Monday, March 16, 2009

Anatomy of a Movie Date


So last night, we boarded a train and headed to Bern to catch an English-language showing of the Watchmen. This post is not going to be about the movie itself, save to say I loved it and was really impressed by how closely it stuck to the graphic novel, which I also love.

No, this post is about going to see a movie here. The movie was not showing in English in Fribourg, so travel to Bern was a must. We got to the theater around 6:45 to buy tickets for the 7:30 showing. Tickets cost 17CHF or a little over $14 each. Mr K grabbed a 16oz bottle of coke and I got a small bag of gummy bears - another 10CHF, though I suppose that's pretty close to concessions prices in the US, too.

The theater itself was tiny - only one screen! Even funnier, when you bought your tickets, you were assigned seating -we were in row 8 and I was in seat 16. The nice thing about theaters here is the seats are huge and cushy and impeccably clean. People don't talk on their phones. No one brought their kids along (which for this movie in particular was an excellent choice.) The movie-going experience was actually pleasant - a far cry from what I remember from the US. With just a couple exceptions, I quit going to movie theaters a few years back when the bad behavior just got to be too much to take. It was nice to go see a movie and actually hear each and every line of dialogue.

Halfway through the movie, there was a short intermission, coupled with an ad imploring us to "Go Eat Some Ice Cream!" - ice cream is the movie treat here. I think this movie is showing with an intermission in the US as well - it's about 2 hours and 45 minutes long. However, intermission is pretty much standard here. We had an intermission when we went to see Wall*E and Mr K says both movies he's been to without me also had intermission.

One last tidbit taken from the ticket: notice at the top, it says "WATCHMEN (E/D/F)"? That means the movie showed in English, but with German and French subtitles. I thought it was really interesting to see subtitles in two different languages at the same top - German on top, French on the bottom.

There you have it - our night at the movies:

26CHF for train fare for two
34CHF for two tickets
+ 10CHF for snacks during the movie.
___________________________

Ouch, I shouldn't have added that up!

2 comments:

Jürg said...

the theatre i usualy go to has no intermissions and also those über-annoying cellphone-talkers etc...

i'm addicted to cinemas but i also get kinda scared away of those places more and more... :(

time for a awesome home-cinema!

oh i forgot: the theatre i'm talking about is in austria though. but it's almost the same on this side of the rhyne. (might be the infamous 'wild east'. :)

Carl E said...

When I read this post, I thought of the ONLY time we've gone out to see a movie in the cinemas here in Brussels. If you want to see an American movie in English, you have to make sure it says "V.O." or Version Original. You'll then see the move in English, but there will still be French and Dutch subtitles. ;-) No intermissions though....thats kinda weird!! :-)