GARBAGE DAY!

The cast of Silent Night, Deadly Night II becomes increasingly desperate to escape the film.


Well, the other day I watched Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, a fairly boring courtroom drama with Gregory Peck oddly cast as an Englishman. I had thought of writing a review of that - it would only be natural - but I already reviewed Madeleine this past week, so the idea of reviewing a boring courtroom drama seemed, shall we say, undesirable. Why review a mediocre movie when I could review an utterly atrocious one?

No, this review will be my first excursion (for this blog) into one of the most underappreciated arts: the love of, and appreciation for, really, really, really bad movies. By bad, of course, I don't simply mean banal blockbuster trash like 300 and Transformers, or even middle-of-the-road films that don't quite achieve what they set out to do. I'm talking about movies that are so mind-crushingly stupid, insipid, intelligence-insulting, ridiculous and cheesy that you can't help but laugh your ass off at them. I will concede it's a decidedly acquired taste. Anyone can like a decent-to-good movie, and most people can at least enjoy a great movie, even if they can't or don't appreciate it. No, the true connoisseurs are those who love bad movies. I can't say that I enjoy all "bad movies" the same way - I love Manos: the Hands of Fate, but despise Snakes on a Plane, for instance. I don't know if it's a sign of open-mindedness to embrace every bad movie, or a lack of discretion. But I enjoy my bad movies like, well, not fine wine, but mediocre chocolate: I eat it until my pancreas shorts out and I develop diabetes. (I'll assume that no diabetics are reading this blog, and thus that I'm not offending anyone.)

There are a lot of movies in this category I'd like to write about, from the hilariously inept Leprechaun flicks to the insipid, insulting Billy Jack franchise, to any number of other films parodied by the late, great Mystery Science Theater 3000. Indeed, I'm sure that I'll get around to these old favorites in the not-too-distant future. But yesterday, seduced by a now-infamous Internet meme, I tracked down and watched perhaps the worst movie of all time - yes, worse than The Trial of Billy Jack - on YouTube - 1987's much-maligned slasher film/camp classic Silent Night, Deadly Night 2.

The original Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) was a controversial (among those fuddy-duddies who care about such things) slasher flick about a kid who witnessed a psychotic Santa Claus killing his family, grew up in an orphanage run by a sadistic Nut Nun, and himself donned a Santa suit before going on a killing spree of his own. Not exactly in good taste, but the movie was worth a few laughs - albeit, not necessarily of the intentional kind. However, it doesn't even approach the depths of laughable terror spawned by its sequel.

The sequel is in large part a recycling of the first movie. And by recycling, I don't mean simply that they recycled plot elements or situations. No, literally the whole first half of the movie (save some bits of narration) was lifted from the original!!! That's right, 40 minutes of an 80-minute movie is footage completely recycled from another movie. That's strike one. (Although, the film does engage in a bit of cleverness by having Ricky and girlfriend watch the first movie in a theater - but that's well after the first forty minutes have ended.) The movie's remaining storyline is simply a random series of events as Ricky (Eric Freeman), the brother of the first movie's antagonist, goes on a seemingly random killing spree, shooting people for wearing ugly football jerseys or mixing their plastics with their paper. None of this makes any sense, although the film belatedly decides that he is to exact revenge on the evil Mother Superior (leading to a hilarious chase scene and showdown between Psycho Santa and cripple knife-wielding Nun). I mean, I would have to be on pot to make up a plot description like that. That's how you can tell it's very, very real. Let me just say, I had a very bad case of the flu last February, which led to lots of insomnia and bizarre, indescribable fever dreams. It's as if someone tried to film these dreams, but their camera broke, so they hired a six year old to write a screenplay based on verbal descriptions, and then shot it on a budget of $6 with a camera phone. And then they lost that and made this movie.

Perhaps the best thing about the film is its lead actor, giving a performance surpassing even the great Tor Johnson in Beast of Yucca Flats. Eric Freeman inspires giggles every time he opens his mouth, giving perhaps the most hammy, over-the-top performance in the history of humanity (including elementary school plays, Indian rain dances and Daniel Day-Lewis ranting about milkshakes). He makes William Shatner look like Paul Scofield. It's a real treat to watch, as he swallows the scenery whole and chews over such great dialogue as "FUCK OFF!... Doc.", "It sounded like some squirrel getting his nuts squeezed!", and my personal favorite, "You tend to get paranoid when everyone around you gets DEAD!" Honest to blog, that's the real dialogue, and if I quote Juno again feel free to cane me mercilessly. (Not that he needs such dialogue, mind you. Freeman is able to make a line like "I don't sleep!" into the equivalent of Lady Macbeth's "Out damned spot!" rant) You can't make this shit up. You can't get much weirder than that... Oh, wait. Never mind. There might be a few exceptions.

Nah. Just wait until you scroll to the bottom of this review.

It's really, really hard to pick out a "best" scene, because the whole movie - even the flashbacks to the first movie - is so bad it inspires laughter. Not just a snide grin or a chuckle, but hysterical, gut-busting, "Normal View"-inspired laughter (that one's for the MSTies in my audience). Even the footage culled from the first movie is pretty funny - death by antler? A little kid decking Santa Claus? The over-acting silent black guy at the beginning? The annoying heckler in the movie theater singing along with the film's theme song? Death by umbrella? It's gold, Jerry, GOLD! Perhaps the most ludicrous (and thus hysterical) scene is Ricky's infamous killing spree, where an argument with his girlfriend's ex leads to a completely random massacre of an innocent suburb. The scene builds on top of itself, every moment more absurd than the last, from electrocuting Boyfriend with jumper cables to strangling Girlfriend with a car antenna, to shooting a poor man's Barney Fife with his own gun, shooting a car which flips over, lands right-side up, and then blows up (from the inside, it must be noted, not the engine - maybe it was being driven by James Coburn coming home from the set of Duck, You Sucker!), and of course, the moment that everyone remembers:

To those who've seen it, there needn't be anything more said about this movie.

For my part, I'll say just a mite more. This is the best movie of all time, if judging by the sheer number of yuks a minute. Not even The Ruling Class, His Girl Friday or even Prince of Space approach this level of humor. If you feel so inclined, the entire movie is on youtube. Why not give it a whirl? If you're reading this review, it's not like you have anything better to do.

Rating: 0/10 quality-wise, 100/10 for camp value

The Stepfather, Or: How to Try and Rip-Off Hitchcock Without Really Succeeding

We finally concluded our horror unit in film class on Thursday with Joseph Ruben's The Stepfather. I had zero expectations going in because I was only vaguely familiar with the film as one of Terry O'Quinn's few starring film roles. Well, not surprisingly, it got a much warmer reception from my classmates (whose taste, in large part, has always been highly questionable) than any of our previous films, which you can read by clicking back through this blog. Needless to say, my incredulity is unparalleled. There is no Shadow of a Doubt about it: The Stepfather sucks.

How many Hitchcock films have you seen, Penrod? Well, if you've seen even one, you should be familiar with the general plot of this movie. Jerry Blake (Terry O'Quinn) is a hardworking, nice guy who moves to a small Washington town and marries widow Susan Maine (Susan Hack), becomes a successful real estate agent, and makes himself a friend to the entire community. It seems the only person suspicious of him is his stepdaughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen), a troubled girl who has never gotten over the death of her biological father. Before too long, Stephanie uncovers the truth: her stepfather is a serial killer, who has wiped out his previous family and may be willing to do it again. Jerry, for his part, just wants an ideal family, but the problem is that when his family doesn't live up to Leave it to Beaver, he decides to resolve the situation by slicing and dicing his relatives. Meanwhile, some douchebag (Stephen Shellen) who was apparently related to Jerry's last victim is running around like a chicken with his head cut off, looking for revenge - but he proves to be absolutely worthless.

