THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #10 – THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

Remember when made for TV movies were good? Okay, maybe not good, but you know, enjoyable in a cheesy kind of way? Or at least watchable? I know, it’s been a long while, but there really was such a time in days of yore. And just in case you can’t remember those fabled days, maybe this little ditty from the made for television magnum opus The Midnight Hour will jog your memory. (And before you ask, yes, that’s Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge busting a move. Sort of.)

“I’m dead, you’re dying, everybody should try it, get dead!” You know, that sentiment kind of reminds me of that old question you occasionally hear from aggressive atheists (usually on message boards where they almost inevitably believe you’ve never heard it before), “If you REALLY believe in heaven, why aren’t you in hurry to die and get there already?” I guess it’s supposed to be one of those oh-so-hip gotcha questions that’s meant to  leave a person gaped mouth and speechless, their beliefs exposed as a fraud, their faith crumbling away into dust.

Alas, I’m afraid to inform our secular friends, there are a number of good reasons we Christians don’t just do the non-believers of the world a favor and drop dead. Here’s just a few.

First off, we’re kind of busy at the moment working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. You see, just because we walk into a church every Sunday, that doesn’t mean we’re guaranteed a spot in heaven. Even St. Paul, who wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, noted in 1 Corinthians 4:4 that “I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord.” So if Paul’s resume didn’t guarantee him a get out of jail free card, I’m pretty sure the rest of us would appreciate as much time as possible to get our acts together so we have a decent shot of actually making it into the heaven we believe in.

Next, besides the monumental task of whipping our own souls into shape, we also have quite a list of duties Jesus left for us to attend to in addition to all the normal day to day stuff like raising a family and going to work. While there’s no comprehensive lists of what those duties are, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy are a pretty good primer. The seven corporal works of mercy are: To feed the hungry; To give drink to the thirsty; To clothe the naked; To harbour the harbourless; To visit the sick; To ransom the captive; To bury the dead. The seven spiritual works of mercy are: To instruct the ignorant; To counsel the doubtful; To admonish sinners; To bear wrongs patiently; To forgive offences willingly; To comfort the afflicted; To pray for the living and the dead. That’s quite a bit to do, and you kind of have to be alive to do it all.

And finally, this life was given to us by God, and as the Catechism reminds us, “We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.”

So, sorry secularists, as much as some of you might wish all of us religious types would just voluntarily kick the bucket, I’m afraid we just can’t do that. We’ve just got too dang much to take care of in the short time we’ve been alloted. Nice try though.

OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN!

Forgive me. What with all the little calamities that I’ve been plagued with over the past half year (look’em up in the archives, I won’t bore you with a recap), I once again completely forgot that I had promised one of my readers a review. This time around, it’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, that tragic tale of “the super-octane girls who are old at twenty. If they get to be twenty.” I might have forgotten it forever if a recent post by Simcha Fisher at the National Catholic Register hadn’t started a small argument in the comboxes about movies one should or shouldn’t watch, which in turn jogged my memory about this one. So, since a promise is a promise, I’m going to get this review done in the next week or two, although it’s likely to be one that would have been better NEVER than LATE. Anyway, here’s a reprint of the original Coming Attraction post to remind everyone what’s coming up.

In case there’s still some of you out there who weren’t aware, I take requests for reviews, many of which come in the form of challenges. Of course, that can result in something of a mixed bag. Requests have brought us everything from Santa Claus Conquers The Martians to Satisfaction to I Spit On Your Grave. That’s a pretty wide range of (questionable?) tastes. But even so, there’s still lots of different kinds of movies out there I’ve never touched on. So it was no surprise a few weeks back when an email arrived suggesting that perhaps I was playing it safe and avoiding some of the darker corners of the cult movie universe, that maybe it was time I dealt with… Russ Meyer.

Fair enough, but which one of his movies to review? Obviously, about 80% of Meyer’s oeuvre is automatically disqualified for being nothing more than soft porn. I got some standards, after all. So after going through the list, I narrowed it down to three. Now while Mudhoney contains every theme typically associated with Meyer, there’s really not much to it, so I passed. Trashmeister John Waters called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! the best movie ever made, and it is the very definition of a cult movie, but after watching it again, I actually found it pretty tame compared to the rest of the director’s output and I don’t think that’s what the requester was going for. So that pretty much left me with Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, the first collaboration between Russ and Roger Ebert.

It goes without saying this is one review that won’t be for the kiddies. Wish me luck.

SHORT FEATURE: QUARTERFLASH – HARDEN MY HEART

You want to know why music videos from the 1980s were more fun than most of the ones you see being made today? Because they made absolutely no sense, that’s why. Take even the most innocuous of 80s pop ditties, like say Quarterflash’s Harden My Heart, and with enough random imagery thrown into the mix, you can turn it into a what-the-heck hallucinatory hullabaloo worthy of the Surrealists in their prime.

So, you’ve got a woman wearing a perm and a unitard running through somebody's dimly lit basement, a gentlemanly dwarf adorned with a big heavy metal hairdo, some failed cloning experiments sitting around a vanity in the middle of a quarry, a gal playing a saxophone in a warehouse with a leaky roof, and some dude wearing a tuxedo and a motorcycle helmet pointing a flamethrower at a bulldozer. Bizarre, huh? Does anyone want to take their best shot at explaining what any of these hypnogogic hijinks have to do with the words that are being sung?

