"So ask YOUR doctor is cyanide is right for YOU!"

Outlandish science fiction about a dystopian future.....
BECAUSE,  WHY  WAIT  FOR  THE  FUTURE?????
Maybe they could get Michael Caine to do the adverts - get a bunch of happy old people sitting around enjoying life, er.... I mean, enjoying death.
It'll save the insurance companies crazy money.

You've reached the age when giving up is exactly who you are, this is the age of knowing how to make things stop happening. So why let the preciousness and dignity of life or morality get in the way? Talk to your doctor about Offex. (And talk to your parents' doctors, while you'r at it - it's the loving and fiscally responsible thing to do.)

Should I copyright that drug name? It seems right for an assisted suicide pill, and it's got an "x" in it.
But perhaps "Assisteeze" would be better, "z" is a kewl letter too.

(They'll need a catchy jingle like the one for pills for erectile dysfunction)

I Will Live Forever! ... (and not just in someone's memory)

Have not seen this film , so no comment on it, per se, and I am mindful of the Harry Potter is about witchcraft! hysteria, when it was obviously Christian allegory.
But I'd like to say  that the "You never really die as long as someone remembers you" trope is sadly ubiquitous in pop culture. 

 'Kubo and the Two Strings' is brilliantly animated neo-pagan poison | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views

The spirituality starts out simple as well but becomes more complex before revealing its sinister nature in the third act. An important distinction needs to be made here between traditional paganism and neo-paganism. Ancient pagan societies, not having access yet to God’s divine revelation, relied on the natural law given by God to every person. Born with the innate impulse to worship, they created religious systems out of the most important aspects of their immediate universe: water, sun and moon, plants and animals, fire, war, sexuality, family, and so on. While severely flawed and lacking, their search for truth was genuine, and early Christian missionaries were able to use their philosophies to present the Gospel and being many to Christ (Paul’s ministry to the Greeks in Acts 17 is a perfect example).

It is a way of presenting 'spiritual' stories without admitting, (and sometimes with active denial of,) the existence of the soul, the spirit -- denying any reality, (as opposed to... what? "virtuality"?) of the immortal spirit with which we are each created...

I thought it damaged the finale of Person of Interest, a work that proved to be, ultimately about Redemption.

Although interestingly, that finale, while repeating words said by the protagonist in very early episodes, (thank you, WGN for running these in syndication,) also put the lie to them, as said protagonist was redeemed - in the end, we most certainly do not die alone. Someone is coming, (has come and will come,) to save us.

Haven't I wandered off topic....

Oh, and felicitous typo, (I think) -

Kubo loses its way. This is because it appears to mix together both ancient pagan ideas and beliefs taken from net-paganism.  

I know, right?
But I really appreciate the review/condemnation because it very nicely outline the difference between the ancient Paganism of Ignorance, and the hippie-feminist-hipster-modernist Paganism of Intention

Suicide on Rise? Especially Among Women? Among GIRLS? No, Really?????

Yes, of course, we've all read about it in the past few months.
We know, you know, 'cause people study it.
And they study it, since, umm... it's bad. right?

Kristin Holland, a behavioral scientist at the Center for Disease Control, believes there are multiple factors contributing towards the increase in suicide rate, and mental health is only one of them.
“Many people view suicide as a mental health problem, but many people who die of suicide do not have a mental health problem. It’s a public health problem,” she said.
According to Holland, the economic recession of the late 2000s and the increase of substance abuse are some of the factors leading to more frequent incidents of suicide.
The report also says that the increase in suicide rate was higher among females (45% increase) than males (16% increase), narrowing the suicide rate gap between the two genders.
The report also states that for women, the highest percent increase in suicide rates was among those ages 10–14 (200% increase)

Hmm....
How can that be, when we as a society are telling them it's wrong? I mean, we are, aren't we? We wouldn't romanticize it, or celebrate those who commit it or encourage it, or anything like that, would we?

 

Is it possible that in the modern world suicide is most acceptable, as long as you meet certain standards of education, class or beauty?

The Evolution of Words

Of course English is a living language, definitions of pre-existing words may multiply as need arises.

"Stylist" was not, I suppose, a recognized profession until recent decades, and so "style", as a verb, could have meant, variously, to "call oneself" or to arrange things to look attractive.

Now "style, v.", can mean "to remind a client that even after she has put on pants or a skirt her ensemble isn't really complete until she adds a shirt or something."