The movie's plot is essentially a reworking of Hitchcock's classic Shadow of a Doubt (1943), a wonderfully dark, grimly humorous noir thriller that Hitch himself named as his favorite of his work. Although I'd disagree (there are at least four others I'd put ahead of it myself), I can certainly see justification for such an opinion. This was among the first movies to explore the now-common theme (Blue Velvet, Desperate Housewives) of the dust and dirt lurking in the seemingly tidy corners of small-town America. The seemingly benign, charming and friendly Uncle Charlie (wonderfully played by Joseph Cotten) shows up at the home of his now-married Sister (Patricia Collinge), and manages to insinuate himself into the community, where he's acclaimed as a model neighbor and citizen. Only his nephew Charlie (Theresa Wright) slowly begins to uncover his secret - that he's a serial murderer and psychotic misogynist. Sound familiar? Save a few slight flaws - the title seems to have little to do with the story, as happened in a fair number of Hitchcock films, and the climax seems a bit overwrought and unconvincing- the movie is among the best of its type, and one of Hitchcock's first truly great movies.

Perhaps Mr. Ruben should have adhered to the famous MST3K maxim: "Never reference a good movie in the middle of your crappy move." While Hitchcock's movie managed to be creepy and chilling, it maintained a sense of humor (however dark) throughout. Ruben plays the film as straight horror, and not only that, but splatter film horror with graphic killings and lots of gore. (To be fair, the body count isn't terribly high, but the killings we do see are nice and graphic.) His low-budget schlock fest takes one of the best films of its type and turns it into a run-of-the-mill slasher flick. The movie borrows the basic plot and characters from Hitchcock films, as well as many specific scenes and visual cues (such as his folding up a newspaper reporting his crime and giving it to a child). There is a shower scene towards the end which seems inserted for little reason other than to recall Psycho, and shortly thereafter, an amusing but strange homage to The Birds. The shot of Jerry with a knife sticking out of his chest put me at least in mind of Torn Curtain, although maybe I'm just connecting the wrong dots. Homages can be fun, but when they're 90% of your film - and when your movie sucks - then you've got a problem.

Besides slavishly referencing the Master of Supsense, The Stepfather shows its slasher roots by falling squarely into the same traps as Halloween and Friday the 13th. The build-up, although let down by a rather amateur screenplay, is decent, and the movie manages to convey its message competently. The movie tries to make the argument that the "ideal family" and the "American Dream" are only a fantasy - which would be great, but then using a psychotic serial killer as the American Dad kind of undermines the point, I feel. Jerry is more of a masculine monster, an embodiment of the repressive patriarchal society come to destroy our happy all-female family. I'm not impressed by this sophomoric feminism, mind, I merely point it out. For what kind of film student would I be if I didn't engage in some wonderfully half-baked analysis? Anyway, once Jerry's psychosis comes to the surface, the movie becomes yet another crazy dude whacking people flick, without anything to really distinguish it from the rest of its insipid genre mates. To be fair though, Jerry doesn't kill anyone with a chainsaw, or spear a copulating couple, or get shot by his kid - erm, well, not quite, anyway.

I've always liked Terry O'Quinn well-enough; his distinctive, craggy appearance and voice are a welcome sight on any number of TV shows, from The X-Files to Millennium to The West Wing to Alias to Lost. He's given fine supporting performances in a variety of films: Heaven's Gate, Young Guns, Tombstone, Ghosts of Mississippi, Old School. So I'm not speaking out of any dislike of one of our finest character actors. But I thought he was bad here, as hammy as a Hormel factory (with 20% less additives!). He is okay in the early scenes as the seemingly model father - his first rage scene is admittedly a bit effective. But towards the end, as Jerry goes off the deep end, he goes way overboard, screaming his dialogue, bulging his eyes. Norman Bates he ain't. It might not be fair to blame O'Quinn; perhaps Ruben should have put his star on a leash. Either way, O'Quinn gives a performance worthy of a William Shatner or Steven Seagal here. To be absolutely fair, he was much better than Corbin Bernsen in The Dentist films, but he lacks the quiet dignity of a Kane Hodder or Warwick Davis. The rest of the cast is competent, but I wouldn't say anyone was really worth singling out for praise, as competent is only praise for a first-year film student.

So, I hope I made my point that The Stepfather utterly blows. Its direction is competent, acting (save O'Quinn) isn't bad, but that's about the best I can say about it. (I didn't even mention the insipid, banal sub-Halloween techno-noodling that tries to pass itself off as a soundtrack.) There's a Hitchcock film I kept mentioning in this review, what was it? It's on YouTube. It's really good. It's a fucking Hitchcock movie that isn't Torn Curtain or The Trouble With Harry. Why don't you go watch that instead?

Rating: 3/10 - Complete Drek

RIP Paul Newman

Well, gee, one has a sore throat and insomnia and they get up late on Saturday, only to see this:

Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as an activist, race car driver, popcorn impresario and the anti-hero of such films as "Hud," ''Cool Hand Luke" and "The Color of Money," has died. He was 83.

Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.

Next to possibly Charlton Heston, Newman is the biggest of the crop of stars who have passed away this year. He is a legend, one of the greatest actors of his generation, and I feel I can do such a legend scant justice, particularly since the number of films I've actually seen him is fairly limited. Still, I've seen enough of his work to recognize his value as one of Hollywood's greatest stars. He will be missed. RIP Paul.

I'll let some of the man's work speak for itself. For your consumption:

Cool Hand Luke - Nobody can eat 50 eggs.

Cool Hand Luke - final scenes.

Torn Curtain - murder scene.

Hud - The men we admire.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - chase.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - the cliff scene.

An Editorial on Pirates 4

Mr. Mercer Sez:

"The deleted scenes from Pirates 3... are under MY command!"

Penrod: Gee, Professor Saunders, I sure enjoyed your lesson on what makes a good film. Now I know who to come for when I want asinine geekiness... er, I mean, cinematic knowledge.

Professor S: Why, thank you, Penrod. If you call me a geek again I will cane you mercilessly - just like last time.

Penrod: Gee, I'm sorry. But came here because I have a question for you.

Professor S: Yes, Penrod?

Penrod: I just heard confirmation that they're making a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Professor Saunders! With Johnny Depp and everything! What do you make of that!?

Professor S: Well, Penrod, there's an obvious explanation for this: Money. Didn't you see how successful the last two movies were? It's all about the Almighty Dollar for Disney.

Penrod: But Disney is all about family entertainment!

Professor S: Don't be an idiot, Penrod. Didn't you see the beginning of the last Pirates film?

Penrod: My mommy screamed in terror while she was watching that. I couldn't hear what was going on.

Professor S: Puerile Bush-bashing, Penrod, by obnoxious Hollywood liberals. And the murder of children, to boot...

Penrod: Golly gee, Professor, are you trying to slyly sneak a pro-life message into this article?

Professor S: Just a cheap jab, Penrod. You'll learn their value one day, once you read Plato and realize he's full of shit... The point is, Penrod, that the Pirates movies weren't exactly paragons of family entertainment. But in any case...

Penrod: But gee, are you saying that Mickey Mouse is all about the money?

Professor S: If he wanted to, Penrod, Mickey Mouse would come over to your house, kill your family and burglarize your home - and film it, too, so he could edit it into Hannah Montana: The Motion Picture. And then have Hannah say something clever about the Patriot Act!

Penrod: You've got me scared!!! Hannah Montana giving political commentary?

Professor S: Sorry, Penrod. Now, what was your question?

Penrod: About the Pirates movie, Professor S.

Professor S: Ah, yes.

Penrod: Aren't you excited? You did write that lengthy article about the Pirates films a few months ago, didn't you?

Professor S: Yes. But No, I'm not excited.

Penrod: But, golly gee, Professor S! More Johnny Depp and more Geoffrey Rush and more CGI and no Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom and more special effects and more battles and sword fights and action and treasure and...

Professor S: Whoa there, Penrod! You're sounding like a fanboy!

Penrod: HEATH LEDGER FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 2009!

