Seatwave.com Ticket Exchange Service: Unprofessional & Irresponsible

In a nutshell: If you have any other alternatives, do not use the ticket exchange service of Seatwave.com!

Since there was not anyone to warn me and I was not smart enough to do a small preliminary research on Seatwave's service (as I usually do for other services), I made the mistake to buy tickets via their fan to fan ticket exchange. I suppose, it's needless to say that practically Seatwave is not a "fan to fan" exchange service rather than a platform for reselling tickets on a speculative basis. But this is not the real problem as far as you are aware of it initially and I assume that everyone who is not excessively naive would guess this fact immediately.

The actual issue with Seatwave.com (and all of the website's variations like seatwave.it. seatwave.ie, etc.) is that their service is extremely unprofessional and they rely only on chance in order to complete the ticket exchange between the involved parties successfully. You will read about many guarantees on their site which they offer automatically for free with your purchase of any ticket(s) and you may even pay for some additional protections. All of these mean nothing if you are not prepared to lose a lot of your time and nerves.

So, here goes my experience with Seatwave. Unaware that I should not use them, I ordered several tickets for Paul McCartney's concert on 26/11/2011 in Bologna, Italy. I made the order on 15/11/2011 and it was explicitly stated the tickets were already ready for shipping. Since I didn't receive any tracking information until the end of the next day, I contacted their support with a question when the tickets would be shipped cause I was worried they would not arrive before 24/11/2011 when I intended to fly to Italy. A kind of an automatic reply followed on the next day notifying me that the tickets should be shipped on 18/11/2011 (three days after my order). I actually received a UPS tracking number on 18/11/2011. For my surprise, after checking the tracking information I found that the scheduled delivery by UPS was for 25/11/2011. I would not need the tickets at that time. I contacted Seatwave support again (a little bit more worried now) and this time I received a human response informing me that the tickets probably would travel faster and I should expect them to arrive by the end of 22/11/2011.

I checked the UPS tracking page again on 21/11/2011 and I found the tickets were not travelling fast enough and I didn't see any chances that they would arrive on the next day. I contacted Seatwave.com support once more. This time they confirmed that according to UPS the tickets would arrive on 25/11/2011. And now the bigger fun began. I contacted Seatwave via the chat option on their website. Without even asking them about a refund (I didn't care for a refund at that point anyway) they informed me they would not refund me because the tickets would arrive before the date of the event. Seatwave's support didn't care the delivery would be after my flight to Italy and they also didn't even try to observe their User agreement which stated that Seatwave would try to deliver the tickets at least 2 days before the event and if they were unsuccessful in that attempt they would either find replacement tickets or otherwise refund the full amount you had paid.

I explained to them that they were in violation of their own user agreement and the fun continued. They answered me that normally people had to travel to the venue at the date of the event and more bullshit like this. I still do not believe that most people book flights for international trips at the actual date of the flight, especially when they intend to attend a concert or any other kind of event. After almost a whole day lost in stupid arguments with Seatwave's support, I informed them again that I didn't care about the refund and all I wanted was they keep their guarantees listed on their site. I wanted tickets, not a refund which I would get one way or another if eventually I needed to.

Read the second part of this article by following the link Seatwave.com Experience, Part 2.

Sucker Punch (2011): A Blow in Your Eyes and Ears

Sucker Punch is a strange movie. Yet, it would be very unlikely, if after seeing previous Zack Snyder's efforts, anyone has expected a regular film from this director. Sucker Punch is a movie about girls. Not excessively dressed, beautiful and sexy girls. It's a movie about weapons. All kinds of weapons. It's a movie about enemies. Armed, unarmed, human, bestial, weird, big, undead and what other sort of enemies you might think of. Sucker Punch is a movie about life, death, dreams, lobotomy, games, crime, dragons, sacrifice. It's a motley hodgepodge.

Sucker Punch starts with Baby Doll (Emily Browning), the main "heroine" of the movie, losing her mother. Quite soon, the girl's stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) attacks her and her sister. Baby Doll attempts a kind of counter-attack, but the end result is not good for her. She is thrown into a hospital for mentally ill patients where the manager Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) is bribed from her stepfather to arrange a lobotomy for the young lady in order to permanently keep her silent. A doctor able to perform the lobotomy is expected to arrive in 5 days. And now, the real hodgepodge begins. Baby Doll's imagination produces a parallel world which is just a little bit nicer than the hospital but far more pleasant for the eye.

The "new" place is a brothel with skilled and young female dancers trained by Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) to exquisitely pleasure the house's VIP guests. When Baby Doll is forced to show her dancing skills, her mind once again retreats to another world where she meets a Wise Man (Scott Glenn) who advises the girl to pursue her freedom with the help of five items she has to either obtain or discover. When Baby Doll is "back" to the brothel it appears she has turned into an incredible dancer and everyone is staring at her. She succeeds to convince four of the other girls to aid her preparing and fulfilling the escape plan. The girls are Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung). And from then on, it's showtime. The deeper the level of dreaming, the bigger the spectacle is.

