Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Monday, January 31, 2011 Well Preserved, Part III So after we set up a time for Febrifuge to come over and help with the worm-dissecting, Trash happened to be on the phone with our sister-in-law and happened to mention the upcoming...procedure. Which is when M. Edium's cousin, then-eight-year-old Deniece, asked, "Can I come too?" So by that evening, between several phone calls and a trip to Office Max, we had everything you need to dissect a worm: dead worms, wax paper, pins, a magnifying glass, a razor knife, a Physicians Assistant, and a third-grade girl. Febrifuge had come prepared. In addition to a little cork pad and some additional tools (I almost said "utensils"), he'd also brought a camera to take the photos you see in this entry, printed MapQuest directions for the inside of a worm, rubber gloves, and -- best of all, if you ask me -- his old lab coat, which he gave to M. Edium. So that's something my kid has in common with the young Flint Lockwood. When it was time to get started, I positioned myself on the far side of the kitchen, with a center island between me and any viscera. Don't judge me, though. Trash went all the way upstairs. The kids, though, were there for the duration. Never once did they show any intention or even desire to flee.  But as you can see from the number of pins they used, the worm tried to make a run for it. I'm not going to throw up close-ups up the dissected worm up here, but it's not because Feb didn't take any. It's just because I don't want to make you throw up. But I'd have to say that every meaningful sense -- the most meaningful being that I had to have almost nothing to do with it -- the worm-dissecting was a complete success.  Except for one thing. In our downstairs freezer, we now have one dead frog and eleven dead earthworms. A week later, Trash was cleaning out the kitchen freezer and asked me to take a few items downstairs. I said the downstairs freezer was full. "But you said last week there was plenty of room," she reminded me. "That was before the frog and the worms were down there," I explained. "They don't take up that much space," she scoffed. "They take up a lot of psychological space," I said. Oddly, though, I've kind of gotten used to them. M. Edium has talked about doing more dissections in the future, but I think a more likely -- and frankly, not undesirable -- outcome is that they'll just sink to the bottom of the freezer, never to be seen again until either the freezer breaks down or we move. And one of those will have to happen before I die, because I don't want to end up in there with them. I take up a lot of psychological space too. posted by M. Giant 6:37 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
I don't even want to tell you what kinds of things lurked in our downstairs freezer when I was a kid.
By
Having gotten to dissect eyeballs twice (primary school and secondary) I can tell you that they do make for cool dissections. Even if they still did squick me out a bit. OK, a lot. It was because they kept looking at you... yep, still squicks me out.
By
You guys are great parents, to indulge the curiosity. Look at those smiles!
By Cutest dissection of a dead thing ever.
By Saturday, January 29, 2011 Busy Busy Busy! So for the first time in my life, I can claim to be a mild-mannered newspaper reporter by day and a rock star by night. Although to be honest, I'm also pretty mild-mannered as rock stars go. And I'm not so much a "rock star" per se as "a guy in a band that's playing a gig soon." And also the "newspaper reporter" thing would be more accurately described as "columnist for an online news outlet." And furthermore the rock star thing is more by early evening than by night...I'll come in again. OKay, so I'm playing bass guitar in a band that's currently called Who The, which despite its name is not a The Who tribute band. We're playing tomorrow (Sunday) at a fund raiser at the Hard Rock Cafe in Downtown Minneapolis. We're part of a whole festival of bands and blues jams that's going from 4:30 to 8:00, and we're scheduled to go on at 6:05. That's give or take, of course. You know how musicians are. Also, I've got a new column on the Southwest Minneapolis page of Patch. If you're not aware of the Patch thing, it's basically a hyper-local news site that focuses on neighborhoods instead of cities or metro areas. My column is called "The Southwest Dad" and is about being a parent in this part of town. The title may make it sound like it's in reference to the Southwest United States, but it's actually Southwest Minneapolis. Which is kind of a shame because it means I don't get to use my idea for a logo of a Kokopelli wearing a cardigan. So those are my two new gigs as of this weekend. Which is why this is a very short entry. posted by M. Giant 9:13 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, January 26, 2011 Well Preserved, Part II I don't think I ever wrote a follow-up on what happened after Trash agreed to order M. Edium some "preserved specimens" to dissect. That's partially because for a long time, nothing did happen. As I mentioned before, your regular civilian householder can't just mail-order dead animals. We had to have them shipped to the same address where the catalog had been delivered, i.e. M. Edium's