Professor S: Sometimes I worry about you, Penrod...

Penrod: So, why aren't you excited, Professor S?

Professor S: Well, Penrod, there are a myraid of reasons.

Penrod: What's myriad?

Professor S: A word you don't understand. Now be quiet. First, there's the fact that the last two movies kind of squelched any creativity by sucking the life out of the first movie and blowing it up into pseudo-epic proportions.

Penrod: But, Professor! What about that squid dude! He looked so AWESOME!

Professor S: No he didn't, Penrod. He looked stupid. And in any case, squid-face CGI don't make good movies in and of themselves.

Penrod: But, what about Johnny Depp! He's so funny, and Jack is cool! And all those teenaged girls love him!

Professor S: Well, Penrod, I liked Jack too, but I think Dead Man's Chest proved that even a great character can be sabotaged by a lame movie and a bad screenplay. The character himself can only provide so much amusement, and even with Barbossa around, he could easily be wasted or poorly used.

As for Johnny Depp fangirls, well, I think we know that they'll come see him no matter WHAT he does...



...But I don't think they make up THAT big of a financial base.

Penrod: But Cheez Whiz, Professor S! What about all the money they made?

Professor S: True, and that only helps make my point. But the third movie just came out 16 months ago. People still remember these movies, and many if not most of them don't have fond memories of squid-guys or million-faceted storylines or Jack clones or 50-foot sea goddesses.

Penrod: But they WERE successful, Professor S!

Professor S: Yeah, but how interested would they be in a 4th movie right after the third one came out? Especially given how many people were disappointed by these movies.

Penrod: But, Professor S, not all sequels are bad:



Professor S: No, Penrod, and I said I liked the third one. My point is though: There's only so many times you can go back to the same well and expect to find water. And the last movie only came out last year. Given some of the crap that turned up in the last two films, I can only shudder what Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio would come up with if they were really out of ideas...

Penrod: But Tom Hollander!

Professor S: I do like Tom Hollander, Penrod, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. He won't be in this one.

Penrod: Why not?

Professor S: He died at the end of the last movie, Penrod.

Penrod: He DID!?

Professor: (stares incredulously) Yep. So he won't be back. And neither will Orlando Bloom, or Keira Knightley, or Jack Davenport, or Jonathan Pryce, or Bill Nighy, or David Schofield, or Chow Yun-Fat, or any of the interesting characters.

Penrod: But Keira Knightley isn't dead!

Professor: No, but she said she doesn't want to do anymore Pirates movies.

Penrod: Well, I can understand that. I mean, being trapped on that island alone by herself for ten years... I don't see how she could even make any movies.

Professor: (shakes head)

Penrod: But wait a minute, Professor S! They brought Barbossa and Jack back from the dead!! Couldn't they do that again?

Professor: Yes, they did, Penrod, and I'm afraid of a sequel for that very reason. I'm afraid to ponder the depths to which Disney may sink in order to make a dollar or bail themselves out of a lame storyline.

Penrod: (after a pause) Wait... Who's Tom Hollander?

Professor:

Penrod: Gee whiz, Professor Saunders, you sure made a convincing argument! Now I know why a fourth Pirates film isn't a good idea.

Professor S: Well done, Peabrain!

Penrod: Penrod, sir!

Professor S: I didn't say it was your name.

Penrod: Hmph. Well, anyway, Professor S, thanks for giving me your advice!

Professor S: Good job, Penrod!

Penrod: Thank you!

Professor S: Where are you going after school?

Penrod: I'm going to get in line for the next Pirates movie! Of course...

Professor S: (stares incredulously)

Penrod: See you tomorrow, Professor S!

Professor S: Oh, Penrod. Could you come here a second?

Okay, Professor S! I'll just wait for Valkyrie instead!

Lean Quest! Madeleine

After several weeks of busy-ness and not a lot of free time (and most of that wasted), I finally resumed Lean Quest today with a viewing of Lean's 1950 film Madeleine, the second film he made with his third wife, Ann Todd.

Madeleine is inspired by the true story of Madeleine Smith (Ann Todd), a young woman in 19th Century Scotland who carries on a secret affair with Emile L'Anglier (Ivan Desny), a lower-class Frenchman, while she is being courted by Mr. Minnoch (Norman Woolland), the respectable yet bland friend of her father (Leslie Banks). Madeleine tries to navigate her way through this crisis, only to find Emile unwilling to take no for an answer, threatening to expose their affair if she won't marry him. Shortly thereafter, Emile falls ill and dies, and it's discovered that he was poisoned with arsenic. Madeleine goes on trial, and the case of the adulterous woman who killed a prospective lover becomes a national tabloid sensation.

Lean once again returns to the melodrama genre, a well he used in at least 75% of his films. This unfortunately is one of his weaker efforts, managing to bring little original to the table. The story is interesting in and of itself, and Lean manages to make it interesting for about an hour or so, even if Madeleine's love triangle never rises above the cliche and soap operatic. But after L'Anglier is killed, the movie comes to a grinding halt, slipping into a dry, formulaic courtroom drama after the commission of murder. There is inherent drama in most courtroom films and plays, but the movie fudges it by dropping the testimony in favor of lengthy monologues.

The cast is also rather weak; although gorgeous (and in spite of having played this part on stage prior to the film's production), Ann Todd is at least ten years too old for the part of Madeleine, and she's just not convincing as the naive, romantic young girl trapped in a difficult situation. Todd proved her talent in many other works, she's just off here. The rest of the cast, Ivan Desney and Leslie Banks excepted, is rather one-note. Lean's movies usually have at least one great performance to make you stand up and take notice; no one here really achieves that, and even Desney and Banks aren't on a level with Noel Coward in In Which We Serve, Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter, Alec Guinness and Kay Walsh in Oliver Twist, Claude Rains and Todd herself in The Passionate Friends, or Katharine Hepburn in Summertime, and certainly not Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai or Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Bland acting is almost unheard of in a David Lean movie, but there's always an exception to any given rule.

The ending also seems a bit off. It's interesting to note that Ann got off on a charge of "Not proven" - a curious, uniquely Scottish ruling that proves not her innocence, but that the prosecution gave a poor case - but the film spoils it by refusing to answer. Although the movie gives hints and misdirection early on - particularly during the "poisoning" scene with the cocoa - after the act actually occurs. The movie ends with a "What do YOU think?"-type narration, putting one in mind of those old Centron educational shorts that Mystery Science Theater 3000 liked to screen in its early days. To be fair, it might not be so offensive if there weren't a narrator ham-fistedly pounding the point home.

However, like all Lean films, the movie excells on a technical level, and here, Lean is perhaps even above his work on Brief Encounter, Oliver Twist and The Passionate Friends. Guy Green's cinematography is rich and livid, his vivid use of darkness, light and shadow throughout the first half more appropriate for a film noir than a melodrama, creating an appropriately foreboding atmosphere. The film features much memorable imagery, particularly the surprisingly violent and suggestive preludes to Madeleine and Emile's trysts, and the scene where Madeleine is taken to jail in a wagon strongly presages an equivalent scene thirty years later in A Passage to India. Lean and Green also make very effective use of deep focus, with several scenes that heavily recall Citizen Kane. And the editing is quite striking throughout, particularly when a raucous town dance is intercut with a meeting of the illicit lovers.

Madeleine is worth a look, and I note that amongst Lean fans, it has a fairly large following, so, as usual my opinion must be taken with a grain of salt. It has its virtues, but has enough flaws and weaknesses to push it into the lower-tier of Lean films. That being said, mediocre Lean is still better than most directors at their best.

Now, only two Leans left - The Sound Barrier and Hobson's Choice. Let's hope we'll have time to get to them within the next week or so.

Rating: 7/10 - Recommended

The Iconoclast Squawks!

Or, There Will Be Bitching.

Well, it's Sunday, I'm at work, and thus have nothing to do. So, for your consideration, time for a well-balanced rant. Not necessarily a topical or timely one, but one that's been spinning around my head for months.

