The One With Aldacron

My wife and I woke early this morning for the first showing of The Prestige at the nearest location of our favorite cinema franchise. We skipped the caramel popcorn this time and went for pepper hot dogs and a pretzel filled with cream cheese. We were both quite drowsy, having been woken up several times during the night by one of our dogs. The movie engaged me enough that I didn’t get sleepy once, but my wife was struggling after the first hour.

Overall, it was a good movie, a story of betrayal, obsession, and magic. It’s told using a convoluted mechanic, but ultimately ties together very well. The movie opens near the end of the story, then shows the events leading to that point through a series of recursive flashbacks. What I really liked about it is that the movie itself is like one big magic trick. There are several hints throughout that point you toward a certain ending, with just enough misdirection to make you second guess. I’ll say that half-way through I had an idea where it was going, then about three-quarters through were a couple of scenes which confirmed my guesses. I was certain I knew what was coming. Ultimately, I was only partially correct — I fell victim to a big misdirection and missed a subtle, but major, clue. I love it when a movie outsmarts me like that. My wife was lost and I had to explain it to her, but I attribute that to her drowsiness.

The theater is on the 7th floor of a large complex that houses two department stores, a train station, subway transfer hub, and a shopping mall. We were in cinema 10, one we hadn’t been in before. As we were exiting, we passed a set of doors that led out onto the roof. Having never gone that way, we headed outside. As we exited the building, I looked to my left and saw, atop a small shack-like structure, a big sign that read “Putt Putt”.

I used to love Putt-Putt as a kid. As I got older, not so much. I remember playing it only a couple of times in my late teens, once on a trip to Dallas and once on a date in high school. That was almost 20 years ago. I had never seen Putt-Putt in Korea. The US Army base in Seoul once had an 18-hole golf course. They turned most of it over to the Korean government several years ago and turned the remainder into a driving range, a miniature golf course, and a six-hole chip-and-putt course (that only lasted a few years before they tore all but the driving range down to build a day care center). I was working on base at the time. A friend and I played the chip-and-putt course twice a week, and I played the mini golf course twice with dates. It was horribly boring and wasn’t the Putt-Putt brand.

So I was exclaiming to my wife how excited I was to see Putt-Putt in Korea. Neither of us wanted to play today, but I told her all about Putt-Putt and how my family used to go to one when I was young. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that Putt-Putt, the brand, is hyphenated. The one we saw wasn’t, but was Putt Putt instead. So it looks like the franchise hasn’t made it to Korea after all. I suppose we can rank that one right up there with Coobucks coffee, which seems to be everywhere in Seoul that Starbucks isn’t (and there’s nearly a Starbucks on every block in some areas), complete with a similar logo and color scheme. Koreans are nothing if not crea… duplicative (ok, that’s a bit harsh — Koreans can be creative and innovative, too, but they sure do love to copy things).

Technorati Tags: Prestige, Korea, Starbucks, Putt-Putt, Seoul, CGV, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine