Saturday, May 5, 2007

Spiderman,Vaisakh and I

I had wanted to see Spiderman 3, ever since ... Spiderman 2 ended, and was really glad the summer season kicked off in Tvm with Spiderman 3 arriving here on time ( ie may 4). So it was decided that I and Eappen would go reserve the tickets and the others would join up later. I set the alarm, woke up at 7:00... Got ready, got Eappen ready... And we set off. Then we stopped had breakfast at Anand and then set off again. We reached there at around 9:15 for the 11:30 show... and were not that surprised to find a small crowd .we parked the bike and got to a comfortable spot near the gate .After 10 mins a guy came and asked if the reservations would be open tomorrow?" what’s wrong with the reservation today" i thought and asked a guy nearby .He pointed to the billboard .there were only 2 shows listed for the day, the first show and second show. Bugger. The first 2 shows were cancelled. The guy at the gate said that the theatre owner's Bro in law passed away, that is why. We drove all this way to the city for nothing. Crap.crap Big time crap. we returned to the hostel with Eappen not wanting to try again in the evening. But i knew I could swing him my way.
After enough cajoling Eappen agreed to come with me in the evening, everyone else was ready too so off we went again .we reached there at 5:00 pm with a medium size crowd waiting for us. I struggled through the crowd, and found a nice spot in front of the gate. Right next to me was a Tvm local who apparently knew the gate keeper. He also knew several people working there as he kept requesting to be let in, referencing their name. He also said that the gate would be opened at 5:45.There were several groups of ppl and also loners. It was the loners I was afraid of, since like me they too had come to reserve for friends. I knew what I had to do; as soon as the gate opened I had to run like hell for the ticket counter. I gave Eappen some tips on running fast, for which he gave me an acerbic look. I told him I had experience, once I went to see “Wanted “with Gaurav and faced a similar situation. When the gate opened, I ran and shoved a guy in front of me, he fell and got run over by other ppl, I was 3rd in . So I knew. The tvm local explained to anyone who would care to listen that there were 390 balcony theaters and 1290 seats overall, so everyone would get tickets. Reassured by that I called the other guys to come on over. But after some time rumors started spreading that the balcony seats were all gone. It was semi confirmed by the gate keeper who asked everyone to proceed to the other gate, nearby, which had a similar crowd but was unmanned by any other gate keeper( [part of the reason I chose this gate, I thought only this one would be opened, that had been the case for 300 and 2 yrs ago for rasikan].I sent Eappen to stand at the other gate whileI held my place in front of the crowd .The gate was opened only for the theatre ppl as they came and left in cars and cycles, we would all huddle in the corners when the cars came. Finally at around 5:45, (the crowd and grown real big, and the pushing was growing.) some ppl jumped the low wall, and the other gate was opened,… we yelled at our gatekeeper to open the gate, he was reluctant but did after a few seconds. I saw that they hadn’t opened the balcony counters, so I quickly diverted to the first class counter, which is like a winding path or tunnel to the ticket booth, I jumped the railing at a point and wriggled myself into the crowd... Lots of other guys were jumping the railing too. After some time Eappen joined me. Whew was it hot .All of us packed into this small space, sweating and mumbling .It was uncomfortable as hell. Soon the Police arrived; you should have seen the mass of humanity swelling in the parking area. Many got thrashed; others ran and stood within the allotted space. You could see the ladies and kids being let in, without any hassles (they had a separate line).The pushing was getting worse it was like being packed in a box. The wagon tragedy and holocaust stories passed through my mind. This was nothing less; we just had more head room. There was a gang of medical college students behind me who kept calling for their friend in the front of the row. Vaisakh .They said shouted his name so many times that everyone in the line picked it up and soon abuses started flying at Vaisakh and his mother. Poor guy. He never returned the shouts. It was so stuffy I was sweating buckets; you had to hold your head high to breathe. And the line was not moving. It was a living hell. Everyone was cursing. On top of that there whisperings that one guy would get only 2 tickets, major bummer, there were 9 of us. After standing there for about 15 minutes the line started moving ever so slowly. After sometime Vaisakh appeared at the side and called out to his friends, brandishing four tickets in his hands. They cheered and the crowd again abused dear old Vaisakh and his mother. Soon the line picked up pace and we now neared the ticket counter, the counter turned into an actual tunnel, closed o all four sides. Eappen was in front of me and it was decided I would get 5 and he would get 4 tickets. All of a sudden I felt something hit the back of my head and there were screams behind me. I looked back and was shocked to see this guy climbing on top of everyone and trying to get into the tunnel. He was literally standing above everyone. It was his foot that hit my head, everyone shouted at him and I too screamed my head off at him, it was surprising that everyone soon stopped yelling and it was just me telling him to get out. I had a good mind to wrestle this stick of a man, but decided against it. Soon I reached the counter, there were guys gesturing me from outside to get them a ticket, I turned my eyes and decided against it. You could liken all this to a concentration camp with us the lucky inmates somehow being let out and the others pleading us to take us with them. Finally we got the tickets and got out. We were semi heroes. We all got in quickly except for Murali who told me wait for a while and totally disappeared. I waited for about ten minutes after which he returned and told me he had gone to the cloak room to deposit his luggage. (he was going home after this).

And the movie? It was Ok. The fight scenes were awe inspiring but there was no flow in the first half. Green goblin is like this uber cool skateboarder, only he is in air. That was nicely done. Venom was awesome, and so was Topher Grace. It also helps that Spiderman has a fantastic rogue gallery that translates very well onto the big screen. My rating 3.5/5. But will have to watch it again once more to finally decide how I feel about it.

3 comments:

Gaurav said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gaurav said...

U got eappen ready??
haha

Raj said...

hey dude.. thats some hell of a description of the pre-movie action.. well, you should try a hand at writing movie scripts sometime.. hehe.. well, the movie was quite below expectations.. they should have named it "Peter Parker" rather than "Spiderman 3".. or may be the makers should understand that the people love spiderman and thats what they expect.. they don't want the sentimental stuff about a nerdy guy with a stupid girlfriend, that we get to see in many other movies!!! i would put it at 3/5 and they score in for the few spidey action sequences and the graphics!!