On Friday evening Gam and I went to Southbank to catch the 9.20pm screening of Iron Man on the big screen. First, a confession: we drove. Gam pulled the "I'm sick" card, which apparently trumped my environmental "we live so close to public transport" guilt card (and to be fair, this cold or flu or whatever it has been laid me up for well over a week so Gam is genuinely still feeling pretty crook).
We bought tickets at around 8pm for us and our friends Amelia and Victor, and headed to Batavia a couple of doors down. There were some seats available but staff were a bit slow in actually getting around to seating us so we decided to go for a walk and see where else we could get a bite to eat and wait for the movie.
In the end we stumbled across Satay Hut, which had a few nice spots to sit and a scarcity of smokers hanging around, so we decided to eat there. The menu makes it clear that anything labelled as containing chilli is actually mild and that anyone who wants something half decently spicy should notify their waiter when they order their meal, so it was fairly obvious that the food is dumbed down for Australian tastes. We ordered a drink each- a 'pina coolada' ('pineapple juice and coconut milk') for me and a lime and soda for Gam, and couple of entrées- the satay beef skewers and the 'yum cha platter for two', which contained two curry puffs (pretty much vegetable samosas), two satay chicken skewers, two bbq pork buns, two siu mai and two other little pork dumpling things whose name escapes me (jiaozi maybe?).
Gam's lime and soda ($4.50) was nice and refreshing, while my 'pina coolada' ($5.50) was tasty but too sickly sweet to drink the entire thing. It didn't taste like it used fresh pineapple juice, or if it did, maybe they had added too much sugar.
The satay beef skewers ($9.50, I think) were pretty good- the meat was well cooked, and the sauce was tasty but lacking in spiciness. I didn't taste the chicken skewers, but Gam didn't have any complaints so presumably they were just as good. The bbq pork buns were far too sweet and lacking an any real flavour whatsoever- I suspect most of the yum cha platter ($24 or thereabouts) was made up of the 'yum cha' items you can buy in the freezer section of the supermarket; the curry puffs were the spiciest items, while the little pork dumplings and siu mai met Gam's approval... he doesn't like bbq pork buns or vegetarian curry puffs, so I let him have my share.
The service was good, and we had a nice little spot away from most of the other tables, so overall Satay Hut was nice for a bite to eat, but for $43 you're better off going to Batavia or Ahmets if you're looking for something to really satisfy your tastebuds.
While we were at Satay Hut we messaged Victor to find out if one of our other friends who'd replied via the facebook events page was coming and whether she wanted us to buy tickets for Iron Man. Victor messaged back that Shannon would like tickets for her and her boyfriend John, to which we replied no problem... only to head to the Cinema at a couple of minutes to 9pm only to find out that not only had the big screen session at 9.20pm sold out, so had the 9.30pm session for one of the smaller cinemas. D'oh! Gam took Shannon's number so such a mess wouldn't happen again, but I wouldn't be surprised if she and John never want to come to something we're in charge of organising again... Sorry Shannon & John!
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Iron Man was enjoyable. Paul Byrnes in the SMH was perhaps too analytical in attempting to describe the contradictions between a couple of token anti-war jibes and the stereotypical 'bad arab' baddies at the beginning of the movie set in Afghanistan. Visually it was pretty cool, and Robert Downey Jr did a nice job in the lead role as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Gwyneth Paltrow wasn't very annoying as Pepper Potts, although god damn it's annoying seeing a woman in a movie in a situation where she needs to run for her life and she winds up being hobbled by a pair of stupid high heels. Why don't women learn from this in real life? Wearing high heels practically makes you disabled and you'll never get away from the bad guys... well, you might miss your bus. I was ever so relieved that the makers of the film didn't ruin everything at the end by having the 'sexual tension' between Stark and Potts resolved by means of a kiss... that would have totally killed it, I reckon. As it was, after the end of the movie, sitting through endless credits and seeing the teaser for the next film with Samuel L. 'motherfucking' Jackson, I was left looking forward to more of the same. A good, fun movie.
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