We have two discs from our respective queues. Brooke has The Ideal Husband, and I have My Favorite wife.

Miles: Dad, did you have Mario Brothers when you were a little kid.
Me: When I was your age? No, there was no Mario Brothers.
Miles: There wasn’t any Mario Brothers Wii?
Me: There wasn’t any Wii at all.
Miles There wasn’t?!?!

This is a very well made movie with a lot of heart, usually. The cinematography is moving at times – flat at others. The characters are clichés, but complex clichés. It’s a touching tale that would have been more with less depth. Let me explain.

Phoebe appears, as do so many children in the movies, as the only sane person in her school. Squished between the popular (i.e. mean) kids and teachers who only care about rules, she finds trouble at every turn. (Or does trouble find her?) As the story progresses, Phoebe’s interactions and inconsistent behavior force the viewer to consider whether there might be something really wrong with the child. Voices on both sides of the debate (and plenty in the middle) don’t make the situations any clearer until the (rather disappointing) conclusion.

It’s somewhere in the middle that this film lost me. It seemed to be making contradictory statements. For example: 1) Adults (and the other children) should be permissive of Phoebe’s actions because she can’t control her outbursts. 2) Several characters have similar outbursts to show that everyone shares a certain degree of Phoebe’s condition.

The problem is that when “everybody else” makes one of these mistakes, they are expected to take responsibility for it, while we are expected to understand and pity Phoebe when she does likewise. You might say that this is reasonable because Phoebe’s condition warrants special considerations, but then she’s not like the rest of the characters and Point 2 is false.

Perhaps the screenwriter wanted to bring these contradictions to the surface – to ask questions rather than make statements. But other contradictions are specifically noted (primarily in Phoebe’s mother’s monologue), which hints that these others went unnoticed.

(I could write another paragraph on the inconsistency of a drama teacher who wants the students to be in charge, but constantly corrects the students’ performances.)

But there are very thoughtful connections made when Phoebe’s is off-screen. Her mother’s interactions with… well, just about everyone… shows how adults can talk and listen without understanding anything. Her sister’s perspicuous lines are a wonderful reminder that not all special children have problems – we just disproportionately distribute our attention to the ones with the problems.

This movie could have been a great shallow-but-meaningful survey of one young child’s experience with being different. The problems only arise when it tries to dive to depth where the salient issues cannot be resolved in 90 minutes. So it is just a good film.

I haven’t had time to write up most of the movies we’ve watched, but here’s a quick rundown.

Better off dead
This wasn’t as funny as I remembered it. Granted, I had never actually watched the whole thing in one sitting, so I had never noticed the boring and/or whacked-out parts. But I have a new appreciation for the geometry class sequence.

The Omega Man
I’ll write more about this later. I thought it was the first attempt to turn “I am Legend” into a movie, but I just found out that Vincent Price starred in one call The Last Man on Earth. So, once I’ve watched that and the Will Smith version, I’ll write something up.

Julie & Julia
This was the first movie in a long time that had Brooke and me laughing at the same time. It kind of dies in the end, but then, so do most real-life stories. It’s very much worth watching, especially for those of you who appreciate French food.

Fletch
Why can’t more comedies have well-written stories like this (and So I Married an Axe Murderer)? All you need to know is that it includes the line “Well, Utah’s not exactly a cure for boredom.”

(500) days of summer
This movie showed me why non-sequential storytelling isn’t used more often: It’s really hard to get it right. Also, are there really adults in this world who act like they’re still in high school? We mocked Uncle Rico for that, why is it OK for other people?

Monsters vs. Aliens
This joined the ranks of most Adam Sandler movies: I didn’t think it was funny at all. Brooke pointed out that many of their gags would have been funny with live action, which I think is yet another distinction between Dreamworks and Pixar. Pixar understands the medium because, well, they invented it.

Princess and the Frog
Brooke and the kids liked it, I didn’t see it.

The Proposal
Brooke liked it so much she wants me to watch it with her. Um, let’s find something else…

Invincible
Not as good as The Rookie, but the same basic premise. It has an added dimension of the economic difficulties at the end of the industrial era – points that may resonate today. Unfortunately, people no longer gaze starry-eyed at professional athletes (or is that just me?), so the biggest contribution of this movie may be nostalgia.

Move Over Darling
I love this movie. Doris Day plays a woman who is presumed dead. The day her husband remarries she reappears quite alive. Complications and hilarity ensue. It has the best “You don’t love me… You do love me!” man/woman conversations.

Playing with empty Easter baskets, climbing on chairs, and, at last, a complete Wii family (Ben earned his privileges).

Do you fish in a stream, or lazily dream on the banks as the clouds go by? Is that what you do? So do I!

Actually, our mom just plops us on the lawn in a port-a-crib.

And she’ll keep doing that until you learn to stay out of the road!

The original post is here.

These hideous bushes have sullied the curb appeal of our home since we moved in two years ago. I finally got enough time (and gumption) to chop them down and rip out the stumps on Saturday. It took a little less time than I had expected.

Here's the before picture. You can see that I had already chopped down the bush on the far right.

My dad gave me this idea.

And the after shot. The pile of branches is from another set of bushes that Brooke trimmed back.

Now I have to call someone to haul away the remnants.

(BTW, my pneumatic pruning shears came in handy for cutting out the roots.)

Now we have to figure out what to do with the space. Right now we’re leaning towards a concrete walkway and tiered planter boxes. Any ideas?

The Strong Museum of Play has a traveling Lego exhibit. The kids had a blast.

The first picture shows Isaac reaching for a large key that is supposedly to the treasure room. The sign above it reads “Don’t Touch! This means you!” Of course, Miles can’t read that well, so as soon as he saw the key he tried to take it off the hook. (You have to know that there is nothing else in the museum that is labeled “Don’t touch”.) Well, the pretend alarm sounded and Miles high-tailed it out of there before anyone knew what was going on. He was freaked out that he might have done something wrong.

My menu bar battery meter disagrees with my dashboard app.