A tyrant falls?

As I mentioned early on, we really like Jakarta movie theatres. The movie theatre company, however, is a different matter. There's only one, Cinema 21, and they're perfect in every way except that I don't think they really like movies. They seem to view them only as money-making units, so they pick three or four lousy Hollywood blockbusters and show them on every screen in town.

Now, however, they have what they so richly deserve: a competitor.


Blitz Megaplex is going for a cool artsy look. They have 11 screens and so far they're playing a pretty fun mix of small, big, and regional movies. This weekend we saw a Korean movie called THE HOST which you must go see right now, unless you're my sister Cathy, in which case it might give you nightmares and shouldn't you be studying for a test anyway?


The other good thing about Blitz, besides their movie selection, is that they jam cellphone signals. There's a significant percentage of Indonesian moviegoers who love nothing better than a nice long chat on their cellphone in the middle of a movie. Have American audiences gotten this bad?