Kung Fu Panda and the Pirate Filmer

We hadn't been to see a silly children's film with the usual suspects for quite some time, so for Kung Fu Panda we rounded them up and headed for the local theater, which has recently remodeled. And they remodeled their fees, too, and are surprisingly now cheaper. They must be having trouble filling the theaters. Adults in the accompaniment of children attending the matinee can get in for children's prices - also the teenager who forgot to take his student ID card (grrrr) was able to get in for kid's prices. Okay, for 25 €, I'll watch Kung Fu Panda, although the party last night was wonderful and long and I think I had one whiskey too much.

The film is a Dreamworks one, they do lots of hairy figures, now that they have hair figured out. They need work on snakey-ness, that one didn't look right.

Let's see, the plot was the usual one: outcast bumbling main figure overcomes bad guy, saves the world/country/village and becomes a hero. Did I miss anything?

There were very few jokes for the adults to get, and lots of cartoon Kung Fu. The kids roared. Just loved it. Even the teeny thought it was not bad.

There was this strange sound two seats down during the film, some guy had his backpack on his lap during the whole thing. As the credits began I realized what the sound was - it was a video camera. And the guy was peering into his backpack that was lighting up his face. What cheek! And what do you do?

I whispered to the guy collecting trash behind me that it looked like he had a video camera, the trash guy went away briefly and then returned. They video guy had his kid with him, and waited for most people to go before he left. We stayed for the last shot, which was not worth the stay. The guy caught up with us at the ice cream stand outside, but did not say anything, and I didn't either.

Maybe I was mistaken and he was emailing on his Crackberry. But why would you do that inside your backpack, not out in the open? And if he was filming - why go to all the danger of getting caught for a crappy copy? In front of your kid? Or maybe they don't get caught, because there is no way to stop them and search them.

Anyway - don't bother for this film. It kind of looks like they had to do something nice for all those rich Chinese out there now wanting to have movies made for them, as Spiegel pointed out.