Had a really good day today, which started with a couple of hours spent at the San Diego Natural History Museum. The main reason for my visit was to watch Sharks 3D, the final 3D movie they have that I needed to see. While some of the shots were truly incredible, especially in 3D, most of the scenes tended to drag on a bit too long. And the movie wasn’t only about sharks. They covered quite a few ocean species including dolphins, sea lions and manta rays. Each of those segments was about twice as long as they should have been. Watching a giant manta ray slowly flying through the ocean is really cool, but watching it swim by the same way about dozen times is a bit much. The 3D was excellent, most of the soundtrack was good, but the narrator was, I think, the wrong choice for some of the dialog they gave him to read (an Englishman trying to be hip with phrases like ” sharks are really cool”) and at forty minutes long there were times I was thinking they really needed to move the story along a bit faster. The movie could easily have been a comfortable thirty minutes. Before the movie started I was walking around trying to take pictures of some of the exhibits but I kept getting interrupted by a impish old female volunteer who was always repeating herself. She literally would tell me something about one of the displays, walk a few feet away, turn around, walk back to me and repeat exactly what she had just told me a few seconds earlier as if to make sure I heard and understood her. Lucky for her I’m more Dr. Seuss than Drs. House, Horrible or Kevorkian. After the movie I walked around a bit more talking pictures of the exhibits and trying to avoid Ms. Reiteration at all costs. Really looking forward to the Titanic exhibit coming in February.
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