But there was no question I was going to see the latest Trek film, Star Trek: Into Darkness in a theater. I thoroughly enjoyed the last entry from J.J. Abrams. So much so that I saw it twice. So you can see there was never any question. Still, I didn’t rush out on the first night.

Today, I decided to see the film down in Cordele. The only other nearby theater showing it around the same time was in 3D and I’ve seen enough 3D films to know that means a two hour headache for yours truly. So, knowing some schools are already out, off I went hoping that it wouldn’t be a crowded matinee….

There’s a sense of irony to that and you’ll see why shortly!

When I arrived at the theater, the ticket counter was closed with a note to buy tickets at the concession stand… Okay… Fair enough, I could order my popcorn, coke, and a ticket, all on one check!

This is when things got confusing. The clerk told me that the film was to the left and said something I didn’t entirely follow about the Great Gatsby. I saw a theater on the left with Star Trek over the door. When I walked into the utterly deserted theater, the Great Gatsby was playing?

Hmm… Okay, well, she did mention Great Gatsby so I thought maybe they were just testing the equipment or something and sat down. After a few minutes I started watching the clock. Shortly, the time Star Trek was set to begin was passing… And the Great Gatsby was rolling right along….

Out into the lobby… no one… not a soul… not the clerk I had bought my ticket from, not another movie goer…

I saw next to the theater I had just exited was one with Great Gatsby over the door… Maybe she had meant Star Trek was on in there… Makes sense doesn’t it?! I Entered just long enough to see the Lone Ranger?! Exiting, I looked high and low and could find no one. And each theater I peeked into was empty. No clerks, no other patrons… And no where was Star Trek playing.

One more time, I poked my head into the first theater. Still the Great Gatsby playing to an emtpy room in the theater that had Star Trek over the door. And then into the theater one more time which had Great Gatsby over the door. And this time it was dead silent.

Life was beginning to feel like the opening frames of a surreal film!

Returned to the lobby again, I ran into the lone clerk and explained I couldn’t figure out where my film was playing. She poked her head into the theater that had Great Gatsby over the door, confirming that was in fact where it was supposed to be. She saw the same dark screen and said she’d find out what was wrong. I went back in and sat in the dark and waited.

Five minutes later, the screen came to life. She popped in to check on things and I thanked her. The last trailer was…. you guessed it, The Lone Ranger. And then… the screen went dark once more…

I waited a minute thinking, surely… no… yep, no film… I started for the door but encountered the clerk before I got out. She said she was on her way to find out what was wrong. After a bit the trailers started again… They were rather less interesting the second time through and I kept wishing I could hit fast forward.

Right after the Lone Ranger trailer… the screen went dark once more. At this point, I was thinking I may have entirely wasted my afternoon, but gotten an insane story out of the deal!

Clerk came in and said that she had gotten someone else to look at the equipment. Wow there are two employees and as far as I’ve seen one patron…

A little time passed and finally Star Trek began! Thank you for not making me sit through the trailers yet again!

I’ll save comment at length on the film for another time, but even 45 minutes late, it was worth every second. While I was not surprised by who Benedict Cumberbatch’s character turned out to be, they told the story quite well. And there were enough unexpected twists along the way to not remotely notice that two hours had passed when the credits finally closed on my cinema experience.

I don’t know if anyone else ever showed up to watch any of the shows that started after mine, but even when I left, I only saw the clerk and one other person. What a twilight zone experience! I’m sure my ticket, popcorn, and coke did not even pay to keep the lights on, but I’ve rarely had such a novel experience so who can complain?

The post An Entertaining Afternoon At the Theater appeared first on Mark E Tisdale.

I’d been looking forward to the new Green Lantern movie for awhile now. High among the many superhero comics I grew up reading was Hal Jordan’s heroic Green Lantern. Honestly, it’s not one of the comics I would have expected to ever see on the big screen. Surely heroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man are a lot more well known to the masses and their powers a bit less fanciful by comparison. After all, Green Lantern features an intergalactic corp of police officers who wield an emerald ring that creates 3-D constructs based on their will-power. Enter the unlikely hero that is Hal Jordan,who happens to be at the right place when a dying Green Lantern is looking for a successor. The ring picks him because he is without fear. Are you still with me, that’s just a taste of the origin story!

Friday morning when I looked at Rotten Tomatoes, I saw the critics universally panned the movie. The interesting thing I noticed was that the audience reactions were almost entirely in the other direction. So, I followed my heart Saturday and stopped in to see the movie while out running errands, and I’m so glad I did! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. In fact, it’s very rare for me to suggest a film could be longer, but I think Green Lantern would have benefited from a bit more time to tell such a huge story. Hopefully there will be more films in this series since having covered the origin of Hal’s Green Lantern, future films wouldn’t need that time to explain the characters and concepts behind Green Lantern.

Today, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are about 25% for critics but 62% positive for audience members, I think that’s rather surprising. Maybe it speaks to the dedicated comic geeks who would see the film, maybe not.

There was a family who were sitting uncomfortably close to me in the theater. Really who sees three open seats next to someone and use all three of those seats in a theater filled with open seats? They were still less annoying than the person three rows in front of me who spent the entire time texting (from the moment he sat down before the previews until the end of the film). I digress… often… Anyway, the strangely familiar family beside me seemed (from their numerous comments) to be largely unfamiliar with Green Lantern, the characters, etc. and they still seemed to have a genuinely good time. So, while I would have left the movie unsure whether John Q Public would enjoy it was much as a comic geek would, maybe it has more broad appeal than I would have guessed at first.

Without a doubt, the DVD will be on my wish list and I hope the film rakes in enough $$ to warrant follow-ups. Bravo to the writers, producers, cast and crew of this film. It was two hours of a beloved comic book brought to life and I’m glad I took a chance on it.

The post Green Lantern Two Hours Well Spent appeared first on Mark E Tisdale.

Isle of Skye

And look at that scenery! Is it any question why a fantasy story would be filmed in such a land?

I found out after seeing the trailer that Stardust was based on a story by Neil Gaiman. At the time, I wondered why I had not read what I presumed to be a graphic novel, by him. It was, in fact, apparently an actual novel. Other than his Vertigo work, I’ve only read a book of short stories. Such is my loss, and I must rectify it soon.

The movie was, in my opinion, fantastic. It was, like much of Gaiman’s work, populated by characters that were every bit as living and breathing as you and I. They had quirks, strengths, and foibles. Even characters who were the back drop to the main ones had their own personalities.

I’ve heard said that there are no new stories, that through out our history on this world we’ve told them all. And that may well be true. The heart of this fantasy, like so many fantasies, is a love story. And like so many of our lives and the stories we weave, sometimes what we want at the outset, and what we want at the end are entirely different things. Familiar plots or not, in the hands of a great story teller, they can still be a wonderful thing.

There are some grusome scenes like the fairy tales of old, but some of the worst is implied off screen, but I think based on my opinion and the giggles and oohs and ahhs in the theater, that this film is great for the young and old and that forever young heart in us all.

Go see it – tell me what you thought.

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