What I am Watching

I love to watch movies.  Most of the time when my wife and I sit down to watch something at home, I decide what we watch.  Occasionally, I am a kind husband in that I will choose something a little less suited for me.  This last weekend, my wife sprained her ankle, and as a result, we spent a lot of time in front of the television to pass the time.  After the kids were in bed, I decided it would be fun to watch a movie.  Since my wife has the sprained ankle and is more especially confined to the couch, there is really only so much Say Yes to the Dress that I can tolerate so a movie was a good alternative.  I had already seen it in the theater, and I have encouraged anyone I tell about it with an ounce of geek in them to watch Scott Pilgrim.  Through the miracle of Netflix Watch Instantly, my wife and I had watched all of Arrested Development a couple of months back, and we grew to like Michael Cera.  Even though the only ounce of geek my wife has comes from what I force upon her, Michael Cera's role in Scott Pilgrim gave her enough interest to watch it with me.  I think she enjoyed it, but it is so far into the realm of being a nerd from the opening music taken straight out of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to the constant barrage of life meters, experience upgrades, and fighting game voice overs that I owed her a movie. 

After yet another episode of Say Yes to the Dress, I recalled a recent episode of The Stuff You Missed in History Podcast I had listened to only a day or so earlier.  Its theme was famous weddings, and one of the weddings covered in the podcast was Queen Victoria to Prince Albert.  I had put The Young Victoria in my Netflix cue a while back, and between the podcast and Say Yes to the Dress it seemed like an appropriate movie to watch.  It was quite good, and most importantly my wife really enjoyed the movie we watched as something she would have actually picked.  It is clean, romantic, and Victoria's character portrays a strong female who would make a much better role model for my daughters than so many of the women celebrities nowadays.  It has beautiful cinematography and costume work which I always enjoy from period dramas, but most of all, it makes me want to learn more about Queen Victoria.  Asides from those things it stars two of my favorite actors, Paul Bettany and Mark Strong who of course plays a bad guy.  I really cannot complain, and I can only say that if every movie I chose to watch for my wife were more like this and less like Bride Wars or other similar bilge, I would pick the movies suited for my wife more often.