Really bad movie premiere.

I watched the "Gangs of New York" movie premiere organized by the Ateneo Junior Marketing Association last saturday at Megamall Cinema 3. Bad experience!

I was with Gino, and my cousin Anton. We lined up at around 6:50PM, since it was supposed to start at 7:30PM. There were a lot of AJMA members at the entrance to the cinemas, trying to sell tickets to those who pass by. It was not a good sight, seeing them trying to sell a LOT of tickets. And I mean A LOT. They should have just brought out several tickets so that they didn't look too pathetic.

I thought we could get in before 7:30PM, but we had to wait until that time. Then an employee of Megamall announced through a megaphone that they will strictly implement the MTRCB R-18 rating. This means that we had to show an ID before we could enter. They said they discussed this with the organizers. Why did they wait until 7:30PM to announce? They should have announced it earlier!

They started to let people in at around 7:40PM. We got good seats. It was really disappointing to see that the theater was not full. The movie got 10 Oscar nominations! There were just too many empty seats. Yes, there were a lot of sponsors, so the org was probably able to recover their costs. But the opportunity was there for them to make a lot of money, being able to get the rights to this critically-acclaimed movie.

Before the movie started, there was a raffle. The hosts were terrible. The girl apologized for all her mistakes in pronunciation. The guy had a lisp, which was probably because he had braces. Hey, I have nothing against this, but they could have chosen another host. There were 10 prizes, and they called out numbers until all 10 prizes were claimed. I think they ended up calling more than 20 numbers. So we all had to wait.

We were asked to stand up for a prayer. Then we sat down. Then the hosts proudly presented the movie. And then we were asked to stand up again for the Philippine National Anthem. The movie started at around 8:45PM!

I've attended a lot of movie premieres organized by school oganizations. Of course no one can be perfect, but I just felt so disappointed last Saturday. Good thing the movie was really good. Heavy, but really good.