Reflections on Movie Night.

First, the bad news.

While we started off with a good running in the JIBs...the Muqata has been overtaken in almost every single category! What is this?! This blog has hundreds of readers...where are they?! Unless...maybe most of you are really Arabs who hate this blog. Could that be? If you haven't voted in the JIBs yet (here are the reasons and links to vote for me)

And now, on to the regularly scheduled post.

Spiderman seeing his blog persona?

The Mrs. and I rarely go out to movies, and I can even count the number of movies we've seen in the past 5 years in the theater on one hand.

So...last week, we went to see Spiderman 3. With Lag Ba'Omer having come and gone, we went out with some friends to Cinema City, Israel's coolest cinema. Since we rarely go out, we treated ourselves and paid extra money with our friends to get upgraded seats.

Upgraded?

It's like flying First Class instead of Coach.

Picture the following: Before the movie, you arrive early with your prepaid tickets and reservation to a private VIP lounge. Sitting down with your friends, all the food in the lounge is free (well, you did pay extra!!) -- eat and drink as much as you like.

Champagne and Wine...ice cream (Ben & Jerry)...soft drinks...fresh cut fruit and vegetables...coffee, espresso, latte, tea...take your pick...it's all there for you to eat as much as you wish.

When it's time for your movie to start, the movie hostess announces that the movie is about to begin, and you exit the VIP room directly into the private balcony of the movie theater.

You can't even see the "coach class" seats below!

With only about 40 seats, the VIP exclusive treatment means you get a large leather seat with electronic controls (and footrest!) that competes with LAY-Z-Boy chairs (or first class seats on British Airways). With mini tables between the seats, there is ample room for the food you bring with you from the "lounge"...ice cream, popcorn and drinks. You get the same wide screen movie experience with stomach churning Dolby Surround-Sound TM, and yet, you get pampered with additional luxuries and extras.

Now, so why is it so much better to see movies here? Not because there are tons of commercials before the actual movie starts, but because there are now COOL "only in Israel" commercials!

What's a COOL "only in Israel" commercial? Where it asks you Jewish related trivia questions on expressions, and you have to figure out what the Jewish source is. I'll try to have some examples in a later post.

About the movie itself...

Well, movies at the theatre are apparently not meant for my wife and I. As on our first movie date, she fell asleep during the movie -- I assumed because I was just too boring a person. (Luckily for me, she married me anyway) I guess the extra comfortable seats in the VIP section caused her to fall asleep...again. (I didn't take it personally).

I liked the movie, since its exactly how I would expect a comic book to be thrown onto a movie screen -- Dizzying digital ink with computer enhanced graphics.

Now, if there were going to be a Spiderman movie based on the JBlogosphere, or the Jewish world, who would the villains be?

1. CANDYMAN! This guy from the shul, larger than life with a tallit-bag full of weaponized candies to be thrown.

2. Hot Chanie. 'nuff said.

3. Holy Hyrax, Batman! Ooops, sorry, wrong comic.

4. The Gabbai. This particularly ferocious character comes after you when you least expect it to give you hagba. Actually, a group of super-heroes who should join the comic book could be the HRT. The Hagba Rescue Team (read about them here). These fearless superheroes allow us to continue to eat week after week. (We had a close call last week as well...)

5. Would the Renegade Rebbetzin be a superhero or villain?

After voting for the Muqata blog in the JIBs, let me know what you think...This could easily turn into an interesting JBlogosphere project, which I'm sure the Holy Hyrax would love to illustrate.

Shavua Tov!

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael