Strange Bedfellows: Susan G. Komen, Margaret Sanger, and the Dixie Chicks

It’s sad, but I won’t be supporting the Susan G. Komen foundation anymore.  They made their choice, same as the Dixie Chicks, and got into bed with an organization that does not support the ideals of the conservative Christian movement.  That’s a nice way of saying they are in cahoots with a bunch of baby killers.  Do they even realize the choice they’ve made?

     Some people refused to support Susan G. Komen when they pulled some of their funding from Planned Parenthood for political reasons, so they reversed their decision and now support Planned Parenthood once again.  I wonder if they realize they will still lose some support no matter which way they decide.  But with the support even some Christian women are giving to Planned Parenthood, I doubt it matters. 

     Leaving liberal Christians completely out of the argument because, frankly, I just don’t understand them (I understand about the love of Christ, but there are God-breathed rules to follow, and true liberals are for ALL freedoms, even the immoral ones the Bible teaches against) I dare anyone who claims to be a conservative Christian to explain to me why they would dare to support an organization like Planned Parenthood (is it just the PC thing to do?), especially if they research its history and all the things Margaret Sanger was into, and closely examine the actions of the ACLU over the years, who support Planned Parenthood, and everyone and everything, except those who wish to worship their Savior as followers of Christ, and those who draw a line in the sand!

     Turns out, there are apparently a lot of Christian women who do support them.  “They helped a friend of mine with breast screening when nobody else would,” said the clerk at a Family Christian Store as she was showing my mom a book called unPLANNED by Abby Johnson, who used to work for them.  My mom read this book, and told me that even this Abby Johnson liked the women whom she worked with there, and thought she was really helping the women who came in, but finally had to leave.  When her facility wasn’t making enough money, she got directives from the top to increase the number of abortions, where the money is.  There was talk of taking the babies who were 24 to 26 weeks along, and she couldn’t abide that any longer.  Now that she’s left, Mom said many of the other women she worked with there wanted to leave as well.

     My sister voiced concerns over this entire affair on Facebook, and many of her Christian friends came out of the woodwork to chastise her, and to tell her what a wonderful miracle Planned Parenthood really is, stating that abortions are only “one small part” of the wonderful work this organization does.  That’s nice, but if the devil was going to build an organization that saw to the destruction of innocent, helpless babies and get even members of the Christian community to support it, he would build Planned Parenthood.  How can these Christian women justify the support of such an organization that kills innocent babies?  It’s a justification of evil.

     Oh, but you know, it’s the same all over anyway.  Another friend of mine attends a mega-church that accepts homosexual couples, and I’ve been to funerals at another church that supports PFLAG.  Hey, you know, I’m not a homophobe (a term that never made sense to me anyway, outside of an immoral campaign: Disagreeing with a lifestyle doesn’t mean you’re afraid); I can understand the directive to love the sinner and hate the sin, and I can understand the pressure and psychology that some of these kids with same sex attractions must endure, to the point of suicide.  We should reach out to them.  But we shouldn’t just blindly support them.  We should do what Jesus would do.  He would reach out to them, and care for them, and love them.  But he would also teach them the error of their ways, just as he did when he taught a bunch of sinners in Matthew’s house, or when he told the prostitute after he had dispersed her accusers, “Now go, and sin no more.”  We should do likewise.

     And now Susan G. Komen is in between the sheets with a bunch of baby killers, which is a more apt term for what they really are.  If anybody in the Komen foundation or any of their supporters should happen to read this, they should know there are many other people like me out there, dismissed by the left, and even some Christians, especially since I’m a man.  Many of these people simply won’t speak up; they just won’t support them anymore.  If you make a decision to go with one crowd, there will be another crowd who will, usually silently, step away.  Just look at the fans of the Dixie Chicks.  It is not the same fan base they started with, and not the same fan base for the rest of country music, whose morals are different from the morals of the Dixie Chicks.  I see Susasn G. Komen in the same boat now… except that Planned Parenthood still has it’s supporters among the Christian community.  Talk about a head scratcher!

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - I'll Always Be a Fan, But a Conservative One

Image from http://wayne.usschesapeake.org/?tag=star-trek-deep-space-nine

A show that only got better over the years!  Standout characters for the entire series were just as likely to be names from outside the core ensemble as in.  Although they did a good job on a few episodes of showing the loving family bond Sisko has with his son Jake, such as “Explorers” and “The Visitor,” I could never quite get into Sisko and his family, and O’Brien was always more interesting playing off of others, especially Dr. Bashir, than he was playing opposite his wife, Keiko.  Kira and the Bajorans were interesting, and even though they were overwrought on occasion, I still enjoyed it!  Another alien culture that was featured prominently was the Cardassians, and while Marc Alaimo’s Gul Dukat was a fully fleshed out, multi-dimensional villain, the more interesting Cardassian was always Garak, the simple tailor/spy played superbly by Andrew Robinson.  I love Garak!  His character is so interesting, and full of subterfuge! He should have been a major character rather than just a recurring guest.  For that matter, Rom was sometimes annoying, but was usually every bit as funny a character as brother Quark (who was usually hilarious), though I usually found Nog to be rather annoying.  Odo was a great character, but was often too grumpy.  And speaking of grumpy, I’m getting just a little tired of Worf and the Klingons.

A few favorite characters: Garak, Bashir, Quark, and Dax

     Dax was fine in either incarnation, Jadzia or Ezri, even though Terry Farrell as Jadzia was sometimes too liberal and pc, (I'm going to step on some toes here, if anyone actually reads these) like the episode the actress loved in which she got to passionately kiss costar Susanna Thompson, another Trill who used to be the wife of one of Dax’s previous male hosts, Torias.  It was all a heavy handed ploy that served only to allow the liberal writers to show their support of the gay movement and ideals, but I’ll merely point out how politically incorrect Star Trek usually is in this department by mentioning how seldom these gay relationships pop up in the world of Trek (never on the old show, or on Voyager, and between Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I can think of 3, really, two of which center on the joined-Trill species).  How come nobody points out how none of these relationships last, and how the overwhelming majority of relationships in Star Trek, and I’m guessing about 99.9%, is heterosexual?  Jadzia Dax may not have a problem with picking things up again when old flame Lenora Khan visits the station, but on every other episode, she’s got her eye on men, and when she talks about Dax’s previous hosts, they always had relationships with the opposite sex, such as Torias Dax being married to a woman, Audrid Dax enjoying life as a wife and mother, and Curzon Dax being constantly described as quite a lady’s man.  If homosexuality is so accepted in the world of Trek, why aren't the Trills even more gay?  If anybody has a right to be, they do!

     The most improved character of the series was, without question, Dr. Julian Bashir, and that may be due to the fact that his character was so blasé to begin with.  The writers obviously didn’t know what to do with him at first, but they finally hit pay dirt in the fourth season.  In two separate stories, Julian tries to prove his medical expertise with two different alien cultures, and having to deal with failure both times.  Some of the best episodes of that season where Bashir episodes, like the excellently written James Bond parody “Our Man Bashir.”  In later seasons, shows dealing with his being illegally genetically engineered as a child, or the ones where he becomes involved with a super-secret Federation spy ring known as Section 31, or the shows where he comes to the aid of a group of genetically engineered misfits helped to make this character as complex and interesting as all the others, which he hadn’t been during the first three seasons.

     All in all, as with The Next Generation, this series seemed to hit its stride in about the fourth and fifth season, and they managed to keep things fresh and interesting!  Bravo, guys!

The Messiah: What Do Modern Day Jews Think About Him (Or Do They)?

I wrote this a little over two years ago after speaking with a Jewish co-worker named Bryan.  I'd like to know what the modern day Jewish culture thinks about the Messiah.  From what I could garner from Bryan, many modern day Jews don't think about the Messiah an awful lot.  If you happen to read this, and you're Jewish, I would really like a comment, because I would like to know what you think about the Messiah, and how you would get around the Catch 22 I outline in this commentary.

I wish I understood the Jews more.  After all, they are God’s chosen people, and I am not like Mel Gibson, in his infamous, drunken rantings about the Jews.  I believe in the Bible, and that includes the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) going all the way back to King David and Moses and Abraham and Noah and Adam and Eve.  The New Testament is replete with reverence and acknowledgement for such as these, even from Jesus Christ Himself, so I’m not going to be anti-Semitic here and hate the Jews or accuse them of killing Jesus.  Jesus was a Jew Himself, and so were Peter and James and John and Paul, and these are all men of faith to admire and look up to and to emulate.  Truthfully, so are such modern day Jews in the Conservative camp as Michael Medved and Jeff Jacoby as far as I’m concerned, particularly for their ideals.  I find their words and beliefs are noble.

And yet I still have questions about what the modern day Jews believe about their own Old Testament, and the prophesies regarding their Messiah:  Who are they looking for?  I know their Bible, what we Christians call the Old Testament, talks about a coming Messiah.  If they don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah, then what was He?  And who is the Messiah?  Will they recognize Him when they see Him, and what will cause them to believe?  What do they make of their Old Testament prophesies concerning the Messiah, and are they even looking?  If the Messiah shows up, will they recognize Him as such, or reject Him on the same grounds they rejected Jesus by?

First, we must look at their rejection of Jesus, and why they didn’t believe He was the Messiah, and why they still don’t.  What do they believe about Him?  Do they put any stock in the New Testament at all?  I mean, the New Testament DOES concern them, as most people IN the New Testament are Jewish, written by Jews, and, for the most part, for Jews.  Are they just dismissing all of that out of hand because it’s the “Christian’s Bible”?  They say Jesus was merely a man, just a human, and therefore, cannot be the Messiah, because the Messiah must be more than a man; He must be special, set apart by God as being more than just a man, and therefore they reject Jesus.  By the same token, they take exception with Jesus for claiming He was more than a man, upset because there is only one God.  When Jesus claimed He was the special Son of God, a part of God, fully God and fully man at the same time, the Jews rejected Him for this.  Because of this rejection, I don’t quite understand who they are expecting.  From their perspective, won’t they make the same mistake when the One they think is their Messiah shows up on the scene?  If this future Messiah is more than a man, I can see them rejecting Him because there is only one God, and if he’s just a man, they will reject him because the Messiah is more than just a man.  It seems to me they don’t understand the nature of their own religious Catch-22, do they?

Not that they’re even looking for a Messiah, of course, or at least the normal Jew isn’t.  They may attend synagogue consistently and read the Torah, and try to live by the modern interpretation of the Old Testament law, but from the few Jewish people I’ve talked to, their search for a Messiah is about as lax as their questioning about what awaits them in the afterlife.  Straight from the mouths of the few Jewish people I have spoken with about this, they really don’t think about such things.  They just “go to synagogue and try to be a good Jew.”  That doesn't answer the question.

I’d like to talk with someone who is not quite so lax in their religion – perhaps Hasidic Jews would be the ones who might have a better answer as to who they are looking for in a Messiah, and perhaps they are the ones who are actively searching for Him.  But I won’t hold my breath.  After all, they are still rejecting the real deal on the basis that he was either just a man, or a lunatic who claimed to be God, or someone whose words were twisted over time while putting much more credence to everything written in the Old Testament.  I'd just like to know what they think.

I still don’t hate the Jews, of course, and I still acknowledge them as God’s chosen people, so He definitely has a plan for them and wants them to share in His Kingdom.  But the Old Testament is a series of events in which the Jews hardened their hearts and turned against God, over and over and over again, and God gave them over to their evil ways and desires until they changed their minds and turned to Him again, and then He came to their rescue.  If you want a basic description in a single paragraph for what the Old Testament is like from Genesis through Malachi, that’s basically it.  It is a detailing of the relationship between God and the Jewish people as they fall away and then come back to Him.  So even though they are God’s chosen people, he’s given them over to their foolish beliefs and ways before.  If the Old Testament teaches us anything, it’s that God is not just going to come to the rescue of the Jews merely BECAUSE they are His chosen people.  God is just as likely to pour out His wrath upon them when they reject Him as He is to be their loving God when they accept Him and trust in Him.  Being His chosen people isn’t necessarily a free ticket to Heaven (or wherever the Jews believe they’ll go when they die).

But there is still that relationship, and that needed relationship, between the Jews and the Christians, and it is the main reason Israel is a friend to, if not America, then at least, in the general sense, the conservative Christian movement in America.  They certainly can’t count on Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President Jimmy Carter!  In this respect, Israel has no better friend in the world today than the Christian who recognizes them as God’s chosen people, and an integral part of their religious puzzle.  Not that there aren’t some Jews, over on the liberal left, and in Hollywood, who I don’t really understand in their political views and who they choose to support.  Barbara Streisand and Binyamin Netanyahu, the current (conservative) Prime Minister of Israel, are both Jewish, but there is a world of difference between each of them and what they stand for.  I have respect for Netanyahu and distain for Streisand, so yes, there is definately a difference.  I trust in the Jews on the conservative right.  Even more so, I know that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and therefore, I turn a kind eye towards them, especially those whose stance in politics is similar to my own, over on the conservative right (in my mind, the only place a real man of God should be, for Jew or gentile, particularly these days!).

I can’t quite comprehend exactly what the traditional Jews believe about the Messiah they still think is coming.  Does any Jew concern himself with this question half as much as I just did for them?  The answer is “probably”, but I haven’t heard from them, and I’d like to know what they think.

Butch Babes, Modern Depravity, Uncool Aliens, and Two Stinky Robin Williams Flicks: 5 More Bad Old Movies

I don’t know what it is about bad movies, but I seem to enjoy writing about them more than I like writing about the movies I liked.  Indeed, these reviews of films I saw in 1999 are quite a bit longer than the reviews I wrote about movies I actually liked, particularly as I examine butch babes in action films for my review of the forgettable film Virus and the trend towards depravity in films like 8mm; therefore, there are only five of them:

What Dreams May Come

I kinda thought this one might be bad.  How I hate sometimes being right!  Robin Williams’s track record as of late has been pretty sketchy at best (Jack, Flubber, Jumanji) and Hollywood’s modern vision of heaven and the afterlife is downright blasphemous (City of Angels, Michael).  Well, I should have known!  This story paints heaven as a surreal playground where people can be who they always wanted, and hell as being a self-imposed purgatory in the same playground.  It’s all mystical, yet God is strangely absent, and the souls who inhabit this strange dimension are only accountable to themselves, and not a higher power.  But without a higher power, what’s the purpose, or the point, of any of it?  As with so many other “spiritual” movies, this is mystical surrealism pretending to be more Christian than it really is, and that’s dangerous!

The Faculty

What is supposed to be a hip update of classic sci-fi a-la Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s The Thing from the pen of Kevin Williamson, scribe of the Scream movies and Dawson’s Creek (which really are hip!) turns out to be a weak rip-off instead.  Yawn!  I’ve seen every bit of it before, in better movies.  Here, there is no originality, and the Kevin Williamson formula of winking a knowing eye to the genre being attributed to is here starting to look obvious and trite.  The talented cast seems wasted.

Virus

What a bunch of hokey tripe!  Jamie Lee Curtis was all right in the original Halloween, but I’m getting a little tired these days of women in these showy I’m-gonna-kick-some-monster-ass movies that used to be relegated only to the macho guys.  “Think Schwarzenegger is the only one who can go up against these Predator aliens and killer robots from the future?” these women seem to be saying.  “Well, think again!”

     I think it all started the moment Sigourney Weaver picked up a flame thrower or jumped in a power loader and told a certain 14 foot tall alien queen to “Get away from her, you bitch!”  Or if you want to blame somebody, blame James Cameron, the director who put Sigourney in that power loader, and the same guy who had Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio chew the scenes against macho Ed Harris in The Abyss, and matching him pound for pound, and the same guy who plopped a buff and nearly psychotic Linda Hamilton right into the middle of Terminator 2: Judgment Day to not only take on whatever killer robots happened to get into her way, but an entire insane asylum as well.  She even took some time out to go kill the innocent scientist working on the chip left behind by the first terminator.  Then came Demi Moore in GI Jane, a girl who was tough not because she had to be, but just to prove that women could be as tough as men – to make a statement.  By the time Geena Davis started wielding guns and swords in The Long Kiss Goodnight and Cutthroat Island, things were getting just a little cartoonish.

     Then Jamie Lee decided to get in on all this female action that in the past had been relegated to the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and James Bond, and she starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies, courtesy of, who else, James Cameron, modern cinema’s savior for strong female characters who were also, almost without exception, tough as nails bitches.  In True Lies, Curtis plays her part comically mousy all the way through, but then lets loose with enough balls to the wall action by the end as to give Schwarzenegger a run for his money.  Having found her butch side, she then agreed to have another go at Michael Meyers and the Halloween franchise that had put her on the map, only this time, she would be no cowering, crying victim!  This time, she was gonna walk down the middle of the street with an axe like any self respecting male hero would do this side of Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme and scream for the psycho killer to show his chicken ass!

     Can we please put a stop to it now?  Linda Hamilton and Sigourney Weaver played women who had to be tough due to the situations they were in, not to prove something or because it looked like more fun than doing the laundry.  Not to mention that by the time Curtis made Virus, the concept, and the character, were cartoonish and unbelievable, and not even the menacing alien or robot (in this case, a little bit of both) was particularly scary or awesome.  I’ve seen it all before, and Virus is the very definition of a modern “B-Movie,” regardless of whether or not they spent a ton on impressive special effects (and just in case you’re wondering, they’re not that impressive!)

Patch Adams

     That’s twice in a row now that Robin Williams has made a stinker!  In the movie’s defense, however, it did have its moments (even if it felt like they were lifted from other films, such as the “inspirational courtroom speech” which was much better in Scent of a Woman), but the whole premise, and the individual situations, were so contrived and ridiculous, it made the film unintentionally funny in spots where it’s supposed to be serious.  In the end, this is strictly a by-the-numbers medical drama with Williams going through his usual improvisational stream-of-consciousness humor, and in this case, his usual schtick would be, once again, the only bright spot in an otherwise dull film.  In other words, remove Williams and his schtick, and the film is nothing but a clichéd, been there done that, glorified episode of Trapper John M.D.

8mm

First Dustin Hoffman, then Robin Williams, and now, Nicholas Cage; why did they all suddenly decide to start making bad movies?  What’s so disappointing is that each is a really good actor with impressive filmographies.  Cage was already an impressive actor when he became a full-fledged movie star with that superb action trilogy (The Rock, Face/Off, and Con Air), and he also managed to win critical acclaim and a Best Actor Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas at about the same time.  Why did he decide to follow that achievement with three stinkers (City of Angels, Snake Eyes, and 8mm)?

     My twin brother said he’d like to someday own Bruce Willis’ movies – all of them, because Bruce Willis is one of his favorite actors.  And Bruce Willis is good, but everyone makes stinkers.  Everyone has their Hudson Hawk, their Fifth Element, their Bonfire of the Vanities, The Jackal, or Last Man Standing.  It’s just not possible to be great all the time, but it’s disheartening when you come across an entertainer whose work you like, and then they disappoint you once, then twice, then three times, and possibly more.  I am now nowhere near as likely to see the next Nicholas Cage movie.

     As I’ve said many times before, it’s the quality of the writing and how good the story is that matters most.  Everything else is really just window dressing.

The story of 8mm is about one man’s search for truth and justice in a literal world of sin, depravity, and perversion.  I didn’t really want to watch a film that had its main character wallow in perversion all around him.  I wanted a murder mystery, not a visual essay on the dangers of dancing with the devil.  One of the depraved characters here, played by Joaquin Phoenix, tells Cage, “You dance with the devil, you don’t change the devil – the devil changes you!”  That not only applies to Cage’s righteous character here, but also the viewing audience who watches this film, or films like it.  Films such as this, that examine the dark corners of the human race and the violence and torture we are capable of, are always a double-edged sword.  Elite, educated minds can see the skill and the intended message, and appreciate the examination and the stark observation of the human condition and the society we live in, yet being human, even they are not above succumbing to depravity.  Still others will appreciate it only for its violence rather than what it says about violence.  Natural Born Killers also comes to mind, but the message about too much violence that it preaches is lost within a movie with too much violence.

Critics like Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly may appreciate that irony, and the craftsmanship of the overall work, but all of this is lost on an audience who sees none of what the critics or the filmmakers see, but instead end up idolizing the violent characters and glorifying the heavy violence in these films.  Films like this are actually two different movies in one, and one of them is a great study in the depravity of our nation, and the other is a glorification of that depravity.  Which one will the elite critic see, and which one will the un-thinking, common man see?  Now add teenagers into the mix (which was Natural Born Killer’s core audience) and you can not only see the irony here, but also the danger.  I’m of a mind that films like 8mm shouldn’t be made.

Images from:  

http://eccentricoddities.tumblr.com/post/5853777434

http://www.cinema.de/stars/star/jamie-lee-curtis,1569188,ApplicationStar.html

http://apocalypsecinema.blogspot.com/2011/01/8mm.html

Reel Heroes: Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright, Terminator: Salvation

I love stories of redemption, both real and fictional.  In fact, if it weren’t for such stories, people would stay hopelessly lost.  But change is inevitable, and with maturity often comes the ability to see the error of our ways, and to become better men and women than we were before, to “rise above the fall” as one Christian song states.  Stories like this abound in our culture, from real people like atheist C.S. Lewis, who became one of the most vocal Christians of the century when he put his quite intelligent mind towards the task of disproving Christian doctrine, and Robert Downey Jr., who rose above his drug-induced, Hollywood, bad boy days to become (shudder) a conservative republican, to fictional characters like Daniel Craig’s once thieving cowboy amnesiac in Cowboys & Aliens or the ultimately evil Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies, who is eventually saved by his son Luke in The Return of the Jedi.  Like these people and characters, Marcus Wright starts out the beginning of the movie Terminator: Salvation as a bad guy – in fact, a real bad guy; a murderer on death row.  The first scene shows him receiving a lethal injection for his crime.  Then, if you can believe it, things get even worse.  The computers launch an assault against mankind, cutting all manner of robotic terminators loose to wipe out the few human survivors.  And Marcus finds himself reborn upon this landscape, eventually discovering that he’s not even human any more, but “one of them,” a machine, but one the computers cleverly allowed to retain his humanity:  All the better to infiltrate the humans and wipe them out for good!  When he returns to them, with John Conner hot on his trail, he is repaired, and taken in like one of their own, and he is in misery with the knowledge of what he once was, a filthy murderer put to death, and the knowledge of what he is now, a half-man, half-machine pawn of the murderous computer system known as Skynet, used to infiltrate the few remaining humans so the machines could destroy them once and for all.

     But he can’t abide this existence, and therein lies his redemption, and the reason he’s a role model.  He rises above what he once was, and even rises above the pawn he has become.  He rips the computer control from his own head, and goes up against the terminators trying to destroy John Conner and Kyle Reese, the only hope for mankind’s future.  He fights these monstrous androids because he’s the only one who can.  Skynet saw to that when they used his body to recreate him in their image.  Yet he proves he is not one of them, and that he is a human, and manages to redeem himself by his human choices.  In the end, when John Conner’s heart has been pierced and he lies dying in a medical tent, Marcus makes the ultimate sacrifice, believing, perhaps correctly, that it is through this final action that he may just ultimately redeem himself.  He gives his heart to John, so that he might live, and that mankind might continue in the face of insurmountable odds.  He didn’t let the fact that the computers had turned him into a machine stop him from being a man, and to become a better man than he was before, than he ever thought he could be.

     We can all take a lesson from that.  Find your heart, and use it for others.  It is, after all, the Golden Rule.

The Spleen, Frau Blucher, the Borg Queen, and a Boy Who Can Fly: 10 More Great Old Movies

Here’s ten more old movies I liked, which I saw, or saw again, in 1999.  Of Enemy of the State, I said “This was fast paced, high adrenaline entertainment… The filmmakers seemed to go out of their way to make their escapist action film mean something as well.”  I loved Stand by Me, but being that I had already talked about it in my journal before, revealing how I identified with each of the four misfit boys, I didn’t say a whole lot this time other than to say “I found the whole thing entertaining and emotionally satisfying.”  Speaking of Stephen King classics, I said of Carrie “I cannot find one thing to complain about this thoroughly absorbing film.”  I had a little bit more to say about these seven:

Tarzan

I’m just a sucker for Disney’s beautifully animated, thoroughly entertaining extravaganzas, and Tarzan more than upholds that tradition.  Despite a few weak periods over the decades (the late forties, the seventies and early eighties), Disney has consistently released and re-released some classic gems, although I do think they end up crossing the line when they use terms like “classic” and “masterpiece” for even some of their more mundane animated features like The Aristocats and The Rescuers.  They may be cute, and have a large fan base of adoring children, but can they really compare with classics such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi?  Terms like “classic” and “masterpiece” should be reserved strictly for the best of the best, and if you were going to divide all the Disney animated films between the classics and the more mundane features, films like Robin Hood and The Fox and the Hound just aren’t going to be on the same list as Pinocchio and The Little Mermaid.  Tarzan, however, would be on the list of classics.

Star Trek: First Contact

Anybody who knows me or has read my journals would know I’m a devout Trekker!

     This is, in my opinion, the best Star Trek film made so far (as of 1999), and definitely the best featuring the Next Generation cast.  It had a great mixture of some Sci-Fi classics from the past, paying homage to Star Trek past, and also to classic Science Fiction stories outside of Trek, all the while being very intelligent and thoroughly entertaining!  My hat goes off to the creators of this story, managing a worthy villain in the Borg, the introduction of the Borg Queen, well played by Alice Krige, the entire First Contact back story featuring James Cromwell as Zephram Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive, and earth’s first contact with aliens, which wisely turned out to be Vulcans.  On top of all that, they managed to have some dramatic scenes involving Data, Picard, and Worf, plus squeeze in the Holodeck and Picard’s favorite Dixon Hill character, cameos by Dwight Schultz as everybody’s favorite Star Trek neurotic, Reginald Barclay, Deep Space Nine’s “little” ship The Defiant, and even Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram played amusingly by Robert Picardo.  Add to that a juicy, comic, and dramatic performance by Alfre Woodard as Lily, an “Alice in Wonderland” character out of place and time (“Jean Luc, blow up the damned ship!”), and you’ve got quite a good time at the movies, especially for Star Trek fans!  Did I mention Counselor Troi gets drunk off her ass?

Mystery Men

This was a nice surprise that came straight out of left field.  I recommended this movie to my sister, and on just my word that it was good, she and her husband took some friends to see it.  She said later that she was so embarrassed, because it was awful and juvenile.

            She either missed the hilarious superhero parody aspect of this movie, or didn’t care for it.  I still defend this movie!  Sure it’s juvenile (how could it not be with Paul Reubens of Pee Wee fame playing a superhero wannabe named the Spleen, whose superpower is his powerful farts, rendering his adversaries unconscious).  Yet it’s also brilliant in its own way (how could it not be with Paul Reubens of Pee Wee fame playing a superhero wannabe named the Spleen, whose superpower is his powerful farts, rendering his adversaries unconscious).  It always goes back to the level of the writing, and this, in my opinion, is superbly written to just skewer the hell out of comic book superheroes and the movies they inspire. 

This movie is done in the same comedic vein as that old Saturday Night Live skit that had Bill Murray playing Superman, Dan Ackroyd as the Flash, and John Belushi as the Hulk (accidentally sitting on the Invisible Girl when he goes to take a dump!).  In the SNL parody, Garrett Morris played a superhero called Ant Man, who had the ability to communicate with ants, but was also able to shrink himself down to the size of an ant while still retaining his human strength.  When the Flash hears this, he shouts out, “Hey, Hulk, get a load of this guy!  He’s got the strength of a human!”  This movie has that same kind of quality to it.  It’s a treasured find simply because, first, it’s not very popular, making it a cult film, and secondly, being a cult film that’s rather unpopular with the masses, it’s not really understood or appreciated by most people like it is by me.  Being a fan of Star Trek, I know what that feels like!  Like its main characters, the movie itself is an underdog amongst all the more popular films, and definitely the least appreciated, even though, in my humble opinion, it doesn’t deserve its stigma.

The Boy Who Could Fly

Now dated, this is still a very enjoyable sleeper, a simple story about life and the ways we cope.  In the end, the charismatic Eric (Jay Underwood) could really fly simply because he believed in himself and what he could do, and taught everyone else a lesson in believing in themselves so they can achieve what they only dream of!  I love the moral of this movie!  That’s classic movie making and storytelling, and Eric, despite his withdrawn personality, should be a role model to all of us, just like he was to the other characters in the story.  Do what you dream!

The Sixth Sense

I wanted very badly to see this movie, and it was definitely worth the ticket price.  Everything clicked, from the creepy atmosphere and shocks to Haley Joel Osmet’s great performance to Bruce Willis as the boy’s psychologist to that great twist ending and the direction the story ended up going in, making this more than just a scary supernatural thriller, but an extremely intelligent one.  I mean, how many stories about ghosts (up to the time this movie was made) would have the victim of these ghost attacks actually try to help these troubled spirits?  I just loved it!

A Simple Plan

This was an unexpected treat and sleeper hit!  What would you do if you found a bag full of money?  We’re talking millions of dollars!  This film is a well-written exploration of how money is the root of all evil, and how it brings out the worst in people, stripping them of whatever masks they may have been wearing.  The money here doesn’t so much corrupt anybody as cause the characters to reveal who they really are.  In the midst of trying to keep secrets and lies, these people really end up revealing the truth about themselves, and it ain’t pretty!  The script is excellent, the movie absorbing, and the acting first rate, especially the central characters played by Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thorton, and Brigitte Fonda.  Paxton, in particular, is brilliant in this role of a normal guy caught up in extraordinary circumstances, doing things he never thought he’d do.  This money merely ended up unmasking everyone, including his manipulative wife and tragic brother.  One of the best thrillers of the 90’s!

Young Frankenstein

My favorite “Halloween” movie, and one that I never get tired of, is Young Frankenstein.  Like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which we watch every year (“Clark, we’re stuck under a truck!”), Young Frankenstein is becoming an annual movie event for Halloween.  It is just so funny!  My three year old niece Emily Rose has cracked everybody up by repeating dialogue from the movie just out of the blue, and she even gets the accents right:  “Poot zee condal bok!” and “Werewolf – There wolf!” and if you say the name Frau Blücher in front of her, she’ll whiney like a horse!  It is sooo cute!  Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is also hilarious, and a Halloween movie staple, yet takes second place to Young Frankenstein.

Images from:

http://technorati.com/entertainment/article/star-trek-45th-anniversary-alice-krige/

http://www.universalstudiosentertainment.com/mystery-men/

http://www.cineplex.com/Movies/Archives/CS79704/The-Boy-Who-Could-Fly/Photo.aspx?id=248322 http://www.aveleyman.com/FilmCredit.aspx?FilmID=21781

Real Heroes: Thomas Kinkade - Rest in Peace, Painter of Light

I was shocked by this news story about the death of Thomas Kinkade:  http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20120407/US.Obit.Kinkade/.  After seeing the movie The Christmas Cottage, I posted in this very blog about it:  http://scifichristianguy.blogspot.com/2012/01/made-for-tv-christmas-movies-morgans.html.  Every month in my journal, I always name someone who I admire, and after seeing this movie about Kinkade, I chose to site him as a role model, someone who was living life the way I think it should be lived.  He will be missed.  I find it interesting that in this very news story link above, they mention how the public loved his work, but the critics did not, and it's the very same thing I talk about in my tribute to him, explaining what it is about him I liked well enough to name him as a Real Hero:

I don't quite understand it, but think critics, and perhaps other painters, may have a problem with him, in the same way they have a problem with Stephen King.  Stephen King himself has talked about this problem, and said something to the effect that once an artist reaches a certain amount of fame, his art is equated with fast food.  While other “more serious” writers are trying to churn out serious, more artistic tombs, Stephen King’s books were starting to be treated like McNovels.  He even addresses it in some of his stories, writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and a couple of his characters (Paul Sheldon in Misery, Thad Beaumont/George Stark in The Dark Half) are writers much like himself, churning out their popular and still well written genre pieces, put yearning for more praise from the critics and attempting to stretch themselves with deeper works and themes.

     I think some critics, and maybe some other famous painters, don’t take Thomas Kinkade seriously, in the same way they didn’t take Norman Rockwell too seriously until many years after his death (and even now, they may still not take him all that seriously).  Good painters, perhaps, but can they compare to the Masters?  Can Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers and Kinkade’s “simple” and idealized nostalgic landscapes of light compare with the masterworks of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Monet, van Gogh, and Picasso?  The art critic would find Kinkade too commercialized, and then view his work with disdain, I’m sure.

