Is It Possible?

Children of Men is a movie that took me by surprise when I first heard of it. The general plot of that film is that in the future mankind is sterile and the race is dying out. In the midst of this decaying world, one woman miraculously becomes pregnant. The renewal of the human race depends upon the safety of that unborn baby.

This is quite a remarkable thing to come out of Hollywood - to cast an unborn child as the savior of the human race. When so many from the Left coast want to support an ideology that completely rejects the humanity of the unborn, to see a movie like this is startling.

There have been other recent movies that have been surprising. I was very surprised to see abstinence until marriage celebrated (and promiscuity painted in so ugly a way) in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Now, the makers of that film are coming out with a new shocker: Knocked Up. The story of two young strangers who have a one night stand only to discover six weeks later that a baby is on the way. Not having seen the film, I can only comment on the trailer in which there is no mention of Hollywood's favorite "choice", abortion. Instead, we see how the young couple try to learn if they can make the relationship work in order to raise the baby together. It's a romantic comedy that in the end may very well show the power of a parent's commitment and sacrifice. I hope that this movie follows Virgin's lead and promotes marriage and family in a very clear, if not completely orthodox way.

Is this a new trend? Is this possibly part of the ripple effect from The Passion of the Christ that I talked about last year? Could there be a new wave of films coming out that actually promote chastity, unborn babies, marriage, and family? How this got past the Producers-Who-Know-How-You-Should-Think in Hollywood is beyond me.

As always, I remain somewhat skeptical. There's always the chance the trailers are white-washed to lure the conservative Christian viewers to the theater, leaving out the juicy parts. But then that's what I thought about The 40 Year Old Virgin. I actually avoided the film for a while until a friend told me about it's surprising message. Despite the positive moral, even Virgin had enough "junk" in it to make it something I wouldn't let my kids see until they were in their 20's, but it's worth referring to those old enough to see it. There's just enough titillating stuff in it to make fully secularized kids and young adults want to see it. The full power of the message of the film is saved until right at the very end.

I wonder if that's how they sneaked it past the censors.

A Political Metaphor

I got this in an email this afternoon...

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?"

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."

Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

A Sneak Peak Into The Edwards' Campaign Staff

A couple weeks ago John Edwards, the prominent Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination hired two bloggers to work on the internet side of his election campaign. Shortly after the two were hired, it came to light that both had made a series of recent and thoroughly offensive anti-Catholic statements on their respective personal Web sites.

Here is one example that is clean enough to reproduce:

The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels.

Now, to get the full force of the issue at hand, the Catholic League has provided a link to the original comments made by the Edwards staffers. It's some tough reading, but necessary to grasp the depth of the bigotry that is being embraced by the Left.
**Warning: the original comments are profane, obscene, blasphemous and un-edited.**

If these comments were about blacks, Jews, Muslims, or homosexuals, you would expect the public outcry to have been overwhelming. Instead Edwards is standing by his staffers. Catholic League President William Donohue comments:

When Mel Gibson got drunk and made anti-Semitic remarks, he paid a price for doing so. When Michael Richards got angry and made racist remarks, he paid a price for doing so. When Isaiah Washington got ticked off and made anti-gay remarks, he paid a price for doing so. But John Edwards thinks the same rules don’t apply to him, which is why he has chosen to embrace foul-mouthed anti-Catholic bigots on his payroll.

To think that these two women are working to put John Edwards in the White House is scary. In one respect I shouldn't be surprised, but it's shocking nonetheless. What these vitriolic comments do emphasize is something I've heard conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager say many times: Conservatives think Liberals are wrong, but Liberals think Conservatives [or the religious] are bad... There is a big difference between the two - especially when framing the arguments for debate.

I don't really think Edwards has much of a chance against Hillary or even Obama, so in the end it could be a moot point as far as the Edwards campaign goes, but what this does reveal is more insight into how the Left thinks, including those working for Hillary and Obama.

The election is a long way off, so a lot of the conversation is a bit premature, I know. But the Left is already launching their campaign 600+ days in advance, so we have to get ready for what amounts to a 2-year propaganda onslaught. The Republican party has a few presidential hopefuls, but so far there hasn't been a single unifying candidate that the whole base feels really good about. Instead we have McCain with his group of supporters, Giuliani with his camp, Romney and so on. I suppose that's normal this far out.

