Mt. Zion

Yesterday after school Sara and I walked to the mall. Not that far of a walk- only about half hour or so. Julie had told us about a movie called Mt. Zion (nothing to do with the church) about some Kiwi boys  from back in the 70s who hear about a competition to be the band who opens for Bob Marley (side note: Bob Marley is VERY popular over here. They had a festival going on while we were in Rotarua in his honor to keep his music alive. A bunch of bands play his type of genre). Since it's a Kiwi produced movie, not available in the states Sara and I decided to pay the 13.50 (yes movies are really expensive here) and go see it. Click here to see the trailer: Mt. Zion Trailer

Their movie theaters are just like ours except that you buy your ticket for the movie at the concessions counter... kind of weird. We spent about five minutes wandering around until we finally asked someone and got it sorted out. Haha oh well. Sara saw DDR over in the arcade games and since we had a few minutes to kill before the movie we played a few rounds. She is hard core and goes straight to the difficult level and as for me well lets just say that I'm on the "I haven't played this in years" level but it was still fun.

Although the movie was a bit different than I expected I loved it! It was so cool to see all of the Kiwi customs and traditions actually on the big screen. They had boil-up (something that we ate with Julie), we heard their national anthem on an electric guitar, and the film had a lot of the characters speaking in Maori (there were subtitles for us pakeha- white folk). The message (at least what I got out of it) was that we should be careful who (or what) we decide to make our role model/idol because sacrificing all to that person (or thing) will not necessarily give you anything in return.

Here's just another interesting part of being in another country: their rating system (the movie was only PG):

RATING	DESCRIPTION
G	Suitable for General Audience.
PG	All ages admitted, Parental Guidance recommended. Possible descriptors: Violence; Coarse language; Sexual references; Offensive behaviour; Cruelty; Crime; Horror.
M	Suitable for Mature Audiences 16 and over (but still unrestricted). Possible descriptors: Anti-social behaviour; Horror scenes; Scenes of cruelty; Offensive language; Violence; Sex scenes; Violence and offensive language; Violence, offensive language and sex scenes.
R??	The OFLC can apply any age rating they deem suitable to their Restricted rating. For example, an R13 would be restricted to persons aged 13 and over. More examples...
R16	Restricted to 16 years of age and over. Possible descriptors: Offensive language; Violence; Sex scenes; Violence, offensive language and sex scenes.
R18	Restricted to 18 years of age and over. Possible descriptors: Graphic violence; Explicit sex scenes; Violence and sex scenes; Violence, offensive language and sex scenes.

Our part of town

Their movie theaters looks just like ours! (if you can tell)