Subtitled SATC2 – finally!!!!!!!

Last night, with Fab Friend's permission to go without her due to geographical differences, I went to see Sex & The City 2 with subtitles with Friend Who Knows Big Words.

I was very excited, and FWKBW did a noble job of putting up with me bounding along on the way there like an excitable puppy, buying every snack known to man, and getting impatient through the non-subtitled trailers.

You see, the cinema for me is such a rare experience, that I like to do everything related to it. The too-much food that you eat anyway, the drink on the side, etc etc – it's all part of my night out.

So anyway, we sat down in our prime seats and the night began – loudly. During the trailers I turned to FWKBW and asked her if the cinema was usually this loud.

She shook her head and then started laughing at me! 'Maybe you should tell them you’re deaf and that the movie is too loud!' she said chuckling at the prospect.

And the idea of that made me giggle. But it also made me wonder whether they do turn up subtitled films louder with the view that people with a hearing loss might be watching them.

At last night’s screening, I think I was in a deaf minority – most people seemed to need the subtitles because they were foreign, and the girls next to us didn’t even seem to know they were at a subtitled showing until the movie began and the subtitles came up!

Their looks of horror were hilarious.

And what of the long-awaited second Sex & The City? Well, I loved it – apart from the scene in the market where Samantha goes berserk over her Birkin. That had me hiding behind my snacks and wishing the ground would open up and swallow her.

My only gripe? Well, that we don’t get to enjoy all those storylines over an entire series anymore…

I’d have loved to see the nanny storyline developed and Miranda’s work situation explored but with the constraints of a 2-and-a-bit hour-long movie, that was always going to be hard.

For all the SATC sceptics out there who’ve chosen to slate the movie, if you hate it that much why bother to go in the first place? I mean, I hate Star Wars, so if a new movie came out, I just wouldn’t bother to go and see it – simple! And I certainly wouldn’t slate it on those grounds, which is what many of the critics seem to be doing.

SATC doesn’t promise to carry an important message, it doesn’t promise to change your life, it doesn’t promise much except to continue updating SATC fans everywhere on the lives of the four women we came to know and love when it was on TV. If you’re one of those women, they you will probably take the cringesome moments of the movie with a pinch of salt.

If you’re not, then go and see something else, unless you’re deaf of course, and nothing else is subtitled that night!

Sex & The City 2 with captions? HA!

Today is Thankful Friday, and aside from the fact that I've chosen to wear a dress that does a Marilyn in even the tiniest gust of wind, I have lots to be thankful for!

Most importantly, and excitedly, I am in the running to be a Superdrug Summer Insider again, after being invited to fight for my title.

Eek!

Am very happy about this, but nervous, too. After being sent a wonderful collection of goodies by the peeps at Superdrug, I put my first blog up yesterday, which you can see here at Superdrugloves.com.

Apparently, there's some Facebook thing on each post where you can ‘like’ my post, and the people with the most 'likes' go through to the Summer Insider 2010 competition.

So if you like my post, be sure to click on the thumbs up picture at the top, please!

Anyway, I got the listings for subtitles for Sex & The City 2 yesterday and I definitely wasn't thankful about them. In London, there are a pitiful amount of evening showings and only 13 cinemas in the whole of the London area in total showing it with subtitles.

Of these, only six are even vaguely convenient for me and of these 1 has an evening showing – and because I HAVE A LIFE, I am not free on this day. I could go to Electric Cinema in Notting Hill at 10am on Tuesday 1 June – except, no wait! I have a mortgage to pay and holiday days that need to be used for holidays not watching a movie that everyone else can see in their free time.

I don't understand!! Are deaf people not supposed to work or something? Is there some Government initiative that gives us the right to take paid time off to attend subtitled cinema screenings?

Well, to my knowledge, the answer is no. So I'd love to know what these cinemas are playing at.

My early readers will know that when the first movie came out, Fab Friend and I had to wait quite a few weeks for subtitles, but at least there was an evening showing. Ah that was great – we met for cocktails and half sobbed, half laughed our way through the entire thing!

I'd so love to do that again with Fab Friend – but it's not looking likely with the current listings.
*sniff

But I can't think about it too much or I'll get so mad I'll combust, and that wouldn't be a very good thing to happen on Thankful Friday.

So I'm going to take action. And at lunchtime I'm going to write to all the cinemas who are showing subtitled SATC 2 and ask them to explain why they don't think we deserve equal treatment.

I'm guessing, maybe a little cynically that money will be a factor here, but I'm not stopping until I get some answers.

I'll keep you posted!

Subtitles on my iPhone

Phew! What a fabulous weekend of weather we had!

First Ever Friend and her Ma came over from Switzerland to visit, which was great fun. The Rents joined us and we went to Kew Gardens in the baking Sunday heat. It was amazing but very, very hot!

I'm not good in the sun. I require factor-50 sun cream and a big sun hat. If I'm not watered regularly I keel over, too. So Sunday was spent looking like a dessert dweller, shrouded in a lightweight scarf and sheltered by a big straw hat that I bought in the men’s' department at Debenhams.

Anyway, yesterday I booked my first ever cab online. And it didn't go well.

With a BBQ at Gym Buddy's house, we decided to travel there in style rather than throwing ourselves on the hot, rammed, smelly, unreliable tube. It couldn't have been easier to book and I got quite excited about the thought of having this online booking service at my fingertips no matter where I was in London.

So we waited, and a text came through saying the cab was 20 minutes late. We waited for 20 minutes and no cab arrived. So I tried to call them but couldn't hear clearly enough. In the end, Gym Buddy took over and when it became apparent that our car might never turn up, she cancelled it, before securing me a full refund and politely having a go at the clueless woman at the other end!!

It was so frustrating. Like a half-finished convenient service for deaf people.

One thing I am very excited about though is a new application I have discovered for my iPhone called ‘Subtitles’. This allows you to download subtitles for movies and then read along from the screen as the movie plays on the TV. The first thing I did was check if there was subtitles for Withnail And I – London Aunt’s favourite movie – and there was. She has been trying to watch it with me for years and the DVD isn’t subtitled. But now, I have the subtitles downloaded onto my phone so we can finally watch it together.

I’m hoping that the new Sex & The City movie subtitles will be added onto it relatively soon so that I can go to that as soon as possible instead of waiting for a subtitled showing. It would be amazing! Just think, subtitles at the cinema without being at the mercy of the scheduling people.

Subtitles at the cinema and erm…

…a flat iPhone battery!

Ah well – you can’t have everything!