"Empower" and "dignity" seem similarly to have.... grown, as words.

I think we may have Thelma and Louise to thank for some of that.
Wasn't it the "transformative violence" of that film that sanctioned women acting as stupid and irresponsible as some men always have in accord with the terms of a patr- living life on their own terms rather than those of a patriarchal society?

And what is driving off a cliff if not "death with dignity"?

As long as it's done in a cool car.
In a beater mini-van it would just be sad...

UK Pro-Aborts Sure Do Seem To Have Something Against Americans

Well, I understand, we are loud.
Or loud adjacent, I personally am just plain loud.
I did not know we Ugly Americans were suspected of funding the UK pro-life movement just the way we did the IRA.

One little miss seems to be actively scared of us anti-Aborts, as if she feared being asked to provide her bona fides when she "went undercover" by reciting the "Hail Mary" from memory.

One man asks me about good places to start finding out about the pro-life movement, as he's brought a woman with him and she's just starting to get involved. I'm convinced my cover has been blown and it's a test. I mumble something about Planned Parenthood selling babies, hoping my disgust is read as incomprehensible sadness about the "babies being killed." Luckily, I still pass.

Seriously.

The people talking to her provoke her disgust, but the thought of babies being dismembered for profit doesn't?

This was the bit of her clever thinking that had me picking my jaw up off the floor:

The next country, [to legalize abortion] he proclaims, was, of course, Nazi Germany—neglecting to add that this was part of a eugenics programme targeted at whoever the Nazis saw as genetically inferior.

Catch that?
The speaker dishonestly failed to note that Nazis killed unborn babies for bad reasons.
We're better, because we don't limit our killing to the disabled or different  -- we campaign for killing perfectly healthy people of our own class, color, religion, and ethnicity!

"But we're good, we're not like that.... we're good people!"

(Had no idea Cecil Taylor's brillinat play had been filmed... will have to find it.)

Holy Week Film Festival

Himself is an old movie junkie, so I have no doubt that this evening or tomorrow he will begin his annual Viewing of the Passions.
I used to avoid tv this week, but now that I no longer have musical/liturgical duties I do have plenty of time, and I don't think watching certain films is an at all inappropriate way to turn ones thoughts on what our Lord has done for us, so when the DVDs come out, (yes, we're that old,) I'll probably join him for some.

There was an excellent television movie that's always in the rotation.  The crucifixion is harrowing, there are first-rate, A-lister performances, and I require about 3/4 of a large box of Puffs to be able to see anything by the end.

I can only watch parts of the Mel Gibson film, but the very end, where Christ stands, alive and naked and strides forth from the tomb into the world Made New Again? and the sunlight streams through the hole in his hand?

Epic. (And That is what that word means. It doesn't describe a kegger. Or a golf tournament. Or a new nail color.)
(That reminds me, last week EWTN showed a fascinating and very moving film about St Edith Stein, starring the thrilling actress who portrays the Blessed Mother in the PotC. Look for it.)

But a film popped into my head after Mass this morning, which, if you haven't, you should see, and Holy Week is a pretty fine time to do so.
We have a lovely mosaic of the infant Jesus behind the altar, and I suddenly remembered a scene in Robert Duvall's masterful The Apostle.

He plays a pentecostal preacher on the lam, and the story of sin, redemption, and amendment is eloquently told.
What is so good affecting about it is that while it is a satisfying plot, with a premise, action, narrative and conclusion, yes, an actual ending - it also is is about those processes of sin, redemption, and amendment in a post-lapsarian world, and the atonement is on-going.
It doesn't seem to say, once saved, always saved, at least to me.
Salvation, once found, can be lost.
Our conversion, our turning toward the Lord must be continuing - which is a very un-Protestant notion, no?

There is a magnificent scene where Duvall is preaching, and he picks up a baby from the congregation, and marvels with his congregation how beautiful the infant is, how perfect, look at his perfect little hands! How his parents must love him!
Can you imagine hurting such a lovely thing? Who would allow that?

How can we wrap our minds around a father, THE Father, Who loves us so much He would allow a nail to be driven into the palm of his Beloved, His Only-Begotten, His One-In-Being-With-Him Son?

We hardly can.

Ennio Morricone and My Capacity To Hold Grudges

I have talked about this with my confessor more than once - I keep score.

I keep it with those I love, I keep it with those I hate am trying to learn to love because Christ demands it of me.

