Rachel Going Nowhere

Just so bad. Sooooooooo bad. I think the point here was for Anne Hathaway to prove she has "real" acting chops, by appearing in one of those quirkily brilliant little indie features. Oh well. This movie is not brilliant, and mistakes weirdness for quirkiness. And Hathaway really ends up just being wedged into a wincingly, embarrassing role that only shows she has very bad instincts in scripts. And somebody has to say it, with the year's most god-awful haircut.

I went to see this film because I'm a Debra Winger fan and I was excited to see her on the screen again. But no, what little of her there is in this dreadful piece, is hardly worth the torture of the rest of it.

Bad script. Bad story. Bad dialogue. Cheap production values. Weird and annoyingly romaticized Indian cultural objects, music and wedding rituals. And also weird Jamaican dancers in bikinis and neon colored feathers. Never wanted to see that interspersed with shots of a 12-Step Drug Addicts meeting. And all set in a totally post-Christian liberal fantasy word in which there are no mores and values, except probably for hating Republican people.

Just really bad. Save yourselves. Passssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

Crikey, mate! What a total mess!

I remember when I was in Australia last year that somebody explained to me the local euphemism in which something very nice is called a "dinky di." Well, let's just say the new movie Australia by director Baz Luhrmann needs a whole new euphemism, maybe, "dinky doo-doo"?

It is a spectacular mess. That is, it is lots of spectacle but all strung together in a very messy way. so much of the movie comes across like a travelogue, only of the most ugly, unsightly parts of Australia. The exceptions of course are the two gorgeous leads, Nicole "Can Her Eyes Be Any Bluer" Kidman and Hugh "Any Excuse To Remove the Shirt is Fine" Jackman. They look lovely here. Too bad what they have to do is act ridiculous.

I felt very often in the 2 hour and 55 minute long project that I was watching a kind of cartoon. It was over-the-top, but we've come to expect that from Luhrmann, but generally it's okay because it is the service of a larger, universal theme. Here, the theme seems to be a weird politically correct apology for white Australians, and a highly romanticized depiction of all things aboriginal - except the aboriginal women, who were all horribly unattractive. Along with the over-the-topness, the period establishing shots of 1939 Darwin, Australia were badly executed paintings that looked like they had been bought in a hotel lobby art sale.

Australia is too cute. Too long. Too sentimental. Too episodic. Too melodramatic. The score too loud and swelling. The acting too theatrical. The script just too, well, um, shitty.

But no worries. If you haven't seen it, you have been warned. G'day.

Happy Thanksgiving from...

...the Philadelphia airport. A day after. I'm on my way back to Los Angeles after a lovely visit home. Too bad New England is so cold. It would be such a lovely place if it wasn't basically uninhabitable 8 months a year.

I was brooding yesterday at Mass on how many Thanksgivings America will get to celebrate before the whole thing is ruled by the new Nazis of Tolerance an insensitive, oppressive celebration of patriarchial and religious colonialism. The day asks us to be thankful to Whom, after all? Some Deity, eh? Can't have that now, can we? But maybe in the future changed and hopeful world we will all go and work out on Thanksgiving instead of thanking God.

I'm also thinking we pro-lifers need to co-opt the monniker "abolitionists." I think that would be keenly galling to the Obama crowd as they shove eighty-seven different ways to kill baby, elderly and chronically ill humans down our throats. Maybe if Obama was all black instead of half-black, he would care more about civil rights? Just brooding here...

So, I'll be off to Fatima in Portugal on December 10th. Got to scope out the lay of the land for the movie I am working on now. Prayers for astounding insight and divine inspiration are so very needed.

The other movie, Mary, Mother of the Christ is going ahead in a very graced way. The financing seems to have come together in the last week. A director is attached and it's out to talent and a shooting date is on the calendar for March. Please do keep the progress of this project in your prayers.

It's Your Fault Christian Obama Voters....

It's all on you. And we're just getting started......

From Brietbart yesterday:

| 11/22/08 3:33 PM EST
Ellen Moran, executive director of EMILY’s List, was named White House communications director by President-elect Obama on Saturday.....

EMILY's List, one of the most important Democratic constituency groups, says it is "dedicated to building a progressive America by electing Democratic pro-choice women to office."

SIng it with me: "Kill the babies! Kill the babies!" HURRY! KILL THEM!

Tell me why you Like Obama....

Helping You Help Me

We have a major star who is interested in playing Herod the Great in the movie I co-wrote "Mary, Mother of the Christ. Said star has asked for a little beefing up of the role of Herod in the movie, and came up with the intriguing idea of having the terrible king show up at the scene of the slaughter of the innocents, and then make a speech to one of the dead babies.

Needless to say, it is rather where I am living these days and all I can do not to have Herod say, "Hell, I don't know if this was wrong. It's above my paygrade."


I spent most of the last two days working on the scene, and I think it is coming out okay. But I thought to toss it out to you loyal readers in case one of you has a cool idea about the scene pop into your head. What do you think? What did Herod think about the Slaughter of the Innocents? How would he talk about it? Would he be just dismissive like Obama about the unborn? Or something else?

BSG Freaking Out

Okay, back to what's REALLY important....

The IMDB page for the much anticipated last ten episodes of the great Battlestar Galactica (2003) (all bow) is listing a "freaking me out!" casting addition.

If you don't want a potentially mind-blowing spoiler of who just might be the Final Cylon, then, by all means, don't click here.

Now, I own that I had thought of this a while back, but dismissed it as being dumb from a story/character standpoint. And the words "dumb" and BSG don't often end up in the same sentence. (Unless that sentence is, "Why is the global audience so DUMB as to not be insanely obsessed with the wonder of BSG?!?")

My feeling is, making this character "the one" is way too cute. And also left-fieldish.

But it sure will make Kara's life (whatever that means since Season 3) much more complicated...

Shaken Awake by The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I'm in the Phoenix airport and the Wi-Fi here is uneven (- which I find disconcertingly cheeky. Don't they know that Obama has been elected and has ushered in a new era of complete transformation of hope and change?!), but I wanted to send a heads-up for the haunting and eerily relevant movie now in theaters, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

The film is being distributed by Miramax and was co-produced by BBC Films. It is worthy of your time and I think should be a must see for teenagers and perhaps junior high students depending on their maturity.

I generally have a bias against Holocaust films. They have to work very hard to win my recommendation because so many of them seem to just rehash the same issues over and over again. I also tend to smart against the notion that the Nazis were the worst thing to happen in the 20th Century. It seems to me the crimes of the Gulag and Mao and Fidel and the other leftist dictators have been arguably worse. They certainly lasted longer. But anyway, be assured that you haven't seen THIS Holocaust movie before. While we have seen the German perspective, we haven't seen it from this angle.

Dramatically in "the eyes of a child" genre, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is all about the inevitable personal toll that an individual will have to pay for dabbling with evil. Set in a German family in WWII, it provides a fly on the wall look at a family just like yours - two cute kids who are the center of their parents' world, a mother who is proudly supportive of her husband who has just gotten a promotion, a little bit of tension with the mother-in-law who seems stuck in disapproval of the new ways, and a young husband and father who is just trying to earn a living in the new Germany. The thing is, he just happens to be an SS officer who has been promoted to be commandant of a death camp.

The eight year old son, Bruno, provides the point of view of the film, and he does the confusion and boredom with adult politics and inconsistency very well. The inconsistency here is in the parents who are raising their two children to be delightful, well-rounded good people....all the while trying to keep the uncomfortable truth of the death camp at bay.

The two highlights of the film are the haunting score by the uber-talented James Horner, and the key performance of the mother of the family, played by Vera Farmiga. Farmiga makes her character so wonderfully sympathetic to us and, then, slowly unravels before our eyes. This mother is not the stero-typical robotic and barbaric "Goebbel's Wife" we have seen time and time again in the Holocaust genre. This is a human being who finds herself being swept along in the weird and increasingly dark momentum of her people's history. She isn't sure how it happened. She never signed on for it all, but by the time she takes action to extract herself and her children, it may be too late.



I would love to see Farmiga get an Oscar nod for her work here. So far, her performance is the most notable, and compelling one I have seen this year, with the possible exception of Richard Jenkins' great job in The Visitor.

There is a little bit of controversy about this film. Critics seem to be annoyed that it derives its central tension from the threat to one little German boy, as opposed to the millions of Jews. This criticism seems to me to be idiotic. Every movie derives its power by foregrounding the problems of one or two little people. In this case, the point of the film is to point a finger of condemnation at the German grown-ups here, who thought they could "handle" the evil they were dabbling in. In the end, it becomes a snowball rolling down hill that has the same effect as in the life of the Pharoah Ramsees when he perpetrated evil on the Hebrew people. If you do evil, it will consume you...or at least your children.

The film is not at all graphic, but the end is very disturbing. The people sat in the theater silent during the credits. The ladies behind me were wiping away tears. But I think everybody needs to see it. ESPECIALLY this week when so many Christians have seen their way to compromising with the greatest social evil of our day - abortion. Our people voted to overlook a little thing like the slaughter of the unborn, because of other considerations like economic prosperity, climate change and the desire to have all the other nations in the world like us again. This kind of a choice gets a very dramatic and cautionary treatment in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

I walked out of the theater ashamed of my country, and for the first time in any Holocaust movie, seeing in the German people not a scapegoat of history, but people just like us Americans in 2008. Only we will get judged harsher then they will, eh? Because we had their mistakes to study. My thought as I drove away in my car was, "The only real lesson of history is that people never learn from it."

Strong recommendation for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

The Spirit of the Age

That's poet/musician Michael Card above. I have had one of his songs running through my head all week. It's the one from his meditation on the Incarnation album, "The Final Word." The song is about the slaughter of the innocents by Herod. It's very relevant this week. Go here to download the song. Here are a couple verses:

The Spirit of the Age

I thought that I heard crying,
coming through my door.
Was it Rachel weeping
for her sons who were no more?
Could it have been the babies
crying for themselves,
Never understanding why they died for someone else?

A voice was heard of weeping and of wailing,
History speaks of it on every page.
Of innocent and helpless little babies,
Offerings to the spirit of the age.

Now every age has heard it,
the voice that speaks from hell:
"Sacrifice your children and for you it will be well."
The subtle serpent's lying,
his dark and ruthless rage.
Behold it is revealed to be the spirit of the age!

A voice was heard of weeping and of wailing.
History speaks of it on every page.
Of innocent and helpless little babies.
Offerings to the spirit of the age.

Don't trust the spirit of the age....

There's more to it, but you get the point. Check it out.

It's CHAAAAAAAAAAAANGE time!

And we're off. (From the Huffington Post today...)

"Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team."

How would Bugs Bunny sing it, "Kill the babies! Kill the babies!" Hurry!!!! Hurry!!! KILL THEM!!!!!




Hmmmmm..... Please one of you Christians for Obama, please help me out here with one of your swift and tortured rationalizations about how an Obama presidency won't mean more abortions. Because, two of Obama's three FIRST ACTIONS AS PRESIDENT seem to be all about killing the Jews. Oh no, excuse me, I meant oppressing the slaves. Oh! What is wrong with me today? I meant, of course, killing the little inconvenient humans in the womb.

It's stunningly terrifying how killing little people ISN'T above Obama's paygrade, heh? A wise man ("a philosopher king") would hesitate before taking any action that might end up in the death of other people.

Sleep well, guys.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


But I want to say a word to my Catholic Obama-supporting readers. I have to ask the indulgence of my non-Catholic readers here while I take a rare moment to address my own who frolic on the Fullness of Truth side of the Tiber.

The question is, was it over-stepping of me to suggest that a Catholic voting for Obama was a sin? Okay, well, with St. Thomas, I will grant you that hopelessly stupid Catholics could possibly be exempted from the pain of sin here. Also, a case could be made that Catholics who are invincibly ignorant (that is really, really clueless through no choice of their own and completely unaware of the gifts available to them to inform their consciences through the compassionate light of the Holy Spirit as it speaks through the teaching authority of the Church) could also escape responsibility in this matter. So, if you, Catholic for Obama are either of these, hopelessly stupid or invincibly ignorant, you would possibly not be flirting with grievously sinful behavior by voting for Obama, and I would feel compelled to apologize to you for suggesting it. Of course, you would then probably also be too stupid or ignorant to understand my apology, but hey, that would be a matter, say, above my pay grade to correct.

But, if you are not hopelessly stupid, or invincibly ignorant, you are in spiritual trouble. Big trouble. Because you aren't like the Protestants in this matter. Through the choices of their ancestors centuries ago, the Protestants have grown up basically on their own in sorting through questions of faith and morals. They are over their heads in this because it isn't a fair fight between silly human brains up against "not flesh and blood, but principalities and powers." But when millions of them get stuff wrong, like whether it is okay to support a politician who wants to unjustly screw Native Americans out of their property, or who, like Obama, want scientists to suck the brain stems out of unborn humans, the Protestants will not be fully culpable for their errors in judgment.

But you, Ted Kennedy - Pelosi - John Kerry - Joe Biden, you are another matter.

In choosing to empower Obama with your vote, you have acted in flagrant, willful disobedience to the Magisterial voice of the Church, YOUR Church. The Holy Spirit set up that Magisterium for exactly such a time as this: a time when a handsome, hip, articulate and compelling leader comes forth who would confuse your screwed up little nature by the disconnect between his bearing and his message. You really want to vote for him because he moves your emotions. But the things he says makes your intellect disturbed. But then your commitment to WHO YOU ARE as a Catholic should step in and say, "I don't know what to do here. What does the Church say?" And the Church says, "When you vote to empower someone who advocates something that is objectively immoral, you share in the responsibility for what they will do with that power." And then you, acknowledging your puny, overwhelmedness against the conflict between your emotions and your reason, would submit yourself humbly in faith to the Holy Spirit as He speaks through the system He set up. And then you couldn't vote for the Planned Parenthood candidate.

In this case, Catholic-for-Obama, WHO YOU ARE as a Catholic took a back seat to WHAT YOU WANT as effectively your own deity/magisterium. We're right back in the Garden with this as the words of the snake echo down through the centuries, "But YOU shall be like God, deciding what is good and evil..." You are suddenly just like the Catholic who voted for Hitler because he made your heart beat with pride through his speeches, even though you felt a bit queasy about those harsh things he said about "the Jew." But you really, really wanted Hitler because he promised to fix Germany's economy and global standing. So you talked yourself into a posture that the Church should just stay out of things like the bedroom or the hospital or the, you know, racial ghetto they're building on the edge of town. REALLY! Have you never ever wondered how it happened that so many good Christians supported the Third Reich? THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENS!




Anyway....

So, the Protestants, who, flailing around helplessly on their own, talked their consciences into supporting Obama, will get into heaven before you. Their sin is foolishness and some level of willed ignorance. Yours, is disobedience and arrogance. A much more serious matter.

If you really couldn't see your way to supporting McCain as a perceived "lesser of two evils," than you should have voted for a third party candidate. Because, as St. Thomas says, if you act when your conscience is conflicted about whether a matter is sinful, than you are willing yourself to possibly commit a grave sin. And we don't get to do that. (Try now and dismiss everything I have said for "judging you." It is your privilege to dismiss me the way you have dismissed the Magisterium of the Church. But maybe, you would be dismissing a prophetic voice that has been sent to you. Yeah...... "See, they murder and stone the prophets.")

Being on the Wrong Side of History, II

"You see, those people in there,
they're not really people at all."
(from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas)

Not surprisingly, I have gotten many emails in reaction to my post about the election of the man I principally think of as Barack Obortion. I'm going to reprint a few of them here and then add some more kindling comments to the fire.


"The tide, the dismal tide..."

