What I'll Miss Installment #2

Well I was hoping to post a bit more in between installments...maybe tonight.

Thursday night I headed to Dubai Mall to catch one of the latest flicks. The nice thing about blockbuster movies is that they come to Dubai around the same time as they are released stateside. That's a real blessing because who wants to wait an additional six months for New Moon? Haha. Unfortunately, movies that I really want to see like An Education, Bright Star and 500 Days of Summer take their sweet little time in arriving.

While deciding what to see at Dubai Mall, I came across the trailer for a film playing in the cinema's Picturehouse Theatre: Cold Souls. Have you heard of this movie? I hadn't. The Picturehouse is a mildly swanky viewing room (less so than, say, the Gold Class Cinemas or Platinum Class at the Dubai mall), which doesn't allow eating (they do, however, need to work on the "no cell phones" rule), and it only plays independent or limited release films.

I could have watched Avatar, Sherlock Holmes or Princess and the Frog, but instead I chose Cold Souls and I am very glad I did. In this film Paul Giamatti plays himself, and being weighed down by some darkness in his soul, he decides to have it removed and stored. When he realizes he wants it back, he has to go to Russia to retrieve it. I'm leaving out details because I really want you to see it. The film, costarring David Strathairn and Emily Watson, mixes comedy and drama with just a hint of absurdity; the result is quite lovely.

I will miss The Picturehouse. As much as I like a nice, mindless blockbuster, I appreciate films that are unique and at times slightly odd. I need a good unpredictable story, and sometimes those films are the ones that are released to a limited number of theatres. When I am home in Spokane I may not even hear about these films, let alone see them.

I will not miss the dumb teenagers who come in late (giggling), take phone calls (loudly), and then leave the film early (giggling).