We've long known that the Academy Awards are a joke. It's quite obvious that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an utterly human organization, prone to the same back-biting, glad-handing and shallow politics of pretty much any organization. Still, it's quite disconcerting that a body purporting to be presenting has made so many selections that even the most generous film scholar would shake their heads at. How on Earth did the bloated The Greatest Show on Earth get a Best Picture nomination, let alone win? Why has Peter O'Toole been nominated for Best Actor eight times and not one once? Where's Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar? Cary Grant's? Robert Mitchum's? Need I go on? No, it's all politics, and quite frankly, the Academy is such a joke that it's unlikely that it had any credibility to lose in the first place.

As if we needed any further proof of that, let me present perhaps the best case for such an argument: Last year's Best Picture nominees. Five films, ranging from mediocre to slightly above-average, were selected for the crown of the best cinema had to offer for the year 2007. The most baffling thing, however, is not that any of the individual selections got nominated, but rather, that not a single one of them could be classified as a truly great film. It's not like there weren't great films to choose from; it's just that great movies like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, or The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which makes a very strong case for the best film of the decade, get overlooked for a pile of mediocre crap.

I have full length-reviews of There Will Be Blood, Atonement, and Juno posted on IMDB, which are more well-organized, thoughtful, and arguably more serious and less sarcastic than these. I haven't gotten around to writing anything about No Country For Old Men or Michael Clayton. If you don't wish to click and read all of the above, then please indulge me and these mini reviews - seven months too late, but then I didn't have a blog seven months ago.

Michael Clayton

Commentary: Perhaps it's not fair to judge a film I don't remember a great deal about, but then perhaps it wasn't fair for the Academy to nominate such a mediocre, middle-of-the-road film for Best Picture. Michael Clayton shares its primary characteristics with pretty much every other thriller that's been made by Hollywood in the last twenty years or so. One could assemble a check list of cliches and they'll have about 99% of the movie covered.

Talented and handsome but amoral protagonist with serious personal problems? Check.
Lawyers? Check.
Evil corporation? Check.
Unintended negative consequences of said corporation's products/experiments? Oh yeah.
Cover up by the Evil Corporation, with an ever-growing body count? Big check.
Crazy informant who turns out to be right about everything even though no one will believe him? Check MATE.
Murder of said informant by thugs who are able to make it look like a suicide? Check-a-rino.
Car bombs? You bet your ass.
Big denouement where the hero manages to rip the CEO a new ass with a smart-ass bluff revealed to be empty (but it works)? What, are you kidding me?
Annoying, repetitive pseudo-techno score? Guess.

So, really, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't all of that been done about 8,456,404 times before in films just like this one? (The answer is yes.)

The movie certainly has its share of positive attributes. Tony Gilroy's direction is solid if unremarkable, complemented by the appropriately moody and dark cinematography by Robert Elswit. Clooney is okay as the lead, although Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton (both of whom got well-deserved Oscar nods) steal the show. So, it's a slick and well-made thriller, but what is there about the film to distinguish it from the fifty thousand films of the same basic genre? Very, very little.

Why it got nominated (cynical explanations, of course): I honestly haven't the foggiest idea aside from its pretensions as an intelligent thriller. Maybe the Academy felt the need to award George Clooney yet again for being the biggest prick and egomaniac and Hollywood.

Rating: A very generous 7 crooked corporations out of 10

Juno

Commentary: Further proof of the vapidity and idiocy that plague the Academy are the four nominations, including, inexplicably BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (alright, who's buying whose votes?), bestowed upon Juno, this year's version of Little Miss Sunshine - an overly clever, self-aware, and smug entry in the hipster pseudo-indie film subgenre. (Did the Academy really think that The Assassination of Jesse James etc. was so bad that it got overlooked in both of these categories in favor of THIS!?!) Juno isn't a complete failure, and is inclusion as an Oscar nominee isn't quite as baffling as, say, Michael Clayton, but that doesn't make it any better, all things considered.

Let's start with the obvious: Juno Macguff is such a hideously obnoxious, self-absorbed character, spouting inane one-liners, lengthy monologues about how she's so super and everyone else is so stupid and lame, pointless bits of quirk like a FUCKING HAMBURGER PHONE, and pointless, mis-attributed pop culture references ("I'm Morgan Freeman! Got any bones you need collecting?"), that it's impossible for the viewer to feel any sympathy with her - rather, they likely want to smash her head in. The script is largely at fault, but I don't think Ellen Paige does much to redeem her character's more obnoxious side. Michael Cera is a gape-mouthed fool for most of the film, although to be fair he fails to fall to the Stygian depths of annoyance provided by his co-star. And the soundtrack... God, the soundtrack! Ten minutes of listening to the droning moody faux-indie rock bleating and strumming is enough to induce any human being to insanity and suicide - until you realize that there's still 90 minutes to go! To be fair, the movie lets the viewer in on the kind of film it is right off the bat - an animated Juno walking down the street drinking a gallon of Sunny D - and no, unfortunately that isn't a joke.

As for Diablo Cody's witty, brilliant Academy Award-winning screenplay? Let's take a look at the dialogue that the Academy deems worthy of an Oscar, the highest award that can be bestowed for screen-writing achievement:

"That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, home skillet."

The scariest thing about that horrific excuse for dialogue (besides the crater where my face once was after actually typing said dialogue out) is that it isn't even the worst line of the movie.

The movie does have a few redeeming values, no doubt. It's adequately directed and shot, although in this kind of film technical aspects tend not to rise above the competent. The supporting cast takes the ball from Paige and Cera's annoying and vapid protagonists and runs away with it; J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman give performances of surprising depth, which are deserving of a much better movie. Juno's relationship with Bateman is an interesting subplot, as is his and Garner's clearly troubled marriage. The movie's more serious and contemplative last half hour is well-done, honest, and even touching, as Juno must confront the fact that happy relationships don't just come along, but you have to do your best to make them work. It's too bad the rest of the movie is an obnoxious gab-fest, an attempt by Cody, Paige and director Jason Reitman to pose their film as the coolest damned thing to ever turn up in Hollywood. You are, like, so wrong bitches. Honest to blog, this film sucks. (Great. Now I'm going to have to amputate my hands for typing that..)

Why it got nominated: Because Hollywood needs to seem hip and with it and nominate a pretentious Indie flick every year, I guess.

Rating: 6 pointless pop culture references of 10

Atonement

Commentary: Atonement is one of those films that got me all hot and bothered before it came out. The trailer was gorgeous, and the promise of anything remotely David Lean-esque - an epic romance caught in the tides of history - one of my favorite subjects in literature and film - made me squeal with delight. Even my repulsion for the bitchy, minimally talented, teeth-grinding Keira Knightly wasn't enough to keep me away. Hell, I've read the book since seeing the movie, and I honestly thought it was one of the best novels I've ever read. So imagine my huge disappointment when this film, when it turns out to not really be a romance at all. Well, that's not actually THE big problem with it, but Gone With the Wind it ain't. (Not that Gone With the Wind is all that great, but anyway...)

Despite the beautiful cinematography and Joe Wright's excellent direction, the movie fails to capture the magic of a Doctor Zhivago or The English Patient, and remains curiously empty throughout. The movie's biggest problem is pacing; it's only just over two hours long, but feels at least three. For a film purporting to be an "epic", that is quite a curious thing. We (as in, me) are also annoyed by the film's conceit of showing us an event from Briony's perspective, then literally rewinding it to show how it really happened. Gag. The biggest flaw that the movie suffers from, however, is its inability to transcends the confines of its genre. Every single shot and scene, no matter how well-composed, seems to be arranged solely for the purpose of proving the movie to be a BIG EPIC FILM.

