Thursday's moviefest

Here are some pictures from yesterday's "Terminator Genisys" premiere, featuring the big man himself, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his date(?) for the evening, the young and lovely Emilia Clarke, a.k.a. Daenerys Targaryen on HBO's "Game of Thrones." Hover your cursor over each image to read its caption. For the sixth image, please click on it to enlarge so you can appreciate the true vastness of the theater we were in.

The cinema is located next to the enormous—and trouble-plagued—Lotte World Tower, an ambitious edifice being built right across the street from Jamshil's venerable Lotte Hotel and Lotte Department Store. You can reach the mall/cinema entrance by popping out of Jamshil Station's Exit 11. The entrance to the mall was decked out with a short red carpet yesterday, as well as a blocky-looking threshold covered with "Terminator Genisys" ads and imagery.

I arrived at the entrance at 7:45PM; Tom greeted me and informed me that I had just missed Arnold and Emilia's stroll along the red carpet. Luckily, Arnold was just inside the complex, standing on a stage and saying some words to the crowd and the ubiquitous cell-phone cameras, his live image being projected onto a giant screen above and behind the stage. I met Tom's other guests for the evening—a British coworker of his named David, a Korean lawyer friend with a name that sounded like "Aesop," and the lawyer's son, Chris.

We wandered past the stage, and I managed to get a shot of Arnold from behind, as you'll see below (look for the picture in which the Governator has been circled). We wended our way up a couple floors; the lawyer and his kid hadn't eaten dinner, so we stopped at a donggaseu restaurant. Tom, "Aesop," and Chris went in for dinner while David and I stood guard outside and talked about HBO's "Game of Thrones" and its literary parent, George RR Martin's epic series A Song of Ice and Fire.

After dinner was over, we escalatored up to the mall's tenth floor. Tom, our organizer for the evening, had already given us our tickets. Some of us bought popcorn; some of us hit the restroom one final time before the show. I was a bit disappointed that all I'd seen of Arnold was his enormous, V-shaped back. Was that it? I wondered. Based on what Tom had told me, I'd thought that Arnold was going to appear in the movie theater itself to say a few words.

We filed into the theater, easily found our seats, sat down...and were rewarded a few minutes later with Arnold and Emilia themselves! I filmed almost the entire spiel, which lasted barely five minutes: a Korean announcer and an interpreter came to the front first; the announcer heralded Arnold's and Emilia's arrival; Arnold and Emilia took turns wishing us well, thanking us for our fan-loyalty (specifically, Arnold noted that he loved coming back to Korea because of the fans), and hoping that we would enjoy the show. Two kids came up and gave each actor a nice-looking bouquet; Emilia's beauty and talent were lauded by Arnold, who also spouted his corny and now-self-parodic "I'll be back" line a couple times. I stopped recording when the announcer said goodbye, and the two megastars left the stage only seconds after that. If you want to watch my rather shaky, hand-held recording of Arnold and Emilia's quick talk, click here. One last note: I was generally impressed by the interpreter, who was quite competent, although I don't think she managed to translate Arnold's compliments to the Korean audience regarding their fan loyalty. A small oversight, I suppose, all things considered.

And here are the photos. As I noted before, you can hover your cursor over each image to read its caption.

Click the image below to enlarge (but read the caption first):

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