Destiny
Given that I'm in serious work-avoidance mode ('cause I can write 60+ thoughtful, well phrased pages on my original research in two weeks, no problem. I have no idea what you're worried about), I've been doing all sorts of useful things. Like alphabetizing my spices or looking up my favorite childhood movies on Youtube. Just kidding: my spices have always been alphabetized.
But the movies were actually interesting. I had no idea how many awesome actors did voice work for kid's films in the seventies and eighties. Derek Jacobi in The Secret of NIMH, and James Earl Jones in The Flight of Dragons, for example, and Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, Tammy Grimes, Mia Farrow, Jeff Bridges, and Christopher Lee all in The Last Unicorn. The music is pretty terrible (America, I'm looking at you and that awful treacle-sweet pop soundtrack you produced for Unicorn). Also, the Watership Down movie still freaks me out. The book not so much, the book I liked; but the horrible animated killer plows and rabbits and dogs and strangling traps, ick.
But the funniest thing was remembering what a nerd movie Dragons is. The whole theme of the movie is the tension between magic and science. There's a reasoned explanation for the mechanics of dragon flight, as well as one for why they breath fire and hoard gems. The final battle begins with the hero reasoning himself out of an enchantment and continues with him shouting out Newton's laws at the bad guy and finally defeating evil with an alphabetical listing of the branches of science. Clearly, with this as one of my very favorite movies, I was marked out to be a nerd from a very young age.
But the movies were actually interesting. I had no idea how many awesome actors did voice work for kid's films in the seventies and eighties. Derek Jacobi in The Secret of NIMH, and James Earl Jones in The Flight of Dragons, for example, and Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, Tammy Grimes, Mia Farrow, Jeff Bridges, and Christopher Lee all in The Last Unicorn. The music is pretty terrible (America, I'm looking at you and that awful treacle-sweet pop soundtrack you produced for Unicorn). Also, the Watership Down movie still freaks me out. The book not so much, the book I liked; but the horrible animated killer plows and rabbits and dogs and strangling traps, ick.
But the funniest thing was remembering what a nerd movie Dragons is. The whole theme of the movie is the tension between magic and science. There's a reasoned explanation for the mechanics of dragon flight, as well as one for why they breath fire and hoard gems. The final battle begins with the hero reasoning himself out of an enchantment and continues with him shouting out Newton's laws at the bad guy and finally defeating evil with an alphabetical listing of the branches of science. Clearly, with this as one of my very favorite movies, I was marked out to be a nerd from a very young age.