Atonement comes pretty close to being the best of these five, however, by virtue of its many, many virtues. The story is fascinating throughout, even when the pace flags, its conceit of an author and the narcissism and God complex which inevitably results from their creation of fictional worlds - only, in this case, it has actual ramifications in reality. This is an utterly fascinating concept, one which Ian McEwan did brilliantly in the novel, and which at least manages to come through - if imperfectly - in the film. While Keira Knightley is as wooden and shark-like as usual, James McAvoy gives a great performance as Robbie, who finds himself inexplicably trapped in a personal hell beyond his control. All three Brionys - Saorise Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave - give excellent performances, showing Briony's character to be narcissistic yet troubled and repentant. Needless to say, the cinematography by Seamus McGarvey is gorgeous, including (but not limited to) the oft-lauded Dunkirk tracking shot, and Dario Marianelli quite justly won an Oscar for his inventive, evocative score. The film also offers a heartbreaking twist ending that goes a long way in redeeming what came before it.

In the end, Atonement is a good movie with flaws, and not a flawed movie with some good bits, as most of the other films on this list are. But, having read the source novel, I think it could have been much, much more.

Why it got nominated: Oh come on, isn't this obvious? It was advertised and marketed as being a great epic romance a la Gone With the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, The English Patient, and Titanic, all of which but the latter were name dropped in this post. Which shows that this movie should have fired its publicity department, and that Titanic really has fallen out of public favor since it first came out.

Rating: 7/10

There Will Be Blood

Commentary: The movie that launched fifty-thousand jokes about milk shakes, and how one is going to drink them up, perhaps even with a straw that reaches waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay across the room. Quite frankly, I think it deserves such a fate, as it contains what must be one of the most painfully contrived and insulting climaxes in the history of cinema.

Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is, for all the hype and acclaim built up around it by critics yearning for a new American Masterpiece, a remarkably empty film for a myriad of reasons. The biggest being that the character of Daniel Plainview is not very interesting. In the end, he is an empty, shallow caricature, whose only character traits are greed and misanthropy. Perhaps this would work were he a supporting character, or even the centerpiece of an ensemble drama, but as the solitary lead, with no characters of remotely comparable screen time or importance around him (except the hideously annoying Paul Dano as the obnoxious preacher Eli Sunday), Plainview is just an obnoxious bore. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a remarkable performance (even if his John Huston impersonation is rather silly), and is fascinating to watch for most of the length, which is all the more remarkable given how weak his character is.

The film starts out promisingly with ten minutes of brilliance, a wordless scene as a younger Plainview, working in a silver mine, comes across his first oil strike. Strikingly shot, without any dialogue and only ambient soundtrack noise, it is a brilliant piece of bravura film making. The movie remains strong in terms of direction, cinematography, and Johnny Greenwood's striking musical score. The movie does a great job of building itself up, only to slowly lose its way in the last half as it unspools in a series of increasingly pointless scenes. Its attacks on religion and big business are pretty typical socialist primer material (well, it WAS inspired by an Upton Sinclair novel), with nothing new, insightful, or interesting to say. And the climactic showdown between Eli and Daniel is just painful - one of the worst written, most ill-conceived, insulting and ludicrous anti-climaxes that completely lets down everything that came before.

So, yeah, the milkshake. Perhaps the dumbest line ever written by a Hollywood screenwriter, in one of the most ludicrous scenes in cinema history. Worthy of mockery? You betcha. When a movie is as pretentious and self-important as this one, you can't really feel sorry for the film makers.

Why It Got Nominated: Besides the pretentious "art film" construction of the movie, the selection overall seemed to be retributive glamor for wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson's history of being overlooked by the Academy, a self-correcting action that they habitually engage in (Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, for just one of the more obvious examples). And Day-Lewis is admittedly very, very impressive.

Rating: 6 milkshakes out of 10

No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men, the next-to-latest offering (now that Burn After Reading is in theaters) from Joel and Ethan Coen, is an intriguing mess. More than anything else, its inclusion as an Oscar nomination seems, like Anderson's, to be a sort of "payback" for the Coens' failure to win an Oscar for their previous works.

The movie's plot is muddied and confusing. The narrative is pretty straight-forward on paper, but one can hardly be blamed for having a hard time for following the episodic adventures of its cadre of anti-heroes. The basic plot - ne'er-do-well drifter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin)'s recovery of a cache of drug money, and hulking hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem)'s attempts to retrieve it - is done in such a scanty, tertiary way that it's difficult to follow, and its only exacerbated by throwing in the seemingly unrelated investigation of Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), whose role in the story is pretty much to bitch about how old he is and how times have changed for the worse, and the bizarre, disconnected subplot involving Chigurh's employers hiring another hitman (Woody Harrelson) only muddies the water to the point that it's impossible to see. I don't really have a problem with the ending, except from a cathartic point of view; I just don't see why we end it with the Sheriff. If the movie was really about him, they should have made it apparent in some way.

And yet, No Country manages to be an intriguing film, for all its flaws. The Coens' direction is harsh and effective, with an atmosphere and feel culled from Sergio Leone Westerns and Fred Zinnemann's Day of the Jackal (with its intense, meticulous assassins and lack of music). Josh Brolin is a pretty good protagonist; he's been an extremely undervalued actor for years, and I'm glad to see him finally coming into his own as a star (see also his roles in American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah, and Oliver Stone's upcoming W). Javier Bardem won an Oscar, and most of the acclaim, and I can't disagree; he's a truly intimidating, frightening presence. Tommy Lee Jones' character seems largely out of place, and quite frankly I don't buy the reading that the movie is all about him. That's just cack.

So, there's a good amount of quality on display here. No Country definitely deserved the Best Picture against its competition. And there's enough there to suggest that I might enjoy it more with a rewatch. But really, the best film in all of 2007? Are you quite serious?

Why It Was Nominated: See above. It's also the best of this lot, which admittedly isn't saying a great deal.

Rating: 7 air-blasted holes in the forehead out of 10

I guess the overall conclusion of this post is this: either the Academy is made up of a bunch of fools and tools, or 2007 was a really bad year for films. I think I'd put my money on the former, personally, but then, I've been wrong before. Either way, there are many films far better than those nominated who failed to get a Best Picture nod, and surely 2007 is one of the most egregious years of poor selection by an institution that long ago forfeited its dignity and pretensions of seriousness.

Okay, rant over.

Rosemary's Baby, Or: What the Fuck?

Well. Two days ago we viewed Roman Polanksi's Rosemary's Baby (1968) in film class. Over the last two days I've tried to think of something to say about it, and at this moment I'm still not 100% sure what I think. I think it's the ending that threw me off, more than anything else.

The ending, where Rosemary (Mia Farrow) confronts her demonic progeny in the midst of the Satanic coven run by her next door neighbors, is, for me, one of the most inexplicable scenes in cinematic history. It's hard at first, second, and even third glance to truly grasp the intention of this scene. One assumes that it is intentionally humorous because of the simultaneously non-chalant and over-the-top nature of the scene. You don't have characters screaming "GOD IS DEAD! HAIL SATAN!" while dressed in house clothes and sipping tea, or acting as if the distraut, knife-wielding Rosemary's biggest problem is being out of bed, or Asians excitedly taking snapshots of the Anti-Christ, and expect to be taken seriously, do you? It seems that the intent of the scene is a sort of satire of religion (which we'll deal with presently); but after all of the suspenseful and horrific build-up to this moment, it turns out to be a poorly done and painfully stupifying anti-climax, on the level of The Game and There Will Be Blood for sheer audience-insulting stupidity.

A pity, as the film was a reasonably effective thriller up to that point. It involves a young couple, Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavettes), a struggling actor, and his pretty and perky young wife Rosemary (Farrow). They move into a New York City apartment with a long and tragic history of murders, accidents, and suicides - and witchcraft. They befriend their neighbors, the elderly Castavets (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), but after a terrifying night of drug-induced sex with her husband, Rosemary becomes pregnant and finds her life unravelling. Attended to obsessively by the Castavets, her husband, and Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Ballamy), Rosemary's health deteriorates, and she immediately begins to suspect that something is wrong, and that her baby is in danger. Turns out, of course, that her neighbors are witches who are planning to use her baby as the anti-Christ. I don't know about you, but I hate it when that happens.