Montessori school. Trash did the ordering, so I have no idea how long they were supposed to take to get there. But after a few weeks, M. Edium's teacher Mr. N. mentioned to me that they hadn't shown up yet and I should probably call. I was like, "Yeah, I'll get right on that." Because honestly, I would have been perfectly happy forgetting all about it, and I was prepared to bet that M. Edium would have eventually forgotten about it too (a great bet, because I would have won no matter what). But Trash, Ms. "Never Say No To Science" Mom, insisted on calling to find out what was going on. After finding the number, getting a customer service rep on the phone, and having her pull up the order, Trash got something like an explanation. The order wasn't lost, or filled incorrectly, or sent to the wrong place. It wasn't filled at all. I'm not the one who did the talking, but my understanding is that the place that is accustomed to filling bulk orders for classes and schools declined to mail us a dead frog and a dozen dead earthworms because it was "weird." No argument here. But Trash got them straightened out, and they agreed to go ahead and ship the stuff out. Hot damn. For a while we weren't sure how the dissection was actually going to happen. Six is probably a little too young to cut him loose with his first scalpel. At the same time, Trash wasn't going to help him, because she doesn't even like to touch a dead animal when she's cooking it. And don't look at me, because I'm not Mr. "Never Say No To Science" Dad. Trash had originally thought we'd have to have her mom help the next time we went to Iowa, because she's the only person in the family with medical lab training. Sure, the last time she'd dissected anything was probably back when Jack Klugman was also doing it on Quincy, but doesn't every grandmother dream of getting that call from their grandchild asking, "Can you help me dissect a worm?" Happily, Febrifuge stepped up, which is good because not only is his training decades fresher, he also lives in the metro area. Having to be around when a worm gets dissected is bad enough without having to drive it four hours in the car first. Before long, a white cardboard box showed up. "It's still not too late," I said before they opened it, and then it was too late. Inside was a big, stiff, brown frog sharing a plastic bag with a puddle of formaldehyde, and a package of what, if one didn't know better, might almost look like the most expensive gourmet pasta you've ever seen, in the form of twelve long, straight noodles vacuum-packed side by side. Horrible, yes. But we never say no to science. It was a little weird having them in the kitchen until the dissection took place. It was also unexpected when Trash happened to be on the phone with our sister-in-law and happened to mention the upcoming…procedure. Which is when M. Edium's cousin, then-eight-year-old Deniece, asked, "Can I come too?" And we went from there. posted by M. Giant 3:24 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Please tell me there will be a Part III. With photos. Not necessarily of the frog-n-worms, but of the adults' faces during the dissection.
By Oh, if there's a part III, I have the photos.
By There are no pictures of me, however, for as soon as Febrifuge entered the room w/his scientist coat and cutting tools, I chose to go grade papers. And shudder.
By Monday, January 24, 2011 M. Ovie Reviews: Tangled M. Edium had been wanting to see this for a while, so I had the idea that maybe he could review this one. But then in the parking lot he said it was his second-favorite movie after Megamind, so I reconsidered. We ended up going on my birthday. Interestingly, much of the action takes place on the lead character's birthday, as well. Surprisingly, that's not all it takes to make a good birthday movie. Albert Brooks also starts movies on his characters' birthdays, but I would not advise seeing Lost in America or Defending Your Life as part of your birthday celebrations. This was much more fitting. I have to say that when I saw the trailers for this movie, it looked really dumb. Somehow I got the impression that it was all about this smarmy dude getting beat up by sentient hair. Of course, I'm certainly not the first to complain about how mis-marketed this film was, so I'm going to stop now. Because the thing is that it was actually really good. Somehow I missed the fact that it was Disney's 50th Animated Feature, which is not the kind of thing people should be missing (this is not the kind of movie people should be missing, but I'm repeating myself). Instead, the ads make it look like a typical DreamWorks Animation knockoff when it totally isn't. As a computer-animated Disney film, it's an odd mix of old and new. It looks like Pixar, though not as gratuitously detailed, and yet everyone's dressed like it's Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. There's anachronistically snarky dialogue, but there are also actual songs, actually sung by the same actors who do the speaking, like in an old Disney musical (and composed by Alan Menken, no less). And it's that hoary Disney mainstay, a fairy tale about a princess, but it's got enough edges and twists to keep it from being a dull bedtime story. I'm not complaining about the dialogue, because there are a fair number of standout