Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

After three nights in Swords, I figured I'd had had a successful visit to the Dublin area, and that it was time to visit other parts of Ireland. I wasn't ready to head off to Galway, which would be my ultimate destination, so I had some free time to go anywhere I wanted for a couple days.

It was all up in the air when I woke up on Monday morning, but nevertheless I knew where I wanted to go. Having seen the capital of the Republic for a couple days, I figured it was appropriate to venture up to the North to see the other side.

So I caught the double decker bus back into Dublin one last time, then headed to the main bus station and bought a ten euro one-way ticket to Belfast.

It was a nice relaxing three hour trip north on Bus Eireann. I felt a little trepidation crossing the border (where the road signs changed from green to black). To be honest, I had intended to completely avoid the United Kingdom on this trip, given that it has turned into hardcore police state. The UK itself now has the same impression in my mind as the USSR did in 1985. But I wasn't shy about crossing the Iron Curtain back then. I figure it was appropriate to venture into the domain of the Eugenicist-in-Chief of the World, Queen Elizabeth.

Having gotten my relaxation at the expensive Travelodge, I'd felt rested enough to book a hostel in Belfast over the Internet. It was only six quid a night, which meant a rustic experience, but my days in Lisbon had accustomed to it. Besides, there was free wireless Internet.

Belfast felt a little sad to me. The entire place shuts down in the evening and feels dead compared to Dublin. A tour bus driver mentioned how the shipyard (where the Titanic was built) has been shutdown and the dry dock cranes are being turned into restaurants. The future of Northern Ireland is all about tourism it seems. I thought to myself, they should build ships there, dammit. Damn eugenicists want to shut down the industrial base of America and Europe. Phony "carbon footprint" bullshit is designed to enslave us.

I also had a real blast after venturing into a cage-shrouded tavern next to the hostel in north Belfast. It turned out to be a stronghold of the Republicans, and I was bought free beers by the two daughters of the proprietor after expounding my hatred for the Crown, and how Northern Ireland is the beta testing ground for the police state for the entire world. I listened to them as they sang along to IRA songs on the jukebox.

All in all, the experience in North was quite fun and exhilirating, especially seeing the remnants of the Troubles. On the second day, I shelled out for a guided bus tour up along the Antrim Coast to the Giant's Causeway, the million-year-old rock formation that juts out into the sea, and which has become the most popular tourist attraction in Europe.

I even had chance to squeeze in a movie while I was in Belfast. On my first night, while exploring a shuttered city center, I found myself in Victoria Square, the opulent multi-story shopping mall which was pretty much the only thing open on Monday night. I took the elevators up to the top floor and found myself as the Omni multiplex.

Among the choices showing there, the obvious choice seemed to be Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I wasn't really looking forward to seeing this movie, but it seemed the appropriate thing to do, to cross it off my list.

I was a little put off when the young woman at the counter asked me where I would like to sit: in front, in the middle, or in back. I have to decide in advance, I thought? Sheesh. How am I supposed to know. I resisted the temptation to reply, away from other people. I took my chances and said "in the middle," and for a mere six quid forty (cheap compared to the Republic), she printed me out a ticket that said "Row E, Seat 19."

I was a few mintues early, and so I was only person in the auditorium when I walked in. It reminded me of the stadium-seating auditoriums in shopping malls in the United States, except for the two video cameras mounted conspicuously on the wall beside the screen, pointed directly down at the seats. We were there not only to watch, but to be watched. I resisted the temptation to ask for my money back.

As other people walked in, I was convinced that we would all wind up sitting in a tight cluster in the middle of the auditorium. But we were well spaced out, and then I noticed people changing seats. Evidently the assignment was just a suggestion. Knowing that, I stayed in my seat. Probably there was no one watching the camera feeds as well---the Panopticon state in action.

The movie itself was just a freaking disaster, confirming my growing impression that outside of a few exceptions, only Disney/Pixar is capable of producing watchable feature-length animation.

The story was stupid and the characters were cloying and annoying. Not for a moment could I get away from seeing Ray Romano and Queen Latifah sitting in a studio doing the voice acting along to the charactes (maybe its the fact that the mouths of the wooly mammoths are not visible as they speak).

Latifah is a decent actor, but I really really tired of the "wife as the adult, husband as the grown child" Postmodern motif yet again on screen. It was sitting through back-to-back episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, which if you know me, is not something I would look forward to.

Just as annoying was the constant winking parade of anachronisms. Anachronisms are of course necessary and fun for this type of movie, but this movie was laden with them to such a degree that it was impossible to take the premise seriously at all. We got a constant stream of references to the Theory of Evolution and cell phones, etc. WTF? OK, I get it. Mammoths are just like us today. It's really about now.

There was something deeply offensive about the anti-nature quality of this movie, with the idea that mammoth mothers need to care for their infants in the same way as humans too. A little bit of this is OK, but when it becomes the main premise of the story, it just doesn't work. It makes me sick to my stomach that this movie was even made.

The only watchable part of this movie was the sabrecat character. Whenever I heard Dennis Leary's cynical voice, it felt like a breath of fresh air, as if he too did not want to be a part of this piece of crap.