£15 for a Korean Martial Arts Film at the Curzon Bloomsbury? My Inner Pricing Manager is Offended

I went to see The Assassin at the Curzon Bloomsbury (or “The Renoir” if you’re old-school) the other Saturday. The 11:00 AM showing. In the Minema screening room.


It cost £15.

It’s a good film. There were quite a few people there - for a Korean martial arts film showing at the Renoir. And get they must have spent a LOT of money on the Takero Shimazaki-designed overhaul of the cinema, of which this is a sample.

But £15?

When the DVD, which will come out in six months at the most, will cost about £8 in the Covent Garden branch of Fopp?

I paid £20 to see the Star Wars movie at the Odeon Leicester Square, and I was happy to do that because some films need to be seen on a BIG screen. The Curzon Bloomsbury does not have a big screen, though it does have more comfortable seats. I think the Minema screening room is not a lot bigger than my back room, and I live in a small terraced house.

My inner pricing manager is offended. I’m not sure what I think would be a good price. The Prince Charles charges £11. That feels about right, as they have refurbished the Prince Charles as well. I think I paid about £12 to see The Big Short at the Cineworld Haymarket the Saturday before that. I know the Curzon want me to sign up as a member, when I will get two free tickets and “reduced” rates. Except those “reduced” rates are the standard rates, and the walk-in price I paid was a premium rate. The annual membership (for me) is £45, less £30 for the free tickets, which is £15, and I think the discount isn’t as much as £3. I would need to see six films a year before I broke even on that one, which is just about possible.

It ain’t cheap to go to the movies no more. And I’m not sure the movies they’re showing are worth that kind of money. Maybe having Rohmer, Robbe-Grillet and Godard on DVD does spoil one. 

Maybe I need to go to the ICA more. After all, they show more or less the same films as the Curzon chain. But this week it’s only showing The Assassin at 16:00, and that’s when I leave the office over in the City. So maybe not the ICA then. While I’m still working.

John Bodi - Death by a Thousand Sluts

While I’m talking about books you should read, this is the first book for quite a while that I read in one sitting. Do not read this if you are female - you simply won’t understand it. Do not read it if you have never had a bad week in your life, because you won’t understand it either.

And when you get to the end, you might realise that Bodi’s real achievement is that, throughout the depressions, crises and breakdowns, not once does he turn to the doctor and ask for some anti-depressants. He never doubts that his troubles and inner chaos can be sorted out without drugs and by action. I’ve had some bad moments, but none as bad as some of the ones Bodi describes. And his insights into people and his descriptions of the London Day Game scene are worth every penny.

Just not if you’re a girl of either sex.

The Scarfolk book really is weird, and it’s the illustrations that are most weird.

I am alive really, it’s just that I’m not taking any photographs and the stuff I’m thinking about is stuff I’ve thought about before and I don’t want to go on about the same things in public.

So instead… read this...

I saw it a while ago in Foyles, found it intriguing, bought it and only now have been in the mood to read it.

It took me a long time to realise that you should always buy a book you want to read, even if you can’t read it right away, because it might not be available in six month’s time when you’re in the mood again. This is especially applies to art books that accompany exhibitions, and art books generally. The really good ones don’t get remaindered, though you may be able to get them cheaper on Amazon. Support your local bookstore however (in my case, that’s Foyles).

The Scarfolk book really is weird, and it’s the illustrations that are most weird. Someone went to a ton of trouble to do those and there are lot of them.

Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his book about his early years in Paris, which seemed to be on every counter and table in Waterstone's Piccadilly branch last week.

We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescape. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside.

That is on the opening page of the stories in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his book about his early years in Paris, which seemed to be on every counter and table in Waterstone's Piccadilly branch last week.

I discovered Hemingway very late. And when I did I nearly gave up writing anything in English again except for business writing because that has to be bad and clumsy to be effective. I thought, based on rumour and hearsay, that Hemingway was merely a stylist. He isn't: he is simply one of the best experimental writers of English there has ever been. Those two sentences pick out maybe a dozen images from a winter evening and knit them together like one smooth Vincente Minelli crane shot.

Masterly.

It’s cold. I’m trying to get over seven hour’s sleep a day

It’s cold. I’m trying to get over seven hour’s sleep a day. I’m wading my way through Nessa Carey’s The Epigenetics Revolution and getting lost in proteins called things like WNKR3 and a description of gene expression modification that sounds like some really kludgey patches to some gigantic corporate Java program.

The Economist had an editorial about Cologne and immigration that was mid-boggling in its sophistry and I don’t even want to get into it. It says:

Thousands more refugees arrive in Greece every week. Those who would shut them out must explain where they should go instead.

Uh. How about they stay where they are and fight for their freedom? Or go to another Muslim country, of which there are plenty much closer than Sweden. Europe is full: go look at the unemployment stats. But here I am getting into it, and I said I wouldn’t.

Rollo is trying to square the circle of the Red Pill for the second time in three weeks.

The circle is that if what he says about women’s hypergamy and sexual strategy is correct, no sane man would ever commit his life, income or assets to a partnership with one, and the only kind of love a sane man could feel is an aesthetic feeling similar to the “love” that one has for sunsets, a favourite comedian or a pretty figure, which is not a love for a person, but for particular features of them. This is the position of PUAs and MGTOWs.

Rollo’s audience are men who want to feel the whole-person kind of love leading to financial commitments that can be cashed in by lawyers. (What makes it worse is that this seems to me to be a laudable ambition, just not one that is going to be happily fulfilled in the current exact conditions of really-existing Capitalism.) He can’t say that he can show how Red Pill aware love for the whole woman is possible, because it isn’t, but if he says words to the effect of “bitches ain’t nothing but sex and entertainment” he risks losing his audience. Roosh lost his moorings a while back with the neo-masculinity thing, Heartiste is shilling for Trump and could be in more white supremacy mode unless he signed off “14/88” (look it up). Rollo is the last of the three R’s standing and it's slightly worrying that he can't deal with this. It's the sort of thing that causes thinkers to implode.

And I'm trying to watch one episode of Nikita S3 an evening, but I missed this evening because I wound up writing this.

Should I know about Chinese Art, or will it go away if I ignore it for long enough?

Should I know about Chinese Art, or will it go away if I ignore it for long enough?

Octopus in Damson on Brewer Street after training and before going to the hygenist.

Yet another new restaurant franchise in Spitalfields Market - something to try in January.

This is going to be a casual, easy rent office space for hipsters with Macs and a glib presentation. Or so the current promotion says.

But I do work with my hands? What the heck else is typing code?

No the waitress isn't telling the clueless Millennials that they can't eat food they bought somewhere else, especially at a faux-Japanese franchise that uses really poor ingredients. I wish she had.

That Ain’t Working, That’s The Way You Do It, You Get Money For Your Sperm and Your Porn For Free

I have to finish the year with this little gem. It's from an article in the Telegraph about how English women are going to Denmark for sperm. Which wasn't the way I read this paragraph...

When “John”, one of the 250 regular donors on the books of European Sperm Bank, walks through the door, the attraction of using a Danish donor seems a little more obvious. In his twenties, with Nordic good looks and utterly charming, he donates three times a week, getting paid around £30 a visit. He insists that although the money makes a difference, it’s his desire to help others that is key. “Instead of donating blood, you can do this to make people really happy,” he tells me.

Yeah, right. Three times a week!

Have a Prosperous 2016.