the second film in our "let's enjoy friday nights with a film, a pie, and some hot chocolate", only without the hot chocolate. since i didn't mention it last time, again we were at sky city metro and again we had crappy popcorn. the popcorn container claims it's the finest in new zealand. i hope not! i don't think i'll have the crappy popcorn a third time. we watched "a series of unfortunate events". if it wasn't for friday night being movie night, i don't think i would have ever watched this film. one reason we picked the film was because it was showing on the giant screen (imax), but it wasn't imax size. it was big in height/length. it was portrait, not landscape. the film was projected landscape as most films are so the top bit of the screen was not used. all the tourist stuff i've seen claim that the imax screen is at this theater and this is the only giant screen in the theater. i saw on one web site though that the imax in auckland closed in 2002. you know what's crappy about the giant screen in auckland? assigned seating! your ticket has your fucking seat printed on it. how lame is that? it wasn't crowded though so we could have changed seats but our seats were in a pretty good location.

i really liked the highly stylized aspects of the film. i don't know how else to describe it. the animation during the ending credits was really cool. i just liked the vibe of it. the music during the end credits was cool too, very loopy in an acid/garageband sort of way. at times the mix of time context in the film was really appealing, at other times it annoyed me. what i mean by time context is that it seemed to be set in the past, yet there were references to modern things. there was a time blur. you're not quite sure what year the piece is set in.

jim carrey wasn't too annoying, thank god! it worked well. it's too bad that billy connolly's role had so little airtime. he's so funny. i was excited to see various others in the film as i really didn't know who else was in it. i think they all did a great job. i found the main characters to be named "baudelaire" quite interesting. it's been a long time since i read the work of that poet. so dark. just like the film. the film didn't make me want to read the book though. i know what kind of vibe it is. burton meets gorey. literature wise i'm just not into that at the moment. i have so many other things to explore first! visually, i'm all for it. bring it on.