I was sitting at my computer the other night when I felt something crunchy in my mouth. Since the last thing I’d eaten had been ice cream, I was immediately alarmed. Turned out my filling, which was put in 10 months ago, had decided to vacate the premises of my top right molar.

So off I went to the dentist, having left The Overlord in the tender loving care of his doting - and in their dotage- grandparents. OK, so one grandparent has an aforementioned broken toe, and the other recently lost an organ (careless, I know, but it was only the gall bladder, and she wasn’t really using it) but together they add up to a complete childminder.

I’m not too nervous about dentists, unlike my beloved who has to be sedated to even get to the waiting room. Today was no exception and painless, except perhaps for the chitchat that came with the dental service.

As my mouth slowly became more and more loaded with dental equipment, cotton rolls, suction devices, etc. my lovely dentist decided it was the perfect time to talk about movies. And then the dental nurse assisting her joined in.

I noticed that the Wilhelm Scream was discussed in the comments last week.

The what? you ask.

Well, the Wilhelm Scream is a stock recording of a distinctive scream used by sound editors and audio effects people for more than 50 years . More recently it’s been used as a sort of in-joke or secret handshake, which is now - thanks to modern technology, film history geeks and its total over-use in Star Wars - far less secret.

It was named after Private Wilhelm - a character from a 1950s film who is seen to emit the highly recognisable scream after being shot with an arrow (pictured right).

You will have heard it before, even if you didn’t know it at the time.

The Wilhelm has turned up in numerous films by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, and even our own Peter Jackson has been known to use it.

Here’s a montage of Wilhelm Screams for your listening (and viewing) pleasure.

See? Told you you’d heard it before.

Little comfort, iota of consolation, smidgen of second-prize… that’s apparently what Quantum of Solace means, and you certainly can’t accuse them of false advertising because there’s very little comfort for Bond fans in this rather tired retread.

According to blond Bond Daniel Craig, the title was “meant to confuse a little. It’s meant to make you sort of wonder” and “We want people to start thinking as they come and see the film”.

Leaving your brain at the door definitely does not help. There were far too many quantum leaps for this reviewer to handle, with every relocation to a new exotic locale making me go: Huh? How did we end up here?

This blog entry was supposed to be about Quantum of Solace, which I saw last night, but events have since overtaken my blog.

Namely, there is extremely rare footage of my Dad - a venerable TV critic about town and gentleman of letters, a polymath and scholar of towering intellect who is happiest burying his learned nose in a book, avoiding physical exertion if at all possible - flinging himself about an oversized, dayglo, bouncy-castle-type obstacle course arranged about Jellie Park swimming pool.

Trevor Agnew, a man in his 60s and with a heart condition who looks a little like Santa Claus, is also a TV critic who takes his researching and writing duties very seriously.

While most of the lily-livered media scrum invited to have a go at Top Town’s impossible obstacle course yesterday declined, Mr Agnew manned up and headed for the changing rooms along with people who weren’t even born when Top Town last aired 18 years ago.

(Exactly how young is babyfaced TVNZ reporter Jack Tame? Has he got his learners yet?)

Going to see Quantum of Solace tomorrow (it opens here Thursday) and it’s odd, but I’m not really all that hyped about it. I’m not going to give my ticket away or anything, but it doesn’t have quite that same buzz about it as the last one.

Here’s the trailer in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Sure there’s all that slick, well choreographed violence and crashing through glass and sexy spies and slumming French actors and stuff but even from these selected trailer highlights you can already tell the script was written by a computer.

None of the actors - barring, perhaps, the guy who gets to smarm “yeah, we should only deal with nice people” - look like they’re enjoying having to dole out these trite lines, which seem to fall with a dull thud from their sullen mouths.

You know, but I’m keeping an open mind…

No, Brad Pitt hasn’t joined Mo-vember (as was suggested by this website earlier this month). He’s starring in Tarantino’s next action flick, Inglourious Basterds, set in World War II, in Nazi-occupied France. (And yes, it really is spelt that way - a nightmare for sub-editors and proofreaders everywhere.)

Quentin Tarantino, who’s been working on the script for more than a decade, has said that he intends for this to be as much a war film as a spaghetti western, and considered titling the movie Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France.

According to various web sources Inglourious Basterds is set in German-occupied France, where a Jewish girl Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of a Nazi Colonel (Christoph Waltz). She narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she creates a new identity as the operator of a cinema.

This blog entry was sparked by yesterday’s blog - in which I mentioned I once contemplated getting married in a movie theatre and Beki, who responded:

Margaret - I’ll see your cheesey wedding plans and raise you - I walked down the aisle to the Piano instrumental “Time Of My Life” theme from Dirty Dancing, then had our first dance to “Storybook Love” from The Princess Bride.

Ok. It’s true wedding confession time. My hubby and I arrived at our reception to the triumphal theme music from the end of Star Wars: Episode IV (Here it is on YouTube, in case you have no idea what I’m talking about). I was the one dressed as a Wookiee. (No, not really.)

Unusual things I have done in a movie theatre:

* Getting my phone confiscated - tick.

* Eating chocolate and sipping champers served by a half-naked male model - tick. (Could you guess that was the screening for Sex and the City?)

* Being glared at by security guards in a locked-down media screening for having a light-up pen - tick.

* Scribbling reviewing notes in the dark and accidentally writing over my previous illegible notes because I forgot to flip the page in my notepad - tick, tick, tick.

* Getting told off by a grumpy, uppity movie publicist for not giving enough stars to his movies - tick.

* Getting thrown out of the cinema for not giving enough stars to a movie - tick. (I guess that one’s not technically something that happened in a movie theatre as such but outside it…)

I never thought this list would include changing a nappy, but then life’s a funny thing… (unlike that nappy).

I’m a little embarrassed to admit I once contemplated getting married in a movie theatre - maybe with a screening of The Princess Bride in the middle. Cheesy, I know.

I’ve been dying to get out and see some flicks sans The Overlord (aka The Fat Controller - he weighs over 7kg already!).

So why is it that the last couple of films have been so disappointing?

Last week I checked out Ghost Town and Rock N Rolla - both touted as films worth seeing by many critics.

Both a bit of a letdown, frankly.

Ghost Town proves that Brit comedian Ricky Gervais (of The Office and Extras fame) is really not suited for romantic comedy. It’s worth noting they didn’t even try for a romantic kiss between potato-faced Gervais and Tea Leoni. (Thank god for small mercies.)

As for RockNRolla, you’re left with a sense of incompleteness. It’s meant to be the kickoff point for a trilogy so writer-director Guy Ritchie didn’t bother writing an ending - as well as deja vu. We don’t even find out what happens to Thandie Newton’s character, who’s left in a perilous situation with Russian gangsters.

Babies and movies usually don’t mix well - kinda like babies and airplanes or babies and any event you need to get to on time…

So surely it would be madness for an ante-natal group to meet at the cinema?

Not when it’s a designated baby segregation time - such as Reading’s Spit The Dummy sessions or Hoyts’ Mums and Bubs screenings.

Several of us desperate-to-get-out-of-the-house new mums went along to Reading the other week to check out how this whole baby-movie thing works.

Basically the multiplex concessions to we (wee?) special-needs patrons are that the lights are left on dimly, and the volume is turned down a little, although I couldn’t really tell. The volume still seemed pretty darn loud to me - which could be a good thing if you’re trying not to hear a screaming baby.