Outside my hotel room window, a thin layer of clouds has stolen over the valley, diffusing the light and making it difficult to see where the sun really is.

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The day was gray and moist, with low clouds weighing on the rooftops and a thin fog floating below.

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Funnel clouds look like cone-shaped or thin rope-like protuberances which hang down from the cloud base, and often do not last very long.

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The idea is to inject clouds of material into the stratosphere, creating a thin haze and deflecting some of the sun's rays away from the Earth, at least temporarily.

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Just on the level of sheer spectacle -- and these are movies we're talking about, spectacle is no small matter -- a flick like "Jack the Giant Slayer" has a lot going for it: a perilous daylong climb into the clouds, a castle in the sky worthy of Hayao Miyazaki, waterfalls that drain into thin air and the delightful sight of a 100-foot chef sneezing into his pastries.

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