Barbara, Although we’ve never met, I just wanted to tell you how much your words mean to me. I live in Canada but we are directly affected in so many ways with what happens in the US. As the saying goes, when the US sneezes, we catch cold. I became a Catholic just a couple of years ago and for that I thank God. I would have never had the spiritual strength to even attempt to stand up against this unmitigated evil that could well be foisted on North America. It reminds me of the line from No Country for Old Men…”it’s the tide, the dismal tide.” I can’t believe the gullibility of people, especially those who call themselves Christian. It makes me want to weep and it makes me want to scream. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Blessings

R.

From Germany....

Dear Ms. Nicolosi,

Thank you for your bold statement! I am a German screenwriter and director, and your words cut into my heart, because I know what it means to live on soil that is still drenched with the blood of God's people. We Germans are the way we are. because of the things we try (hard) not to remember, and still, we cannot escape them. There is no innocence, no end to responsibility, no cover-up through the shifting sands of history. The holocaust is as alive in our hearts, minds or collective unconscious, as it is in the memories of its few survivors who are still around. There is only forgiveness, and no escape for those who do not seek it. I know that God's law tolerates no exception. I know that God accepts no argument, no pragmatism and no delay in the execution of His eternal will.

God will judge Mr. Obama, who said about his daughters "If they make a mistake, I don't want them to be punished with a baby". Punished with a baby. God won't look at Mr. Obama's democratic, charitable or merciful works and see in them a compensation, at least in those works which Mr. Obama does not do in God's name - God will judge Mr. Obama's heart, like everybody else's.

Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will."

But there is hope - God can still change Mr. Obama's soul, and we can do our part by prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven... We can command the love of heaven to earth, and we should do so now. Prayer, repentance and submission under God's loving will had changed the hearts and ways of many of the kings of Israel, and why shouldn't it change a democratic leader of our day. God can do so, and He is eager to do so, and we can certainly play a role in it, now that the ballots are cast.

Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

No matter what deception he used, regardless of the secular multi-media power behind him and the obscene amount of moneys spent - Obama was elected by a Christian virtue, that of hope. People put faith in him, and experience shows, that where there is faith, it can be put into other things, and persons, too. Let's pray that the American people will put their faith in God alone (again), and see that all other things (and people) are subordinate, and subject, to God's will. Jesus was an optimist from the beginning of time, and so am I. America is a wonderful nation, and still the most faithful nation of our time.

John 19:11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.

All the very best from Berlin,

A.V.
Berlin

From Obama's home town...

Thank you for writing this. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I am ashamed to admit I have been cowed by my friends who have accused me of being a one-issue voter (sigh, which I am, and always will be until abortion has ended). Shame on me for not yelling right back. This articles gives me my, um, ovaries back.

Tonight, after reading this, I went to my parish's prayer service for the election, then proceeded to another parish's adoration chapel to say the rosary.

Should BHO win, it will be a sad day for unborn children everywhere and women of color in developing nations, especially, who are going to get artificial birth control and abortion stuffed down their throats (thanks to BHO's cozy relationship with Planned Parenthood and people like George Soros). We could be in for a very bumpy ride.

God bless you for giving voice to what many, many, many men and women know in their hearts to be true.

Peace,
M.V.
Chicago

Several folks also sent me an article by Fr. George Rutler about a book by Robert Hugh Benson called The Lord of the World. Written in the early part of the 20th Century, the book eerily seems to predict the whole weird cult of Barack that we have watched unfold in these last few months - a guy with nothing to recommend him except style comes forward and sends people into thrall. They faint in front of him and place on him all the kind of hope and adulation that is proper to God. It doesn't end well for the world.

We'll see.

The most interesting reactions to my post were the ones from people who were enraged about the picture of the little hum an slaughtered by abortion. People seemed more infuriated by the fact that I had posted the picture, than they were by the contents of the picture itself. Amazing, no?

What you had in that reaction was fury that I would distract them from their ravings about Obama's compassion, wisdom and how much he "gets it" about the poor, by an image of the barbarism that he actually stands for.



