Who listens to a commentary about a movie he hates?

Huh? It's a podcast, not a Blu-Ray.

On that note: Have you ever noticed just how many synonyms English has? If you don't speak any other languages you might never have noticed, but really it's kind of ridiculous. Virtually every word in our language has at least one synonym, and most often one of the two synonyms seems more polite than the other. Best example of this I know is "sweat" and "perspire." The two words are perfect synonyms; they mean exactly the same thing. But one is more polite.

"Sweat" (the verb) is from the Old English "swætan." "Perspire" is from the Norman French "perspirer," out of the Latin "perspirare," literally "to breathe through."

Between 1066 and the mid-1400s, late Anglo-Saxon and Norman French merged to form what we now call Middle English, which of course evolved into Modern English starting in the 15th century or so.

But we've retained almost all of the vocabulary of both languages. The grammar and basic functional words are Anglo-Saxon, but fully half of the vocabulary of Modern English is French. You can especially see this with the meat words: cow versus beef, swine versus pork, deer versus venison. Pretty much the only meat word we retain from Old English is lamb, and that's just cause the French "agneau" is hard for us to pronounce. (We did retain the name Agnes, though, which is just the Latin word for "lamb" with a different spelling.)

Anyway, it's all a thousand-year-old side effect of the fact that the nobles spoke French and the common people spoke Anglo-Saxon. We kept almost all the words, but even today we associate the French words with politeness or snootiness, and the Old English words with being low-class or common, or even rude. Social memory lasts a long time.

Okay, done being a word nerd now.

Invid: Got a link for that?

Quick is the word and sharp is the action. Stand tall on the Quarterdeck son, all of us! Huzzah!

Pick up Master and Commander at the Down in Front store

Master and Commander on IMDB

Master and Commander on Box Office Mojo

Development from the Patrick O'Brian novels

The abridged movie tie-in is available in the books section of the store

ILM, Weta Workshop, Asylum

His Majesty at the time was George III

The Caine Mutiny

Russell Crowe

HBO's Rome

Spaced

As you know...

Theodore Taylor's The Cay

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, October 1805, six months after the events of Master and Commander

Theremin

Teague and Trey's duet

War of 1812

Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...

Privateer

Russell Crowe on Twitter

Bad Astronomy and Human survival in space

Jonah and the Whale

Moby Dick, read it

Galápagos Islands; Darwin would not explore them until 1835

John Harrison invented the first marine chronometer

*Clocks were necessary to calculate Longitude at sea, for the full story pick up Longitude by Dava Sobel

Albatross as a metaphor in Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Circa 6th century Anglo-Saxon territory included parts of England and France.

Gary Chang's modular Hong Kong apartment (yeah, found it, what up?)

Ama-ebi

Ladymouth? You be the judge

Elliot Smith

Cheney shoots friend

Human Centipede: The Game, also a movie

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

*Fun fact: Motorola is a contraction of motor and Victrola; remember how early car CD players would skip on bumps? Imagine trying to play a record in the car

The Tuba was not developed until 1835

Your summer reading list:

The Cay, by Theodore Taylor
Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls
The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
The Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen
Summer of the Monkeys, by Wilson Rawls
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier (Doug Hutchison portrays Obie Jameson in the film),
Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell
The Pearl, by John Steinbeck
and I'll add one of my own
Horatio Hornblower, by by C. S. Forester

Get a library card, enjoy your summer

Ecumenical Council

Syren

Rumspringa

Zeitgeist: The Movie

St. Crispin's Day speech

The Sandman Comic

Naval guns and munitions of the period

The Paixhans gun, the first naval gun to utilize exploding shells, c. 1822

Junk shot, know as Langrage in naval artillery

Grenades had been used in Europe since the late 15th century

Seafaring professions

Terrapin

Just a head's up, that map shows Briton (i.e., Celtic) territories in the 6th century, not Anglo- Saxon.

Well, I honestly didn't know if DiF liked the film or not before that one post you're referring to, and assume he didn't either. Gregory Harbin is just saying his opinion wasn't changed, not that the commentary itself wasn't interesting or entertaining. It's similar to my reaction to the Avatar commentary: I really like the movie, they mostly ripped it a new one, and after listening to them I still really like the movie. It's probably the first time at least one DiF guy didn't have an opinion similar to mine so it was an interesting experience.

Really liked this episode guys. More like lerved as Steve Martin would say. Heard references to about 4 movies i haven't seen. I also prefer an action movie with an equal amount of good, intense (to me, anyway) acting as opposed to just wall-to-wall action. Maybe that's what you get from a director and DOP who're both in their late-'50s, instead of younger directors. Or not, who knows. How old's Michael Bay?

And yeah, the show notes are great.

I'm over an hour in and I still haven't gotten to the lady mouth part. I'm greatly...anticipating it.

With judo, I hope.

If anyone comes after Brian or calls him Ladymouth, you can expect THIS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RugI_SBO … r_embedded