Having a Blast at the Movies

As our planned Saturday excursion fell through, due to the ridiculously warm weather in Chicago (I don’t like or desire 50 degree days in February — they’re just plain ugly), I took the family and my nephews to see “Coraline” in 3D. We decided to go to the 4:00 show, just in case the flick was too intense for the kids under 10. It was a very good movie, although a seat closer to the middle of the theater would’ve been nicer, to take advantage of the 3D to the utmost. The show was a sellout, the place packed with families and young adults on dates. I still can’t get used to seeing movies in the daytime, even when the weather is miserable or I’m trapped in another city with nothing to do. But whatever. I know it’s a rather quaint notion that a matinee should make you feel guilty. It’s also old-fashioned to think that you should filter a child’s intake of movies to match their maturity level, as all the parents who bring their toddlers to slasher movies will attest. Such a fuddy-duddy I am!

But the trailers! Ah, me, if a kid (or any other sane person) can sit through the movie trailers on the big screen and not feel assaulted, then let him or her watch whatever’s playing. Zombie Nazi porn starring Paris Hilton, for all I care. If you can make it through the trailers relatively pain-free, your synapses have been fused to such a degree that you should be sent into space to fight for our species’ survival, like in “Alien II.” You can take it, you’re an interplanetary Marine.

We were shown one trailer on Saturday for a new animated movie called “9”. Presented by legendary Tim Burton and visionary filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (which means I guess, that the film will have three endings, all unsatisfying, and all involving balletic explosion sequences), “9” is some post-apocalyptic thingie about a homunculus created by a scientst to carry on the human “spirit” in the desolate landscape. If you like your trailers to give you vertigo, then I’m sure you’ll love the movie. But the sound! The volume had to be cranked up to at least 80 decibels! My shirt was vibrating from the noise!

Sure, ol’ Grandpa Finn Garner does have his hearing problems, and he got them from, all together now kids……excessive noise!

But that excessive noise was experienced in punk bars and at Ramones concerts, places we all knew would be loud. By the ripe old age of 19, I had permanent damage and a ringtone in my ears that makes the world sound like bacon frying in a pan. It sucks, but I did it to myself.

On the other hand, one wouldn’t expect a movie trailer to leave one bleeding from one’s ears — perhaps one should just stick with the TV from now on.