Friday, September 30, 2011

Historical Ack-uracy

You know, Netflix has been kind of obnoxious lately.  Raising their prices, dividing their DVD and streaming services, sending me patronizing emails, and -- most offensive of all -- mailing me a string of disturbing movies.

Not bad movies, just... gross.  Like Gladiator a few weeks back.  Blood and beheadings and all that jazz.  And this week?  John Adams, which is technically a TV miniseries, but I regard TV movies and miniseries pretty highly so it might as well be a movie.

But, okay (GROSSNESS ALERT) there's a smallpox epidemic in Massachusetts, 1776.  And while John Adams is off trying to do the whole Independence thing, his wife, Abigail, decides to inoculate their children by exposing them to a bit of the smallpox virus. So this one friend of hers (a doctor? one can only hope) extracts some goo out of one of the... uh, lesions... of a seriously disgustingly infected-with-smallpox person, then inserts that into Abigail and the children's bloodstreams.  OH HELLS NO.  Well, guess what, THEY ALL GET SICK... the daughter most terribly.  She's got pox everywhere.  And they are nasttttty.  See, I always thought smallpox were like chickenpox, but smaller.


No.  They are bigger AND grosser.  Way, way grosser.

And, I mean, kudos to the John Adams make-up department for making that poor daughter look like a freaking garbage pail kid, but EW. MY EYES NEED A BATH NOW.

There are two more discs in this series, and I plan to rent them, because hey, it's good otherwise.  No, really!  I like watching a bunch of dudes in wigs debating and yammering endlessly and voting and stuff.  It's history, man.  And you know who plays George Washington?  David Morse!  The unfortunate side effect of this is that from now on, every time I look at a dollar bill or quarter, I'm automatically going to start quoting The Langoliers.

Oh well.

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