Chapter 12

A shark of a tale

Saturday...

So After repeated attempts from the cleaning staff of the tatiana hotel to wake me up, I decided to wake up finally. I got dressed in my new room and had a blank mind on what I wanted to do today. I flipped through the moscow time (www.moscowtimes.ru) and saw that there was this American Cinema at the Raddison Hotel. Today at 5pm they were playing A Shark Tale. I must have been grogy cause I conviced myself that it was the new Pixar movie (the incredibles) so I got up and went to the movies.

I decided to take my Ipod with me and listen to tunes while walking the streets. I've decided that synthpop must be the soundtrack of Moscow. Everywhere I go its playing. From Ultra being played at the Starlight Diner, to Big in Japan blaring from the Hotel lobby, to the crazy techno coming out from all these cab driver's cars. I have a play list on my Ipod called "I LOVE SYNTHS" which is mainly all the synthpop music I have on my pod. Turns out I have over 1000 songs that fit in that catagory... who knew! So walking around, listening to songs such as Head Hunter (yeah, its not synthpop, but its synthy) to Client.

I noticed today a lot more cops checking people's papers and passports. I made sure I stayed clear of them. You hear tons of stories of cops trying to shake down people for money. I hope that never happens. Then I got paranoid that they may confiscate my Ipod. From the fear of being in the metros to the fear of actual cops, I decided that I was getting too paranoid so I had to stop thinking all together.....

I got to the Raddison Hotel SAS in Kievskaya and kept thinking "how is there a movie theatre in a hotel" Turns out that in the back of the hotel are all these conference rooms and in the main hall is a state with a huge theatre screen. I was happy to see that they had some recent movies coming to their theatre soon. I think in the next couple of weeks the new bridget jones and Alexander is playing there, as well as that JayLo Shall we dance movie. I'm like my brother in law (zain) I don't care what's playing....a movie is a movie.

I saw the poster for A Sharks Tale and was annoyed that it was that will smith movie. What was strange is that there was a sign saying "Please take headphones with you for translation". It turns out that Russians can go to the movie too and get real time translation of what is being said in the movie. You plug the headphones into your seat. They handed out headphones to everyone because for some odd reason.....the last 15 min of the movie's audio track was in Portugeese?!?!?

So I'm watching the movie, its ok....Will smith is talking his talk and its a very american movie, filled with references I have no idea how anyone foreign would get. There were all these American kids in the movie, enjoy themselves. So all of a sudden near the end, Will Smith starts speaking Portugueese. Everyone in the crowd scurried to plud in their headphones and parents reached for their kids headsets and plugged them in. The Kids were not happy about that and some started to cry a bit. I kept trying to figure out what was going on and how to get this headset from working. The Protugese audio track was perfect, it had the movie score and everything, it didn't sound like an overdub, I'm just suprised on why 90 percent of the movie was in English and why the last 15 was not. My friend Omar who lives in Spain just started to see movies in Spanish even if he didn't understand what was going on. He didn't care, he said eventually you'll get a feel for what is going on. After 2 mins I was annoyed so I quickly tried to figure out how to plug in my headset.

I Finally plugged in the headset to find out sadly that instead of hearing the English audio track, I got to hear Irina, a Russian woman in the booth behind me, trying to translate portugeese into English. This one russian woman with a this accent said EVERYONE's lines and had to translate all the hiphop slang that will smith's character was saying. It was absurd to hear here say "Oh right man....slap me skin, yes, you can dig it.....that is cool, no?" in chappy english. I finally understood why the kids were crying. I started to laugh. It was probably one of the most absurd movie going experiences I've ever had.

I wonder what's going to happen next time I go there. Will Bridget Jones be 1/2 in Italian and 1/2 in English? I have a feeling that this was just a wierd occurance.

I'm back in the office cause its right next to the hotel. No one internet cafe for me. I want to save my money. There is nothing better than making free internation calls and using the internet from work.

posted by RU ETL @ 9:18 PM