characters who don't say anything at all -- and a couple of them are even human. The king and queen are both persistently silent and yet heartbreakingly expressive, the chameleon gets his points across without ever saying a word, and the horse will crack you up with a look. It's like non-verbal communication is the new 3-D or something. That said, Tangled is an awful title. Rapunzel's hundred feet of magical hair is many things at any given time, but the one thing it never is, no matter what happens to it, is tangled. That amount of hair should be getting snarls in it from any activity beyond semi-complicated thoughts, but it behaves itself ridiculously well. Between its getting dragged through the wilderness, being carried like a bundle of firewood, and a couple of full immersions, not to even mention its customary use as an elevator, she should have arrived at the end of the movie looking like Sideshow Bob instead of [SPOILER]. And as an adoptive parent, I really should be used to the ubiquity of parent issues in children's pop culture. Dead, absent, and just plain horrible parents are everywhere from Narnia to Hogwarts, and you have to navigate them carefully. Just as one example, a couple of years ago, M. Edium asked who Princess Leia's father was and I heard myself saying, "Bail Organa." So I had mixed feelings when Rapunzel rebels against her adoptive mother, and it's okay because she's not her "real" mother. In the car afterward, I had to make sure we talked about the ways his adoption was different than Rapunzel's; for instance, we didn't steal him and stuff him in an isolated tower for selfish reasons of our own. His tower has all kinds of local amenities. Other than that, though, I loved it, and so did . Rogue with heart meets princess with balls. Those aren't my words, but M. Edium's. More or less. posted by M. Giant 8:26 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Long-time lurker, first-time commenter.
By Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Footwork Part of Trash's job is to research stuff people ask her to research. Sometimes it's for other people in the company, sometimes it's for people in her department, sometimes (on rare occasions so it doesn't look like I'm taking advantage) it's even for me. Often, it's for her boss. Researching stuff is not only her job, but her superpower. You ask her to look into something, she won't just look into it. She'll stick her head in there so far that before long the only part of her you'll see is the soles of her feet. She'll disappear up its fundament and come back out the other end able to tell you how it works in ways that even it didn't know about. But speaking of feet… A few weeks ago, Trash got a request from her boss to do some in-depth research on pedicures. She even wanted her to get one. Take pictures. Video, if possible. Really learn all about the whole pedicure industry from the inside out. The whole Trash package. Another thing you need to know about Trash is her atavistic aversion to all things feet. Feet are erogenous zones for some people. For Trash, they're the exact opposite. She doesn't want to be near them, she doesn't want to touch them, she doesn't want to think about them. If there were a way for her to leave them out on the front stoop when she came into the house, she would. She hates feet. So listening to her boss outline everything she was going to have to endure with her feet was making her crazy -- although she was doing a fantastic job of hiding it. In fact, here's how much Trash wants nothing to do with feet. A couple of nights before this call from her boss, she was talking with our friend Bitter about pedicures, and wondering why it's so expensive to just have someone paint your toenails. Bitter blithely explained about the trimming and the scraping and the rubbing, and before either of us knew it, Trash's own feet had completely failed her. Literally, she was suddenly forced to collapse to the floor in revulsion. Which was, of course, the point at which I got the idea to have her boss ask her to research pedicures. It was surprisingly easy. Trash's boss and I get along pretty well. We have several shared interests, the chief one being tormenting Trash. She IM'ed me with an unrelated question that morning and I bounced an answer back and said, "Hey, by the way, can you make up a reason to have Trash to research pedicures?" and while I was still formulating an explanation she was like, "Sure!" and the next thing I knew it was all set up. So, among the many, many advantages of working at home, add to them this one: I got to listen to Trash's end of the conversation as her boss asked her to do something that gave her hives. And while listening, her boss and I were IMing back and forth. I felt like Ashton Kutcher with not as many Twitter followers. Finally, I couldn't keep from laughing, and Trash busted us. But it was win-win-win, I think. Trash's boss and I had a good laugh, and Trash got to show her boss some real loyalty. It's not often you can mess with someone's head and advance their career at the same time. And you should have seen her on Christmas when she opened the present I gave her: a gift card for a free pedicure. Magical. posted by M. Giant 11:36 AM 3 comments 3 Comments:
This is why your marriage works so well: Mutual torment.