Please, please, do tell me about how humane Obama is. And how he won't torture people like the Bush Administration, and how he wants every child to have a great education. Please, do go on. Don't let the evidence of your senses sidetrack you from what you want to believe.

I wonder if the people who are enraged by these images get similarly furious when people post pictures of starving children in Africa, or of civilians killed in bombings in Iraq, or of the people being persecuted in Tibet or East Timor?

No, they don't hate those photos, do they? Because those are so safely far away. It's creepy to see the images of the aborted child who might have been your next door neighbor but for your vote for people who support abortion rights. Somehow, supporting those who support slavery, makes you complicit in slavery. It does. Yes, it does.

Yes, it DOES.

So, the pictures are really, really uncivil of me to post, aren't they? Don't want to have to think about those babies. Those tortured faces and massacred little bodies. Want to think about "hope" and "CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!"

Good luck with that.

An Open Letter About Being A "One-Issue Voter"

I just sent this message off in an email to yet another of the annoying useful idiots who define themselves as Christians supporting Barack Obama and have felt the need to try and rally me to the cause of supporting the man.

In the name of missing a chance to take a stand on the slavery of our day.....


__________________________________________




Dear _____________

I have received your heartfelt appeal for me to consider voting for Barack Obama. As a Christian, I find your message way beyond galling, and into the realm of the surreal.

I can not, under any circumstances, ever support a candidate who thinks it is okay for a baby human to be chemically poisoned in its mother womb.

That is, nothing could ever prevail upon me to vote for a man who vehemently argued it was not a moral problem to have a late term child, delivered intentionally in breach, so that it's head could be punctured with scissors and then have it's brain sucked out so that it's skull could be readily collapsed.

In other words, there is no possible scenario, under which I would vote for a man who shrugged that the separation of the humanity of unborn humans from their rights as persons was ABOVE HIS PAY GRADE!!!!! It is particularly mind-numbing that such a blithe dismissal comes from a man of color, whose own personhood was voided only a short hundred and fifty years ago by the same Supreme Court that has arbitrated this the greatest social evil of our lifetime.

It is proof of the complete triumph of the civil rights movement that the group that was once oppressed now gets to declare another group subhuman so as to nullify their civil rights.

But let's be clear for the record, shall we? Not once, in the history of the human race - NOT ONCE! - has a group of humans separated another group from their rights as persons, and been right. NOT ONCE! In fact, the people who voided other's personhood - the others being Jews, women, Native Americans, blacks - have all been judged by history as being among humanity's most vile and evil of groups. So why the hell do you think this time will be any different? It's the EVIL, stupid!



I guess it takes an intellectual of Obama's stature to render the above image obscure and subject to debate. Above your pay grade to say what that is, IS IT?! Above your pay grade??!!! A flipping five year old can tell you what that is, you gutless hypocrite. It's a little dead person.... Looking out for the little guy, huh, Obama? Gonna take care of the poor? It's not quite going to be UNIVERSAL health care is it, Senator?

Don't kid yourself. Abortion ain't just one more issue on the horizon anymore than slavery was in the 19th Century, or anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930's. There were certainly other issues in 1858. There were economic problems and international disputes - but the truth is, today, we remember none of those other issues. Slavery was the DEFINING issue in the same way that abortion is today because the failure of a person to have a gut-wrenching horror over both slavery and abortion, reveals everything about the quality, insight and wisdom of that individual. Myself, I am not going to see my name on the rolls of history's dupes alongside the slavery question's Steven Douglas who found a political rationalization to support keeping black people as slaves. He was wrong then. You and your ridiculous Obama are wrong today.

So please, stop trying to convince me that your guy is great. He isn't! And don't you effing dare try and convince yourself that Jesus is somehow indifferent to your lukewarmness about abortion or that the war in Iraq somehow balances out the Democrat party's obsession with abortion rights. Don't you dare try and duck the ramifications of your vote in this matter. You must own the screams of the unborn echoing back to heaven in the way that the German people had to own the stench of the burning flesh of the death camps. Own it. Because you are a useful idiot for the demon of this age.

May God help us.

Barbara R. Nicolosi