At the Cinema in Singapore

Tonight, Paula and I saw David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” on its opening night in Singapore. We both liked it a lot. This was my first time at the movies in Singapore, and it was a mild adventure.

From our dinner in Chinatown, the nearest theater was the Cineleisure Orchard. Orchard is like a suburb made entirely out of malls, and the Cineleisure building is a 9-storey vertical mall. There are at least 16 screens in the place, plus various restaurants, snack bars, and concession stands, and some teen-focused retail. It feels like about 50/50 theater/other

We first tried to see the show in Cineleisure’s Platinum Suites. The show was sold out for the Platinum Suites theater, but we asked the attendant for a tour the place. The theater is like a Sundance or Big Picture, with food service at seats, but the chairs look amazingly comfortable. I want to go back and see a show there soon. This luxury has a steep price: SGD28 weekdays and SGD38 weekends.

Our regular tickets got us comfortable reserved seats with great cup holders, which was great. These seats were SGD8, or SGD7 when paying with a MasterCard.

Two other little Sing Cinema details, regarding the concession stand: 1. They have frozen Fanta drinks, like Slushies in the US. They are unbelievably sweet, if one goes for that sort of thing. 2. The concession stand only takes cash, which is weird for a country with more space-age forms of payment than I have ever seen anywhere.