Bulldog

when i was 15, it's already foreseeable that i'd be the first person exterminated at the break of the third world war. a roach would despise me for being so vulnerable to all sorts of hardships in life -- temperature, noise, food, bedsheets... even the "wrong" colours and lighting can bug me. and unsurprisingly, human beings are always the biggest source of irritation.

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we've never been spoonfed on cinema etiquette, but it's supposed to be common sense. let's forget about the non-stop beepings for the time being -- the worst is yet to come. i understand that the cinema experience is no longer considered an "event" we look forward to, but the dark space is still a momentary refuge for us to forget about real time and space. and the entitlement to this right is not limited to wong kar-wai arthouse flicks, but also to every popcorn movie that deserves rotten tomatoes. there're those mouths which are fed up with the $40 popcorn and decided to host an 80-minute symposium on the establishing shot, high-key lighting, montage and jump cut. thank you very much, but i've had my film lectures. and no, you're not a cahiers du cinéma critic nor a dvd special feature, so just zip up.

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there are also those fragile little hearts we've to cater to. even if it's utterly out of the blue to see two cowboys smooch in brokeback mountain, you don't have to scream like they are about to crawl out from the screen. i also assume that applying and scraping fat from a corpse's skin to produce perfume is SICK but you don't have to call him a psychopath every 2 minutes. you may as well take a power nap or leave at the 32nd minute of the film. and yeh, if you don't catch the satire in the group sex scene (the mob is enchanted by the serial killer who has dipped himself with perfume extracted from the bodies of his victims, and instead of wanting him executed, the crowd indulges itself in sexual pleasure openly in the square) towards the ending of perfume, you do not have to deafen me with continuous whispers of "chi-seen"s. no country for old men may be jaw-droppingly long and quiet (man, you haven't met béla tarr and hou hsiao-hsien), but you can save your guesses on the murderer's next move to yourself.

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while i was on my knees begging for openmindedness from my fellow viewers, i may as well be aware that part of the $70 we pay goes to the first-hand responses, and thus be tolerant to others' execution of freedom of speech.

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my bad, my bad.