Cryin' on the corner, waitin' in the rain
I swear I'll never, ever wait again
You gave me your word, but words for you are lies
Darlin' in my wildest dreams, I never thought I'd go
But it's time to let you know, oh...
I'm gonna harden my heart
I'm gonna swallow my tears
I'm gonna turn and leave you here.....

Did I somehow miss the dwarf and the bulldozer in those lyrics? I don’t think so. In fact, reading through them, they seem like pretty standard break-up song material. Well, except for maybe the “harden my heart” line, as not too many people use that old phrase these days. But we all know what it means, right? After all, the image of the hardening of hearts appears quite a lot in the Bible, even showing up in the very first reading of the very first Sunday of this Church year (Year B) in a passage from Isaiah 63 where it says, “You, LORD, are our father, our redeemer you are named forever. Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?” Seems simple enough. Hardening our hearts is basically when we willfully shut out and ignore anything or anyone we don’t want to be influenced by. It can be positive, such as hardening our hearts to the lies of a deceitful lover, or it can be negative, such as hardening our hearts to the call of God on our conscience. So, nothing weird about the hardening of hearts, right?

But what about those times in the Bible where it states that God hardened someone's heart? Pharaoh, the Egyptians, Sihon, the kings in North Canaan, and even the whole nation of Israel, they all had their hearts hardened by the Lord at some point. In fact, Paul pretty much states outright in Romans 9:18 that God “has mercy upon whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.” Which on the surface makes about as much sense as a 1980s video, because it sure makes it sound like God is usurping people’s free will and causing them to act in ways that will endanger their souls. I mean, how can you accept the word of the Lord if He hardens your heart so that you refuse to listen to it? Not only does that seem patently unfair, it pretty much contradicts the nature of our relationship with God as revealed elsewhere in the Bible.

And that’s just one of the examples, folks, of why we can’t just parachute Bibles into non-Christian countries and expect the so-called “perspicuity of scripture” to reveal the true meaning of the texts to those reading them. Scripture is not intended to stand alone without guidance. In this particular instance, some expertise in ancient Hebrew is needed in order to figure out what’s actually going on in these verses. In the book An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax By Waltke & O'Connor, we learn that those passages which speak of God hardening someone’s heart are utilizing the Hiphil verb form of the phrase rather than the Piel verb form. Which means that… um… well, it’s probably best to let the book explain what that means…

“Ernst Jenni, beginning with the assumption that the two morphologically distinct stems have different semantic values, undertook an exhaustive study of the Piel, focusing on the Piel and Hiphil stems of the same verbal root in similar contexts. According to Jenni, the Piel signifies to bring about a state, and the Hiphil, to cause an event. His distinction involves two contrasting ideas: state versus event, and to bring about versus to cause actively. According to Jenni, the differences between Piel and Hiphil can be understood by appealing to deep differences: the Piel is analogous to a nominal clause, the Hiphil to a verbal clause. Though both stems involve causation, the factitive-resultative Piel generally has to do with the bringing about of a state or condition, and the causative Hiphil with the causing of an event. The Piel can often be translated by an adjectival construction: an adjective (with stative verbs), a passive past participle (with fientive verbs). Superficially considered, the relationship between subject and object in both Piel and Hiphil  stems is often that of a transitive making or causing which proceeds from the subject to the object. The object, however, experiences this action quite differently in the two stems. With the Piel, the object is transposed passively into a new state or condition. Philosophers would refer to this transposition as "accidental" because the object makes no contribution to the verbal notion. With the Hiphil, however, the object participates in the event expressed by the verbal root.”

Or to bring it down to sound byte level, the use of the Hiphil verb form in the original Hebrew implies that God created the situations in which hearts COULD be hardened, but those whose hearts WERE hardened had to make the choice to go along with it. With that being the case, it’s understandable in the reading from Isaiah why the Israelites seem to be asking God to please stop them from doing that very thing. So you see, it all does make sense in the end.

In the Bible anyway. Now if only someone could publish a book explaining 1980s music videos, because I’d really like to know the significance of the unitard and the flamethrower in Harden My Heart.

STILL VOICES #009

CUTAWAYS – I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE

The first best thing about I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle is that it really truly is titled I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle, that’s not a typo. The second best thing about I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle is that it really truly is about a vampire motorcycle, one that sucks blood out of people’s necks and doesn’t like crosses or garlic. But the third best thing about I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle is the priest who shows up about midway into the film. Perhaps you might recognize him?

Okay, so his name might not come to you right away as he’s missing all of his distinctive gold plating, but if you close your eyes and listen to the voice, you can just about hear him advising you on the astronomically impossible odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field. That’s right, kids, it’s C-3PO himself, Anthony Daniels. Now you know what he was up to in between trilogies.

Truthfully, with a title like I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle, the movie is a lot more enjoyable than it has any right to be, managing to tread the fine line between humor and horror pretty well. And as a bonus for us Catholics, the priest character turns out to be a decent guy who performs his duties happily, has no crisis of faith, and even makes it to the end of the picture alive (minus a few fingers, but still, he makes it, so I’m not complaining). Weird, huh? The only explanation I can think of is that the movie wasn’t made in Hollywood, so the filmmakers didn’t realize they were supposed to depict priests as creepy and despicable as possible.

