It’s been a while since Sophie first learned to roll over onto her back but now she’s fig­ured out how to keep going and flip to her stom­ach as well. The best part is that Kelly was quick enough to catch it on cam­era the very first time. See the exclu­sive video now:

We’re obvi­ously excited that she can per­form this new acro­batic feat but we are also sad­dened because it marks the end of being able to leave her in one place. No more quick dia­per refill­ing while she’s on the chang­ing table. No more run­ning to the other room to grab the phone. I was watch­ing her while mak­ing cof­fee (step by step) and by the time I was fin­ished, she was halfway across the liv­ing room floor with a proud smile on her face. Time to start think­ing about what needs to be put away as more mobil­ity is sure to follow.

 
Meanwhile, on the TV…
 

Kelly and I have been able to fit in some movie watch­ing thanks to our AppleTV. Without the near instant movie rentals it pro­vides, we wouldn’t be able to fit any­thing but bad tv shows between the time we put Sophie down and Kelly goes to bed.
Well, the other night we rented the 2007 Beowulf movie. This is another one of the recent crop of 3D ani­mated movies fea­tur­ing extremely real­is­tic faces that cause Hollywood reporters to turn into Chicken Little. “Actors will be replaced with com­put­ers! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!“

It is a beau­ti­ful movie with many moments where you for­got that what you were watch­ing wasn’t real, how­ever, the plot was not so real­is­ti­cally ren­dered. The script writ­ers really wanted to make some­thing of sub­stance but fell short. I guess it didn’t help that I had watched Blade Runner the night before. Blade Runner is a film that is full of such uncom­pro­mis­ing excel­lence, a proper review would required me writ­ing it in City-Speak. (Those of you who under­stood that last sen­tence should read it as an invi­ta­tion to meet me at a nearby cof­fee shop for hours of intel­lec­tual yet geeky discourse.)

Beowulf was, for its time, an extra­or­di­nar­ily thor­ough col­lec­tion of oral his­to­ries recant­ing the epic adven­tures of an Anglo-Saxon super-hero. On the con­trary, the 2007 Beowulf film is just a big bud­get retelling of a fight between noisy neigh­bors who set­tle their dif­fer­ences by fight­ing and sleep­ing with each other. Grendel, who is sup­posed to be a phys­i­cally over­whelm­ing and fright­en­ing mon­ster, is reduced to a cross between Resident Evil’s “Nemesis” and “Corky” from Life Goes On, Grendel’s mother is pretty much Angelina Jolie in gold paint, and Beowulf goes from olden-times super hero to flawed-for-no-reason brag­gart.
I won’t bore you with any more details but, just in case you were still inter­ested in see­ing this film, I thought I would end with a list of alter­nate movie titles.

Unofficial Beowulf Alternate Movie Titles

• Beowulf: Tis no Polar Express
• Beowulf: The biggest video game cut-scene since Final Fantasy
• Beowulf: Look who’s sleep­ing with Grendel’s mother now!
• Beowulf: The vil­lage com­mon sense forgot.
• Beowulf: The block-party that just won’t stop!
• Beowulf: Yeah, our ani­ma­tors imag­ine Angelina Jolie naked too.
• Beowulf: Who’s left to keep repop­u­lat­ing this place?
• Beowulf: The hair that wouldn’t move