I went out to the cinema to watch a film this evening. It was the newest Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki film "Ponyo".
I saw it at the Showroom cinema, right next door to where I work, so that was convenient. The ticket cost me £6.90 and I was slightly late but there were so many adverts that I ended up waiting around for the film to start. The picture was out of focus when it started but the seats were comfy.
The film started, and... it's a really good film!
It was dubbed into English, but as you'd expect from the localisation of a Studio Ghibli title, it's top quality and uses great actors - no complaints from me!
The film broke halfway through. The lights came up and some music started playing. I counted the number of people in the audience; 18 people in total. Wow. I had thought it was nice to have two entire rows to myself to lounge around and perch with my head on the seat in front! After a few minutes, someone from the audience went to fetch someone, and after a few minutes I followed to investigate... and the other person came back. A member of staff told us to sit tight and wait for the film to come back.
"Excuse me", I piped up with a question which had been burning within me. Which was going to distract me from the rest of the film if I did not get an answer right away: "You don't happen to know what the music we're listening to at the moment is?" :D
"It's... from a soundtrack, um, another Japanese film..."
"Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" spoke a voice from behind me in the audience.
"Ah! I knew I'd heard it from somewhere! Thanks!" :D
See, this is the kind of cinema The Showroom is. ^_^
The film started again, and lasted about a minute before the film stuck on one frame and we watched it warp and melt away.
"OMG! Ponyo just burst into flames!!!" T_T came a cry from the audience.
And we waited again, but the film restarted after much less of a delay this time. The sound was still a little messed up, making a somewhat surreal film even moreso.
But, this experience didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film at all; as I said, it's a wonderful film. As always with Miyazaki films, it's got the same old undercurrent of "children are cute", "hey kids - befriend weird things; it's ok!", "destroying the environment is super-bad", and "females are the more-amazing of the two genders". That's not a bad thing, it's just what I expected, I suppose. Some parts are very odd and never end up being explained, which is also to be expected. Hmm, I guess there's not much more I can say really without giving anything away. It's a good film, I liked it more than Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, I'll leave it at that. ^_^
I might well get it on DVD when a home version comes out, so I can watch it uninterrupted and in focus. ^_^
If you don't care about watching this whole film, watch the trailer, and you'll know the entire plot to the film! That's terrible! T_T Just as well I only looked at that after seeing the film! I'm only linking to it so that anyone who's seen the film can see what I mean!
