Tales from the cinema...

Okay, not so much tales but more of a small rant...

Last night I took Mr M to see the much talked about Senna film. It was pretty flippin' awesome, but more on that in a minute.

We ventured to our local cinema, which happens to be a Cineworld. Now in terms of cinemas I always find Cineworld pretty good and they may be my favourite cinema chain but my local one is seriously understaffed.  Rather than going to the ticket counter to erm, buy your tickets, the tickets are sold from the refreshment counter. Of course this might be great for some people - I mean you can buy your tickets and refreshments all in one go, but for those of us who have already collected our tickets from the machine? Not so great. It takes ages. Especially when there is the grand sum of two people serving. The annoying thing is there is a whole other counter for refreshments but that was completely closed.  

So out of three counters (one for tickets, two for refreshments) only one was working. It was a long, slow process queuing to get a diet coke I can tell you, and what do I get faced with when I get there? £7.20 for a regular drink and regular popcorn. SEVEN POUNDS AND TWENTY PENCE. Honestly? Is it me or is that just a tad overpriced?  Well Cineworld, you can stick your popcorn where the sun doesn't shine!  After paying over £17 for two cinema tickets and booking fee there's no way I was forking the best part of a tenner for some nibbles.

I might be getting really old but I am sure there was a time when the cinema was considered a cheap night out? I used to go weekly when I was a bit younger. Now it has to be saved for films I really want to see. Paying nearly £30 for two people to see a film with some watered down Coke and bit of stale popcorn is NOT something you can do all the time!  Obviously none of this outrage purely applies to Cineworld, I am sure Odeon, Showcase and Vue are just as bad. 

Anyway, after the shock of blatant daylight robbery...the film, Senna. Was it good? WOW pretty much seems up how I felt when I left the cinema.  The film is basically a documentary about the F1 career of the amazing Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna. It starts with this entry into F1 in the 1980's and ends with his tragic and untimely death at the age of 34.  A lot of the story focuses on his famous rivalry/feud with Prost and also on how Senna felt unfairly treated by the FIA. Jean Marie Balestre did not come out of this in the best light and neither did Prost but I think that was to be expected.

You don't have to be a F1 fan to see and appreciate this film. Certainly, whilst I enjoy the sport and have been to see a live race, I'm no die-hard fan but this was a beautiful piece of filmmaking which had me enthralled from the off.  Asif Kapadia deserves to receive some big recognition for this work which was thought-provoking and incredibly moving. Indeed, I cried from the moment he won the Brazilian Grand Prix right until the end, despite knowing that the story didn't have a happy ending.

Mr M and I dissected the whole thing afterwards and had a good conversation about how some things in F1 have changed dramatically - it's clearly a whole lot safer these days but more reliant on technology, and how some things seem to have stayed the same - the FIA generally still being a bunch of arses and McLaren still getting the rough end of the stick (I did wonder just who Ron Dennis pissed off once upon a time...). I'd also hope that F1 is slightly less corrupt that in it has appeared in the past but sadly, it's probably not. As Ayrton Senna himself has said, it's all about politics and money.

love & kisses
Mrs M x