      But ask me if I care!  I’ve seen some of the “serious and thematic” paintings by the likes of these painters, and while I tend towards renaissance and realism in the paintings I enjoy, and even some impressionism, when they get too high brow, the paintings themselves start to get strange.  They may be powerfully thematic, but then they start to impress only scholars and lose touch with the common man.  I’ve seen paintings the critics seem to love, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso, The Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo, and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans by Salvador Dali, and paintings like this may impress art critics, but yeach!  

This is the very reason these art critics may have a problem with artists like Rockwell and Kinkade, and the reason art movements like expressionism and cubism aren’t wholly embraced by the general public.  It’s a struggle that occurs in all the arts, from fashion and performance art to photography, music to television, books and poetry to plays and film.  Each of these art forms has their less popular but serious works the learned critics tend to like, and each of them also has the pulpy popular stuff that pleases the masses.  I sometimes can appreciate the less accessible art that doesn’t generally appeal to the masses (such as the expressionist painting The Scream by Edvard Munch), but more often than not, I go along with the popular crowd, especially with something like paintings.  I’d much rather have something – anything – by Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade, hanging in my living room than some strange looking piece of art from a movement like expressionism or cubism.

     With that said, let me also just say that I love the paintings of Thomas Kinkade, and I really admire the man himself!  After watching the biographical movie The Christmas Cottage, a movie I would like to own now, I’ve come to see this gentle Painter of Light as a fellow compassionate, kind, and sympathetic spirit.  I admire him for the same reasons I said I admired the fictional character of Michael Sullivan from those Star Trek: Voyager episodes “Fair Haven” and “Spirit Folk” that I wrote about before.  Thomas Kinkade has achieved the kind of life I would like to have, doing what he loves and (seemingly) having an uncomplicated life full of the love of Christ.  He doesn’t seem to care what the critics say, but paints the kinds of pictures he loves and that speak to the common man, especially the Christian, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as pride doesn’t get in the way.  And talent?  Boy, does he have talent!  I love his inviting, colorful paintings.  His art may not be critically thematic, but it presents an inviting and romanticized world that speaks to the Christian heart about the way things could be without sin in the world, and illustrate, perhaps, a little bit of what Heaven may one day feel like.

     But more than just his beautiful paintings and his gentle, loving spirit, the man, by all outward appearances I have seen, has a deep love for God.  I’m not saying he’s perfect, because none of us are perfect, and in fact, if you Google “Thomas Kinkade Christian,” you are likely to find articles about some of his possible failings as such.  True or not, by the same token, if you were to investigate anyone, you’d likely come across someone who didn’t like them and had some negative things to say.  I love Dinesh D’Souza, but the internet is brimming over with people who can’t stand him.  I’d hate to see what others might have to say about me!  I realize the kinds of things that might happen to a man, even a Christian man, once he becomes a business, and his name alone is a selling point, but I can still applaud the image of himself he is selling to the masses, whether or not it’s true (and I choose to believe it is true).  There are many who have achieved his level of fame who don’t project the positive and loving Christian image he does.  He is leading others to God.  I’ve always maintained that the people I admire are most likely idealized versions, sort of like Kinkade’s paintings themselves.  You can hope, but you’re not likely to find something in the real world quite as enchanted as Kinkade’s perfect landscapes full of delightful cabins with blissful light shining from them any more than you’re likely to find people who won’t ultimately let you down in one way or another.  My admiration of Thomas Kinkade is for the qualities I can see and would like to see more of in myself.  At the very least, I can wish for the ideal, and I for one would rather give him the benefit of the doubt, because that’s what loving Christians do.  At any rate, I’d like to one day meet the man and judge for myself.  Other than these few internet complainers (and who knows if you can really trust them either, because, after all, who are they anyway), I’ve liked what I’ve seen and heard about the man!  I strive to find that same passion in my writing.

The Avengers (Not the New One), a Fallen Angel, V'Ger, and, of course, Beloved: 10 Bad Old Movies

I love movies, but certainly not all movies.  Some are mildly bad, some are really bad, some are so bad they’re actually good, and some, inexplicably, draw big stars and big names to them and yet stink up our movie theaters and DVD players for months, just as Oprah Winfrey’s pet project Beloved, based on a famed Toni Morrison novel, happened to do!  I have no doubt the novel might just be interesting and perhaps thought provoking, but it’s not The Help, and the movie was a mess!

     The list below contains films I saw when I started documenting which movies I loved and hated back in 1999, and features, among others, a few forgettable romances, disappointing horror films, The Avengers (not the new one, but the movie remake of the old TV series), and even the first Star Trek motion picture! 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

It wasn’t worth the wait.  This thing has none of the qualities that made the original series such a cherished treasure.  The original series cast looks tired and old, in their new uniforms that look like pajamas, the atmosphere is passionless and dull, and about ¾ of the movie is a series of bloated, over-budget special effects and the casts’ reaction, staring out the main bridge view screen with awe and wonder and fascination.  Just how many times do we need to see Sulu widen his eyes with his mouth gaping open, or Spock raise his eyebrow, or bald guest star Persis Khambatta put her fingers to her chin as she contemplates the effects taking place on the main view screen.  Enough!

Real Genius

Got it for Christmas, and it was passably enjoyable, but definitely not a keeper.  I’ve seen star Val Kilmer do better in many other films.  In retrospect, this is just one of dozens of forgettable 80’s teen comedies.  Ferris Bueller it isn’t.  It’s not even Revenge of the Nerds.

John Carpenter’s Vampires

Some of my friends liked this one more than Blade, but oh, not me!  Vampires was missing the style of Blade, and without style and mood and lavish productions like the aforementioned films, like Interview with the Vampire, then the vampires just wind up looking silly.

