When I said yesterday that finally there is a decent film showing, I was wrong! I turned up at the Zena Palace at 8pm last night to find a queue out of the door for some pretentious looking Greek film. Someone in the queue told us it was by invite only; so a bit like the Oscars then! I didn’t have an invite, don’t speak Greek and had no desire to watch the film anyway. I wanted to see An Education. I had been looking forward to it all day…..
The publicity information from the cinema said the film was on Monday to Thursday. To be fair when I double checked on the website, it does say in small print underneath the big Monday to Thursday advert, that actually it is not showing on 03/03 or 04/03 because of film premieres. Very helpful! Why not just advertise it as on Monday to Tuesday then? And if it is still showing next week, it won’t be on Thursday as there is another premiere advertised at that time. So it might be on next week, Monday to Wednesday, or it might not be on again at all. When I finally got through to the cinema phone line this morning, I was told that they don’t now whether or not it will be on next week yet. So what was the point of putting it on at all for two days? Or at least make it clear that it will only be two days!
I revise everything I said yesterday. I praised the Zena Palace for showing a decent film. What is the point of getting everyone excited and then only showing it for two days? Is it because there is such a small audience for such films? Six of us last night, to be precise. But it is hardly an obscure, niche interest film. It has been nominated for three Oscars, including best film! Last night’s potential audience don’t matter as we were probably the only six people on the island who wanted to see the film anyway. Is that it? Let’s hope it wins an Oscar this week, then there might be a chance that it will be shown again.
If it does win an Oscar obviously more people will want to see it. Then it will probably be shown at more cinemas but I will be forced to go and watch it with all the teenagers and other people who sit and talk all the way through films because they are not really interested anyway. That will just infuriate me even more than not being able to see it at all here. I will probably swear at someone and risk a fine or imprisonment for public profanity. Best I just get it on DVD. Well, it does come out on DVD on Monday so I am just gong to do what I always do: order it from play.com and give up trying to see anything here at all.