It's a really corrosive trait for ones relationships, and it colors my opinions in really unhealthy ways, for I also keep track of the score regarding people I don't even know.

I had a beef with Tom Hanks for taking home the Oscar that rightfully belonged to Anthony Hopkins for Remains of the Day long before he made those obscene and hateful movies where he played a "symbologist." Hopkins' Mr Stevens was an achievement on the order of Maria Falconetti's Joan, but besides being the kind of flashy play-acting the Academy loves, Hanks' work was in the service of a cause Hollywood loves, the lionization of those suffering with the consequences, unjust or otherwise, of sexual license, so, of course he won.
Oddly, the same year saw another of my Top Ten Oscar Things-That-Make-You-Say-WHAAAAAAA?

Michael Nyman's brilliant, BRILLIANT score for The Piano? not even nominated.

THAT SCORE WAS MORE IMPORTANT TO THAT FILM THAN ANY OTHER MOVIE SCORE IN THE HISTORY OF MOTION PICTURES.
It was almost the plot of the film, a parallel screenplay in another medium.
It was a character in the film.
(No grudge on my part against John Williams who won the award for score, since Nyman received no nomination.)

Ennio Morricone's Mission score lost to Herbie Hancock's for Round Midnight, and that inequity has ticked me off for thirty years.
Anyway, because I don't watch the Oscars, other than the opening if I think the host has promise, (Chris Rock's monologue was spot on,) I did not learn until just now that the great Morricone has finally received a competitive Oscar, (he did have an honorary.)

It's for a film I shall probably not see, (Tarentino movies can be too skeevy,) but I feel a great deal of ....some emotion that sits between joy and relief?
That kind of "all shall be well, and all shall..." satisfaction that the world is going back toward being in balance.
And that's my problem in a nutshell.
I think things should be in balance.
I remember things. I remember slights, I remember favors.

I keep score, I take inventory, I measure things on a scale of my own devising and find people either wanting or in desert of more.
Even when although I perceive some trespass but magnanimously forgo revenge or even calling attention to What I'm Letting You Get Away With?
I'm still keeping score, that's right.
And I reward myself by giving myself over to feelings of smug superiority.

Now, I say "I remember," but I must be honest, the one matter I manage to forget as I sneak my thumb onto the scale?
God offers boundless mercy against my minute goodnesses,  prefect benevolence to my trivial good turns, abundance for my puny deeds.
Balance things out? you, Scelata?
Don't make me laugh.
But God has no thumb on the scale, and for that I am grateful.

Morricone has a way with the oboe, huh?
And this was, no, is beautiful.
Although his music is neo-romantic, it functions, as I believe movies scores most often should, in the way classical, as opposed to romantic art does - not to provoke and manipulate the viewer's emotions but to evoke the emotions one already has, to put one in touch with what is already there, to remind one of what hopefully lurks just below the surface, to resonate with memories of ones better self.

Famous Persons Not From the Realm of Filmdom Appearing in Movies?

Methinks Bolingbroke Henry IV would be ag'n' it. (as is the Holy Father):

Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackney'd in the eyes of men
So stale and cheap to vulgar company,
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wonder'd at;
That men would tell their children 'This is he;'
Others would say 'Where, which is Bolingbroke?'
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dress'd myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,
Even in the presence of the crowned king.
Thus did I keep my person fresh and new;
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen but wonder'd at: and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity.

"The Danish Girl"

Thanks to "For Your Consideration" dvds, I have watched a number of newish movies with Himself, of late, movies which I would have probably seen later when they were free, or never. (I don't think I'm violating an terms of their possession if I watch them with him.)
Generally, after I view or read a piece of work like this, I go back to see what reviews, "experts," etc., had to say about it.

I've read that it is a piece of transgender activist "propaganda," that some involved in its creation see themselves now as adding their voices to the acceptance of transgenderism....

Frankly, I was surprised by the refreshingly un-PC pov of The Danish Girl.

To me, it seems to present, in very sympathetic terms, the life of a delusional man, and they way his life was constricted, and ultimately ended by the mental illness from whihc he suffered.

What the intentions of its creators' were, I can not say, but that is what I "got" from it.

