movies

There was a thought-provoking article by Catholic Veritas titled The Dark Knight Rises: Sacred Art. Most of the main characters, locations, and themes were related to similar Christian names, places, and themes, but one character left unexplored was Peter Foley, the deputy police commissioner who had a rather large role in the film, considering the number of other leading cast members.

I noticed, in watching the movie a second time, a certain scene where police are martyred by the main protagonist (to the words of "Shoot them. Shoot them all."), and the camera moves to a closeup of one of the police officers (Peter Foley), laying murdered in the street, in his dress attire.

An observant person would notice a few things about this scene:

Judging by the trailers for this movie, I think it will probably be a pretty thrilling and interesting movie that handles Catholic faith and morality well. The production value looks to be a bit higher than some other recent Catholic/Christian films, and I'm excited to see some top-notch actors and actresses in the credits, including Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria and Eduardo Verástegui.

The movie will be released June 1st, 2012 (just a short time from now). Here's the trailer:

After receiving the typical deluge of 'new faith-based movie coming soon!' marketing emails from The Maximus Group, my wife and I decided to go watch October Baby last night.

I'll just offer a few observations here, as I don't want to get into a full-on review, especially since there are hundreds of more-detailed reviews online. To preface this review, I'm going mostly on techincal/production quality merit... the story was compelling, and the movie is worth watching, but I don't feel this movie was worth a full $10+ ticket price at a movie theater.

I've only been using the Apple TV for a few days now, but I have used it enough to jot down a few first impressions. I'll likely do a full-on review at some point in the future.

Some of the things I really, really like about the ATV (I have the black/2010 model):

Avid fans of the original Tron (like myself) have likely anticipated the release of Tron: Legacy since the day the first hints of a remake appeared in 2008. A lot of pressure was on the Legacy filmmakers to not only keep the original sense of wonderment and otherworldliness of the first movie, but also bring the technology and ideas from the first movie into the twenty-first century.

The short version of this review is: you should see this movie. It is a great homage to the original, and it has enough digital effects, and just enough plot (just like the first one—the plot was never a strong point!) to keep your eyes on the screen.

Image from Geekologie

From a friend's blog post on Avatar:

People applauded at the end of the film, which I found a bit disturbing. Visually, it was awesome. But we just saw humanity slaughtered on an alien planet. We just saw the greed of humanity at its worst. We just saw a terrible spirituality exalted as ideal. And, finally, we just saw the remnant of the humans sent back “to their dying planet,” and we cheered.

No wonder people feel depressed after stepping out of the theater and back into reality. We are scum. We are parasites. We deserve to die on this rotting planet for our sins against Mother Earth.