Headline: The Others/Jade Scorpion: Buzzkillers (AKA Thank You, Cranky Man)

I saw two movies last week, The Others and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and you may think they don't have anything in common but you're wrong. They both were shown in theaters with sound problems, for one thing.

As far as I'm concerned, the big reason to go to see movies at movie theaters is to see the films presented at their best- big, bright screens and fabulous surround sound. You just can't get into video rental the way you get into a film in a big theater.

There must be others who think the same way, but it always seems to be me that has to go to the lobby and tell someone that there's a problem with the film inside. As far as I'm concerned, a technical malfunction is cause for revolt, and the whole crowd should storm the lobby and demand that the technical problem be hunted down, interrogated, stripped naked, rubbed in garlic, painted red, and hung on the wall in the projection room to scare off other technical problems that might wander in, looking for a home. We should get free popcorn, too.

That's not what happens, though. What happens is I go to see the Curse of the Jade Scorpion at the Aptos Twin, and I become aware of a fairly loud buzzing noise coming from the speakers during the previews. I look around at the other people in the theater, expecting them to plead to me with their eyes, "Yes, I hear it too and I'd be enormously thankful if you would go up front and champion our cause, because I'm either: 1) too shy to do it 2) finally holding hands with this person who I'm really into and don't want to let go now, or 3) a very large person sitting in the middle of the aisle and, well, you understand."

But what their eyes are really telling me is "The screen is that way."

So, with absolutely no sense of community support, I go to the lobby, where the staff surrounds me with concern and asks how they can be of service, so that I might get back to the film without having missed too much. This is of course a joke and a lie. You don't get that kind of customer support in this price range, you get 4-5 gossiping teenagers who didn't think they'd have to do any work for another 96 minutes. Though they're in uniform, it's difficult to determine who's an officer, so I just address them all. "There's this nasty buzz in the sound system in there."

They all looked at each other, and muttered a few things I didn't catch, but the gist seemed to be that they knew what the problem was, and the real issue was who would have to go deal with it. "Sounds like hornets?" one of them asked, and I wanted to say "No, it sounds like a 60 cycle hum caused by a bad ground, or a cheap fluorescent light transformer sharing a power circuit with the audio power supply," because I can, but I just said "Yeah" and walked back into the theater, hoping it'd be fixed and I wouldn't have to drag my friend out to get our money back just to teach those people who don't give a crap a lesson.

Pop quiz: Did they thank me for telling them about the problem? If you answered yes, you're probably still living in the 50's, a decade I think I might have liked in certain respects.

Returning to the theater, the buzzing stops. I sense by the reaction in the room that everyone noticed the improvement, even if they didn't seem to notice the problem. It's the Emperor's New Clothes all over again. "Thank you, cranky man," everyone is saying, silently, silently.

Just days later almost the exact same thing happens in the Riverview Theater, which is usually my favorite theater. For some reason, the air conditioner system sounds like two jet engines strapped to the ceiling. The noise is shut off, only to come back on for five minutes out of every half hour or so, just to remind me who's boss.

Woody Allen's first movie writing credit, What's New Pussycat, starred blue-eyed Peter O'Toole, and Peter definitely got all the chicks. Woody was in it too, but he didn't get any. He's been making up for that ever since, making movie after movie where he gets them all. In The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, he turns down a very vampy Charlise Theron and bags Helen Hunt, who's finally managed to end a film walking into the sunset with someone even older than Jack Nicholson.

Back to the Riverview. When the air vents weren't recreating the key scenes from Twister, another Helen Hunt picture, I caught a fair amount of The Others, starring Nicole Kidman. This film is a sort of psychological ghost thriller without any visible carnage, and I'm very proud of Nicole and plan to tell her so when she calls.

Supposedly, in Movieland, when you pitch a film idea to a big film company what they want to know is "What's it like that works," meaning show me where this kind of thing made money before. It's movie math, and The Sixth Sense plus The Shining equals The Others. They've all got a little craziness, a little surprise, and a little boy. Check it out, it's quite engaging.

Before going to the Riverview, though, I'd call ahead about the fan noise. Ha ha, as if you could call a real person at a theater. Gripe gripe gripe, maybe I should just let this go. It's not that big a deal, it's just some extra noise. Perhaps I'm sublimating my sense of powerlessness against terrorist attacks into my moviegoing experience, hoping for at least one little world that's reliable and safe and cares about mankind. That's probably it. Excuse me, I think I'm going to go rent something with Jimmy Stewart in it, probably Harvey.