All the cinema ads irritate me. Last time I was in, everyone talked over the ads which made me happy.

Last time I was in, everyone talked over the ads which made me happy.

Yeah, we chatted loudly with the family in front of us and took the piss out of the ads with great gusto. That in itself could be misconstrued as 'fun', but we'd rather have just watched the film we just paid to see.

If I am forced to sit through commercials, don't expect me to do it quietly. It's the one time that rudeness is justified.

Next time, I'm going to boo and hiss loudly the entire time.

If anyone from Vue Cinemas or Odeon Cinemas senior management are reading this, let me just say that if you want people to come to your theatre instead of watching new movies at home, dumping these endless, annoying, loud, stupid, pointless ads might go a long way to winning your audience back. Just a thought.

I usually go into the cinema 20 minutes after the advertised start time and avoid most of the ads. I take my own food and drink in too, but don't tell anyone :)

They don't seem to run ads in the theaters very often here yet other than movie trailers and I usually want to see those or at least like having the buffer in case we're a few minutes late. There are a couple of theaters here though that don't run trailers or anything so if it says 7:15, the movie starts at 7:15.

yes, my local art-house only has 10 minutes of ads+trailers, and when I was in London I'd go to the National Film Theatre which is amazing and has no ads, perhaps one trailer, and bans food and drink.

I kind of like the trailers... I just hate the hackneyed way they make them:

IN A WORLD FILLED WITH MONEY, ONE MAN HAD THE BALLS TO STEAL IT ALL. HIS NAME? BILL GATES...

whoooooshhh! Bam! *surround sound shite*

THE YEAR WAS 1955...

what's up with that?

I absolutlely detest movie theatre ads myself. To my mind, once I can clearly see that the showing of the movie has been underwritten by ad companies, I should now expect the movie to be FREE.

However, it's caught on everywhere, and if we'd like to know who to blame we need to look in the mirror. It's pretty outrageous, but if the movie-going public had gotten up in arms, rebelled in any way, the theatres would have dropped the attempt. Instead, Americans (at least) seem to be anaesthetized to ubiquitous advertising, to the point where we can't imagine NOT having to sit through ads to enjoy something. It apparently doesn't bother anybody.

If I'm wrong - it if it really bothers a lot of people - then they should start making noise about it to people who can change it, like the National Association of Theatre Owners, one of the more powerful lobbying groups in the country. While they're fretting over the possibility that you're bootlegging the movie on your digital camcorder, they're happily raking in the millions from selling your eyeballs to Coke. And also call or write to the local theatres you patronize to let them know how repulsive this is. Maybe an op-ed or letter to the local paper would help, too.

I hate it as much as anybody, but the only thing a business like this is going to respond to is Loud Public Outcry associated with Attendant Drop in Ticket Sales. If moviegoers aren't wiling to do that, they presumably don't care all that much about it, so bring on the more commercials!

It's my mantra these days. The world is of our own making.

Well said, Miko! I don't know how long this travesty has been occurring in Britain since I'm still rather new.

as long as I can remember, cd, and I've lived here for 28 years.

"She'll be smoking hot, but she won't actually be aflame"

I rarely Go To The Movies, in part because I'm spoiled by longstanding friendships with boutique videostores, in part because I'm cheap cheap cheap, but largely because if one more person starts talking during a movie, I will set his or her head on fire, I swear it, I do I do I do. To avoid criminal prosecution for arson and assault, I watch my movies at home.

A movie that does lure me to the cinema is usually small or off-beat, so in my little city that means it plays at the art-house theater, where they play trailers but no outside ads.

Accordingly, I hadn't kept up with the trends in trapped-market advertising. A couple of years back, when we went to see Serenity at a googolplex outside of town, I simply couldn't make sense of the short film playing before the feature. It looked like an ad for an energy drink, but my tortured brain kept trying to reframe it as a subversive trailer for some indy film about marketing.

Because, see, it looked like an ad. But that was absurd. An ad, in a movie theater?

To be fair, the most gag-inducing ad I've seen lately was the trailer for some new romantic-raunch comedy --- two minutes that felt like a lifetime. It did pose some unintentional humor as a self-parody --- it played like a background clip from The Player.