“We can’t underestimate the power of media like television and movies to shape our impressions of clergy.” explains priest and psychologist Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti, author of the book Why Priests Are Happy. “Once, there were movies like Bing Crosby in Going My Way and the Bells of St. Mary’s, which were angelic portrayals of priests. But I don’t think those really were helpful, either. Now, we’ve gone from those kinds of depictions of priests to downright negative portrayals—if not mocking. You almost never see a healthy, happy Catholic priest in the media these days. Does that affect the priesthood? Well, it doesn’t help. And, I don’t think that we should return to the Bing Crosby image. That places the priest on an angelic pedestal that’s unrealistic. Then, if a crisis hits like the one that rocked us in recent years, then people are shocked and crushed. But this popular image, today, of dysfunctional, lonely depressed priests—well, that’s not accurate overall.”

Besides the news that our priests aren’t all maladjusted deviants, another nice thing about Rossetti’s study is that while it concentrates on the priesthood, it contains conclusions that can be useful to all the rest of us. For instance, Rossetti’s research suggests that as a priest’s time in private prayer increases up to and over an hour per day, they become less emotionally exhausted, less depressed, less likely to be lonely, less likely to be obese, and they deal with stress in less dysfunctional ways. And it goes without saying that they experience a stronger relationship to God. So if an hour of prayer a day can work such wonders for priests, it seems reasonable to think it could do the same for us as well, doesn’t it? Just tossing ideas out there.

OUTTAKES #036

*Patrick Madrid’s “In Search Of The Great Apostasy”
**The Crescat has company.

STILL VOICES #008

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

Looking for something to do in between trick or treating and celebrating All Saints Day? Well, why not catch up on some Halloween reading? After all, this is the time of year all the big boys and girls blog about the same stuff we do here all year round. Best to take advantage of it while you can.

First up, Taylor Marshall from the Caterbury Tales offers up his Top Ten Suggestions to Have a Catholic Halloween. I couldn’t help but chuckle when he suggests refraining from passing out religious literature instead of candy. Methinks perhaps that Mr. Marshall once fell victim to those well meaning, but ultimately insane, Chick tracts just as I once did. You can be sure that happened to Fr. Joe from Southern Fried Catholicism, who while discussing the surprisingly holy origins of Halloween, recollects the popular ‘Judgment Houses” many protestant churches put up in the 90s. But you know, rather than ponder too long on what some nut jobs gave done the holiday, why not stop by The Crescat’s place and consider The Virtue of Halloween instead (it’s worth it just to see the homemade costume of KISS’ Paul Stanley she wore as a child). But whatever way you choose to approach Halloween bemoans Danielle Bean at Crisis Magazine, please don’t mommify it! “The Church doesn’t ignore pain, fear, evil, and death.” she notes, and neither should we.

Now as you might expect us to around these parts, we spend the evening watching scary movies. And we’re hardly the only ones. Even a non-horror fan like Red Cardigan from And Sometimes Tea manages to step out of her comfort zone during this time of year and surprisingly finds some enjoyment in The Walking Dead (at least the parts she keeps her eyes open during). It’s all enough to make Paul Jarzembowski from Spirtual Popcorn wonder just what can scary movies teach us? There’s something to them, that’s for sure. Take for instance Fr. Dennis Kriz, OSM, who on his personal blog manages to find some Marian Imagery in the Terminator, or the Curt Jester, who while musing on those bygone days before his conversion, questions to what extent his atheism led to his love of movies involving horror and supernaturalism.

Well, it’s time to carve some Jack O’ Lanterns and get the boy suited up for trick or treating, so I’ll be going now. If you still need some more reading material, The Happy Catholic has some good links of her own worth exploring this All Hallows Eve. Stay safe everyone, hope none of you get a Chick tract this year. Or any Mary Janes. Man I always hated getting a bag full of those when I was a kid.

HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN V

As long time readers know, it’s just wouldn’t be Halloween around here if we didn’t offer our yearly cheap and easy to make costume suggestions based on some of the movies we’ve discussed over the past twelve months. We do this to help out those folks who might feel that the fare found on store shelves is either too demonic to wear to their local Protestant fall festival, or too risqué to walk around in at their Catholic parish’s Halloween carnival. Of course, we realize that what is and is not considered risqué changes with the times. If you don’t want to take our word for it, just check out Business Insider’s history of slutty Halloween costumes (because nothing says business reporting like an article about slutty Halloween costumes).

Costumed cuties exposing their shoulders in 1930. Harlots.

Still, even with changing social mores, we think the costumes we have to offer this year will meet just about anyone’s minimum standards of decency. Not standards of good taste or intelligence, mind you, just decency.

First up, we have what has to be the infinite loop of Halloween costumes, SAM SMITH from ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES.  In the movie, Sam was a master of disguise who was so good that he even managed to infiltrate the enemy camp by masquerading as a tomato. So, basically, if you choose this costume, you would be disguising yourself as a master of disguise disguised as a tomato. Got that? And all you would need is one of those Dept of Corrections orange trash bags, some leaves, and a pair of green leggings. And what better costume for Christians as we’re often called to take on many guises in order to get God’s work done on this world of ours? As St. Paul wrote in I Corinthians, “To the Jews I became like a Jew to win over Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win over those under the law. To those outside the law I became like one outside the law—though I am not outside God’s law but within the law of Christ—to win over those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it… So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Avoid giving offense, whether to Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit but that of the many, that they may be saved.”

