Two Posts in One Day - Boom-yah!

I figured that I'd take advantage of the excessive internet access I have at Troë's school and post twice today. (That, and now it's after school and Troë has a singing rehearsal for her play, and I'm bored.) And to make things more interesting for those of you who read this regularly and are bored of hearing about Troë classes and my work - I'll talk about something different.

Movies in Britain. The movies here are different - in several ways.

Firstly, not all of the movies from North America are released in the theatres over here, and they also have theatre-released movies here that never air in Canada. A case-in-point is this new movie "STORMBREAKER" (in all caps, for no reason). It stars Ewan McGreggor, Alica Silverstone, Mickey Rourke and a bunch of other people. I'd never heard of it before coming here, but it was everywhere here when we first arrived: on buses, billboards, Burger King kids meals, and anywhere else we cared to look. It looks kind of "Spy Kids"-ish and John said it's based on a series of kids books that are popular in England. That probably explains why the movie is hyped so much over here.

Secondly, when movies are relased over here as well as in North America, they're released at different times. Usually later times. Yesterday I saw a sign advertising a sneak preview for "The Devil Wears Prada" next weekend. And today a break time some of the teachers were talking about the new Adam Sandler movie coming out next month: "Click". I encountered this phenomenon went I went to Australia, but though that it was isolated to that area of the world. (To me, it makes sense that summer blockbusters should come out during the summer months, regardless of when that is. So in Australia, I didn't find it odd when action-adventure movies were primarily released in the hot months of December and January, during the students two month summer vacation.) England is the Northern hemisphere, just as in Canada, though. Also, England is pretty populous (twice that of Canada) where-as Australia is smaller then Canada.

Finally, when the movies are released over here, often they're called something entirely different. Last week we rented a few of these movies. In Canada, Jean Reno stars as an assassin in Natalie Portman's first movie called "the Professional". Here that movie is called "Leon". In Canada, Ashley Judd, Greg Kinnear and Hugh Jackman all star in a romantic comedy about being jilted called "Someone Like You". Here that movie is called "Animal Attraction".

To complicate things the movie posters and rental jackets usually have different pictures on them.

So when we go the library to rent a movie (which we do) then you often come across movies you;ve never heard of, with covers you've never seen, staring actors you know. So you pick it up to rent, only to realize that you've already seen it.