Andre

I had a chance opportunity to watch the latest Batman movie The Dark Knight in a Philippines shopping mall theatre. Happy about this and excited to see what everyone's talking about, the afternoon turned into a nightmare to the point of ruining the movie experience. I shall never set foot into a local cinema again, given I was assured there's nothing unusual about all that I experienced.

In short, throughout the movie I had to endure:

• Most of the audience were children aged anywhere from 5-10, having a blast like it would be their own McDonald's birthday party (forget about any movie rating whatsoever);
• People chatting like at a bar on a weekend evening;
• People coming and going like in a train station;
• Mobile phone lights like in a disco (surprisingly no ringtones though);
• The couple next to me was exclusively playing for the first 2/3 of the movie with their mobile phone and then left, not looking once at the big screen;
• People standing up for no reason;
• It was a lot colder than even the freezing Hong Kong theatres with occasional wind blows matching a typhoon.

In addition to that, there's the inconvenience of registering and giving up at the security check-point any picture-taking device (though mobile phones seem to be ignored). I'm not in favor of movie piracy but I think I'm not wrong in wondering why a country like the Philippines has such strict measures when the movies sown there are already available in DVD quality both on the Web and on the street markets. With today's high expectations of the quality of illegal copies, I doubt there's any market left for hand-recording movies already on sale.

Lack of seat selection (first comes, first served), no staff monitoring the audience for their behavior, no blanket rental, are only a few of the many other inconveniences.

At least I was told there are better places to enjoy a movie.