Eddie Redmayne gave a very detailed, but more technically proficient than moving portrait of Einar Wegener. (I should say up front that I go in to this with a bit of hostility to Redmayne, because I think he has an Oscar that belonged to Michael Keaton. Not his fault, so I'm sure I'll forgive him eventually, as I will Tom Hanks for having the Oscar that by all rights was Anthony Hopkins' for Remains of the Day.)

On the other hand, that may have been intentional, and appropriate, because except in rare cases of congenital sexual ambiguity, men suffering from such delusions can, at best, aspire to a kind of "technical proficiency" in their pretense, rather than anything real. Overacting is always easier than being, hence, the caricatures of femininity presented by so many drag queens and trans-gender "women."

Alicia Vikander is the soul of the movie.
It is a love story, and her character is the one who provides actual love, (though even she fails at the real test of the lover - wishing, and acting for, the good of the beloved. Much harder than enabling, perhaps?)
Regardless of the truth of the story, in this film of an apparently highly fictionalized novelization of a truish story of an attractive madman, her portrayal of the wife who loved him through and despite his descant into insanity was wonderful.
Her husband's delusion, his betrayal, his pitiful learning to play a part, (as if ones gender is a matter of gesture and posture!) his lies, his truly insulting - to an actual woman - notion of womanhood, and finally, his absurd attempt to have organs implanted in order to bear children at an age when pregnancy and childbirth would have been improbably for an actual woman - the clear-eyed love she exuded was tragic, beautiful and riveting. (I understand that actual Gerda, for all that gender idealogues want her to be a lesbian icon, finally gave up and married another man while her damaged husband was still alive.)

"Weaved"??!???

' "Weaved"? It's WEAVE, noun, present tense..."

I might have to see a satirical examination of race in America with a script that contains such a line.

"Bowie's Interest in Chistianity"

One last What the Folderol about the reaction to David Bowie's passing, in Crux:

Bowie’s interest in Christianity can also be gleaned from the fact that he played a bit part as Pontius Pilate in the controversial 1998 Martin Scorsese film “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

Uh, sure.

Sure.

The way Alanis Morissette's interest in Christianity can be gleaned from her playing God in the 1999 Kevin Smith film, "Dogma."

"Yeah, he's really sorry, so if you could just apologize to him...."

 

It is a staple of sitcoms and rom-coms, dating back at least to "Much Ado,", (so I guess, dating back to whatever the source from which Shakespeare lifted the plot of MAAN,) that two people have a falling out, and their circle, either because the enmity of the two is just wearing on their friends, or simply for sport, try to convince each that the other has more or less expressed contrition, so can't we put all this animosity behind us?

Can't we all just get along?

I keep thinking of the innumerable iterations of this situation as we hear, over, and over, and over the words "mercy," and "repentance," and "forgiveness" and "amendment."

Mercy, as I have always understood it, is as unmerited as Grace.  

If I am entitled to something, my receipt of it does not require mercy from anyone but simple justice.

You can extend forgiveness to anyone who has sinned against you, whether he asks for it or not; and God can extend mercy to and pardon whom He wills.

But does the Church have the authority to forgive someone who doesn't ask for it?

Mercy invites the sinner and it becomes forgiveness when one repents and changes one’s life. The prodigal son was greeted with an embrace from his father only when he returned home .

-- from the Synodal intervention of Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas

She can, She must show mercy, to all sinners, (that is, to all human beings, everyone of us,)  in inviting to repentance, but can she forgive them, on behalf of all Her members and especially on behalf the those who may have been wronged by the sin, if it is not sought by the sinner?

And if he "asks for forgiveness" *wink *wink, for a "sin" *nudge, *nudge, that he does not believe is a sin and in which he intends to continue to engage, is not "the last imposture worse than the first"? (Am I queering my own argument by using the words of the chief priests and Pharisees?)

And I fear sometimes, that those in high places urging admittance to the sacraments for those in "irregular" marriages, (is "irregular" like "disordered" and "indissoluble"? is it too harsh to say?) not those in the marriages themselves, urge with such fervor not because they think mercy is required but because -- and I apologize, this is a serious accusation I make --  because, ultimately, they do not see such situations as sinful.

Now I am not the kindest of human beings, and yet more than once I have apologized to someone when there was no question in my mind that nothing I had done merited remorse or regret much less a mea culpa.
But it made people feel better, or calmed someone down, or just seemed the easiest way out....

And as I said, not the most gentle or conciliatory, so if I've done this, EVERYONE has probably done it at one time or another.

