for ten millennia, and he has a lot of catching up to do.
‘I’m kinda fond of you, kid,’ he tells Aladdin. ‘Not that I want to pick out curtains or anything . . .’
The movies sometimes struggled to capture Williams’s comic genius (though Dr Mayo still maintains he enjoyed Patch Adams) so maybe it was always going to be an animation that could keep up with the speed of his character changes. By the end, Williams’s performance, taking in his Nicholson, his De Niro, Groucho Marx, Arnie and so many others, will leave you exhausted. And your head, for the moment at least, quiet.
SCHOOL OF ROCK (2003)
Of course, School of Rock. Jack Black playing accidental music teacher Dewey Finn is an irresistible (if obvious) choice to cure your tinnitus. Loud rock gives you tinnitus! A loud rock movie takes it away again!
‘Immigrant Song’, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ and ‘Substitute’ have caused millions of ears to ring for decades, so we might as well put them to good use now. The research into laughter’s curative properties in this area is admittedly in its early days. Just about to get going, in actual fact. But it is true that exercise increases the blood flow to the different parts of the ear (genuine medical fact) and this is a good thing. Therefore, the more you laugh, the better the karma flows and the biorhythms of healing will flood your body (less factual). For example, here’s Dewey’s new, improved school timetable: ‘8.15 to 10, Rock History. 10 till 11, Rock Appreciation and Theory. And then Band Practice till the end of the day.’ Here he is addressing his class: ‘It’s gonna be a tough project. You’re gonna have to use your head, your brain and your mind too.’ And the staff: ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those that can’t teach, teach gym’ (a great line, albeit lifted from Woody Allen).
The thing is, we all know that Jack Black’s rocking Gareth Malone figure will have tinnitus and have it a whole lot worse than you. And because Jack plays for real with his band Tenacious D, he understands and feels your pain. Does it stop him raising his goblet of rock? Of course it doesn’t.
THE RAID (2012)
A really rather useful feel-better-all-round film. Whatever your pain, watch The Raid and feel your aches just melt away. Over the course of its 101 minutes, whichever part of your body is afflicted, you will see it punched, stabbed or kicked (maybe all three at once) so often, that you realise you have nothing to complain about.
A new member of a SWAT team finds himself in a fifteen-floor block full of ruffians. He and his noble band of bobbies need to arrest the head ruffian, but wouldn’t you know it, the cad won’t come quietly. So everyone has to be killed. There are many hi-tech, high-powered weapons lying around, but why use them when fists and feet are so much more wholesome? So much more balletic? We prescribe this movie for tinnitus because the way Gareth Evans directs, each crunched skull and smashed spine is like a small explosion going off in your head. This has the pleasing effect of extinguishing the rather feeble ringing in your ears. And don’t worry about the dialogue. There’s barely five minutes’ worth (all in subtitled Indonesian), and who wants to talk (or indeed read) when there is another groin to kick?
DISTRICT 9 (2009)
Nothing pleases the ear more than the sound of an extra-terrestrial bug getting splattered. There’s something about the yuckyness of it all that leaves a fevered head calmed and reassured. And it’s a relief to know you aren’t a prawn from outer space.
That might be hard on the prawns in Neill Blomkamp’s South African movie, as they turn out to be considerably brighter than many of their Uzi-waving tormentors, most of whom work for an outfit called Multi-National United. With a name like that, it’s not difficult to work out that these guys aren’t going to be on the side of motherhood and bobotie pie. And in their alien killer-in-chief Koobus, they have a man who is definitely on the side of DEATH AND FLAME THROWERS.
Spaceships, disgusting eating habits (cat food, mainly) and a good old-fashioned shoot-out make this a feast of fabulous noise. An aural jacuzzi for your tired head.
So we learn that The Tremeloes got it so wrong with their 1967 hit ‘Silence Is Golden’. Silence is not golden. For the tinnitari, silence is a nightmare. Go see a movie.
DR DAVE NORRIS’S HEARING TEST
Dr Mayo: Dr Dave Norris knows all about sound and vision at the movies – see p.110 for his guide to all things ‘aspect ratio’. Here he sets a quick quiz about how the speakers should work in a cinema.
Dr Kermode: And if you have one of those home cinema surround-sound thingummys, it works for those as well. Who said this book had no practical use whatsoever?
Dr Mayo: You? Take it away, Dr Dave.
Dr Dave Norris: Sound design is an increasingly important element in any production. An incorrectly set-up sound system and sound level in the cinema can ruin a film. See if you can match the correct speaker to the correct element of a movie soundtrack.
IDENTIFY WHICH SPEAKER SHOULD HANDLE WHICH KIND OF SOUND AT THE CINEMA
TYPES OF SOUND
• Dialogue
• Explosions, rumbles
• Ambient noises – dogs barking, birds singing etc
• On screen sound effects, music
SOLUTION Dialogue: centre • Explosions, rumbles: subwoofer • Ambient noises – dogs barking, birds singing etc: left, rear and right surround • On screen sound effects, music: left and right
NOSE JOBS
Some Movies Just Stick Out . . .
THE CHILD CATCHER
CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968)
Once seen, never forgotten. Like all the best children’s films, there is something distinctly sinister about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Sir Robert Helpmann’s Child Catcher, with his long, child-sniffing nose, was mostly responsible: ‘There are children here somewhere. I can smell them.’
NICOLE KIDMAN
THE HOURS (2002)
This notorious prosthetic proboscis gained almost as much publicity for The Hours as the entire cast put together. Denzel Washington presented the 2003 Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, saying, ‘. . . and the winner, by a nose, is Nicole Kidman.’
GERARD DEPARDIEU
CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1990)
Another
