Thursday, April 17, 2008

Educational Movies To Be Sure You Miss!

This poor kid! I have found several videos and DVDs at our library to complement my son's schoolwork - history and science.Some are good, some are mildly ridiculous, and some are so incredibly "is this happening to me?!" bad that I give him extra credit for getting through it! Oh, my gosh, one was so bad, it was 'cheesy', for one. You know what it looks like when someone is faking running when they really are standing in place? There was a lot of that in this one video about the cell. In the video, a kid was sucked into the cell being studied by his classmates. Okay, silly but whatever. Then it was full of terrible puns (my D hates puns) and pathetic attempts at teaching. In between the appallingly stupid segments of the movie were useful points that he took notes on. That was the worst movie ever.

Then today. This wasn't as horrifying but we were in a stupor at the end. It was a 39 minute movie - supposedly IMAX! It should have taken 7 or 8 minutes. D said it seems to have been shot at 10,000 fps and played back at 30. The people walked and moved so slowly, it was absurd. Truly, it was strange. No, it was not a technical problem, it was made that way. It was supposed to be part of the atmosphere of the movie but it really REALLY did not work. It's called The Hidden Dimension and shows views through an electron microscope. I have never seen a movie done this way before, where the ... it was just so pathetic.

Now D is afraid when I go to the library! Have you ever accidentally tripped over one of these types of movies? The kind you would consider a good candidate for an MST 3000 movie?