As a frequent movie-goer and lover of silence, I politely ask people to be quiet all the time. Why anyone ever talks in a movie is beyond me. Unless it’s to say something like “your pants are on fire”, you should keep your mouth shut. In part, I think the VCR revolution is reponsible, because people become accustomed to watching movies at home and talking all they want.
And I practice what I preach. My friends and family know that if they say anything to me during a movie, they won’t get a response (and may get a smack). It’s interesting, too, that everyone complains about people who talk in movies. Surely some of these complainers are also talkers, aren’t they?
Regardless, in light of my shushing practices, this article is worrying:
A moviegoer was severely beaten after he shushed another man in the row behind him during a showing of “The Triplets of Belleville” at a downtown Ann Arbor theater Saturday evening, city police said. The 51-year-old victim was hospitalized with multiple fractured ribs, a collapsed lung and several facial lacerations that required stitches, police said.
I do try and pick my spots as far as the shushing goes–if there are three Hell’s Angels behind me discussing the sheen of Gwyneth’s dress, I’ll just get up and move.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I’m the other end of the extreme – I prefer to watch movies at home so I don’t have to listen to (or smell) the idiots. (Going to see Matrix II on opening night was a grave error in judgement and I haven’t set foot in a theatre since.) In addition to the noise factor, I have issues with “smell”. At least in my own home I’m not subjected to the olfactory assaults of pot, b.o., alcohol or cigarette stench.
It is frustrating to have to wait for video releases but the pros outweight the cons in my view;
1) cheaper
2) absence of chatter and stink
3) the pause feature
If I had a big screen tv I’d be set!
I also find I get better sound quality in my living room than I do the theater. There’s less space to fill with sound and I can point the speakers towards where I’m sitting. Depending on where you sit in a theater, you might not hear everything, or you might get one speaker dominating your sound field.
And, yeah, my DVD sometimes looks sharper than an underlit scratchy print in the theater.
I worked with a guy who had a similar thing happen to him (I think it was at the Granville 6)…he shushed these kids behind him and one of the kid hit him in the back of the head knocking him unconscious, and his head hit his girlfriend’s face giving her a black eye too. The kids then ran out of the theatre and I’m not even sure if they got caught, but the guy was messed up and couldn’t work for a few days. He hasn’t been back to the theatre since, last I heard.
I once shushed this kid playing his video game …as it was beeping during the movie. I turned around and said turn it off! He looked at me like I was insane and then turned it off.