The real problem is that the Right may not become fully unified even once the official Republican candidate is nominated. I'm already hearing things like, "If Giuliani gets the nomination, I'll just sit out the vote because he's pro-choice." The same things are being said about McCain and Romney for their own reasons, so I'm not so sure how unified the Right will be even when there is only one person to worry about.

I used to be one of those "I'll sit out the vote" types. I'm not proud to say that I didn't vote until GW Bush's first run. What got me to get off my duff wasn't the sterling record of Bush. To be honest, I didn't look into it that much. What convinced me that it was important to vote was the fear that if I didn't Gore would win. And I knew enough about how Gore saw things to know that I didn't want him to lead us into the new millennium. I knew that a no vote for the Right equals a yes vote for the Left.

Even if we have to vote for a pro-choice Republican, there's something to be said for keeping folks who think like Amanda Marcotte and Mellisa McEwan from running the country. And how will this episode with the two foul bloggers end? Brian Saint-Paul of Crisis Magazine offers this prediction:

After an unnecessarily long wait (courtesy of Edward’s political tin ear), both Marcotte and McEwan will “resign,” issuing a statement saying that they regret their past remarks and the damage they caused Edwards. Furthermore, they’ll thank the former senator for standing by them against the “attacks” from the Right.

For his part, Edwards will “sadly” accept their decision, and will then say that he hopes America can now move on from these “distractions” to discuss the real issues facing the nation. Oh, and he’ll assure Catholics that he has nothing but respect for them and their religion.

At that point, will anyone believe him? We shall see.

UPDATE Tuesday 2/13:
Catholic League announced today that Amanda Marcotte has quit.
Donohue comments:

The Edwards campaign is in total disarray and the meltdown will continue unless McEwan is removed from his staff. The fact that Marcotte had to quit suggests that Edwards doesn’t have the guts to do what is morally right. He has one more chance—fire McEwan now.

Brian Saint-Paul has the gift!

Film's Next Frontier

The first films were silent, and black & white. Then came sound followed quickly by color. Over the years picture quality has undergone an evolution as film and color processing have become better understood. Audio quality has undergone a similar transformation moving from mono to stereo to THX surround.

Film making as an art has undergone its own evolution as brilliant directors have shown us the many ways in which the art can be crafted. Part of that evolution has been the growth of the technology behind making films including cameras, camera rigging, set design, effects and so on. The effects department has probably been the single biggest growth sector in the movie industry, revolutionizing the way stories can be told by making the impossible to photograph possible to render.

We have been blitzed in the past decade with movies that have ever-increasing "wow" factor. In recent years, the films that seem to have been working the hardest in that regard have been of the horror genre. What was a tense off-camera moment in a Hitchcock film, can now be a fully visible gore-fest - not with stand-ins or with rubber prosthetics. Oh no. Through the beauty of CGI, we can see Sarah Michelle Gellar's eyeball get drilled out... in slow motion if we like.

But, through the equally rampant growth of the home-movie industry (movie rentals, movie downloads, Hi-Def TVs, 5.1 Dolby home theaters, Blu-Ray, etc.) the theater business in recent years has been in a slump. Hollywood hasn't wow'ed us enough to encourage the sort of profits they would like. And for good reason. Why spend all the money it takes to see "The Queen" on the big screen when in a few short months, you can pick it up for a fraction of the price and watch it in the comfort of your own home theater?

Enter 3-D. Oh, sure 3-D has been around since the 50's, but that was a mere parlor trick compared to the real magic that is about to hit big screens in the next few years. An article by Variety.com says it all: The key goal of 3-D is to "re-establish the primacy of filmgoing". And with the emerging technologies in the coming years, they may just do it.

And we're not just talking about the usual conversion of an old movie to 3-D as has recently been done with "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and will hopefully be done soon for "Star Wars", but they're even talking about cameras that are being developed for shooting movies "from the get-go" in 3-D.

And those cardboard glasses that make you see everything in red and blue for the next two hours after you leave the theater? Those are gone with the wind and replaced with state-of-the-art glasses that are wirelessly linked to the digital projector to create a perfect syncronicity between polarized images, giving a seamless, full color, digital quality, computer controlled picture in a 3-D environment without any of the usual motion-sickness that have typically plagued the old red & blue method. Add what CG and modern sound can do, and we have the makings of a whole new experience that people will easily pay $10/seat to see.

This is big, and I think it may herald the next biggest shift in the movie industry since it went from silent and black & white to "The Wizard of Oz".

At least until the horror genre gets a hold of it.