On a technical level, Polanski achieves a lot of praise. The film is wonderfully banal, establishing its horror within a purely realistic and dull situation. When one calls the annoying, gabby old bag next door a witch, they generally aren't speaking literally - but you never know. The movie isn't really scary, but then it doesn't much try to be scary in any classical sense, more disconcerting and nightmarish than anything else. If there were a payoff at the end, this would be even more worthy of praise; Polanski goes the wise route by leaving the whole story open to interpretation until, well, the ending. The film's high point is undoubtedly the sex scene, the skillful editing of Rosemary's various drug-induced dreams and the horrifying reality of what's happening to her is a brilliant, surreal bit of editing; it's perhaps the closest one could come to conveying a fever dream on screen. The acting is pretty good; Mia Farrow manages to make Rosemary's increasingly adrift state and growing suspicions highly believable, John Cassavettes is convincing as perhaps the ultimate Horse's Ass (he sells out God, Rosemary, and the entire human race for a part in a play - thanks, jackass), Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer are quite funny as the unlikely witches, and Maurice Evans has an effective but all-too-brief part as the film's resident Van Helsing/Dr. Loomis/Detective Arbogast/etc..

Of course, the movie has some interesting subtext which an aspiring film student such as myself feels obliged to delve into. The movie serves most obviously as a metaphor for the many traumas which women go through during pregnancy. Rosemary is relegated by her pregnancy to a passive role, unable really to protect herself, and she is effectively controlled by her husband and her neighbors; she is at the mercy of an unhelpful doctor and friends and family a bit too interested in her pregnancy. Of course, there are her own fears about the baby, as she continues experiencing pain, discomfort, and horrifying dreams, which prove quite reasonable when the baby turns out to be not crippled or retarded, but the Messenger of Evil (and a distant cousin of Damien, no doubt).

That's pretty obvious subtext, but our film class felt it much more fruitful (pun not intended) to explore the undeniable religious subtext of the film. Besides the Satanist's continual mockery of religion (blasted as being "all spectacle"), the movie plays as an inverted view on religion and its role in society, family, and pregnancy. I succinctly offer this reading: The movie is REALLY about a woman being forced to have a baby she doesn't want by her family and the Church. Abortion and contraception are not an option, regardless of how desirable they may be. The movie hints at this reading throughout, from the aforementioned commentary by supporting characters, to the flashbacks to Rosemary's Catholic school upbringing, to the otherwise inexplicable scene where Rosemary, in her fever dream state, kissing the Pope's ring (which is the same as her Satanic "good luck charm"). The ending is an obvious mirror image of the Nativity, down to the inverted crucifix over the baby's crib. A magazine posing the question "Is God dead?" shows the dilemna at stake here. (One must ask, however: If God is dead, how can Satan exist?) Clearly, religion has not only become hypocritical and reduced to spectacle, it has also turned to worshipping Satan.

So, that's all well and good - "Interesting, very interesting, perhaps even true" - and for the most part adds up to a quality film. But what the fuck is up with that climax? Please answer me that question. Who the Hell thought it would be a good idea to completely ruin the suspense and horror with such a hamfisted bit of satire (assuming of course it isn't NOT trying to be funny but is just so over-the-top it's lame)? Damn you, Polanski.

In conclusion, Rosemary's Baby is a decent entry in the demonic cult/pregnant woman subgenre of horror film, with many technical merits, interesting subtext, and pretty good acting. But what the fuck is up with that climax? I'd give it a 7 or perhaps even an 8 on its own merits, but what the fuck is up with that climax? It buggers description and classification, and as a result I refuse to rate the movie out of principle.

Commodities: A Brief Lesson

Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Padre Pio recited this novena every day for all those who requested his prayers.

My good friend and brother in the US, Joseph and I are going to pray this for a Catholic friend of his who is very, very ill and for one or two others who I know.

There are many acts of kindness and generosity we can do for others, but the kindest and most generous thing you can do for someone is to pray for them, because Our Lord has the power to bless, heal and bring peace. Our Lord, in His Heart, has treasures and gifts of which we can only dream.

Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

I. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of...... (here name your request)
Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory Be to the Father....Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.


II. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you." Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for the grace of.......(here name your request) Our Father...Hail Mary....Glory Be To the Father....Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

III. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away." Encouraged by your infallible words I now ask for the grace of.....(here name your request) Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory Be to the Father...Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours.
Say the Hail, Holy Queen and add: St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, pray for us.
-- St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Chess is Cool

Err...We knew that already. My friend and sister, Vanessa taught me to play chess a couple of years ago. I am eternally grateful to her. It is a great game! And clearly this rather glamorous young Russian lady is raising the profile.

Many male chess players on seeing this picture will be thinking, "Crikey, she can bash my bishop anyday!" Chess is dead sexy. All that tension! Will he? Won't he? Will she, won't she? Oh bollock's, I've lost my knight.

From The Telegraph:

Alexandra Kosteniuk, 23, has worked as a catwalk and swimsuit model to raise the profile of the game.

She also sells sultry semi-clad photographs of herself, and has made a 36-minute video which shows her "doing exercises on Miami beach".

The modelling exploits have raised eyebrows among critics, who believe it distracts from the intellectual importance of chess.

But Miss Kosteniuk has more than proved her talent for the game after being crowned "Queen of Chess" at the women's championships held in Russia.

She said: "Modelling is not a job. It is just a hobby, like reading books.

At 14 years old, Miss Kosteniuk became a chess grandmaster, the youngest woman in the world to attain the title.

She quickly made a name for herself on the international stage by reaching the final of the world championship in 2001, aged 17, and becoming the European champion in 2004.

And at the age of 20 she achieved the International Grandmaster title, becoming the tenth women to have received the highest title awarded by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

Last Wednesday, Miss Kosteniuk won the Women's World Chess Championship 2008, after beating the Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan in the final.

But her fans say her greatest achievement has been to give the game of chess a sexy image, which has attracted a new young following.

She is the host of a popular podcast "Chess is Cool" which informs listeners about current chess events, and has adopted the motto "beauty and intelligence can go together" and proved her worth as a model.

Miss Kosteniuk's career began after her father Konstantin left his army job when she was young, to devote his time to training her.

She said: "I can remember when my father introduced me to exercises.

"He wrote on little cards the squares of the chessboard, like E4, A1 - or even false ones like E9 to test me. Then he would show me cards, one quickly after the other, and I'd have to say whether the square was white or black on the board."

Mr Kosteniuk even taught his daughter to win a chess game blindfolded in three moves when she was just five, in a bid to "exercise her brain".

Miss Kosteniuk is married to Swiss-born Diego Garces, who is 25 years her elder. In April last year she gave birth to her daughter Francesca Maria. The baby was two-and-a-half months premature and stayed in hospital for eight weeks, but has since made a full recovery.

Blair to Lecture Students at Yale on Faith and Education

Crikey! The former Prime Minister who during his tenancy of Number 10 was a leading pro-abortionist, war criminal and champion of civil partnerships for gays, became Catholic last year. Suddenly he is cleaning up on the lecturing circuit. Wonder how much he is getting for this latest speech to Yale students in the US. He is expected to get a mixed reaction. I know we are bound to forgive our brothers and sisters when they make mistakes. What annoys me about him is that, publicly, he doesn't seem to have changed his mind about anything he did while he was in office. Secondly, he's making a bomb (excuse the pun) out of what, aside from the massive achievement of Northern Ireland, was a disasterous period in UK political history, for the Pro-Life movement, global peace and stability and important rights and liberties which he undermined. Thirdly, he's lecturing young people on faith, while when he was PM, he seemed to indicate that the war in Iraq was a decision which was based on his faith. Not sure how well that would go down with the Chaldean Christians in Iraq who have faced persecution and an assault on their freedom to worship ever since the calamitous invasion.