So is that dishonesty on my part? is that a sin against the eighth commandment?

And to bring the conversation full circle, that is a staple of prison dramas, the innocent man, falsely imprisoned, who serves years longer than he needed to because he will not perjure himself by confessing to and showing contrition for a crime he did not commit.

When I was a kid, expedience being one of my core values, I always thought such nobility was the mark of a sucker and a patsy.
(So, another mea culpa.)

Jane Austen Classic, "Sin and Synodality," Finally To be Filmed

At long last, "Sin and Synodality" to grace the screen, starring Sandra Bullock.

IT is a truth universally, (that is to say, catholicly,) acknowledged, that a single bishop in possession of a diocese must be in want of adding tax payers souls to his flock. 
However little known the feelings or views of such a bishop may be on his first entering a synod, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the Vatican spokesmen, that the Truth is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of the various factions and their mouthpieces trying to bend the Church to their will.

All the male roles to be played by Eddie Marsan.

 

                    

"The Young Messiah"

I often tell people that my husband came to the Faith through his love of history, that objects in the museums attached to most of the California missions, (thank you, St. Junipero!) intrigued him, and led him to want to learn more, what's that thing? (a monstrance,) why did they use it? what do they, I mean you, believe about....?.... what did we believe about any number of things, actually. And he's still asking questions.
Fact is, he came to the Church as much through old movies as anything else.

Between his crush on, (in the I-want-to-grow-up-to-be-HIM! sense,) Richard Burton leading him to see Becket more times than he can count, his fascination with the geo- and curial politics in Shoes of the Fisherman, and a love for Ben-Hur, (especially the Miklós Rózsa score,) that borders on idolatry, a great deal of what he knows, or at least knows enough to be curious to learn more, comes from film.

He has a decent collection on DVD or digital file, and especially around holydays, we are likely to watch some  film or mini-series, or other.
Oh, who am I kidding, we're likely to watch ALL of them, (and yes, I meant to include that silent.)

So it won't surprise me if he is very keen to see the film being made of the Anne Rice book,Out of Egypt.

But I question the title change - I'm not  in Himself's league as an old movie buff, (that's old movie... buff, not old... movie buff,) but even I can't read the new one without thinking of Young Tom Edison, Young Winston, and yes, Young Frankenstein.

Barb Nicolosi, Prophetess

While looking for a picture of the simply adorable Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte for that last post, I stumbled upon Barb Nicolosi's take-down of that horrid movie of Brideshead made in the last decade.

(After I finally saw the film, [certainly wasn't going to pay to,] I mostly agree with her.)

At the time, I don't think I even noticed this in her opening paragraph -

Imagine if someone did a new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and it ended up savagely racist?

Of course,  I'm not saying Set a Watchman itself is anything like, but it's almost as startling, (and to many lovers of Harper Lee's novel and its characters, sacrilegious,) that Atticus was originally portrayed as racist.
Isn't it?

Dim-witted "Star Wars" Fan That I Am....

Himself is watching an old British serial on Youtube.
I misidentified an actress for him, and chagrined, I looked online for support for my contention that the two I confused are... well, easily confused, (he didn't challenge me, since he couldn't recall seeing either of them before.)
It turns out that no, I am not the only one to have mistaken them, according to the actresses themselves.

But in the process, I also came across the oft remarked upon resemblance between Keira Knightly and Natalie Portman.
Yeah, sure everybody know that.
(And Winona Ryder could be their older sister. Her career, but the way, seems to have been rehabilitated, and I am very glad for her - she was tremendous in that Worricker series. I digress.)

What I didn't know, was that Keira Knightly had been in Phantom Menace.

The "decoy" handmaiden that looked so much like Queen Amidala?

I thought the idea was that it really was Queen Amidala, who was pulling a Henry-V-on-the-brink-of-battle, and that sci-fi often being careless about tying up loose ends, or providing linear story telling, they just forgot to explain that.

(You know, like, oh, Han's not blind anymore, did we forget to tell you that? or maybe, Luke's hand? well, yeah, but the artificial one looks exactly like a real one, so no emotional weight connected to the loss, in fact there isn't even really any point to us having bothered to show him losing it, except we could do a decent special effect.)

Maybe I wasn't paying attention, as was, actually, warranted by the movie.

Not that I didn't enjoy it.

Star Wars is like pizza, among other things, even bad Star Wars is good.

