OFFICE SPACED
Chatter ‘gems’ overheard in the Total Film office this month…
* “New fave trope: when someone takes ‘offence’ then goes, ‘Dude, I’m just messing with you!’” * “During lockdown, will the readers mind if we recycle old Office Spaced quotes?” cutout will then be in place for your selected showing. But you know what… even then, I bet I still get the most annoying cutout sitting next to me! DAVEY, VIA EMAIL
Yes, it’d be Sod’s law to be lumbered with the standee that won’t sit still, flopping forward with a distracting ‘whump’ at crucial junctures. Or one that gives you papery side-eye for two hours. Or you get stuck behind a family of life-size Iron Giants. It’s enough to make you miss the phone-scrolling, nacho-spraying natterers of yore…
TROUSER TROUBLE
While sitting down on the toilet, I noticed a strange, scary-looking face on Ryan Reynolds’ trousers on the cover of TF298… was this intentional, or by accident? Because it’s freaking me out whenever I sit on the toilet!
J. WILLIAMS, VIA EMAIL
We’d never wish to distress readers, least of all when they’re heeding nature’s call, so trouser-face was a pure accident. Or at least that’s what that issue’s guest cover designer, Rory Schach, tells us… BTW, not the J. Williams?!? Now we’re the ones freaking out on the toilet (you have to write where you can when everybody’s at home).
JUST DESERTS
Your Guide To The Galaxy feature [TF299] got me thinking about the lack of geographic diversity in some fictional universes. Arrakis from Dune is guilty of this, but Star Wars has to be the worst. I know we don’t look to science fiction for a geography lesson but it’s far more interesting and believable to have planets like Flash
Gordon’s Mongo, which has everything from forests to icy wastelands. Let’s have more of that diversity and fewer uniform ice planets, desert planets, jungle planets, etc.
STEPHEN PARRY, ERDINGTON
Hear, hear. Though not sure what you mean re: Star Wars. You’ve got your OG Desert Planet (Tatooine); Desert Planet Built On The Sands Of
Fan Service (Jakku); Desert Planet Of The 24-Hour
Party People (Pasaana) and Desert Planet You Can’t Remember The Name Of from Solo.
KICKING AND SCREENING
Things I haven’t missed about cinema: the kid kicking the back of my chair and his parents ignoring it; same kid, who’s obviously seen the film before, telling pals what happens next; people deciding they need the bog right after the trailers; people deciding to have an intimate chat the moment the movie starts… Talking of having your chair kicked, I remember a chap who kept doing it during Angel Has Fallen. After 10 minutes I turned round and firmly asked him to stop; he very kindly explained it wasn’t him, and asked if this was my first 4DX experience. Then and there I decided 4DX wasn’t for me! GRAHAM ANDERSON, VIA EMAIL
Ah, times have changed since Dialogue’s youth, when a cinema manager could promise “the full Blade Runner experience” by stringing up a few fairy lights and putting off repairs to the leaky roof. Graham’s tale is a lesson for all; the next time, say, you feel a flurry of wet flakes and snap of wind, check that you’re attending an augmented screening of Frozen, rather than the ritual sacrifice of Frosty The Snowman.
MOVIE ’DROME
Wow! Just read your Tenet article, then watched the trailer for the new movie by ‘Nolon’ [OK, we’ll allow it this once – Dialogue ed]. Certainly looks a palindromic mind rotator, with time seemingly the same backwards and forwards. Surely one for the top spot and looks like confirmation the director should be deified. Pip pip!
MADAM ANNA, VIA EMAIL
We pondered firing a similarly palindromic response back at you, then thought, no, it is opposition.