If being a tomato just doesn’t grab you but you still like the costume within a costume idea, then how about giving PAUL as CTHULHU from THE LAST LOVECRAFT: RELIC OF CTHULHU a try. Just print out and laminate the head of H.P.’s most popular elder squid thingy, grab some old swimming pool noodles to use as tentacles, and you’re ready for trick or treating. The neat thing about Paul is that while he still lives in his mother’s basement, is totally useless in a fight, and probably smells like the dollar menu at McDonald’s, the two main characters in the movie can’t accomplish a thing without him because he’s the only one who took time to memorize Lovecraft’s works so he’d know what to do if Shoggoth showed up. Christians should keep that in mind. As Fr. John Hardon wrote, “The seed of God's revealed truth has been sown into our hearts at Baptism. But that was only the beginning. We must do everything in our power to grasp the meaning of what we believe. Otherwise the devil will come along and steal the faith from our hearts. There has never been a substitute for understanding our Christian religion. There is no substitute today. But now, this understanding is absolutely imperative. The world in which we live is hell-bent on stealing from our hearts what we believe. That is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church is such a providential Godsend.” The Catechism is free online. Read it.

You know, our first two costumes are fine for individuals, but since this is a Catholic site, we recognize the possibility that some of our readers might have a whole brood of younglings to deck out for Halloween. If that’s the case for you, then the CHILDREN OF THE CORN should be a no-brainer. And the best thing is, If your family dresses very conservatively, you may already have all the clothing you will need to outfit the little buggers. If not, no biggie, just go borrow some from the local Pentecostals. Then all you need to do is pick up a few ears of corn from the grocery store, hand the kids some old gardening tools, and you’re ready to go. Now to get the most enjoyment you can out of these costumes, be sure to find the nearest neighborhood where there’s a large concentration of new atheists and send your mob of kids marching down the middle of the street waving their corn and utensils about while yelling “Outsiders!!!” at the top of their lungs. Hey, this is what cowards like Richard Dawkins are telling everybody you’re training your kids to be like anyway, you may as well have some fun with it.

Speaking of being hated, we come finally to what may be the most horrifying costume we’ve ever suggested. Yes, it’s NUKIE from, what else, NUKIE. Now, to wear this costume you will have to go through the trouble of making a paper mache head that looks a bit like Yoda after he fell into a wood chipper. But after that, all you’ll need to do is go roll around in some mud (or if you’re brave, a septic tank) and you’re good to go, although for the full effect, you might want to rub some Vaseline under your nose so it looks like you have an unending nasal drip. Whatever options you choose, the end result is guaranteed to make you the most hated trick or treater on the block. There’s a good chance any home on whose door you knock will actually egg you. If that happens, just consider it good training for the Christian life. Remember, Jesus said that “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” So we weren’t exactly promised a life of endless yucks as followers of Christ. And if you know your Church history, people like Dawkins are nothing new. There will always be someone who hates us for our beliefs. But if we’ve had a true conversion in our hearts, and we bolster that faith with a continued study of the reasoning behind it, we can weather the hatred and be all of the things others need us to be as God deals with them. At last that’s how it works on our good days.

And that’s about it for this year. So everybody suit up, get out there, and have some fun. Happy Happy Halloween everyone!

BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: NUKIE

Nukie (1993)

• Ronald France,
• Glynis Johns,
• Steve Railsback

A benevolent alien arrives in a sparcely populated African country to search for his brother who has been captured by a secret U.S. government agency. Two African boys help "Nukie" trek across Africa as U.S. government agents seek to head him off and prevent what they believe to be an extraterrestrial invasion.

12% want to see it

PG, 1 hr. 39 min.

Director: Sian Odendal, Sias Odendal

 

October 23, 2011: Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

When the weekly readings start off with the words “Thus says the LORD: You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt,” you can pretty much guess the subject matter of the movie I’ve got in store for you this week. But if you’re expecting Alien Nation or District 9, well, you just haven’t been reading this blog long enough. Oh no, I’ve got something much, much more painful in store. What I’ve got for you is Nukie… and it’s possible you may never forgive me for that.

Nukie is the touching story of two small aliens that kind of look like ET (if ET resembled a monkey sculpted from human excrement) who become stranded on Earth and struggle to reunite. This is problematic because Miko has been captured by the evil American Space Foundation (an organization I strongly suspect is modeled after NASA, mostly because every time they show these guys getting out of cars, the doors have the NASA logo stenciled on them), while Nukie gets stuck in the middle of nowhere Africa hiding from a bunch of ritual sacrifice practicing tribesman, a sympathetic nun (Glynis Johns, hoping nobody remembers her as the mother from Mary Poppins), and a NASA Space Foundation helicopter pilot (Steve Railsback, hoping somebody, anybody, will remember him as Charles Manson from Helter Skelter).

