The week's gotten off to a solid start. Last night I saw "Gothika" (Or the much better Bulgarian translation "Готика." It's just more fun to say.) at one of Silistra's theaters. it was the rip-roaringly funniest horror movie I've seen in a long time. The new post-"Sixth Sense" horror world is a predictable and comical place. Scary things always happen when the music or sound tells you they're happening and ghosts that seek help always look for it by either scaring their helpers or beating the living crap out of them. I know when I need help, I usually like to sneak up behind someone and wait until they're just about to turn around before I grab them by the shoulder and scream in their face. It breaks the ice.
Also, and I'll put a spoiler watch here, just for kicks. But, also, when a woman kills her husband with an axe and did so beyond any doubt, it's nice to know that a jury would let that woman off the hook if her lawyer presented a clever story about being possessed. You know, as long as the man was an evil jerk, it's all cool. And let's release the stepdad-killing girl who says she sees satan. It's a vigilantism fire-sale! All criminals must go!
Seriously though, a moderately tense first half, a riotously funny second half, and the inexplicable presence of an olympic-sized swimming pool make it a pretty good flick. I can't say I wasn't entertained. I almost fell asleep during the standard-issue middle lull, but I was tired. I don't think you can fault the movie too badly for that. It's definitely worth a rental.
At the movie I ran into (for some reason I'm typing dyslexically today. The words are all coming out wrong, then I have to fix them. It's odd and it's never happened at a long stretch like this. Hmm. Might be possession. One never knows.) one of the more well-known but obnoxious English-speakers in town. He loves the Discovery Channel and likes watching movies, but Jody (the sitemate) and I don't like sitting next to him because he talks and really doesn't mind if the whole theater hears. Last night he wanted to know what "main prison" meant because the camera focused on it for no reason and for a couple of seconds. The odd thing is, he knows what prison means, so in whispers I had to explain what "main" means. I finally wound up with "basic" as a word he knew, although I should have been able to come up with the Bulgarian translation. It hasn't been a good Bulgarian week for me. I've been stuttering and bumbling quite a bit.
Anyway, at various times he also wanted to know if I believed in ghosts, what a psychiatric prison is ("Is it an asylum, or a prison?" That is an odd distinction if you have only one definition of asylum on your mind.), and who I thought was behind it all. I answered his translation questions out of some sense of duty, but I ended the other conversations after the questions.
It all made for a fun movie experience, I suppose. Good times, even if the title of the movie has nothing to do with anything.