Movie of the Week Part III: The Painted Veil

Why do people act like dicks at free screenings?

I've been to a bunch of free screenings this year and there is one constant.

People act like they are not AT THE MOVIES.

I don't care if it was free. It's still a movie. Turn off your cell phone and shut the fuck up.

Because this was the last screening I'll probably go to in 2006, it was like God gave me a "Best of the Worst Moviegoers"

We had...

• Two cell phones ringing
• A couple sitting in front of us talking in Spanish every three minutes
• A woman in a down coat who kept shifting in her seat against her coat making that annoying sound that down coats make.
• A couple who came in 30 minutes late and walked into the middle of the theater blocking views because for some reason they thought that there would still be some prime seating real estate left
• A woman sitting right in front of me who had a hearing aid with a little red light flashing that was hypnotic.
  
• An old man who kept making loud comments to the movie.
• A woman who got out of her seat to let someone out to go to the bathroom/concessions and decided to take this opportunity to STRETCH and block the view.
• Some guy who chose the quietest parts of the movie to crumple his paper bag
• These old people who yelled at someone who stood in front of them during the credits saying that, "the movies not over for us."
  

Anyway, how was the movie? Not sure. I think it was okay. It felt the best scenes from a book as opposed to a seamless movie. The acting was great. I felt like we needed to know more about why Walter (Ed Norton) was the way he was. The ending was VERY anticlimactic. Not that every ending needs to be climatic but it shouldn't feel like we just ran out of story.

Then again, I was so distracted that under different circumstances I might have enjoyed it more.