Recent films and film issues

1. I took two kids to see How to Train Your Dragon the other day. We don't go out often; we watched the 3-D version, and it was the 3 year-old's first time in a movie theater, so enthusiasm abounded. I was somewhat enthusiastic myself because I'd read several reviews that said it was a great movie, one of the best of 2010, even.
   
   If so, it's been a really, really bad year in film.
   
   The film wasn't really bad per se; it just wasn't especially good. Worse, I worried that some kid would see it, take its rather stupid message to heart, and try to make friends with a pit bull wandering the neighborhood. That's been on my mind lately thanks to recent news items regarding issues like this in parts of Mississippi.
   
   
2. Cuba Gooding is quite good in Gifted Hands: the Ben Carson Story. Unfortunately, the film raises your interest in the teenaged Carson's issues with temper, but never shows exactly how he grew out of those issues. Aside from that, it's a very good film.
   
   
3. Students in one of my classes are aware that I know Latin (long story) and today they left a message on the blackboard before I cam into class:

   Et tu, Perry?

   In reply, I wrote,

   Manus, orate pro mihi!

   which might actually be incorrect, but I don't think so. Some of them got the reference, and then someone mentioned that awful TV show I won't name (but you can follow the link) and so the class suffered a ten-minute rant on the show's gross misrepresentation of Marcus Tullius Cicero.
   
   To be honest, I'm amazed that I kept it at ten minutes. I can really go off on tangents, but I wanted desperately to show that isomorphisms preserve normal subgroups and quotient groups, so I guess that kept me in check.
   
   During the rant, I mentioned Cicero's speeches against Catiline. I reckon I'll soon see on the board,

   Quo usque tandem abutere, Perry, patientia nostra?

   or something similar. I'd deserve it, if so.