Last Sunday I finally got out to the new Miramar M…
Last Sunday I finally got out to the new Miramar Mall in Dazhi. Its main feature is a huge ferris wheel that’s visible from all over town, but it also has an IMAX theatre. Thus, when Maoman called up and asked me if I wanted to go see The Polar Express in 3D with him and V, I told him I’d be ready in 5 minutes.
The area of Dazhi where the mall is located is very empty and flat, giving me the unnerving feeling the Xinyi District used to impart before it got filled with Mitsukoshi Department Stores and sidewalks. We got tickets for the 11pm showing and then walked around a bit before getting some dinner at the local Friday’s. Actually, it was a huge dinner, as dinners at Friday’s tend to be, and we got Lucky; Lucky was supposed to be our server, a hefty fellow whose head was stuck up the ass of a doll in the form of Sully from Monsters, Inc. I think it was supposed to be a hat. Maoman asked me if I thought Lucky was a ‘mo, but I didn’t have a chance to test out the secret handshake.
The food was good except for the fried ice cream we had for dessert. V had slipped out to exchange recipes or whatever it is women do in the bathroom, and returned with a new bra. I’m not even going to wonder about that.
The movie was ok, I guess. Well, not really. Our seats were all the way to one side of the theatre, and the staff must have been confused, because one guy told us we could switch once the movie started, but then once we sat down in our new seats, another guy came over and said the seats we were in were “forbidden” by “the boss”. So back to our bad seats we went.
The 3D effect wasn’t nearly as good as I recall from the IMAX in Sydney, and the Chinese subtitles, which weren’t in 3D, further ruined the effect. The movie itself was almost completely without plot, character, or story; it tried to make up for these shortcomings by stuffing in so many Christmas tunes even Jim Nabors would break out cursing, but the effect was limited.
I did get a couple of interesting shots of the ferris wheel while we were waiting for the movie, though. One little platform was cordioned off. Maoman asked a security guard about it, and it turns out the pedestal is not only the center point of the entire complex, but it’s also hollow and will collapse if anyone stands on it.
I got the new vidlet up, though without Quicktime Pro to massage the encoding it’s a whopping 15mb. I also updated the photography page with several new photos, though still a small portion of what I’ve taken recently. I think I’ve got enough ideas to fill out another edition of News from the Renegade Province as well, and since Graham’s back in town (with peerless Chinese thanks to several months in Kunming), perhaps he’ll grace us with another submission.
