Ooh, forgot one!

[cp]

The LEGO MovieI took the older two girls to see this last Friday evening, since we're all big LEGO fans. It was even enough to interest Hermione, who generally says she would rather wait for a movie to be available to watch at home rather than go to the theater to see it. At least Hallie enjoys going to the theater! Anyway, I'd heard really good

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[cp]

I always felt a bit too hemmed in by the 5-star scale, or even a 1-10 scale. 64 points gives me a lot more shades of granularity, plus it's arbitrary and weird and I like that. :) In general, I basically lay it out like this: 60+ are the top-notch, near-perfection, desert-island stuff. The 50s are outstanding and deserving of repeated viewing. 40s are solid, the sort of thing you might decide to leave on while channel surfing. 30s are competent and enjoyable enough, though they do have weak points. And 20s and below are varying shades of dreck, maybe with some merit but mostly to be avoided. :)

Oh yes, I thought FauxNews' blathering about the LEGO movie was a good reason to support it, even if I weren't already a big LEGO fanboy. They did the same nonsense with the Lorax (brainwashing kids to be environmentalist hippies!) and the Muppets from a couple years back (the villain was named Tex Richman, those leftist Hollywood Commies!). Of course they're morons. In the case of the LEGO Movie, yes, the villain of the story is a CEO-style control freak who essentially mandates conformity and consumerism via control of the media, and the everyman hero becomes the hero by breaking away from that structure, even if it's sort of against his will. But the movie itself, like any movie based on toys or with an accompanying line of toys, is first and foremost one long commercial for those toys. So we're talking about a multi-billion-dollar company putting out a hugely profitable movie to sell their hugely profitable toys, and Fox is actually going to call it out as an attempt to brainwash kids about the evils of media-obsessed consumerism? Puhleeze.

Don't even get me started on the utter hypocrisy of FoxNews and conservatism in general. There are about a gazillion examples of them railing against things that they were 100% supportive of under other circumstances, and vice-versa. And their sheep eat it all up as gospel. I tend to think conservatism has really become a faith-based movement, not just in its religious beliefs. No other political affiliation I'm aware of has an entire industry devoted to sheltering its adherents from every opposing viewpoint, including the truth. :)