Chinese movie experience

Today I went for another long walk and stumbled upon a movie theater. All of the signs, posters and marquis were in Chinese, so of course I couldn't make sense of anything. I couldn't really tell what movies were playing on this particular day, or what times, etc. etc. etc.

And I couldn't even communicate (or mime) the question for "What is playing today?" I tried. And failed.

Luckily another girl came up to the counter to purchase a ticket for a movie, and she understood I was having troubles, and she spoke a teensie weensie English, just enough to help me understand which movies were playing and what times. THANK YOU MYSTERY GIRL!

I had two options. One was a Chinese movie with Chinese actors and the other was Blitz, a movie with Jason Statham...

I chose Jason. I thought the movie would be dubbed over in Chinese, but I didn't care...I thought, hey, Jason Statham is Jason Statham in ANY language ::insert repetitive eyebrow raise motions here::. The movie was in English, with Chinese subtitles. As a fun learning experiment, I tried to read the subtitles and figure out what the characters meant as I listened to the dialog. I don't think I figured out much, just some basics like "good" "no" "what" and some characters that reference people in ways like "you" "them" "we" etc. Oh, and the movie was as you would probably expect. Jason Statham being over-the-top cool and rebellious, with a revved up soundtrack and lots of running and beating people up. Fun times.

Oh and guess what! There were no previews for other movies before this movie started! I'm not sure if it's like this for all movies here in China, but it was great just jumping straight to it. Way to go, China. Sometimes I do like to see previews, but today I wasn't feeling it...previews would just add pointless time before my eyeballs could be blessed with Jason-ness.

In the theater lobby I was super excited to see this poster (I sort of hate to admit it)...

Titanic in 3D, hello! I will definitely be coming back in a couple of weekends to see this, and I don't care what language it's in since I know every word (SIGH. I know, I know).