More Misunderstandings of the Holy Father By Those In the MSM

The Washington Post asks, What has Pope Francis actually accomplished?, and then answers it by telling us about things the Holy Father has said, acknowledging as much themselves, " by giving us "8 of Pope Francis’s most liberal statements."
I dunno -- you'd think a newspaper that operates in D.C, around people who are, er... politicians, might understand in the words of the immortal Po'k,

Sayin' ain't doin'...

(I don't know if Po'k actually said that, but Himself quotes the man's aphorisms extensively when expressing dubiety.)
That said, at least two of the items enumerated are actual accomplishments, actions - the embrace of the surgically altered woman, (no one should be called "the devil's daughter,") and the issuing of the 2 motu proprio altering the way decrees of nullity may be granted.
Other matters are range from nothing new, (nothing new aside from the media taking notice of something - many of Francis's words, once unpacked, reiterate what has long been the case, or long been taught,) or yet to accomplish what they, hopefully, adumbrate.
Frankly, the writer would do well to read his own article, and heed the words of the Scary Red Robed Church Monster ©, (the bogeyman who inhabits their nightmares, the very thought of whom so delights Church regressives that like children at a horror movie, they can't help peeking at him again and again and again, through their fingers held tightly to their eyes, to enjoy the chills and thrills even as they lose control of their bladders.)

For the Dread Cardinal Burke ©, has said,

“One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope [which] is not absolute.”

The horror!

Um.... boo?

But the Pope said.....

There you have it. In the minds of some who know not the mind of the Church, The Pope Said closes the conversation.

(It's kinda like, "But the bell rang!", the definitive, not to be gainsaid, unrebuttable answer to anything, anyone ever said, about anything. In the Code of Canon Law, expressed campana resonata, causa finita est.)

Well, I suppose it may indeed be sort of raining spiritually, only I am too sinful to see it.

"Don't Look and It Won't Scare You"

When I was a child, and one of... well, of very many children, and TV was one of our mostest favoritest things in the whole wide world, no one always got to watch what he or she wanted to watch.
Sometimes ones preference prevailed, sometimes that of my brother whohasnotasteorsensewhatsoever, sometimes a younger child since he or she would be put to bed first leaving his or her elders a half hour more of prime time...
And sometimes, naturally, a parent would make a unilateral decision.
(Frankly, this is one of the great lessons one absorbs growing up in a large family, without even being conscious of it, "I don't always get my way. NOR SHOULD I." I digress.)

My oldest brother was a big fan of Creature Features. (Not sure if that was it's real name.)

I watched it quite a bit, and if was tame enough, or we were quiet enough, my parents allowed it.

I liked "monster movies." I really, really liked them,a long as they weren't, to use the technical term, "ookie." I like chills and thrills and horror, particulrly in a "period" setting,  but not slime and never gore.

My oldest sister really didn't like such things, and some of us littler ones liked some kinds but not others, but regardless - although if it was noticed and judged too intense it might be shut off, or certain people might be removed from the vicinity, but since since each of us had already essentially made the choice to watch and since movies in the olden days parcelled out the shocks and the effects, and filmmakers and television directors did not go out of their way to make even the sound effects realistically sick-making as they now do, the parental solution was not infrequently to state the obvious - "Don't look and it won't scare you."

Don't look and it won't scare you.

That still works today, and it's not bad advice in some matters.
There are many scenes in movies as they are now made from which I turn away, during which I create noise in my own head so as not to hear screams and cries.
(Even in some not-so-new movies, I just thought - Peeping Tom, anyone?)

And I thought for quite a while before I decided to post the picture of tiny, tortured baby parts with my #CallHimEmmett post.

But I thought it was important, self-censoring of images of that horror is a weapon the enemy uses to allow us and those we would persuade of it evil to ignore the abomination of the deliberate abortion of our fellow men.
Often on television or internet a news anchor will use a "warning" that's in reality a teaser - that "before we roll this footage, we must warn our viewers, some of the images you are about to see may be..." tempts many, ooh, can't wait, wonder what....?

So yesterday, when Himself asked, as he does almost everyday with black humor, what's the atrocity du jour? and the answer in the news made his question hideously apt, I have to say that the forbearance shown by most outlets in not playing, (in an unending loop as they do for most of the barbarities they are lucky enough to have caught on camera,) the video bid-for-fame-and-immortality made by the racist who murdered the reporter and cameraman was both surprising and appreciated.

