This Side of Eden - Trailer

A great and simple portrait of celebrating Holy Week and the Easter Triduum.

The Way - Sheen, Estivez

Let's keep our ears to the rails and see if we can find where this film will be showing. It is, according to one reviewer, the "perfect Easter family film."

Mud Pies & Kites

My friend Gerry, back in Haiti again and asking for help to finish his documentary.

"It's Not About the Money" Clip - Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

"It's not about the money, it's about the 'game' - the 'game' between people."

In Battling to the End René Girard shares his understanding of the closeness of war and exchange. Through the eyes of Carl von Clausewitz (who introduces the notion that humanity is always moving toward an 'escalation to extremes') sees reciprocal action, which covers exchange between people, market trade and bellicose relations, as the equalivance to a duel and that it is the hidden structure of all social phenomena.

Clausewitz established an equivalence between war and monetary exchange - he saw no real difference between the two activities (trade would not be a metaphor for war, but would concern the same reality).

Girard writes: "Trade thus has all the features of war: if smooth settlement of exchanges degenerates into furious competition, a trade war can become a real war."

"We exchange goods so as not to exchange blows. Exchange, whether commercial or bellicose, is an institution, in other words, a form of protection, a simple means. If the institution is seen as an end, we fall back into violent reciprocity. Our emotional and spiritual lives have the same structure as our economic life... Exchanges must not be seen for what they are, in other words, reciprocal. This is the law that has to be complied with in order to live together. Life is livable only if reciprocity does not appear. Many anthropologists have trouble seeing this... (t)hey compete with one another to describe the complexity of the differences and social rules, without seeing that the rules are only there to prevent the return of reciprocity."

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader

I was recollecting this story A Dragon's Tale by Marjorie Thompson today and I discovered that the movie of CS Lewis' book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be coming out next month.  Awesome.  Before you get swept away by the movie check out this little piece called, A Dragon's Tale.  And for you Radio Theatre Drama buffs link to my post above and get a taste of this very segment of the book describing Eustace stripping off the scales from the dragon that he had become.

Every Great Actor

Me and Orson Welles

Welles: "You really are a God created actor Richard. These aren’t just words for I recognize the look."


Richard: "The look?"


Welles: “The bone-deep understanding that your life is so utterly without meaning that simply to survive you have to reinvent yourself. Because if people can’t find you, they can’t dislike you. You see, if I can be Brutus tonight – I mean, really be him from the inside out – then for ninety minutes I get this miraculous reprieve from being myself. That’s what you see in every great actor’s eyes, you know.”



This short scene jumped out at me. We really are like actors (of course in denial) desiring to play the role of someone else. Think about it... Read this great paper from our friend and mentor Gil Bailie, THE SUBJECT OF GAUDIUM ET SPES RECLAIMING A CHRISTOCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

Is it not time to surrender and let Christ be your life? Col 3:4

Cool Hand Luke - What we got here is a failure to communicate

wish you'd stop being so good to me, captain.

the man - the motion picture that simply will not conform.

there aint nothin to come back for.

Paul Newman - Cool Hand Luke - "Plastic Jesus"

i dont care if it rains or freezes, long as i got my plastic jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car. comes in colors, pinks and pleasant, glows in the dark cause its iridescent. take it with you when you travel far. get yourself a sweet madonna, dressed in rhinestone sittin on a pedestal of abalone shell, going ninety i aint scary cause i got the virgin mary assuring me that i WONT GO TO HELL!!!!! THANKZ PAUL NEWMAN.

God's Warrior - Best definition of what true evangelizing is all about

"God is Truth and it is your job to point them toward Him."

Letters to God

Worse Than Golden Compass?

Steven D. Greydanus of Decent Films says it plainly: Don't go see Robin Hood. Ridley Scott is still in the Middle Ages revisionist mode.

Up - Down-to-earth

The Pixar film UP is filled with the usual amazing story line, animation whiz-bangery, and laughs that any child has come to expect when dragging parents to a matinee or birthday outing.