On the surface that might sound like a decent setup for an entertaining movie, but trust me, it’s not. For those foolhardy enough to watch it (go ahead, I dare you, it’s on YouTube), Nukie will hurt you. The pain starts right away as Miko is tortured by the NASA Space Foundation scientists while he continuously screeches out NUUUUUKIEEEEE!!! again and again and again and… you get the point. Anyway, simultaneously, Nukie is plodding all over Africa incessantly screeching out MIIIIIKOOOO!!! again and again and again and… all the while failing to wipe his constantly running nose, not even once. (I’m serious. Picture a walking turd with a sinus infection. That’s Nukie.) About all Nukie does manage to accomplish is to talk to some baboons (who talk back!), terrorize a local tribe by causing an earthquake, and spend way too much screen time calling out for the ground to swallow him up and end his miserable lonely existence (which, at one point, it does). It’s all made completely unbearable by the fact that five minutes into the film, you realize absolutely nothing that happens during the course of the  movie is necessary because the aliens have the power to turn into balls of energy and fly off into space anytime they want to. But apparently that slipped their minds until the very end of the movie, because neither alien ever does it. Instead, Nukie just teleports around the jungle until the natives reject Christianity (no, really) while Miko uses his powers to escape his prison cell, only to sit in the very next room teaching the NASA Space Foundation mainframe how to have feelings. I suppose it just goes to show that if you’re going to assume the physical form of feces, you’re likely to end up with s@#% for brains.

To make matters even worse (if that’s possible by this point), Nukie leaves you with the distinct impression that it’s trying really hard to say something serious about the United States. I don’t know quite what, but… something. You see, all Nukie knows about Miko’s location is that he is being held captive by America, whom both Nukie and the two tribal children he has befriended mistakenly believe to be an individual person. So basically Nukie spends the length of the film looking for this guy America so he can find out why he’s treating everyone so badly. It all leads to a really bizarre scene near the end of the film where we see Nukie writhing around on the ground after being riddled with harpoons from a spear gun and one of the children curled up dying from a snake bite (wow, they just don’t make kids movies like they used to). Faced with all this carnage, the remaining child shakes his fists at the sky and bellows out, “America! AMERRRRICA! Help us!” (It’s true. May I be struck with leprosy if I’m making this stuff up.)

Look, I’m not even gonna pretend to know what the South African filmmakers had in mind with all this. Is it anti-American? Pro-American? Do they even know where America is? Whatever the specifics, the broad insinuation appears to be that we Americans don’t treat those from outside our country as best as we could, not even when they literally land right on our doorsteps. Now, how much truth there is in that criticism is arguable, but in general, Christians should view any degree of antagonism towards “aliens” as a thing to be avoided. The Catechism explains that “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him. Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”

Like with many areas involving Catholic social teaching, what the Catechism does here is lay out a guiding philosophy for immigration issues, but leaves the specific methodology of carrying it out to our individual consciences. We can legitimately support or oppose various legislations, even taking an opposite side of the argument from the guy sitting next to us in the pew, as long as our solution adheres to the general ethical guidelines regarding the fundamental rights of the human person and charity towards strangers. For instance, the USCCB is currently throwing its weight behind the DREAM act legislation and makes their case for supporting it at this site. And since the bishops do represent the teaching authority of the Church, it’s not a bad idea to check out what they have to say about the issue. But since the DREAM act is a specific legislation, individual Catholics can still oppose it in good conscience as long as they are doing so for the consideration of the “common good for which they are responsible” and not just out of fear or hatred for the “aliens” it is meant to benefit.

So, which way should you feel about something like the DREAM act? HA! Like you’re really gonna get an answer here. Immigration is one of those issues that requires a lot of thought, and God (no matter what the current crop of uninformed atheists would have us believe) expects us to put the big brains He gave us to the task. Always keeping the guidelines above in the forefront, consider the issue, pray about it, and make up your mind.

As for Nukie though, just take my word for it and avoid the wretched thing. It’s just what Nukie looks like, a big heaping pile of crap.

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #9 – WILLIAM SHATNER PERFORMS BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Because some site is bound to inflict this on you anyway, it may as well be here in our dark little corner of the blogosphere where it belongs…

Well, at least now we know what happens when geeks drop acid. I know that picking just one weird thing out of this freak show seems futile, but there is one extra confusing moment in the video for me. At about the 3:40 mark, the correct lyric should read “Bismillah!”, but the onscreen subtitles declare “It’s my law!” Why?

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know, but it’s what I had on short notice), “Basmala, or Bismillah, is an Arabic noun used as a collective name for the whole of the recurring Islamic phrase bismillahi r-rahmani r-rahimi. It is sometimes translated as ‘In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful’. This phrase is recited before each sura, except for the ninth; according to others it constitutes the first verse of 113 suras/chapters of the Qur'an, and is used in a number of contexts by Muslims. It is recited several times as part of daily prayers, and is usually the first phrase in the preamble of the constitutions of Islamic countries. It also forms the start of many dedication inscriptions on gravestones, buildings, and works of art, which go on to name the deceased or the donor.”

So, considering Bismallah is a Muslim exclamation, were the lyrics changed so as not to offend Muslims? Doubtful. I sure don’t remember anyone declaring a fatwa on Freddie Mercury when he first sang the song all those years ago. So it could just be that Shatner’s getting old and couldn’t understand the words Queen was singing in the first place. Or maybe (and this is a long shot) the Jewish Shatner is uncomfortable using a Muslim term. Now, I doubt that’s the case, but wouldn’t it be something if it were? After all, people can get a little wonky when you start bringing religions together.

