damn russians
Saw Sin City last night. Good movie, though not for everyone. Pretty violent/gory, very stylized. Whereas Spiderman, X-men, etc. are movies based on comic books, this one is more of an animated comic book. Not without minor flaws (plot holes, some character inconsistencies), but nothing too detracting.
The russians, on the other hand...
I'm occasionally (often?) not too fond of the typical russian. One of the reasons is that some of them don't seem to grasp basic rules of etiquette. For example, not talking in a movie theater, or keeping your voice down in a crowded store. Evidently, if you are speaking another language, you are inaudible to those around you. I can understand why this happens: much of the reason to keep a conversation quiet is for privacy, so if you believe you are safe from eavesdropping, why not shout across the store at the top of your lungs? Other foreigners do this as well, but I've noticed it with russians more than with anyone. (Of course, maybe that's because I understand them.)
The nice thing about speaking the language is that if you ask such a group to quiet down in russian, it freaks them out and tends to be extremely effective.
But I digress.
Our neighbors (to my left) at the movie theater were a pair of russians. Men, around their 40s. I think they were on a date, with the one immediately next to me the 'bottom' and the next one the 'top' (at least from their conversational mannerisms).
They were retarded. In the literal sense - their conversation was on the level of 4 year olds.
They talked to each other about the movie. Insightful comments such as "wow, look at all those bullets". After a couple of minutes of this, I turned to them and asked them (excruciatingly politely - that's something russian is very good at) to not talk during the movie. They freaked out and shut up.
But that wasn't the only thing they did. Apparently, the 'top' found violence hilarius. Bust-your-ass-laughing, fart-in-a-crowded-room hilarious. So every time something violent happened (and this is Sin City, so every couple of minutes), he laughed uproariously. (rzhal, is the russian word). The fact that he was the only one laughing did not phase him.
It was, to put it mildly, extremely annoying, and since it happened constantly during the first half of the movie, it detracted considerably from the experience. At least he quieted down toward the latter half.
Ugh.
Yeah, I'm aware that being retarded, they weren't typical russians. The first half of the rant is there because they reminded me of all my other encounters of such nature. (Update: maybe they were typical russians after all - see comments below)