Some reviewers compare Sucker Punch with Inception and it's easy to see where their reasoning comes from. But on the other hand, if we exclude levelled dreaming and a few hints of possible but not certain shared dreaming, there are not too many similarities with the Christopher Nolan's film and it's hard to say Sucker Punch is just an Inception clone movie. In addition, the ending of Inception has been widely open to interpretations, whereas Sucker Punch ends rather unambiguously. In a way, its ending has more resemblance to another 2010 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island, than to the Nolan's movie. And in terms of quality, it is questionable whether the both films are comparable because although Inception has been a far from perfect movie, there is even more to be desired from Sucker Punch.

And if you ask, what more do you want from a film with so many hot chicks in it... Sucker Punch is a mess. There is even a point in the movie (after, let's say, the first "second level" dreaming) where you may wonder what is really happening since the film has been looking like 3 completely unrelated stories up to this moment. The number of "stories" continues to grow as the movie progresses but at least some system appears in the initial chaos. The script is not a strong side of the film either and there are several cases of characters' behavior that do not seem well motivated or clearly explained. Sucker Punch carries out an expendable "you are your own God" message that is kind of artificially embedded into the movie. Finally, many of the visuals and techniques used in the film have been already exploited a lot, e.g., bullet special effects, slow motion, etc.

Then why would you possibly go see this movie? Well, there are moments beautiful to watch, either the gorgeous girls, or the exuberant visuals. The film is colorful in pretty much every aspect. If you are a gamer, the second level dreaming sequences offer a variety of game references. The music is primarily loud and although not being very original, there are noticeable covers of popular artists like the Beatles or Eurythmics. The score is what one would expect from a Zack Snyder's movie thus if you are into that sort of music, it's another plus for you.

And practically, this is it. If you want to see a film made primarily for your senses, Sucker Punch is a good choice. If you want a deeper story with less fireworks and noise, just skip this movie.

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Black Swan (2010): Commenting a Few Speculations

Following the release of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, a lot of detail interpretations have appeared. Some of them have been justified while others have been mainly fictitious. In this article we are going to comment a few of these speculations so it's likely that a couple of spoilers will be listed below although they will be avoided if possible.

Let's start with the genre of Black Swan. It has been classified as drama, thriller, mystery. While it fully belongs in the category of drama, the other two classifications are not entirely correct. Usually a thriller is associated with a kind of a crime: a murder, a theft, etc. It's not a must but even if we consider Black Swan to be an exception, it's hard to say the movie thrills you in the common way thrillers do. It's probably more thrilling because it is a Darren Aronofsky's film and somehow you don't know what exactly to expect from a motion picture of his. Pretty much the same thoughts apply to the movie being a mystery. There is not really any great mystification explored in the film.

Some people mention there are supernatural elements in Black Swan. Sure, a few events prompting at this direction happen but after seeing the movie's ending it is hard to believe anyone still supports this theory. Any physical and spiritual appearances of unnatural forces throughout the film appear to be just imaginary and a product of an unstable mind. Our main character, Nina (Natalie Portman), is the only one in the movie seeing or feeling such "unearthly" presence.

The other important ballerina in Black Swan, Lily (Mila Kunis), is intended as a contrast of Nina. Yet we don't see anything evil in her as many viewers claim. All bad we see in Lily is again only through the eyes of Nina thus it is a result of her imagination. Lily is open-minded, easy-going, playful, seductive and men like her but there is nothing evil in all of these. Even the symbolism of colors in the movie hints at Lily's character being good. If you watch carefully you'll notice that the last time we see her (the moment of final truth unveiling), she's dressed in white.

There are plenty of speculations that Erica (Barbara Hershey), Nina's mother, abuses sexually her daughter. But in Black Swan we see almost nothing proving this theory. The main argument coming from the supporters of sexual abuse presence in the film is that one night we hear a line "Are you ready for me?" coming from Erica. Well, it's true, but it could mean anything. Maybe, it's intentionally there to bring some portion of uncertainty in the audience about the mother-daughter relationship. Still, it does not prove the sexual abuse hypothesis. The line itself could just mean whether the girl is ready for bed so her mother can turn the lights off or kiss her daughter good night, or close the door, or whatever. We see throughout the movie that Erica still treats Nina as a little child so everything mentioned is completely feasible.

Finally, Nina's mental problems are viewed by some as a journey to her dark side and they consider Nina becoming evil in order to successfully perform the role of the Black Swan. But again, we do not see Nina accomplishing anything bad in the movie, except for physically damaging herself in moments of madness. We see her occasionally behaving not very kind with her mother or Lily but there is nothing evil in her manners and they are obviously a consequence of her mental state. And if we refer to the color symbolism once more, at the end Nina is dressed in white. Practically, we don't see any real-life black swan portrayed in the film. But even without it, the amount of obsession and self-destructiveness flushing out of the movie strikes us with full force.

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