If you want to experience just how wonky, try reading paragraph 841 of the Catechism to one of your more stringent evangelical friends. That’s the passage which says, “The Church's relationship with the Muslims: ‘The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.’ Now I can’t tell you how many protestant websites there are which takes this paragraph as proof, PROOF I TELL YOU, that Catholics are not Christians. Because after all, Muslims worship God (Allah) but don’t recognize the trinity, so if the Church teaches that Catholics and Muslims worship the same God, then Catholics must worship God (Allah) and not recognize the trinity, so Catholics must not worship the same God as other Christians, ergo Catholics are not Christians. And they put this kind of stuff on their websites with a straight face.

Sigh. Sometimes, there’s just nothing so dangerous as a Christian with a highlighter. Paragraph 841 of the Catechism by itself does read a little iffy when taken by itself. But if you keep reading, paragraphs 846 and 847 not only leave little doubt where the Church stands on Jesus, but puts paragraph 841 in its proper context. "All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His Body....They could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it." So you see, paragraph 841 is NOT ecumenism gone wild. By itself it just recognizes that Islam (not without errors) stems from the same Abrahamic tradition that the Church herself does. And when combined with the surrounding paragraphs, it hints at the way God may save folks who are not “fully incorporated into the society of the Church” because they never knew “that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary".

All this whole section of the Catechism basically does is recognize that since Islam helps foster a belief in one God, Muslims who are truly and innocently ignorant of Christ (another post for another time) can still be saved by the singular grace of God. This whole notion of “baptism of desire” goes all the way back to the Bible. It’s what St. Paul was getting at when he stood up at Areopagus in Acts 17 and said, “You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.” So really, if you’ve got a problem with paragraph 841 of the Catechism, you’ve got a problem with the teachings of the apostles. All I can say to that is put down the highlighter and back away from it. Everyone will be better off in the end.

Now, with that cleared up… can anyone please tell me what’s going on in this Shatner video? Please?

STILL VOICES #007

OH, THE HORROR

Is everybody else as excited as I am? Tonight’s the night! It’s the return of everybody’s favorite primetime gut munching zombie show… THE WALKEN DEAD!

What? Oh. It’s The Walking Dead? Well, that’s pretty good, too, even if it could use more cowbell.

Man, we love October around here. It’s that time of the year when we hardly have to crank up the DVD player because all the channels are so jam packed with horror and sci-fi goodies. It’s also the time of year somebody has to remind the world that not only can Christians watch a lot of this stuff (a lot, not all), but that we might just have a better grasp of the subject material. This year it’s author Brian Godawa who’s taking a shot at it over at Speculative Faith with his series of post on An Apologetic Of Horror. Take a peak if you have the time. After the show, of course.

INTERMISSION

Sorry for the lack of content, folks. A couple of nights ago my wife’s step-father passed away, so while she helps her mother with arrangements, I’ll be doing double duty here at home. Prayers for Jack’s eternal rest would be gratefully appreciated even though, in all honesty, he was hardly the kind of person who would have accepted the validity of such things while he was alive. Like so many others, Jack renounced any belief in God decades ago after watching his first wife lose an an agonizing battle with lung cancer. He just refused to accept that a God could exist who would allow such suffering in the world. There are many valid theological reasons for why life is this way of course, but as those who have experienced such events knows, that knowledge alone can often be of little comfort. Jack, unfortunately, was one of those who could never overcome the bitterness of his loss to ever consider the possibility of such reasons, much less accept the peace of God awaiting those who’ve had to go through such things.

As so often happens, the lack of faith of the deceased has resulted in a kind of pallor settling over everything. Now I don’t mean to paint with a broad brush as I’m sure there are peaceful, even joyous, atheist funerals out there somewhere. But I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen one personally. That being said, however, I know this much. I believe in a God who died on a cross, crying out in despair at His own overwhelming feelings of forsaken abandonment. That’s a God who knows intimately what Jack was going through those many years ago when his fist wife died. And as He’s a God of infinite mercy, I can have the hope that He’ll take that into account when Jack stands before him. And because of that, I absolutely do pray for Jack, no matter that he would have scoffed at such a thing. And if you’ve read this far and have got the time, would you mind sending one his way yourself. God bless.

BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)

• David Miller,
• George Wilson,
• Sharon Taylor

One of the first films ever to be designed specifically to become a cult movie, this silly low-budget comedy has tomatoes growing to giant size and terrorizing screaming '70s types. It's really bad on purpose, with awful effects and a dumb script, in hopes of luring fans of campy old movies like Plan 9 From Outer Space. There's a fun Jaws parody as the tomatoes attack a swimmer and a cute bit involving a military meeting in a small office with a very large table, but overall it fails to generate many laughs. The problem is that the films which this one attempts to mock -- mainly bad 1950s sci-fi pictures -- have a cult following because they are funny unintentionally, and are beloved for reasons which this somewhat cynical effort completely misses. It has its moments, granted, but it just tries too hard. – Rovi

38% liked it

PG, 1 hr. 27 min.