Of course he is expected to give all the money to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. I'm assuming that when Cardinal Cormac received him into the Church, that the aforementioned issues were discussed at length. For his sake I hope they were. By rights the man should be facing temporal justice for war crimes in the Hague. Given that he is not and is doing very nicely thank you very much, perhaps he could give St Mary Magdalen's Building Fund a little cash. Charity covers a multitude of sins. Perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his Faith Foundation is a sign of his public penitence.

Stigmatisation

A friend of mine has helped at least two teenagers who were kicked out of their family homes when they were honest about their sexual orientation. One of them is Catholic. How could a Catholic father do that?

Funny Film

My Parish Priest

This is my Parish Priest. We are very fond of him because he is generous and merciful. He's just come back from Germany. He too has written something on his blog at St Mary Magdalen's about the potential tragedies of economic depression. Good to know me and a holy priest are thinking along the same lines.

St Mary Magdalen's Church, Brighton

Genius!

Apparently, the character of Dr Strangelove was based on Henry Kissenger. LMAO!

New Conspiracy Theory on Large Hadron Collider

A new conspiracy theory has emerged that the Large Hadron Collider, officially designed and built to discover what happened a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, is, in fact, a gigantic washing machine and tumble dryer for Europe's clothing, should the worst case scenario occur and everyone's washing machines break in a freak lightning storm.

An offical speaking on behalf of the LHC project refuted the claim, saying, "There is no basis to the allegations that the LHC is a giant washer/dryer. I mean, how could we create a mini-black hole which could swallow the Universe and turn everyone into goo in an overblown and ridiculous attempt to solve the most important questions which have fascinated mankind since the beginning of time, if it were being used for...I mean, cut! Err, can we run the interview again? I, I, gosh is that the time? I've got to dash, I've got to go to a meeting..."

Gianna Jessen: Abortion Survivor

If Obama had got his way, ladies such as Gianna Jessen in the future would not have survived to tell their story.

Land of the Free?

Yes, the Church Respects Science

With thanks to Independent Catholic News

Vatican to Host Congress on Evolution

An international conference entitled: "Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories. A Critical Appraisal 150 years after 'The Origin of Species'". is conference idue to be held in Rome from 3 to 7 March 2009.

The congress has been jointly organised by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, U.S.A., under the patronage of the Pontifical Council for Culture and as part of the STOQ Project (Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest).

The news was announced yesterday by Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture; Fr Marc Leclerc SJ, professor of the philosophy of nature at the Pontifical Gregorian University; Gennaro Auletta, scientific director of the STOQ Project and professor of the philosophy of science at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and Alessandro Minelli, professor of zoology at the University of Padua, Italy.

"Debates on the theory of evolution are becoming ever more heated, both among Christians and in specifically evolutionist circles", Fr Leclerc explained. "In particular, with the approach of the ... 150th anniversary of the publication of 'The Origin of Species', Charles Darwin's work is still too often discussed more in ideological terms than in the scientific ones which were his true intention".

"In such circumstances - as Christian scientists, philosophers and theologians directly involved in the debate alongside colleagues from other confessions or of no confession at all - we felt it incumbent upon us to bring some clarification. The aim is to generate wide-ranging rational discussion in order to favour fruitful dialogue among scholars from various fields and areas of expertise. The Church has profound interest in such dialogue, while fully respecting the competencies of each and all. This is, however, an academic congress, organised by two Catholic universities, the Gregorian University in Rome and Notre Dame in the United States, and as such is not an ecclesial event. Yet the patronage of the Pontifical Council for Culture serves to underline the Church's interest in such questions".

Brown to Clean Up the City

Gordon Brown has pledged to "clean-up" the financial system following the rescue of Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS by Lloyds TSB.

Well, I suppose that's one job he could do once voters have whipped his sorry, power-crazed, anti-Life arse out of Downing Street.

"Here's the mop, here's the bucket. Oh, yes, you're much better at this job. You're a natural!"

Why is the Church Against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill?

http://www.writetothem.com/

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will see its final debate in October. Now is the time for all those concerned with the sanctity of human life, religious or not, to write to their MPs while the Pro-Life All Parliamentary Party Group lobbies as much as it can to have this bill scrapped. No potential cure, for which there is no evidence, is worth the harvesting, mutilation of and destruction of countless human embryos. You can write to your MP at the above link.

If you feel passionately against this Bill you can sign an e-petition to Downing Street here:

You can also sign and e-petition to Her Royal Highness, the Queen, to ask her to stop Royal Assent to the Bill, should it get through Parliament:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/eccematertua/index.html

The Majestic Neil Young

Johnny Cash R.I.P

Obamessiah? My Arse!

O Mother, I Can Feel The Soil Falling Over My Head

The numbers have gone green and the arrows are pointing up!

MARKET DATA - 11:42 UK

FTSE 100
4992.30up
79.90 1.63%
Dax
5932.58up
71.60 1.22%
Cac 40
4046.59up
46.48 1.16%

Gosh, what a rollercoaster ride market trading is! I'm off to Seville to buy a nice pair of slacks!

Morrissey on Objective Moral Disorders

Objective Moral Disorders

I've recently thought that Objective Moral Disorders would potentially be a good name for a punk band. I mean, Laurence England and the Objective Moral Disorders has potential as a band name. God knows, I've got a few!

However, I was thinking, that with regard to the gay community, one phrase the Church uses that really riles them is 'objective moral disorder' with regard to homosexuality. I don't mind the phrase myself because really all that means is that I am a sinner dependent on God's mercy. But, I think, that if you were an alien observing Earth (above is a picture of what an alien looks like), you would begin to wonder what on earth we are doing here.

Let's assume that the alien species in question did all they could to maintain life on their planet and ensure that the survival of the species was their raison d'etre. Then they observe us.

So calling back to Planet Zorg, alien says:

"This is Alfred calling Planet Zorg, over."
"Hearing you Alfred, what news?"
"Well this is a strange breed. The men are doing it with the men. What is the point of that? That will not create new life. This race are killing their young in the womb. Why are they killing their own? Why don't they want children? Do they want to destroy their own species? Even the ones who are married. They have a special pill to stop babies being born. Also, the men use rubber sheaths designed to stop babies being born, over."
"They must be on a suicide mission. Cheers for that, come back home, over."
"Err, okay, over."

The Church does understand the complexities of human nature and the myriad, objective moral disorders therein. However, objectively speaking, new life does not develop from homosexual partnerships, therefore, objectively speaking, homosexual partnerships are morally disordered.

A Nice Slice of Entertainment: A Song at Twilight

Nothing beats a tough week of school and studying better than a nice little slice of entertainment! You normals might go hang out with friends (whatever that is), watching an inane (or just possibly very, very witty) sitcom, or drink slash smoke hookah or pot (in which case there's no hope for you). No, I'm a film geek dammit, and as such I'm liable to find my own ways of entertaining myself.

During my YouTube searches a came across a BBC TV adaptation of the Noel Coward play A Song at Twilight. Produced in 1983, it stars Deborah Kerr, Paul Scofield, Bruce Lidington and June Tobin. It tells the story of a night in the life of prolific author Sir Hugo Laytmer (Scofield), who is given an unexpected shock when his ex-lover, actress Carlotta Gray (Deborah Kerr), arrives at his mansion with unwelcome news. She wants possession of his private letters, detailing their affair, for her memoirs. Hugo rather rudely declines the offer, after which Carlotta drops the bombshell: she has letters showing his homosexual affair with his deceased secretary, and more importantly Hugo's cruel, dismissive treatment of him. The situation goes from bad to worse for Hugo when his wife Hilde (June Tobin) arrives, revealing that she knows Hugo's secret and feels their marriage is loveless. The question onhand, however, isn't Hugo's sexuality, but rather his hollowness as a person: he is arrogant, dismissive, mean, and loveless, incapable of true affection towards anyone or anything - or so his lovers think.

