Dialogue

Mail, rants, theories etc.

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★ STAR LETTER

I’ve developed a coping mechanism for when I’m feeling anxious during tense action scenes in the cinema. In such situations I find it useful to hum a cheery ditty. Some examples: during Top Gun: Maverick’s finale, I soothingly broke into, ‘Those magnificent men in their flying machines, they go up tiddly up up, they go down tiddly down down.’ For Meg 2’s jet-ski frenzy it was, ‘Baby shark doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo’, and for Oppenheimer’s atomic-test tension I went with Lulu’s ‘Boom-bang-a-bang…’ Unfortunately, I have had a few strange glances from others in the audience. Do you think studios could perhaps put on special showings with these calming tunes as part of the soundtrack? Or include a tension-releasing five-minute interval to let me go for a short walk?

We’ll certainly ask our Hollywood pals. Although we’re still waiting for them to get back to us over whether they might consider putting mid/end-credit stings at the start of films, or getting someone with lots of cred (Denzel Washington, say) to record little intros telling us honestly whether said stings are worth staying for. Wavey and everyone with a letter printed here will receive a copy of classic spooker The Others, out now on 4K UHD, BD and DVD via StudioCanal. Didn’t send an address? Email it! Or you can fog-get it!

PHYSICAL THERAPY

In response to Kevin’s letter on physical media [TF 342], I do have the same concerns about film and television becoming streaming-only. When I enjoy a film, I like to have it on DVD for that feeling of ownership; I also like knowing that I won’t have to scramble through different streaming services and paywalls to watch it. I’m in the Gen Z/millennial bracket, but after a childhood building up my film collection, I’d hate not to be able to continue it in the future.

‘If Robert Pattinson can manage Bruce [Wayne] and James’ filming schedules and hairstyles, he would be the best [new Bond].’

@Zvez17

The future of physical media may be uncertain, but for now at least we have labels like Arrow, BFI, Indicator, StudioCanal and more still flying the flag - often with super-deluxe packages where a flag is just about the only thing not included. (We still have our Kiki’s Delivery Service tea towel, even if it would take witchcraft to return it to its original pristine state).

EVERYDAY HEROES

Is anyone else out there fed up with the constant roll-out of Marvel/DC films? The trouble with most of these movies is that the superhero is generally either some top scientist (Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, Reed Richards) or unbelievably wealthy (Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne). I’d love it if, just once, studios gave us a superhero with an ordinary job, whose ordinary life is the main focus of the film rather than the usual CGI-laden, pyrotechnic-filled slug-fests.

That does sound refreshing; it is sometimes hard for audiences to relate to characters that are, to quote Florence Pugh in Black Widow, gods from space (not that TF readers are anything less than divine). Maybe we could get an Iron Man reboot where, instead of opening his briefcase to reveal a Mark Umpteenth mega-suit, there’s a battered spiral notebook, a packet of expired Nurofen and his 11am banana.

SACRED PROFANITY

Re: last month’s letter about the use of profanity in cinema [from David Patrick Moore, TF 342]. My mum used to say that the use of swear words showed a person to have an inadequate vocabulary. Sorry, Mum, but their effectiveness on the big screen can’t be denied, starting with movies from her day, like Rhett Butler not giving a damn or 1970’s M*A*S*H dropping the first F-bomb heard in a mainstream US movie. Many great movies have a lot of cussing: Casino, Uncut Gems, The Wolf of Wall Street… And I’m not really sure some classic movie quotes would have the same power if you cleaned them up: ‘Yippee-ki-yay, mother-fudge-knockers!’; ‘Go flopperdoodle yourself, San Diego’; ‘How the fiddlesticks am I funny? What’s so frying-fishcake funny about me?’ Darnation, they just don’t quite sound the same!

Bryan Stahl

‘I’m just going to say it… I love [Ahsoka] but Thrawn is one of the most ridiculous-looking villains I’ve ever seen. I just can’t take him seriously.’

True enough, although taking the opposite approach - injecting filth into innocuous quotes - feels equally wrong: ‘Oh crap, Auntie Em, there’s no chuffing place like home’; ‘Houston, we have one giant arseboil of a problem’; ‘That’ll do, pig. That’ll do. FFS’; ‘Rose-bleedin’-bud.’

GOLDEN TICKET

In response to your game of ‘Who has the oldest ticket stub?’ [Dialogue, TF 341], I would like to submit my almost 35-year-old ticket for Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I used to keep all my ticket stubs back in the day, as it was a great reminder of all the films I had seen over the years. Paperless tickets are now the norm and better for the environment. But who knows, maybe in years to come you could suggest a game of ‘Who has the oldest virtual ticket?’

Yes, imagine Dialogue-bot asking if anyone remembers QR codes… Thanks for throwing down the old-stub gauntlet, Scott; our eyes telescoped Looney Tunes-style when we saw the ticket price: £1 actual 50! That would barely buy you the dust off a cheesy nacho in today’s world.