i can’t believe i hadn’t written about this earlier. the number of times i’ve been to a malaysian multiplex can be counted on one hand, so forgive me if some of these below still exists!
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things that i won’t be experiencing at the movies anymore:
- crap parking in the cinema foreground, with or without the jaga kereta
- air tebu stalls and the like at the cinema entrance
- the fact that movies do matinees, followed by four or five screenings of the main feature, plus an additional midnight screening of an upcoming film if it was the weekend
- ticket booths with grilles
- tickets that are of toilet paper quality with D-17 scrawled in thick coloured pencil
- checking out stills of films in the foyer
- the terms coming soon, next change and now showing
- kuaci
- those beautiful softly-lit velveteen festooning curtains that covers the screen, as you are being greeted (nicely/gruffly – take your pick) by the usher
- the smell. i’ve smelt substances from the likes of kerosene to urine.
- pre-feature slide ads of the nearby hair salon and shops selling bak kut teh
- pearl and dean’s pap pah pap pah pap pah pap pah pappap pah before the ads
- ads for alcoholic beverages, namely guiness stout (pokok tumbang, kilang machinery rosak etc), hennesey and the one for anglia shandy that had malaysians playing a cowboy, a bartender and a bargirl
- the shaw brothers montage* (like the one in kill bill) with the exact tune that you’d get in the p. ramlee films [* i am unsure what you call it, if you know drop a note in the comments below!]
- the malaysian heat and the blinding sun as you come out from the cinema hall