            Take From Dusk Till Dawn as a case in point.  The movie is very good up to and including the very hot dance that Selma Hayek does with a snake, using her foot as a glass by putting it in Quentin Tarantino’s mouth and pouring liquor down her leg!  Then she goes through some quick, special effects CGI transformation and attacks him, and from that point on, the story changes gears rapidly, with the style and mood sustained through the first half chucked out of the window in favor of silly and stupid vampires without any personality or style.  The entire second half of this movie is moronic!  The vampires are absurd here, and not the fleshed out, living entities of Interview with the Vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Near Dark, or even, yes, Blade!  The vampires in these better films are more than just mindless monsters; they’re characters.  The vampires in John Carpenter’s Vampires are not the seemingly real creatures of Interview with the Vampire, complete with wants, and fears, and emotions, but are more like the idiotic, cardboard zombie creatures of From Dusk Till Dawn.

Bed of Roses

This thing was vapid, seemed short, and lacked the characters and emotions of a really good film.  As romance films go, few get down and dirty with real characters, preferring wistful storybook romance over full-fledged, real people.  If you want characters with substance and more than one or two dimensions, look elsewhere.

City of Angels

Does this movie understand the cosmic themes of the afterlife, or was it just a chance for Hollywood to put two of its most bankable romantic leads into a movie about a woman who falls in love with a literal angel?  I can certainly understand why a movie like this might appeal to the studios and audiences, especially with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage attached as the two leads, yet ultimately, this movie has an angel giving up eternity in heaven with God for a short existence with Meg Ryan.  Even Satan wouldn’t be so foolish, and this movie simply felt wrong (though some women I’ve talked to believe it is the ultimate romance, a story where a woman finds out the man who loves her is actually an angel who is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to be with her!).  Then what do we make of that ending [SPOILER ALERT!] where he falls from heaven, and then she’s killed, leaving him alone and fallen?  Was it divine retribution for caring about a human more than his creator?  Divine retribution doesn’t make for warm-hearted romance, and I don’t understand how these women who defend it can possibly like that ending!

Snake Eyes

I loved Nicolas Cage’s action trio The Rock, Face/Off, and Con Air.  I didn’t care for his Oscar winning Leaving Las Vegas.  Now, with City of Angels and this Brian De Palma film, he rolls snake eyes.  While the first was an immoral as well as bland romance, Snake Eyes was a bland De Palma thriller, and [SPOILER ALERT!] even Gary Sinise as the surprise bad guy can’t do much with it.  Carrie remains De Palma’s best, though the ultra-violent Scarface and the underrated comedy Wise Guys are very close seconds, and almost everything else was slow, strange, and dreamy, from his early thrillers like Sisters and Obsession, to later ones that came along after Carrie, like The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, and Raising Cain.  No wonder he switched over into other genres with films like The Untouchables, Mission Impossible, and Casualties of War (and even these films were mostly technical, with De Palma more worried about editing and camera trickery than the actual story he was trying to tell).  With his thrillers, even his fans describe him as a second rate Alfred Hitchcock, and Snake Eyes doesn’t do anything to dispel that description.

Beloved

This Oprah Winfrey piece of trash stunk up Terry’s basement for a month!  What is Oprah Winfrey doing making complete garbage like this for?  It was disgusting, and their attempts at deep philosophy and social commentary just wind up looking not just stupid, but completely brain dead, like its main character, Beloved.

Pleasentville

This film is one up on Beloved simply because it was infinitely more colorful and dazzling, with a tremendous cast including Toby McGuire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, and Jeff Daniels.  However, what we saw was an extremely pro-liberal, anti-conservative story with some very pretty window dressing.  The whole thing was designed to make people think morality is a bad thing, and that the oppression of freedom, any freedom, harkens back to the days society was segregated and blacks were treated like second class citizens.  I understand the themes of suffrage, and the need to struggle against the tyranny of people who shove their vision of moral perfection on everyone else, but by the same token, I know we can’t just allow people to live any damned old way they feel like, or society will rot like worms in an apple.  But no matter what I feel about this movie, I will have to admit, it did something Beloved tried to do, but failed:  no matter what side of the political fence I’m on, Pleasentville at least made me think.  I can at least look at the movie and be able to tell what the filmmakers were attempting, and be able to at least compliment them for being intelligent, and for making an original, creative, and intelligent movie.  I still don’t know what they were trying to do with Beloved!

Mary Reilly

I’ve wanted to see this movie ever since it came out.  I had been enjoying some modern versions of classic horror stories, and I was anticipating seeing this retelling of the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” story from the point of view of the doctor’s maid, and starring Julia Roberts as Mary and John Malkovich as Jekyll & Hyde.  But boy was it dreary, and depressing, and boring!  Jekyll should have been more noble, and Hyde should have been more ruthless and psychotic, and Mary should have been more emotionally invested, especially with Dr. Jekyll, but like the audience, she seemed rather uninterested and passé about the whole affair.  A misstep at best.

The Avengers

Not the new superhero movie.  These reviews are all from 1999, so this is the big movie remake of the old TV series about two super-sleuths, starring Ralph Fiennes as John Steed and Uma Thurman as Emma Peel.  Based on the initial buzz surrounding the film, I was expecting it to be just horrendous, but curiosity got the better of me, and truthfully, it was a mess, but a pretty mess.  Some of the scenes were just bizarre, like those involving the life-sized Teddy Bears, and I much preferred the old series with Patrick McGee and Diana Rigg.  Hearing that classic theme music made me want to watch some of the old shows again.


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