By
Oh my god, you're awesome/evil. I despise feet in the same way, but have grown to love pedicures. Don't want to think about giving one, don't want to talk about or think about foot issues, maintain that ALL man feet are disgusting. However, once a month it's nice to get a massage and make my feet (which nobody sees) pretty.
By
I am so with Trash on this one. Feet are repulsive! If she ever comes across a means of leaving one's feet at the door in her research, please oh pretty please will she share it with me?
By Wednesday, January 12, 2011 M. Ovie Reviews: Season of the Witch Like I just said, there’s really nothing out right now that I still want to see, but Trash all but drafted me into going to Season of the Witch. And the reason she picked that movie was because, as usual, she was staying home. I went in knowing almost nothing about it, except that it was Nicolas Cage in some medieval adventure. Two reasons to skip it, as far as I was concerned. It's been a very long time since Nicolas Cage was the best thing in a movie, although he came close in Kick-Ass, largely by being the anti-Nicolas Cage. Here he goes in another direction, undertaking the ambitious actorly task of phoning in a performance in a movie set before the invention of phones. Cage plays a disillusioned Crusader who, along with his sidekick played by the usually awesome Ron Perlman, gets roped into transporting a suspected witch across the undifferentiated European countryside during the 14th century. This is done by means of a horse-drawn jail cell on wheels. Alas, this means that not only is Nicolas Cage not the best actor in the movie, he's not even the best cage in the movie. At some point early on, I started to wonder if Sam Raimi had anything to do with this film. And I’d have to say he did, but only indirectly. As we know, Raimi got his start making cheap rip-offs of horror movies. Well, in a lot of ways, this is a cheap rip-off of a Sam Raimi cheap rip-off. There's lots of BOO! moments, bullshit scares, gratuitous gross-outs, and swords that make a lot of noise even when they aren't touching anything. There's even a character who looks like Sam Raimi, for God's sake (although he turns out to be Al Capone from Boardwalk Empire, so I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice the resemblance). And that's just the filmmaking tics. It's Raimi-lite plotwise as well, from the shaky geo-historical setting populated by wisecracking Americans to the reverse-Necronomicon that both the prologue and climax hinge on. Unfortunately, it's all fake-Raimi, like biting into a big chewy chocolate-chip cookie that turns out to be a manhole cover packed with raisins instead. Plus, Sam Raimi would never be so clumsy as to set up a central question like "Is she or isn't she a witch?" and then tip his hand so early. He'd rather replace that hand with a chainsaw. I wish I could tell you how Cage and Perlman acquit themselves as action heroes, but as seems to so often be the case lately, any and all fight scenes are shot with so much quick-cutting that trying to actually follow the action is futile; all you can do is wait for it to be over. There was one scene in which I actually experienced something like suspense, but it was during a slow-moving scene of a bridge crossing. And even that was filled with editing cheats: "Whoa, how's he going to get around that big hole -- oh, never mind, he's already done it." Speaking of cheating, this movie needs to make up its mind about the 14th-Century Church. We first meet our sympathetic heroes as a pair of jovial veterans, making mordantly world-weary quips as they cheerfully go about their genocide. Then Cage loses his faith and peace of mind as a result of the one atrocity he commits (totes by accident!) in years of Crusading. Then we spend a lot of time dwelling on the hypocrisy and superstition of the Church, only to find out at the end that it Kind Of Has A Point, when it comes to the really scary shit. I did, however, enjoy the end credits. The names of the crew members were so scattered with umlauts and diacriticals that it looked like someone threw a bucket of road salt on them. Whatever else all those foreign names may signify, I hope they mean that wherever this film was made has a good exchange rate, so that Nicolas Cage could get the most from the paycheck he clearly made this movie for. posted by M. Giant 11:09 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, January 10, 2011 2010 M. Ovies So now that it's the second week of January and you're completely sick of anything with "2010" in the title, I thought now would be the ideal time to post my rankings of the movies I saw in the theater in 2010. Strike before the iron is cold enough that your tongue would stick to it, that's what I always say. You'll notice that there are a number of movies in this list that were not actually released in 2010, or in a couple of cases, even in this century. I have addressed these anomalous entries by devising a highly advanced algorithm to account for what I call the "20th Century Classic" factor, which will properly weight their quality against the new releases with which they had to compete. After many tireless hours with my dad's slide rule and various university math department message boards, I believe I have succeeded in incorporating them into my rankings so that they are judged no more or less subjectively and arbitrarily than the rest of the list. So here goes, in order from best to worst: 1. Toy Story 3. Almost perfect. 