let the record show it's based on a graphic novel, not a textbook, and it's narrated from the point of view of a Spartan anyway - who I was likened to mid-way through the movie, so pretty much every scene then on, I was David Wenham (ooh-da-lally!). Hell, I deliberately didn't shave my beard off to go see it and if I didn't like it, I would have shaved it off by now...though I'm tempted to style it like Hans Gruber in readiness for Monday...sorry, Manday.
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