After the tepid “Troy” and the awful “Alexander”, I was hoping “Kingdom of Heaven” would be a change in pace. And I was wrong. Even with Ridley Scott at the helm, I was just so disappointed. Continue reading
Tag Archives: religion
10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America
One of the more notable episodes coming up on the History Channel’s “10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America” event, is the exploration of “The Scopes Monkey Trial”. The upcoming series from the History Channel involves ten episodes exploring ten fateful days that changed the landscape of American culture and history, and they examine truly relevant events that changed our way of thinking from the gold rush, and the emergence of rock music in to conservative culture.
One of the events chronicled here in the great series is The Scopes Monkey Trial which would later inspire the great Arthur Miller to write one of his most amazing plays “Inherit The Wind”. As someone who has been immersed in the incredibly volatile debate brewing in our country about creationism vs. evolution, I decided to watch the Scopes episode first. “10 Days” is a series that is a mixture of a documentary, a chronicle, and filmed sequences by film directors from David Helbroner of “Southern Comfort”, to award-winning documentary director Bruce Sinofsky and it’s a major event for the History Channel.
Religion and science is an ongoing battle that may very well go all the way in to the end of human existence. Some people prefer to think we were born of logical origin, and some prefer to think were born in the image of a god, and what happened around this time was that people were so against the theory of evolution that they arrested John Scopes as a scapegoat to make an example of him. From this came William Jennings Brian who was a devout Christian, and Clarence Darrow an evolutionist and agnostic who came to his friend John’s defense. This material even without the help of Arthur Miller is engrossing plain and simple.
What’s so good about the series “10 Days” is their episodes are paralleled to issues that are important today, in some way or another. And the “Scopes” episode is representative of the ongoing debate of creationism and evolutionism today that has and continues splitting America. The series also explores both sides of the issues, scrutinizing both Darrow and Brian. Upcoming episodes for “10 Days” including “When America Was Rocked” concerning the rock influence on Conservative America, and “Gold Rush” about the California Gold Rush.
Crusades: Crescent & the Cross
“The Crusades”–most recently depicted in the epic “Kingdom of Heaven”–is the focus of yet another documentary in the History Channel’s sprawling documentary epic called “The Crusades: The Crescent and the Cross”. The Crusades was the ultimate holy war, one the world is experiencing now, but it was less a war of religion, but more a journey to prove their religion wasn’t in vain. As an interviewee declares, it was less of a search and more to prove their love of their religion, and ultimately futile effort that would prove later on.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
I believe that the intention of Mel Gibson and this entire production was noble. The idea, that of bringing the relevance of Christ’s sacrifice to the forefront, is something that a lot of people love and identify with. I am an atheist myself, but I believe in many of the philosophies Christ espoused, and I pattern a lot of my life on his tactics and thought. I believe in honesty, truth, martyrdom for good causes, beauty, and most of all, I search for a God with all of my heart and want to find some kind of supernatural existence for us all through writing. That’s the intent of these creators, I am assured. Unfortunately, the best laid plans.
The Magdalene Sisters (2002)
“The Magdalene Sisters” takes place on 1964, the heels of the women’s liberation front where young women realized their sexuality and did so through protest, standing up for their rights, and burning their bras showing they wouldn’t be constricted sexually through man made products, yet here we visit a village in Ireland where women’s liberation hasn’t quite caught up. If anything “The Magdalene Sisters”, a well acted and very well directed film, analyzes the constriction of women in Ireland and how utterly one – dimensional their values were. It’s more of a film centered completely around ignorance and not only about religious ignorance, but social ignorance, and paranoia that the slightest thing will destroy the religious function and faith.
The Order (2003)
What “The Order” suffers from is what many supernatural films suffer from: it has decent direction and interesting visuals but it’s end result is bland, boring, and devastatingly bleak. As well as being contrived and derivative. Crooked churches, secret organizations within the church, mysterious priests who have other connections, creepy looking children who are in the film just to be creepy, and characters that barely have any personality at all. Ledger plays Alex Bernier, a conflicted young priest whose mentor has just died and now the church is investigating his suicide. Alex is called upon by another priest (Peter Weller) who suspects that his mentor has been murdered now begins investigating his murder and hopes to bury his mentor in the church graveyard while discovering a mysterious cult that is tied to his mentor’s death.
Bruce Almighty (2003)
“Bruce Almighty” makes the message perfectly clear; everything has a consequence. Every choice, every reflex has a consequence and everyone pays for it in the end. Bruce is taught that there are people far worse than he could ever imagine though he refuses to see beyond his own self-centered self obsessed world to discover that. He pulls in the moon and creates stars for his girlfriend one night and ends up causing a massive monsoon on the other side of the world, he grants everyone’s blessings with a “yes” answer thus causing chaos, even granting everyone the win in the lottery and people only getting 17 to 20 dollars. It’s never that simple, it can’t be that simple and Bruce discovers that with terrible results.