2. Inception. Far from perfect, but in the most interesting way. 3. Shutter Island. I admit it. I'm a sucker. 4. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. A huge sucker. 5. Rashomon. Groundbreaking and riveting in 1960. 6. The Evil Dead. The scariest movie I ever saw in 1983. 7. True Grit. Better than the original, in the sense that I actually saw it. 8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Thankless, but solid. 9. Iron Man 2. That cliche about sequels? Movies like this are the reason for it. 10. Centurion. Some of the movies within this movie were really good. 11. The King's Speech. Spit it out already. 12. Megamind. Trying so hard. 13. Knight and Day. Underrated (but not underrated enough to rank higher). 14. Date Night. Great cast, crap movie. 15. Alice in Wonderland. Probably would have liked it if I'd seen all of it. 16. Tron: Legacy. Better special effects don't fix the premise. 17. Legion. The apocalypse as first-person-shooter. 18. MacGruber. 19. Kick-Ass. A dark myth trapped in a tedious coming-of-age slog. 20. Dinner for Schmucks. Hypocritical and sanctimonious. 21. Youth in Revolt. Audience member in revolt. 22. Predators. Seemed like a good idea at the time. 23. Clash of the Titans. Some interesting new stuff, but all in the first half hour. 24. The American. Perhaps there will be a sequel in which something happens. 25. Salt. My eyes rolled longer than the credits did. I wish I could say that every one of these movies had at least one actor in it that I've recapped for TWoP, but six of them didn't. Fortunately, six other ones had at least two, so it averages out. In case anyone cares but me. So now, on to the 2011 list. I'd probably be getting a better start on that if there were anything playing right now that I remotely want to see. posted by M. Giant 7:43 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, January 05, 2011 Sock it to Me I'm not going to tell you yet again that telecommuting doesn't have drawbacks, because it does. For instance, some claim that it causes your social skills to atrophy. Back in August, one of our neighbors asked me at the block party whether I had found that to be the case, and I wittily replied, "Uhh…talking…not good as…before [large swig of beer]." And I haven't talked to anyone since then, so clearly I don't need to worry about that. The biggest problem -- and trust me, I am fully aware of how minor this is -- is that it's hard on my socks. At first, this wasn't a problem at all. I had too many socks as it was, mainly as a result of the fact that whenever anyone asks me what I want for Christmas, the first thing that comes to mind is socks. For, like, fifteen years. We keep them not in a drawer, but in a laundry hamper in the closet, is how many we had. But then when I started ruthlessly throwing away pairs that had holes in them, the pile shrunk. As time went on, they stopped overflowing the big laundry hamper, then got moved to smaller laundry hamper, and by the end of this year, it was starting to get difficult to find complete pairs in there among all the socks we never wear but still keep for some reason. So why the high-speed hosiery attrition? My theory is that spending my whole work day without shoes leaves them unprotected, and some spots on our floors aren't exactly a bowling alley. Between the room thresholds, a few rough floorboards, the odd protruding nail, and one floor grate in our bedroom that snags not only socks but also pant cuffs and even the occasional shirt-tail, it can be dangerous around here for socks. Christmas came just in time, and when I asked for socks, it wasn't just because it was the first thing that came to mind. I was getting desperate. So why, you may ask, didn't I simply buy a pair of house slippers? Well, I had a few reasons. It's bad enough that Trash makes me wear actual pants during the day; having to wear the next-best thing to shoes around the house on top of that seemed untenable. Plus there's the whole Ward Cleaver vibe that I'm not crazy about, even if I wear a hoodie instead of a cardigan and chomp a pen between my teeth instead of a pipe. But last month, as Trash was finishing up her Christmas shopping, she summoned me to her computer so I could help her pick out a pair of slippers online. With my sock population rapidly dwindling, my resistance was as low as my sock supply by this point, so all I wanted was a pair of slippers that didn't look too much like shoes on one extreme, and not too much like cartoon characters on the other. They didn't have my favorite color in stock for my size, but I sucked it up. Trash was giving me a gift, and it's the thought that counts, after all. So Christmas came, and I opened my slippers, and my God, why didn't anybody tell me about these? They're so warm and soft, like your feet are being constantly hugged! And any concern I had about feeling like I was wearing shoes evaporated. These are to shoes what pajama bottoms are to pants, except I can wear them all day. And they're shoes I can wear on the furniture, to boot (no pun intended). So now my only question is, how long will these last? Because maybe I should be considering a laundry hamper full of slippers to go next to the laundry hamper full of socks, no? posted by M. Giant 7:29 AM 5 comments 5 Comments:
All that praise yet you didn't share the brand of slipper?!? Don't keep me in suspense!
