I don't know if this is relevant to this list but last night I saw the
film <The Thin Red Line>.  As seems to be fairly common with films of this
type (Private Ryan was the same) the speech is often poorly articulated and
with such high levels of background noise the dialogue remains about 60%
incomprehensible.  On both occasions the majority opinion during the
interval was that we were all pleased to have the Spanish subtitles upon
which to fall back.

And yet I noticed that I was hearing the music on the soundtack and
absorbing 100% of everything that was going on in the orchestra.

Earlier in the week I saw One True Thing (Streep & William Hurt).  The
dialogue was wonderfully articulated but I remember nothing at all of the
music.  This was a fascinating film; the Red Line bored me rigid (it seemed
endless - nearly 3 hours of it).  Perhaps I found myself listening to the
music track due to boredom?

John G. Deacon  http://www.ctv.es/USERS/j.deacon