Breaking The Law

So I'm sitting here at work on a slow Saturday and figured I'd use this time to catch up on some posts. Our work policy forbids the use of personal e-mail, blogs, and social networking sites while at work, but I feel like rebelling today.

Midnight Premieres of Summer Blockbusters are good! We went to the midnight showing of The Dark Knight on Thursday. I can vouch for all of the reviews you've read that say the movie is fan-freaking-tastic. But what makes the movie-going experience all the more fun is going to the midnight opening with all the other hard-core movie fans.

I've been to the midnight openings of Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, and The Incredible Hulk so far this summer. The Dark Knight was the largest of all these openings by far. We went to the theater in Southdale and they must have been showing this movie on over a half-dozen screens. Typically, as was the case with the other midnight premieres I've seen, the theater will usually have it on one or two screens. On Thursday night, we got our reserved tickets and the usher just told us the number on our tickets were irrelevant and that we should just grab a seat in any theater that has a seat left. The mall was long closed, but the entire south, east, and west parking lots were full of cars until after 3 am. It was quite the event. I'd never seen a crowd this size at a midnight premiere; not even for Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

The highlight of the evening was probably about 20 minutes into the film when there were some "technical difficulties" with the film reel. The film basically just came to a halt, complete with the audio slowing down and lowering it's pitch like when you're listening to a cassette tape and the batteries die on your Walkman (if anybody still listens to their Walkman anymore). Then the uproar from the audience came. So what does the theater staff do? They send some employee -who looked and sounded like the Squeaky Voiced Teen character on The Simpsons- to address the crowd. Poor kid. He was probably shitting his pants up there, but the audience was civil for the most part and didn't hassle him too much. Lucky for him that we all left our pitchforks and torches our cars.