How to watch a movie

China is notorious for pirated DVDs. I'm sure somewhere on the streets of China right now there is a copy of Harry Potter to be had. Of course, it would be a copy with echoing audio, and peoples' heads popping up at the bottom of the screen. I didn't want to see it that way.

So yesterday, while the kids were up in another part of town visiting friends, my friend Jen and I decided to see it on the big screen. The earliest showing was at 11:30 in the "VIP room." To get in there, I had to buy a VIP card which allowed us to purchase the tickets at half price, which was a whopping $9 US. And that for a matinee! But we soon saw that VIP really does mean VIP.

For starters, we were escorted into a coffee room, where we were given free snacks and coffee or tea. The snacks included little dog bone shaped crackers and sandwich crackers with rock hard icing in the middle. Thanks but I'll pass. The tea was decent, but I wasn't about to give myself any reason to have to leave during the film. If I had, I would have not only missed the movie, but also an extra five minutes of sitting in the mother of all movie seats!

We walked in to the theater which was small (VIP only you know) and filled with about eight rows of giant red leather (nice leather) recliners. This is how to watch a movie! The screen was big despite the room being small. Now that I've done it that way, I don't know that I'll ever be able to go back to a regular theater.

Oh, and Harry Potter was quite entertaining, by the way.