22 January 2012

Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

I try to keep this little knitting blog on topic most of the time, but every now and then something happens to make me break from the formula and rant about something else.

I have just returned from seeing Red Tails. If you have any inclination to see this movie, let me offer one word of advice: DON'T.

George Lucas keeps getting worse at writing dialogue as he ages. I had hoped, seeing as he's the executive producer, not the screenwriter, that it wouldn't be so bad, but within three lines it was obvious that he got his mitts on the script and completely ruined it. And not only that, but he tried to shoehorn an awkward love story into what is otherwise an action film. At least this time he didn't have the guy snogging a sibling, but it was still pretty contrived.

In an interview on The Daily Show, Lucas said he meant for Red Tails to be B-movie cheesy. I think what actually happened is that he tried to make it spectacular, failed utterly, and then realized he needed to lower everybody's expectations. Bruce Campbell is B-movie cheesy. Red Tails is just bad.

If you have any interest whatsoever in historical accuracy or even scene-to-scene continuity, don't even bother renting this one. The markings on the planes are wrong, the radios are wrong, the guns are wrong, machine gun rounds somehow cause massive explosions on the deck of a destroyer, it's apparently summer in Italy at the same time it's winter in Germany... almost every scene has something seriously wrong with it, and it's painful.

So do yourselves a favor and avoid this movie. Meanwhile, I'm going to drive out to Skywalker Ranch and smack George Lucas upside the head with several history books, a thesaurus, and a restraining order to keep him from making any more movies.

09 January 2012

Downswing

The confluence of cloudy days, a lull in the job search, and the depressive phase of my Bi-Polar symptoms means I've been struggling to pull myself out of bed for the last week or so. Despite my inability to do much else, though, I've been remarkably devoted to one new knitting project. It doesn't look like much right now, so I won't take a picture, but it's going to be a cute little top-down, raglan 3/4-sleeved, cropped cardigan.

The only trouble is that I'm using the Cascade 220 that I bought years and years ago with the intention of making a cabled hoodie (never got beyond the first sleeve), and at the time I was more concerned about my budget than about dye lots, so I only bought a skein or two... and this pattern requires closer to three.

So now, with the body nearly finished and not quite enough yarn to do even one sleeve, I'm realizing that yet another sweater is going to be set aside to hibernate. The last one was intended for Rhinebeck a few years back and was stuffed away at the bottom of the WIP basket out of boredom. Maybe this will be an excuse to finish the old one while the new one waits for me to have a yarn budget again.