What was unexpected was the four minute depiction of Carl and childhood sweetheart Ellie's marriage. As someone who has shared the ups and downs of realtime marriage for thirty years plus, I find it surprisingly heart-string pulling and, well, down-to-earth.

See it here.

I am "just" a vessel

Born of Hope

Of all the film projects surrounding the epic sub-creation of
J. R. R. Tolkien, my favorites are those still in production via Actorsatworkproductions.com, Kate Madison, Producer. These works of love are available solely on-line.

The latest, and best, Born of Hope, in words from the website is "a 60 minute Lord of the Rings inspired film being produced in the UK. A low budget production, the entire cast and crew are giving their services for no financial gain. The subject matter and quality has attracted people from around the world to join the team, even gaining support and interest from some of the original New Line Trilogy cast and crew members including Richard Taylor and the Oscar® winning team at Weta Workshop, New Zealand."

To view Born of Hope, go here. (Click on subtitles; the soundtrack is iffy.)

Year One

World is going to hell in a hand basket or rather ending as we know it so let us start all over without all this God stuff...

A teaser for Gerry Straub's long awaited film on St Francis

Gerry is known as a superb cinema photographer who works benefit the poor. I believe that my friend's gift of weaving a story around and through our hearts is his greatest gift though. Check out Gerry Here to see a few more excerpts of San Damiano films on Youtube.

Theater of Cruelty - For the Masses

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

All Sound, No Music

Anthony Esolen writes on some important cultural realities. Pay close attention to what he sees as indicatives and imperatives.

Recently my family and I watched The Sound of Music for perhaps the twelfth time - probably the last great musical that Hollywood ever produced. It made me wonder if I could list the reasons why such a movie could not now be made.

These reasons I offer below; but it seems to me that they can all be united under the single assertion that the intellectual, imaginative, and emotional palette of the American people has suffered a terrible constriction, a reduction to the tedium of lust and greed and the thirst for power. It is not so much that Hollywood would not make a movie like The Sound of Music as it is that the people themselves would be hard pressed to understand it...MORE>>

Screens Dripping with Blood

David P. Goldman - remembered fondly by many readers as 'Spengler' in his cloaked identity - notes a six-fold increase in horror/gore/slasher movies since 1999 in Be Afraid – Be Very Afraid.

As occasional Girardians, the 4 Mass'keteers might discuss this trend, and, of course, we invite others to do so as well.

Bella Star Inspires Brit Youth

And speaking of actors:

LONDON, AUG. 25, 2009 (Zenit.org).- This week, the actor Eduardo Verastegui will join some 1,500 British youth in a prayer festival.

A press release from the bishops' conference of England and Wales announced that the leading man of the movie "Bella" will be speaking at the upcoming Youth 2000 festival, a 5-day retreat that begins Thursday.

This annual program aims to provide a "gateway" back into the Church for young people, age 16-30, who no longer practice their Catholic faith.

The press release noted that this festival unfolds in the style of World Youth Day, with talks, testimonies, dynamic prayer and worship...More>>

Mickey Rourke, Faith, Second Chances

Rome, Italy, Aug 25, 2009 / 10:44 am (CNA).- Famed Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke, who was at the Sarajevo Film Festival last week, told a Bosnian newspaper that he thanks God and his Catholic faith for giving him a “second chance” in life to overcome his addictions, which almost led him to commit suicide.

Speaking to the Bosnian daily “Avaz,” Rourke said, “God gave me a second chance in life and I thank Him.”

Rourke achieved fame in the 80s with action films and erotic thrillers. At the beginning of the 90s he left film for boxing and fell into heavy drug and alcohol addiction.

According to the newspaper, during the most difficult moments of his life, his psychiatrist and his priest were his best friends ...

In 2005, when he began to land bigger roles in films, he revealed to a magazine that he was meeting often with his pastor in New York and was on the verge of suicide. “If I weren’t Catholic I would have blown my brains out,” he said. More>>