By Lands' End. You mean not all slippers are this awesome?
By
Now you've done it. I *need* a hamper full of slippers!
By
LE rules. They make the most awesome flipflops ever, too. AND, when I, through my own damn stupidity, ruined my favorite ever pair of LE flipflops last year and then tweeted about my idiocy, someone from LE contacted me and sent me a new pair. For free. Again, as I said, LE rules.
By I've had my slippers for over 10 years now, despite there being a huge hole in one of them from a random dog. Yes, they were far too expensive (I'll just say triple digits), and were from New Zealand. But it felt like I had just inserted my foot into a sheep, but with less blood. I love my slippers and am unable to find a suitable replacement for them as of yet. The hunt continues... I wonder if Trash would be willing to measure my feet for me for a proper fitting... hahahahaha
By Monday, January 03, 2011 M. Ovie Reviews: The King's Speech My ignorance of source material is restored, even though The King's Speech is based on history. I knew that there was a King of England who abdicated earlier in the previous century, and I once saw part of a video of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II some time in the 1950s (at the Tower of London, where else), but I had absolutely no idea what went on in between in terms of who was on the throne. Now I do. It was Colin Firth. Should have known. The night after seeing True Grit, the last thing I wanted to do was go to another movie whose lead character had trouble making himself understood verbally. But it was literally the last movie currently out that I was still interested in seeing, so I dragged myself out into the cold, dark night. All of six blocks from my house. As all students of the British Royal Family and this year's crop of Oscar-bait are aware, The King's Speech is about King George VI's struggle with a debilitating stammer, a difficulty made infinitely worse by the advent of radio and widespread expectations that he'd be expected to speak on it. He was terrified that his stutter would make him sound like an idiot. If only he had known the kinds of people who do morning radio shows today, he wouldn't have worried. The first thing you notice is that this film is apparently funded by the British Lottery, which is somehow appropriate. In fact, this film is such a gamble I can't imagine it ever being made in the U.S. How would a Hollywood studio ever greenlight a movie that is, yes, about royalty, but has a lead character who often takes several minutes to get a sentence out? Kind of a hard sell. But as you're watching it, it's good to know that since this is after all based on a true story (and one that many of the citizens of this film's home country know, no doubt), one has a certain amount of confidence that one is not being bullshitted too much. At the same time, you're always hoping for a giant breakthrough, if only to supply some sort of payoff for "Bertie's" travails. But the fact is that if anything, he experiences more setbacks than breakthroughs. The speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush is no miracle worker (although he more or less claims to be early on); it's all hard work and exercises and practicing and very little magic. The major twist, when it comes, doesn't even involve the King. Still, the ending is pretty satisfying, all in all. And it's nice to see Helena Bonham Carter in a period costume that for once does not include crazypants. I wish I could think of more to say about it. Firth is awesome, of course, and I'm sure I'd be even more impressed if I'd ever heard the real George VI speak. There's all the depressing drabness one expects from a movie set in the thirties and forties (thirties and forties Britain, no less), but after a few scenes it's possible to tune some of that out. Bertie's stammer, however, cannot be tuned out. Don't go expecting to try. Naturally, there is a typically inspiring ending, and the whole movie does a decent job of explaining why the stakes were so high, even at a time when the monarchy was already in decline. I mean, it all seems frightfully important when you're watching it, but then you go home thinking, George VI, huh? Really? So that was the last movie I saw in the theater in 2010. A full, comprehensive, crazy-making ranking list will show up here in the next couple of days for you to agree with, disagree with, or not care at all about. posted by M. Giant 7:35 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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