Director: John De Bello

 

October 2, 2011: Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

So, after 4 1/2 years of trudging through bad movies, we’re finally getting around to Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. Really, you have to wonder what took so long. After all, this may not be the kind of movie which appeals to the more serious (too serious?) movie reviewers such as the one above from Rovi, but Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes is tailor made for sites like this. I mean, c’mon, any movie that has a couple of old, obviously unprofessional, actors sitting on a sofa deadpanning dialog like…

Jess: "Look at the giant tomato, Martha."
Martha: "I didn't know they grow'd them so big, Jess."
Jess: "I wonder where he's going. (pause) He got little Timmy."
Martha: "Poor Timmy."
Jess: "He et him all up."

…is more than welcome around here.

And it’s not just the horrible line readings that make Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes so endearing to bad movie fans like myself. There’s goofy characters like the master of disguise who successfully infiltrates enemy territory by dressing as a tomato (only to blow his cover by asking for some ketchup). There’s musical numbers with all the quality of a grade school play such as the mind numbingly bad pop opus "Puberty Love" (sung, if you want to call it that, by Matt Cameron, future drummer for Soundgarden and Pearl Jam). There’s the telltale signs of guerilla filmmaking such as the scene in which the film crew inadvertently crashed their rented helicopter and rewrote the script to include the accident because, on their budget, who could afford to waste a good disaster (no one was injured, but watch the actors playing the policemen in the foreground realize what’s happening and begin to freak out). And the whole shebang ends with a free for all tomato stomping bonanza that includes most of the cast and crew, some guys dressed like the Marx Brothers, a whole gaggle of kids fresh off the street, and inexplicably, the San Diego Chicken.

Now, if all that’s not enough to convince you that there’s no way to take a movie like this as a serious piece of work (much less review it as such), then just remember… it’s about a bunch of tomatoes… who kill people. Of course the movie is bad. Who cares if they made it that way on purpose, or just pretended they did after the fact. It’s about killer fruit. Who in their right mind would take a story about a bunch of tomatoes seriously? Now, grapes, that’s a different matter altogether. If the story had been about grapes, then we might have something serious on our hands. Grapes can be real trouble.

I sense there may be some doubt. Well, if that’s the case, perhaps you should take a peek at this week’s first reading if you need a little more convincing. In this passage, the prophet Isaiah tells us about his friend who owned a vineyard. “He spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines; within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a wine press. Then he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes.” Wild grapes! Everybody run for the hills! I’m telling you, Isaiah is one of the big names in the Bible, and if he’s worried about wild grapes, then the rest of us should be as well. I’m serious, we should all…

Huh? What’s that? Pope Benedict XVI had a slightly different take on this passage? Well, let’s see what he had to say. "[This story] speaks above all of the goodness of God's creation and of the greatness of the election with which he seeks and loves us. But it also speaks about the history that occurred later, man's failure. God had planted choice vines and yet they yielded wild grapes. What are the wild grapes? The good grapes that God expected, says the prophet, would have consisted in justice and uprightness. Wild grapes on the contrary are violence, the shedding of blood and oppression, which make people groan under the yoke of injustice… what appears first of all is the accusation of the violation of social justice, contempt for man by man. Deep down, however, one sees that with contempt for the Torah, for the law given by God, there is contempt for God himself; there is only a desire to enjoy power itself… We want to be the sole owners in the first person. We want to possess the world and our own life in an unlimited manner. God annoys us or we make of him a simple devout phrase or deny him altogether, eradicating him from public life, so that in this way he no longer has any meaning at all. Tolerance that only admits God as a private opinion, but that denies him the public domain, the reality of the world and of our life, is not tolerance but hypocrisy. Whenever man becomes the only owner of the world and proprietor of himself there can be no justice.”

So, um, apparently that whole wild grapes thing is a metaphor for mankind’s tendency to reject God’s plan and try to run the world all by themselves? Well, as the Pope points out, that always ends up in a disaster. Much, much worse than killer fruit. Seriously.

THINGS TO COME: THE CATECHISM CATACLYSM

With movies like Warrior and Machine Gun Preacher hogging all the attention around the Christian blogosphere right now, it would be easy to overlook some of the really low budget religious themed offerings popping up on the festival circuits right now. For instance, there’s Kevin Smith’s Red State which, truth be told, just sounds too stupid to even talk about. But there’s also Todd Rohal's The Catechism Cataclysm, which creeps into limited release on October 19th and VOD one week later. I have to admit, the title sounds promising, but with a theme song entitled “GOD WILL F*** YOU UP”, I’ve got my doubts.

Basically, The Catechism Cataclysm tells the tale of the world’s most infantile priest who, after being forcefully sent on leave, tracks down the loser he used to idolize in high school and convinces him to go on a canoe trip. Buddy comedy mayhem ensues for awhile until two Japanese girls named Tom and Huck show up with their mute pal Jim and things start to go really, really weird.

Look, I like priest comedies as much as the next Catholic. Even some of the ones that are purposely antagonistic towards my religion, like Father Ted, can have some funny moments. So I don’t want to dismiss this movie right away. But when you’ve got folks like Steven Rea from the Philadelphia Inquirer saying things like “It seems hopelessly without a point - unless the point has something to do with dropping a Bible into a dirty toilet.” and Leslie Stonebraker of the New York Press musing that “rather than use this premise as a set up for bible satire, the film relies on diarrhea jokes and uninspired buddy-bonding to carry us through an ill-plotted tale of damnation and redemption” then, well… let’s just say I’m not optimistic. Oh well, at least Bless Me Father is streaming on Netflix.