Don't look and it won't scare you...

Maybe some of us are doomed to just go through the rest of our lives perpetually scared.

They Just Don't Get It, They Don't Understand What "Pro-Life" Means

Watched a movie yesterday, I'd been vaguely interested in it when it came out a number of years ago, but never gotten around to it.
It was a four-boxes-of-kleenex tear-jerker, a bit manipulative - how could it not be? it was about a dying girl, and her sister who had been genetically engineered, no, that's not fair, designed? well, chosen, presumably from a group of sibling embryos all the rest of which were disposed of, to be grown for spare parts a "savior sibling" for the sick child.
The younger child was suing her parents for emancipation rather than be forced, or at least coerced into donating a kidney.

As is my wont, I did a little research afterwards, what else have I seen him in? what's the source material? what did the critics think of this?

That last has always been of interest to me, how was a work received by those whose business, whose life's work it is to judge a work of entertainment or art?
This fascinates me even more in the past year, trying to fathom how mass delusion, even psychosis, seems to sometimes take hold of the world of film criticism as a whole.

Because, Boyhood.

(Twelve years to shoot it? Watching it felt like twelve years of my life I'll never get back.)

I digress.
So, I'm readin a few reviews...
The late Roger Ebert was one of the few top critics who thought well of My Sister's Keeper.
But this really threw me for a loop -

Although “My Brother’s Keeper,” ... is an effective tearjerker, if you think about it, it’s something else. The movie never says so, but it’s a practical parable about the debate between pro-choice and pro-life. If you’re pro-life, you would require Anna to donate her kidney, although there is a chance she could die, and her sister doesn’t have a good prognosis. If you’re pro-choice, you would support Anna’s lawsuit.

No.
NO!
Not just "NO" but HELLLLLL NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

The Pro-Life movement is, above all, about the dignity of a human life, the dignity and rights of each individual life.
It is about fighting against the commodification of any one human person, even if it is that person's mother who is trying to usurp ownership.
Should the sibling want to help, to save the sister's life?
Perhaps.
Sacrifice is a momentous thing.
Sacrifice is a great good, a noble action.

But it is only sacrifice to give up what is truly your own to give. 
Nobody else should dare demand it of you, no one can lay claim to your body, nobody can "require" such a violation of your autonomy.
(And that includes your mother, regardless of on which end of her birth canal you currently are.)

The Food of Love? Then Morricone is a Master Chef!

Shakespeare seems to have meant sexual love when he described music as "the food of love," but there are so many more, and greater kinds of love, aren't there?
And there is music that can be, in a small way, source and summit for them.
There is no question that music can stir the emotions, (melt the heart, as Aquinas might say,) or that music, singing specially is the natural outpouring of the expression of these various loves.

True liturgical music must be our love song to God.

I was watching a movie on tv last weekend, didn't realize the entire thing would not be broadcast then and there, (going out, have to ask Himself to DVR the final part tonight.)
Knew nothing about this biopic of Padre Pio 'til I turned it on.
I am generally leery of foreign films on EWTN, they are sometimes rather cheesy, even second -rate, sorry to say, if it's a subject that interests me I'll stick it out, but...

And here's another matter, because of the way all but American films generally record sound, there's a real distancing that occurs, with me at any rate, I have trouble really engaging - the artificiality is more pronounced, the voices less "present" seem less real, and sometimes the dubbing is just plain bad either in acting or synchronicity.
At my most pretentious in artsy student days I probably saw more foreign films than I did Hollywood product, so I learned to usually disregard this, (the way I did static on the radio, or the sound of vinyl, or the fighting of my brothers three feet away while I was reading, ;oD) but it's still a thing.

Anyway, this started out pretty well done, I liked the gruffness of the actor in the title role, I liked the depiction of the dangers of cult of personality, I liked that for a, literal, hagiography it wasn't hagiographic, someone had put real effort into the voice casting.... and then the music welled up and I thought, "Well, A picture, A+ picture production values!"

And so it was - a quick check on IMDB revealed that the score was by none other than the peerless Ennio Morricone.

What a treasure this man is!

I have bemoaned for years and years, why doesn't HE write for the Church? why hasn't HE composed Masses and Vespers and Hymns? why won't HE...? 

And now I learn that he has, at long last!
Thank you, Papa Francesco, thank you, Society of Jesus, for inspiring that!

(Have to go listen to it now...)