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miss and i saw the new wallace and grommit film last night. at a totally shady cinema. we saw the 10pm show, and i think there were four people in the building total, for the five screens they had. of the other two, one sold us our tickets, the other ran the projector and smoked.

being in a movie alone is always a little spooky. moreso if only half the light bulbs work, there's no music (not even a stray cricket to break the xray blanket silence), and the walls are sticky as well as the floors. and for some reason we still whispered to each other before it started. perhaps fear.

movie trailers are audiovisual fast food burgers. we both understood the overdubbed harry potter and narnia trailers just perfectly. it's not the kind of thing you notice when it's in your own language, that the VO is speaking third grade english. i'd complain about being pandered to, but i was thrilled to understand someone speaking f r e n c h.

i'd checked out the theatre ahead of time and i was pretty sure it was going to be in english. we had fingers crossed, but i was wrong. interestingly, a lot of the shots with signs, newspapers, buttons, had it in french. they must have shot a couple versions of the backgrounds at the same time. anyway, it would have been obvious to anyone watching that we weren't native french speakers. i was killing myself at all the slapstick and visual humor but timidly chuckling ten seconds late, if at all, to anything verbal. i'm happy to have even gotten one language joke.

i really liked the movie. some excellent inventive visual gags and some good stock ones executed well. also, a good amount of cuteness. 100 bunnies on screen at a time? it worked with sheep, it works with rabbits. i think they were using some new construction materials occasionally too. i don't remember fuzzy hair in an aardman piece before. the voice acting wasn't great, but you don't have to worry about that. the english talent listed in the credits looks pretty top notch. i wonder if it would have enjoyed it less if it were in english. it's so easy to love something you're straining to understand.