The best thing and the worst thing about going to the cinema has to be other people.

When it is the best you are part of a wondrous shared experience and the audience becomes one, reaching together, gasping, giggling, sighing and getting caught up in the movie and there is nothing quiet like it even the odd funny exclaimation from someone which the whole place breaks up laughing at. Some of the best movie going experiences I have ever had were those like that,the majority of them were in the Savoy 1 over the years and three of the most memorable were The Crow, Bram Stokers Dracula and Practical Magic.

These days I find such experiences are very very rare, even when we do go to see a kids movie, yes children will be children but that magic seems to be missing. It seems a lot of people don’t want to take part in the group experience which is going to see a movie with maybe 100 strangers and sharing a common experience, we get people having conversation, talking and texting on phones or even checking the time on them which still creates a bright glare which will ruin the night vision of those around them.

I have for the post part given up on going to see mainstream movies due to the lack of consideration of other people. I find I get more fun out of once off special screenings, like when Pravda were showing movies, watching 28 days later in there was a wonderful experience.

So if people are the best and worst thing about trying to watch a movie and as great as home entertainment systems are they can’t gve you the experience of 20 other people giggling or groaning spontaneous along with you how can you have that level of good interaction with out the bad and well with out having to leave the house and comfort of sprawling on the sofa?

It seems that twitter may be the answer. It has the abilty for people to share and react together in a connected way with out having to endure the less plesant aspects of people’s proximity. Tomorrow evening just such an experiment is taking place. Damien Mulley has been organising a watching of the princess bride ( which is one of my favourates ) to take place at 8pm tomorrow evening and people from all over the country are going to watch it in unison and twitter as they watch. If you don’t do the twitter thing and you want to read the comments you will find them here and here also is the facebook event page. There is even the option to pop into Spy bar who are having a screening of it run by SoundCheck with free popcorn.

I am really interested in how this will work out and how many people take part,
as a collective shared experience is something so many of us just don’t do these days and it is part of the glue which sticks people together as a community.