People, is this any way to start a new year?

So last night, for reasons I still can't quite work out, I went to the roadshow presentation of Che. The cinema just down the road from me was showing it, in its 4 hour 17 minute glory. The start time was listed at 6:45pm, so I figured it would be done by 11pm and I'd be home not long after.

Wrong-o. There was 20 minutes of pointless faff at the beginning and a 25 minute interval between the two parts so the whole thing took five hours from start to finish. The irony is it was only ever good and watchable (admittedly with an insanely amazing performance from Benicio Del Toro), it never really tipped over into being great. Oh well.

I forget, every time I go to this cinema that, as it's the local "arthouse" cinema, the level of pretentious film snob conversations I overhear tend to make me want to kick people. When I saw La Vie En Rose there, for example, I overheard someone saying "yah yah, well of course Charles did see Edith perform in Paris." Oh fuck off. Last night's little gem was someone commenting to their friend that the last time they'd seen a film here it was Terrence Malick's A New World. He then spent a few minutes waxing rhapsodic about Malick and how wonderful Thin Red Line and New World are before saying "I mean, I find it really challenging to stay awake during them, but they're so amazing". I had to really fight the urge to tap him on the shoulder and say "when a film bores you into unconsciousness, I don't think you really think they're good, do you?"