SOME time ago, I went to see War of the Worlds at a cinema at the The Zone in Rosebank, Johannesburg. I wasn’t expecting to be hugely entertained by the not-so-well-written HG Wells story; I was more interested in how Steven Spielberg had updated the classic that sent people screaming into the streets when Orson Welles read it on radio in the 1930s.Still, I wanted to follow the mumbled American dialogue and soon became extremely irritated by two moviegoers chatting away next to me. Since it is tricky for a middle-aged white male to upbraid sassily dressed young black women, I bit my tongue, but eventually I could stand it any longer."Can you please watch the movie?" I asked.A rigid silence reigned for a good 10 minutes, then one of them burst out laughing. Glaring at the culprit, I saw this was not a new bout of giggling — she was holding her mouth as she stared with big eyes at the screen.I said nothing, thinking there was little I could do about delinquent youngsters. But soon I d...
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