Leaving after the first five minutes...

In my apartment, not so high above the streets of Atyrau, where the city does sleep,or at least does a good job of sleeping around, TV is an obvious and regular respite.

Alas, as anyone who stays regularly in hotels or has access to satellite TV will know, having 42 channels does not mean having a smorgasbord of enticing dishes to pick and choose from. One of the impediments is that you never know what on earth is coming up on all those other channels you're not tuned to. You flick optimistically and constantly through the channels, sometimes idling too long at a particularly mundane yet fascinating episode of myth-busters or a scene of hyenas pack-hunting chimpanzees, in the hope of finding a good movie. What's more, you're of course seeking a quality movie (not one about a quake that threatens to rupture the world and release hoards of worms on its unsuspecting inhabitants. One where the rationale is clear for the lack of an Odeon Leicester square opening). And one that you haven't seen.

You then have the extra hurdle that, despite the 1min it takes to cycle through 42 channels, the movie you finally find, and are interested in, is invariably half way through... I like to see the movie as nature intended it, I don't want to be forced to paper over the cracks, fill in the blanks for the sake of a half satisfying, half hour of viewing.

But with satellite, no such option exists, you need to be ever at attendance, flicking, searching, trawling the skies for a movie that is worth watching and yet, not yet begun.

The reality is that you never watch an entire, satisfying or desired movie, rather you watch a collage of movie snippets. Very rarely do we tune in and find the movie has magically "just begun".

Yet the beginning means so much.

In Zack Snyder's remake of Romero's classic "Dawn of the dead", we kick off with a truly epic melding of music and video. The jagged and violent splicing of image to image, and soundtrack to soundtrack (johnny cash's "when the man comes around" overdubbed with dialogue, screams and radio garble) leaves the music video equivalent, "Thriller", in the dust.

How do I know this? Am I a film buff, a loser in the steppes with too much time on his hands, or just using obscure and specific references to pretentiously establish subculture credentials, like Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) did in Jonathon Levine's 2008 hip hop subculture classic, the Wackness? (..)

No (well, ok, and "yes" and "yes") - it's mostly to do with a monumental exhibition I was lucky enough to stumble across "while in Berlin". Walking from room to room took me through mock theatre after mock theatre, some dressed up as old style cinema houses, others funky dancefloors with sponge floors and VJ screens. And, as I walked through, I was perpetually walking into the start of a movie.

Who knows what the intent of this was. But my interpretation was two fold;
(1) the start, the first 5minutes, of a movie, where credits are rolling, music is playing, and suspense is building, is in many ways the coolest bit. Hell, I get a kick out of just watching that 20th century fox segment with the searchlights and the make believe studio building. But when the titles roll and the incidentals kick in…. In Berlin, this collage of movie-beginnings was a meal in itself. I'm sure a study would confirm that 80% of a films editing budget goes into the opening (even if the bosses don't know it). And rightly so; the feel, the opening music portraying suspens, happy-happy joy-joy, violence or darkness. That 5 minutes that sets the tone for the next 89 minutes. First impressions are, after all, everything to us.
(2) there's something cool about walking into a movie once it's sort of started (and let's face it - we're all doing well if we're that early), so perpetually walking into one movie start after another, it has the curious effect of compounding that small unique experience, creating a sandwich of similar experiences, that is very, very cool. Think the repetitive, but slightly different, nuanced experiences of Bill Murray in Harold Ramis's "groundhog day". But with 5 minute segments.

A movie beginning is like a movie trailer. A hollywood promoter once described in the New Yorker the importance of, and dynamics around, movie trailers. In one example, they were tasked with a particularly lame rom-com starring Jessica Alba. Given such material to work with, they were understandably starved ideas on how to hook the public - they finally selected a specific scene where she happens to fall over a piece of furniture - this was pounced upon, and they used it to suggest this was another, new and improved "something about mary" (cute, clumsy and clever rom com). Thus re-inventing, at least prior to viewing, this movie in the eyes of the viewer.

You're forgiven if you've seen, but don't recall, "Good luck Chuck" (even if you haven't forgiven yourself). But the gist is, as one viewer on IMDB put it, "Good Luck Chuck is a totally different movie from the one advertised". If only the feeling could have lasted….

Unfortunately most of us stay until after the movie titles roll.

That's it for now, didn't really touch on Kazakh life. Will waver occasionally…. no apologies….