‘BUNCH’ BOUNTY

Kenneth Turan’s otherwise thoughtful “Bloody Marvelous Peckinpah” (Feb. 26) was marred by one unfortunate omission: He failed to mention composer Jerry Fielding, whose haunting, rousing, ironic score contributes mightily to “The Wild Bunch’s” brilliance. Paul Seydor, in his book “Peckinpah: The Western Films,” writes that three Peckinpah/Fielding films “produced marriages of image and music worthy of comparison with those of such celebrated director-composer collaborations of the past as Eisenstein and Prokofiev or Hitchcock and Herrmann.”

Bloody marvelous music, too.

GARY RAE

Los Angeles

*

We finally have come to an awareness that there is a correlation between smoking and cancer. Are we ever going to conclude that there is a connection between the rise of graphic, gratuitous violence on our screens (film and TV) and the increase of violence in our communities?

FATHER VINCE CONNOR

Chaplain

Calif. Dept. of Youth Authority

Chino

*

Courtesy and respect for human life is the glue of civilization. Our movie industry’s fascination with killing, and you who praise it, are melting the glue.

ERIC SEVERSON

Cambria

*

Turan neglected to address the screening conditions at the Cinerama Dome, whose screen (designed for three individually focusable images) is so overly curved that at any given moment a full third of the projected image is not in sharp focus. When the middle is in focus, the left and right sides aren’t. When the left and right sides are in focus, the middle isn’t. I hate to say this about the classics, but in this case, “Wait for video.” Or better yet, see them at the New Beverly.

LUIS-MANUEL MEZA

DE LA TORRE

Los Angeles