What can be said, besides that this is an excellent, fabulous piece? (I could do an in-depth thematic analysis of course, but it's 12:30 AM on a Thursday. Gimme a break.) As stated, it's a filmed play, but that's certainly not a bad thing in this case. In fact, this may be the best literally "filmed play" I've seen to date. The dialogue is witty, sharp, and concise - as one would expect from Noel Coward, one of the great playwrights of the 20th Century. The trio of stars is fabulous, and it's quite simply a lot of fun to watch Kerr and Scofield go at it with such relish. Scofield is, as always, a wonder to watch; if nothing else, you've got to love his voice and his use of his eyes. He could read the London Municipal Phone Book on camera from cover to cover, and I'm sure he'd find a way to make it interesting. Kerr, for her part, takes Coward's urbane dialogue and snaps it up, chewing it with relish. Not to imply her performance is hammy, rather that she's having fun with the material and happily lets it show. Tobin contributes some nice pathos around the edges as Hugo's long-suffering wife. (Liddington's role as Hugo's servant isn't much, but it's not the actor's fault.) I've seen many TV plays drown out great actors and creditable performances due to poor production design and too much ambition for the alloted budget (Alec Guinness and Genevieve Bujold's Caesar and Cleopatra, which can also be tracked down on YouTube, is a prime example), but that simply doesn't happen for this show, since it doesn't try to be anything more than a drawing-room "dramedy". It's a real treat, and at under 80 minutes it doesn't have the time to overstay its welcome or become dry and stale.

Here is part one on YouTube. If it sounds up your alley, follow the links until the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV1sbfKfHeY

Rating: 10/10 - Must See

Off for the Weekend to San Lorenzo in Seville

I was hoping there might be some relics of my patron, St Lawrence, Martyr of the Church, in Seville, but no. I am going there for the weekend with a beautiful friend who I love dearly.

Sex Education For 6 Year Olds

I'm not easily shocked or outraged. However, I am not sure the Government's efforts to halt teenage pregnancies will be greatly improved by introducing sex education for 6 year olds. As I said in the article below, let children be children! For the full article see the link.

Song for AIG Insurance Bank

News Just In!

MARKET DATA - 00:19 UK

FTSE 100
4912.40down
-113.20 -2.25%

Dow Jones
10609.66down
-449.36 -4.06%

Nasdaq
2098.85down
-109.05 -4.94%

Can anyone explain to me why news websites, TV news and radio news all give us these figures? I mean, do the newscasters think that on hearing it we are all scrambling around checking our shares kept neatly in filing cabinets? I would like to know the percentage of the population who take notice of any of these figures!

If the economy is good, why can't they just say, "Well, the economy is doing alright, so why not treat yourself to a nice dress or a good pair of slacks tomorrow," and give us a little wink. If the economy is bad, they could say, "Markets are a bit screwy at the moment, its what we call in the trading industry a funny turn." And then, if billions of dollars or pounds are being wiped off day by day and huge investment banks go under, depriving thousands of their livelihoods they could just say, "The economic outlook is shafted. We're all shafted. Repeat, shafted." Really would make economic outlook reporting much easier and more easy on the eyes and ears!

On BBC the numbers are red and have little arrows pointing down. All of the figures have this. This must be bad! Sometimes I think these red figures with down pointy arrows are just put on the BBC website to make us crap our pants for the sake of it. I feel sorry for the people who are going to take a hard fall from all this. As for me, I'm not in a position to lose much as I don't have much. I guess that's one of the perks of being a 30 year old waster.

Money Can't Buy You Love. But It Can Buy You a Giant Shark in Formaldehyde

"What a snip at just £9.6 million pounds. I like it! I mean this is the kind of thing that could really liven up the front room. No, it doesn't go with the curtains. No, the bathroom. Ouch, no, that would really awaken those childhood 'Jaws' fears of the Great White coming out of the plug hole. Okay, the bedroom, yes, perfect! Oh no, hang on, do I really want to wake up to that every day? God that thing could give me nightmares no end! Okay the dining room. Oh, but it might put me off my food. Tell, you what, lets put it in the garage for a while and just be content and smug that its famous and I own it and its mine! All mine! Mua-hah-hah!"

Modern art doesn't make me angry. I mean, give the guy credit, he thought of it first. I suppose the really annoying thing about Damien Hirst's fish/mammals in formaldehyde in tanks lark is that very little of the creation is actually his. In truth, if you're going to put one of God's most fearsome and ferocious creations into a tank of liquid which sustains it mid-tank, you really can't claim that you made it at all. God made the shark, so He should get a cut of the £9.6 million Damien made from God's glorious and intimidating design. If he would like to give the Church a cut, St Mary Magdalen's Building Fund needs plenty of cash to restore the roof.

Songs to Sing in Economic Meltdown I

Songs to Sing in Economic Meltdown II

Songs to Sing in Economic Meltdown III

St Francis before the Pope II

St Francis before the Pope I

Apologetics

"Tell me Loz, do you think that if the carpenter who delivered the Sermon on the Mount returned to Earth, would He recognise His church? I think that St Francis of Assisi summed it up beatifically when he declared that 'for evil to work requires not active assistance by Man, but mere acquiescence'."

"I have a friend who i went to law school with, who is currently representing a client's claim against the Church. I have no problem in forgiving the sinful priest, I have serious problems with forgiving the Church which has repeatedly tried to buy off my friend and his client."

On the whole I want friends and relatives and strangers to comment in the comments section, because the good thing about a blog is that it can be a forum for differing views to be shared. Even though I enjoy having the final say (who doesn't?) I enjoy debate and hearing what other people think.

And talking of the final say, above I have posted Michaelangelo's 'The Last Judgement'. It depicts the Resurrection that will take place at the End of Time. Our Blessed Lord promised He would be with His Church even unto the End of Time, and so Catholics do believe that Our Lord shall return and we say this in the Creed at Mass when we say, "...We believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting."

We believe therefore that when Our Lord returns in Glory that He shall recognise His Church simply because She is His Bride and He is the Bridegroom. Christ is united to His Church and the Church, though full of men and women who err and who sin, is united to Christ and the whole Court of Heaven.

St Francis of Assisi loved the Church, was faithful to the Magisterium and although he was faithful to the Gospel, took a compassionate view on those who erred simply because he took literally the words of Our Lord who in the Sermon of the Mount said, "Blessed are the merciful, they shall be shown mercy." At the end of 'Brother Sun, Sister Moon', it is Pope Honorius III (played by the late, great Alec Guinness) who descends from his throne, approaches the poor man of Assisi, and kisses his hands, and his feet. Great film, I'll post some of it in a mo'.

Ultimately, my personal feelings on the abuse crisis is that for every priest or clergyman who abused his authority, there are many, many others who serve Christ lovingly. While it is not a bad thing to ask for holiness from the Church, it would be naive to think that the Church would be immune to the scandal of child abuse, when it has infected every sector of society from care homes, to schools to scouts groups and even families themselves. I couldn't say why the Church is trying to "buy off a client" and if that's true that doesn't sound good. At a guess I would imagine that the Diocese is trying to limit the scandal. From an apologetics point of view, that Diocese is clearly not awaiting a 'verdict', has admitted the depth of the scandal and the sorrow caused and is already offering compensation. The whole affair is very sad.

For Catholics however, the question is not, will Christ recognise His Church when He returns to judge the living and the dead? The question is; Will He recognise me? We don't believe in a rapture that takes believers into Heaven and non-believers to Hell. When it comes to the Four Last Things, of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, these are salutary things to think upon for us all, Catholic or not. For Catholics, the question is not, is the Church faithfully witnessing to the Gospel? The question is, am I faithfully witnessing to the Gospel? The question is not, is the Church abusing its responsibilities? The question is, am I abusing my responsibilities? The question is not, is the Church feeding and loving the poor and hungry, visiting the sick and the imprisoned? The question is, am I?