The Struggle

First moviegoing experience in Milan! So it was a Monday and there's a happy monday promo which makes the ticket 3.5 euros, way less than the usual 8.90 euros. My first movie here was Step Up All In, I specifically chose this film because Step Up films has no story, the real spectacle here is the dancing. Why so? Because all the major cinemas in Milan are dubbed in Italian. Yeah. So they released A Walk Among the Tombstones early here but I couldn't watch it. And I don't know how do they decide the seating, because the ticket box person didn't show me any seating arrangements. So I thought it's the who's in first system, like the one I encountered in the Philippines. But no, it actually has a seating number. Another unique thing here is there's a 5 minute break random in the film. It was literally at a middle of a dialogue and bam! Pause to relax.

This fall-holiday season, there aren't many films I wanna watch in the cinemas (a result of 2 years of prioritizing in Japan). My little list of films only consists of Gone Girl, Interstellar, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies. These are the major ones. The award-season films are not included. WHICH led to the biggest regret of the month: Birdman was shown here in Milan but I found out a day before the screening in which all the tickets were sold out. And this week, Zurich Film Festival is here. And George Clooney's wedding in Venice. hashtagThepainsoflivinginEurope

Anyway, Step Up All In was pretty bad. The flash mob story was, in the Step Up films scope, revolutionary because it didn't involve some tournament. And the dance wasn't even that cool. It looked cool thanks to the super Briana Evigan. And that leading man looked like Chris Evans' stunt double. On a different occassion, I watched Jeff Bridges-starrinThe Giver. It's not bad, but it has all the potential to be amazing. It should be better than Divergent but apparently not. That's a shame. It could be more epic and more thought-provoking, but it ended up talky and bland. Sorry, precision of language; it's quite boring. But the color scheme thing works beautifully. And that overhyped Taylor Swift appearance is only maybe less than two minutes. Hey but who doesn't love Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep?

Anyway, the only films that I would watch that would be screened here in English next month is only Lucy. So that's pretty retarded. Italy is even worse than Japan in terms of movie going.

Buona Sera!

Hi! I'm very honored to introduce this blog's third base camp which is in--drumroll--Milano, Italy! Unbelievable and crazy right? Suddenly this blog just went places. This boring blog. Anyway, I celebrated by staying at home watching two movies back to back (if you're wondering, they're The Rover and Chef) while also accomplishing my first laundry and eating lunch. I know what you must've been thinking: man, this is one lazy Asian over here.

So, good points: new experiences, new friends, all of those new things right?
Bad points: dubbed cinemas and unfriendly locals.

Say whaatt? Dubbed cinemas?
Yep, while the film distribution is pretty good Italian cinema going is a product of the country's history of anti-English/anti-American. Therefore they dubbed all of English-speaking films to their own proud language. They claimed that they have the best dubbers in the world, and from what I've been seeing from the Italian version of trailers, it's true. But fuck that, come on. We're in one of the most famous cities in the world and you can't find an English speaking cinema? Yes you can apparently, but the movies played in those cinemas are limited and not updated ones. And there are only THREE cinemas playing this lingua originale films. Struggle is not over from Japan, guys. Let me get tickets to Coppa della Stelle or some of that three-worded Italian title of The Fault in Our Stars. There are people who needs to watch Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Guardians of the Galaxy in English here.