The Movie Goer

The other night I couldn´t take the heat (plus avoid some of my charmless hostel mates) and decided to take in a movie. On the one hand, not exactly the best use of my increasingly limited time in Nicaragua, but on the other, an authentic cultural experience, the chance to do what everyday Leonians do on a weekday night. The cinema is just around the corner from my hostel, housed in a complex that also contains a grocery store and two fastfood restaurants, Hollywood Pizza, and Tip Top Chicken. There is also a vaguely Starbucksian coffee shop called Cafe Latino (not a made-up name, I promise.) My first night in town I had stumbled into the place, exhausted and starving from a long day of travel. I must have been really hungry because I couldn´t find an open restaurant (this was around maybe 6:30) and decided to try Nicaraguan fast food. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) both of these establishments, despite clearly being fast food, are sitdown restaurants with waitress service. I gave both a try but they were filled with Nicaraguan families, and subject to the same lax service (from an American perspective) that all Latin American restaurants seem to have. Eventually my hunger overwhelmed me and I ended up having a strawberry ice cream cone for dinner. god I love being a grown up.

Anyway, I made my way back to the theater for what I can only assume was the World Premiere of ¨The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.¨ The theater showed a bizarre combination of Brand New releases (Mummy, Dark Knight, X Files 2), and movies that have long been out on dvd in the states such as Hannibal Rising, release date February 9th 2007, Shutter, release date March 21st 2008, and the one where Diane Lane plays some sort of FBI cyber crime expert who eventually becomes the target of an internet super killer or some other such plot device so ridiculous that not even I bothered seeing it.

As soon as you step into the theater you are blasted with startlingly intense conditioned air, a welcome relief from Leon´s relentless heat. My ticket (remember this was for the Mummy, a brand new release that technically didn´t even come out in the states until the next day) was a little more than two dollars, and then I went to the grocery store to buy some candy to sneak in, just like home. I was definitely the only gringo in the audience. I guess Rob Cohen´s latest directorial vision of supernatural evil confronted with lots of guns and quips (at least he didn´t make Jet Li try to speak English)could not overcome the siren song of cheap beer and dollar mojitos.

The theater rapidly filled to capacity with all manner of Leonese citizens: parents with children, couples on dates, and a pair of giggling teenaged girls who literally talked to each other throughout the entire movie. In fact, everything that you consider rude and annoying about going to the movies these days seems to be par for the course: talking, laughing, yelling, cell phone calls etc.. Nonetheless, the movie was blandly diverting (plus it had tons of kickass, although poorly rendered, CGI Yetis!) and the air conditioning was nice. Who knows, I may even take in a showing of Shutter later tonight... Tomorrow, I´m off to the Corn Islands, and I,m not entirely sure what the internet situation is there. I´ll post when I can.