Saturday, November 24, 2007

Movies and lunacy - today's mix

Any Way Saturday
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There are many movies being released this Thanksgiving and Christmas season. One of the movies getting a lot of advertising is Beowulf. Unfortunately, I fear a lot of English Lit teachers will be encouraging their students to go see this movie. The problem is the movie version has a lot in it that is not as it is in the written masterpiece. A review of it can be found here.

A movie that some might consider viewing is the Bee Movie. Like most movies, it manages to get some questionable material into the script. The reviewer I read [here] gives it a "qualified B".

Enchanted seems to be a good bet, though. Every once in a while, someone comes out with a holiday season movie that you can actually go to and enjoy. This might be this year's winner. Read about it here, then go and enjoy yourselves.
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Have you ever heard of the AmChurch? The term 'AmChurch' is a form of shorthand name for the American Catholic Church. It is a very non-traditional aberration of 1970's liberality after Vatican II.

I, for one, have been oblivious to this group. This week for Thanksgiving Day, Mark P. Shea* wrote an article on the Inside Catholic website about these extremely liberal people, who call themselves the American Catholic Church, as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. You can read the article here.

An example of their 'theology' can be found in their interpretation of the story in Ez 16:49 - '...the real sin of Sodom had nothing to do with sodomy but was, instead, lack of hospitality'. Does that cause you to scratch your head and say, "What?".

Another example can be seen in the story of the loaves and fishes. Their interpretive version says, "Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and the crowd, so moved at his warm fuzziness, started to share their own lunches with each other and sing..." - for real!

Read the article for more. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord of the Roman Catholic Church.


*Mark P. Shea is a senior editor at www.CatholicExchange.com and a columnist for InsideCatholic.com.
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4 comments:

Michael Bates said...

For me, Maurice Sagoff's Shrinklits version will always be the definitive abridgment of Beowulf. It begins:

Monster Grendel's
tastes are plainish.
For breakfast?
Just a couple Danish.

pluggedinonline.com is a great resource for knowing exactly what to expect in terms of objectionable content. The Tulsa Beacon, a weekly newspaper here, carries a couple of their reviews each week.

Fr. V said...

I remember when JP II came to America and somebody made the goof of saying to him, "Welcome to the American Catholic Church," and he said, "No, it is the Catholic Church in America!"

Woo hoo!

Tom in Vegas said...

It's seems to be an unfortunate afterclap. Any time a story goes from book to screenplay some aberration ensues. The same can be said of Lord of the Rings and the unhistorical account of Mozart's life in Amadeus.

Tom

uncle jim said...

michael-
thanks for showing up - nice to look at things other than politics, i hope. i've used pluggedinonline for a number of years in youth ministry - it helps to have reliable source with real answers.

fr v -
are they active in your area?

tom-
you are so right on; screenwriters have certain liberties / aberrations assigned them by producers [and probably directors, too]. sometimes the finished product is recognizable as to source ... and sometimes not. some changes even change the main story - but as long as the viewer pays for the ticket, the producers are happy...most are no purists.