STILL VOICES #006

BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: THE LAST LOVECRAFT: RELIC OF CTHULHU

The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu (2011)

• Kyle Davis,
• Devin McGinn,
• Matt Bauer

Jeff is an ordinary guy that is stuck at a dead end job with a boring life, but when a strange old man gives him an Ancient relic and tells him that he is the last bloodline of H.P. Lovecraft, He and his friend Charlie embark on an adventure to protect the relic piece from falling into the hands of the Starspawn and his minions that wish to reunite the relic and release Cthulhu back into the world.

54% want to see it

Unrated

Director: Henry Saine

 

September 18, 2011: Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

What with flicks like The Dunwich Horror and Dagon, we’re certainly no strangers to Lovecraft inspired movies here at the B-Movie Catechism. But Lovecraft inspired comedies? Yeah, not so much. I suppose that’s because tales of near omnipotent cosmic aliens whose very existence causes madness and mutations in those who perceive them just doesn’t seem like the kind of material designed to induce belly laughs. But you know what, The Last Lovecraft manages to pull it off for the most part. It does so, like a number of recent movies, by taking the template of Sean of the Dead and replacing certain superficial elements while keeping the overall tone. So, instead of Sean’s circle of underachieving working class Londoners, Last Lovecraft gives you a handful of underachieving aging comic book fanboys. And instead of zombies, you get fishmen. Gooey fishmen. Suckered fishmen. Hapless half-breed gill-slitted fishmen. Lots and lots of fishmen.

Now, it’s true that The Last Lovecraft never quite generates the same level of emotional investment in the characters that Sean of the Dead does, but the humor mostly makes up for it. If you’re at all familiar with H. P.’s mythos, then you’ll probably find plenty to smile about. There’s the cliff notes style animated history of the elder gods versus the dinosaurs, the sequence in which the boys train to battle Cthulhu using swimming pool noodles as tentacles, and, of course, the reclusive Captain Olaf, who lives in an RV in the middle of the desert (because there’s no water around) and beguiles strangers with his charming tales of “whole heapings of fish rape”. But even if you’re not up to speed on the entire Lovecraft library, you can still laugh at the all too real stuff such as the portly comic book freak in his XXL “my other pet is a shoggoth” t-shirt who tries to flee from the fishmen only to run out of breath after about 20 yards.

Okay, so that last one sounds a little mean, but it’s all in self-deprecating fun. The movie actually lovingly plays up to the fantasy of every comic book geek in the world… the chance to defeat a great evil and save the world. In that aspect, the movie leans more towards August Derleth’s interpretation of the Cthulhu mythos than it does to H. P. Lovecraft’s original vision, at least according to the various works cited on the Cthulhu Wiki. “Common themes in Lovecraft's fiction are the insignificance of humanity in the universe and the search for knowledge ending in disaster. Humans are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. Lovecraft called this viewpoint Cosmicism, a doctrine which holds that humankind's religious beliefs are a mere conceit and that ultimately humanity is alone and defenseless in an uncaring universe.” In contrast, “Derleth had his own take on the mythos and tried to make it conform to his own Catholic values and dualism. Instead of a universe of meaninglessness and chaos, Derleth's mythos is a struggle of good versus evil… Derleth further distorted Lovecraft's vision by concocting a parallel to the Christian narrative of Satan warring against Heaven, pairing the devils of Lovecraft's mythos (the Old Ones) against a race of benevolent Elder Gods with humanity's fate hanging in the balance.”

Well, whether Mr. Derleth distorted or (gasp) improved on Lovecraft’s Yog-Sothothism is an argument I’ll leave to the frothing fanboys, but the comparing and contrasting of the two approaches is telling in some respects. You see, a lot of the horror in Lovecraft hinges on the sheer alien nature of the old ones and the inability of the human mind to comprehend them. What you don’t understand will drive you mad. But things don’t quite work that way when you overlay Christianity on top of it all. And it’s not because religion offers answers to everything. You see, while the Catechism makes it explicitly clear that God “calls man to seek him, to know him”, this week’s first reading reminds us that our knowledge of God has its limits. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” In a certain sense, excepting what small portion of Himself He’s reveals through Christ and The Holy Spirit, the eternally omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, Christian God who exists both inside and outside of time and space is just as ungraspable and alien to the human mind as any fictional elder god poor old Lovecraft’s fevered little brain could ever cook up.

The difference is that while Cthulhu and his pals, consistent with Lovecraft’s real life atheistic worldview, couldn’t give a rat’s ass about humanity and see us only in utilitarian terms, the vast unimaginable creative force behind the universe that is God knows each and every one of us individually. And while that’s scary in its own right, especially if you’re up to something He doesn’t like, it’s also comforting because, as this week’s responsorial Psalm points out, “The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. The Lord is near to all who call upon him.” So go ahead and keep searching for God, keep trying to grasp what little of himself He has revealed to us, even if there’s no way in this life you’ll comprehend but a fraction of it all. Trust me, the amount of peace and love you’ll find in that little bit is more than enough to bring about a continuous tentacle-free transformation in your life. Really, given the benefits, the only madness in searching for God is not searching at all.