You watch: soon they'll start interrupting the movies themselves with commercials, just like on the teevee! They'll probably begin by re-introducing intermissions ("for your convenience", of course), and then: "Hell, as long as there's nothing happening up on the screen, why not throw some ads up there? You know, keep the people entertained!"

I remember, before they started showing ads in American theaters, how Americans would rhapsodize about how cool and exotic and sophisticated it was to go to European movie theaters.... because they showed ads.

Elsa, was it a commercial for noted shitfest The Holiday?

A friend is still angry with me for accidentally opening her eyes to product placement. We were watching Unbreakable, discussing it as it played (I will not set your head on fire at home, no), and I exhaled in irritation during the breakfast scene that's shot to prominently display the carton of brand-name orange juice. Sweetly, she squinted at the brand name and said, "Huh. That's weird. Do you think they [Shaymalan et al.] got permission?"

I briefly outlined product placement, and we went back to the movie. After that, she started noticing brand names spattered all over her favorite movies. She says it's ruined movies for her.

I must remember to redeem myself by pointing out that it makes Repo Man that much funnier.

chuckdarwin: no, it's an upcoming or recent release called "Mr. Lucky" or "The Lucky Man" or some such crap, about a man who gets a reputation as a woman's penultimate boink before meeting her one true love. In response to your question, I googled for about 90 seconds before I was overcome with not-caring.

Re The Holiday: No, my response to that trailer (seen on DVD) was to pine wistfully for a film with Kate Winslet and Jack Black, but not crappy. It looks like dreck, but I'll end up seeing it eventually.

For a moment, I thought you were speaking of the stunningly bad Last Holiday, which remakes the sweet if bleak Alec Guiness film into a splashy, vapid joke of a film. My mother asked me to go to see it with her. And I did, without even rolling my eyes or praying for the sweet release of death. It's awful. But Queen Latifah is splendid, gleaming, charming. You can't take your eyes off her.

Hi Elsa -

OH! You mean THIS dreadful nonsense.

I still can't figure out why everyone likes Knocked Up so much. I just don't see the appeal of it.

THIS looks more like my thing.

I'm still half-optomistically looking forward to Knocked Up, but at home, not in the theater. My partner's Totally Manly Man Crush on Seth Rogan guarantees we'll watch it while he pokes me as says, "Hey! Funny!" I find Rogan sort of anti-charmingly charming, and I'm still harboring hope for Apatow (who, yes, seems to have suffered some sort of humor-deficiency episode since "Freaks & Geeks").

Fun Fact: "Apa-TOW!" is a frequently heard exclamation chez Elsa.

who, yes, seems to have suffered some sort of humor-deficiency episode since "Freaks & Geeks

WHAT?! You clearly have not seen "Undeclared." Oh lordy, is that a funny show and probably one of the most realistic depictions of college life ever.

I did see it! I was terribly keen to love it! It wasn't for me.

There were moments of pure hilarity, but I thought they were mired between too much plodding dialogue and, on the other hand, tiresome hyperbole.

So, yes, just like college, actually.

It just wasn't for me. I'm glad to hear it has its enthusiastic fans, though!

I've been thinking about posting David Denby's take on Knocked Up in the New Yorker, but I'm a little afraid it'll start one of our signature Earnest Gender Wars. I saw the movie, I laughed my ass off, but I agreed with Denby's take on it, which I just started to write all about, but deleted, realizing it was spoilerific. Enjoy!

I liked Knocked Up, and I saw a lot of my own college days and college friends reflected in that movie. I thought the slacker-ism was completely realistic - it's sort of a Dazed and Confused for my generation.

Someone I know disgustedly asked why the hot, high-powered girl in the movie was paired up romantically with the slovenly, nerdy, shaggy Seth Rogan. She thought it was completely realistic. But personally, it's a trend I've been witnessing more and more in my age group or slightly younger couples - hot girls and sweet, nerdy guys...

...and, like Miko, I'm going to avoid pushing this over into a gender debate, and just end it by saying that "Good Luck Chuck" looks like exactly the kind of movie I will avoid for the rest of my life.

"...she thought it was completely unrealistic..."