Valkyrie...

Kyle and I went out on Saturday night to see the long anticipated movie Valkyrie.

On the good side. The costumes were excellent. The script was decent. The story engaging. Tom Cruise's German... wonderfully executed.
On the down side. Everyone except Tom was British and had a huge! British accent. The cinematographer needed to be fired! I would guess a good 80% of the movie every one's head was cut off between the nose and the eyes. I had no clue who was who, and which side they were on. I focused on the excellent wardrobe to figure out who was speaking but it was difficult.Tom's character was caught in an explosion at the beginning of the movie which is the cause him loosing the left eye, right hand just above the wrist and the pinkie and ring fingers of the left hand. I counted at least 5 times that the right had miraculously appeared or the shadow of missing hand fell on his leg. It was a little distracting. Because I couldn't see any one's face I had to look at the gone/back again hand.I saw the "missing" fingers move a few times. I don't want to blame this one on the film, it could have been that the theater didn't have the projection right... but.. in the left hand corner there were production notes of color, scene and other gibberish. I kept looking at it thinking it would tell me where we were and the year.
In a fraught with danger office scene there is a general sitting on a desk and we are looking at him from the door's point of view... well right in the middle of screen I could see the track for the camera. I thought, "Did I just see that?" as they flashed to Tom standing at the door. Then back to the man on the desk and there was the track again. This went on a few times until finally we got the close up that was promised and the track slowly went out of view. I felt so bad for such an important part of history getting lost in all the muck.
I got so fed up with the poor workmanship of it all and I sat back and closed my eyes. I imagined myself sitting at the side of my grandparents old consul record player listening to a great radio show.Hurray for Let's Pretend.