Note: I began this post right after seeing this in the theater in late December, but didn't decide to finish it off until netflixing it this weekend. We saw the Hobbit, but somehow going to the theater didn't have the same sense of being an event like seeing The Fellowship of the Ring eleven years ago. Are all of us, even the film crew, just older and more tired? I mean, even though we knew a decade has passed, it was still a shock to see how old Ian McKellan looks (well, either that or they muffed the makeup), and I definitely noticed that Saruman remains seated for almost the entirety of his time onscreen (a kindness to Christopher Lee, who turned 90) -- I do like the addition of the Council of the Wise scene, if only because Saruman painting Gandalf as a dangerous schemer is a nice touch. Given all the other edits -- and while there are many poorly chosen deviations from the original story, I won't belabor them here** -- the decision to keep the reunion of Bilbo
& the dwarves after the escape from the Misty Mountains, but prior
to being chased by the wargs, is extremely curious to me. All the
speechifying in that reunion breaks up the action and would have worked better at the very end of the film, because the same points are simply being rehashed. ** Well, maybe just Radagast***... for me, the most disappointing bit about Radagast's role in this is that
it seems to break an important connection between Thorin and the
Necromancer: Gandalf acquired the map and key from Thrain in the
dungeons of Dol Guldur! Thus, he already knew about the darkness
gathering in Mirkwood; thus, Radagast's filmed role was unnecessary. Then again, perhaps it will turn out that Gandalf did already know what Radagast reports, and was simply being coy. That's probably too much to hope for. *** No, no, we just got to Bert, Tom, and William. They've taken a great scene in the book and turned it into a stream of bodily functions jokes. I had blocked out just how terribly awful this is. Now I'm sad again that Jackson doesn't seem to truly understand the importance of song in Tolkien.
As one of the last remaining New Jersey Nets fans**, I should be charmed by the prospect of Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin playing significant playoff minutes for a "contender" ten years after making back-to-back Finals appearances***, but given that they're playing for the @%$@#& Knicks, it's really just depressing. ** and by "fan" of the Nets, I mean "person who is vaguely aware of and moderately cares about what the team is currently doing". Really, it's the most a New Jersey team can ask for when Jersey is the Scottish and New York is the English:
*** it would have been three consecutive finals, if Kidd weren't playing injured during the 2004 playoffs (requiring microfracture surgery in the offseason). As it was, they took the eventual champion Pistons to 7 games with a one-legged Kidd. There's NO WAY they lose that series if he's healthy. IMO, Kidd's Hall of Fame ticket was punched when he managed to get to consecutive Finals, first with Keith Van Horn, Kerry Kittles, Kenyon Martin, and Todd MacCulloch as starters (with rookie Richard Jefferson coming off the bench), and then with Kittles, Martin, Jefferson, and Jason Collins as starters (and not much off the bench).
My 3rd grader's class is doing money, fractions, and probability, and I've been thinking up a brief parent volunteer lesson plan to talk about probability with dice, around the idea of having two people each roll a die with a different number of sides, and talking about how likely it is that one or the other roll the higher number. I'd start with d4 vs. d6; there are 24 possibilities and it's easy enough to work with the kids to enumerate all of them. There are 14 wins for the d6, 6 for the d4, and 4 ties.
d6 vs. d8 is tougher to do in a short lesson; we'll work out that there are 48 possible outcomes, and there are 6 ties in those outcomes. Maybe we'll have time to work out that the number of wins for the d6 is 1+2+3+4+5, or the sum of number from 1 to (number of sides-1), and therefore the number of wins for d8 is 48 - 6 - 15 = 27, but that's probably too much to get through in a single day. So we're all set, except... in d4 vs. d6, 14 - 6 = 8 = 2 * 4; in d6 vs. d8, 27 - 15 = 12 = 2 * 6. Hunh.
Dice Larger Smaller Ties Wins Wins d4 vs. d6 14 6 4 d6 vs. d8 27 15 6 d8 vs. d10 44 28 8 d10 vs. d12 65 45 10 d12 vs. d20 162 66 12
The difference in the number of wins is the number of sides on the smaller die times the difference in the size of the dice. I'd never noticed this before. Cool.
The visual explanation for this relationship is as follows (looking at the possible outcomes of d4 vs. d6):
The red area above the diagonal shows where the smaller die wins, the blue on the diagonal shows the ties, and the green below the diagonal shows where the larger die wins. In the first four rows, the numbers of wins are balanced, but once past the possibility of a tie, the larger die wins every possible outcome in the row. The number of outcomes in each row is the size of the smaller die, and the number of rows in which the the larger die wins all possible outcomes is the difference in the sizes of the dice.
Ah, of course. It looks obvious from this angle, but wasn't immediately so coming at it from the other side.
Through no fault of its own (having been published a full year earlier in 2010), it is difficult to remember that the title of this book is not, in fact, 50 Shades of Milk and Honey, though I am sure there would be a market for Regency BDSM. It is, as advertised, a fun comedy of manners against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Oh, and there's magic, though it's somewhat different from what is presented in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. So, go and read it. It's a very fast 300 pages. thar be spoilers
Given Beth's history, and what we see of her in this book, I don't quite believe that she's still so impressionable and gullible, and so the "reveal" of Dunkirk's character flaws, combined with Jane's sudden interest in Mr. Vincent -- there really isn't a spark between them, so it reads a little as if she only falls in love with Mr. Vincent because he has fallen in love with her (shades of the Princess Frog) -- is not really satisfying. These are minor blemishes on; it's still a good read. But at any rate, this book's dark secret, likely unknown even to the author, is that it's the greatest piece of Hermione/Snape fan fiction written to date**. To be sure, the names are changed, but who else could the plain but talented Jane and the misunderstood misanthrope Mr. Vincent be? Ron (as Mr. Dunkirk) even makes an appearance, along with his impressionable-but-bright younger sister, to provide a hurdle to the H/S romance, until Hermione figures out that Ron is too violent and doesn't really respect her opinions. :-) ** the best music video, of course, is this one:
Don Cheadle stars as real life convict-turned-DJ Petey Greene. The first act of the movie, tracing Petey's rise from prison to a leading voice in D.C.'s radio scene, is excellent, and about as good a biopic as you could ask for -- I especially liked the cuts that provide links between Petey and Dewey, and the prison inmates and the protestors on the D.C. Mall. The problem is that, after Petey's coverage of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the filmmakers struggle to manufacture second and third acts around the fracturing and eventual mending of Dewey's and Petey's relationship. Petey's failure to perform on the Tonight Show and Dewey's eulogy at Petey's funeral, aside from being entirely fictional events, simply don't carry the same emotional power as the events surrounding King's death, so the latter parts of the film drag. The solution, I think, is to start wrapping up the film shortly after King's death, at the emotional high point. It would be a good challenge for a film student, but you could probably even do this by re-cutting the existing film from 120 minutes to 90 minutes.
