At the risk of angering a whole section of people who read this, I must say that movie theater behavior has deteriorated terribly over the last thirty years. There used to be uniformed ushers who patrolled theater aisles every few minutes and enforced behavior. Today, the answer is to turn the sound up full blast to drown out the crowd. I have taught classes in Film History and Film Appreciation in high school and one of the first things I stress is that "movies are not a participatory experience". Since I teach at a big city high school with a mixed demographic, you can imagine how that goes over.<BR>Everyone should understand the difference between perfectly proper and acceptable noise - laughing, screaming, crying, at the normal prompts - and noise which is smart *** in nature and merely intended to tell everyone around them "HEY LOOK AT ME". I always worry when I get to the theater early and three or more teen age boys walk in wearing hats. And if you dare say anything to them, your life and health are in jeapordy.<P>Most audience behavior seemingly matches up with the type of film being shown. The frist three times I saw RINGS - the audience was almost reverential in behavior. It was like they were having a holy experience. That loosened up a bit as the months went on and the crowd mirrored the American demographic a bit more. <P>Interesting comment about the little kid and the first arrow hitting Boromir. I just saw it for the 11th time and that sick noise still gets to me as that first very thick arrow plunges into his chest. I guess some kids have just been totally ripped mentally by an overdose of splatter films and video games.<P>Speaking of audiences - please take note that RINGS just captured the #5 spot on the world wide all time box office list with over $816 million in the bank. If anyone would have predicted that a year ago they would have locked you up. It is still $95 million behind #4 Independence Day so that is probably a bridge too far. Remember InDay? For five minutes it pretends to be the X-Files, then 5 minutes of Close Encounters, then 10 minutes of Die Hard,then 15 minutes of Star Wars, and that was only for starters. Very interesting watching a woman outrun a nuclear exlosion. Yeah, that could happen! But enough fools saw it multiple times to make it #4 all time. I will be happy with #5. <BR>PEACE.
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