I over-reacted tonight. And it happened so quickly that Pat had no chance to grab my arm and sit me back down in my seat in Carmike's theater 11.

We were there for the 7:05 screening of "Inception." The commercials were over, the theater was dark, the screen had widened, and the previews were underway. But a quartet of young people a row up and over to our far right continued to chatter away. They weren't whispering. They were chattering. Almost constantly. And apparently not about what they were seeing on the screen.

I endured this through four or five previews. Then I had an out-of-body experience. From somewhere above, I saw myself bolt out of my seat, navigate down our aisle and across the aisle at the front of the theater and up the aisle on the right. I heard myself say something like, "I just paid almost twenty dollars for this, and I want to know now whether you plan to talk throughout the movie as you've done throughout the previews?" The quartet were taken aback. One of them said, "The movie hasn't started yet." Another said, "Excuse me. You're being terribly rude." I said, "Don't talk to me about rude," and returned to my seat, fuming. The first part of the movie was all but ruined for me, as it might have been for them.

I shouldn't have flown off the handle. I should have approached them more civilly. My guess is that there is now a shifting set of views on the propriety of talking during previews. My position, as a veteran movie-goer and movie lover, is that talking during previews should be limited to discreet whispers of reaction, e.g., "That looks good" or "Forget that one." Nearly constant chattering, unrelated to the previews themselves, should be way out of bounds. For young people, however, a consensus may be emerging that previews "don't count" and that during previews one may behave as one would at home in the family room.

If things are moving in this direction, then I'll be even less inclined to fork over twenty or thirty bucks to Carmike. To the extent that going to a movie -- and I include watching the previews -- becomes indistinguishable from an evening in the family room, I'll be hard-pressed to justify leaving the family room.

The youngster and I took in a matinee screening of "Predators" this afternoon. It's a visually decent specimen of the summer SF/Horror flick, but it never draws you out of your seat into the action. You never have the sense that you're accompanying the characters through the jungle to their fate. Remember how you felt during "Aliens" when Hudson poured out his "That's it man, game over man, game over!" There's no point in "Predators" when you feel that way. It's visually slick, but emotionally sterile, hobbled by so-so writing and by an absence of any memorable performances. Is it worth a couple of matinee tickets. Sure. I guess. Is it James Cameron? No way. Not even close.