DAILY CALL SHEET: JANUARY 4, 2026

The Flying Saucer (1950) As reports come in of a UFO buzzing around Alaska, both the United States and the Soviet Union send agents to find out what's going on. The American team consists of Mike Trent, a boozy Bruce Wayne type, and Vee Langley, the best looking female Secret Service agent Uncle Sam could find. This doesn't necessarily mean romance between the two is inevitable, but things do happen when you play co-ed tackle football. As for the Russian, he isn't immediately identified, but it's quite possible it might be the caretaker of the cabin the Americans are staying in as he is constantly pointing guns at the couple when they're not looking. The flying saucer turns out to be real, but where it comes from and who will gain control of it remains a mystery. This is mostly a plodding and dull travelogue for Alaska, but it gets some respect as the first motion picture to ever involve UFOs.

TIL: While the Church didn't unconditionally support the United States during the Cold War, her feelings towards the other side were made pretty obvious when, in 1949, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office issued the Decree Against Communism. Approved by Pope Pius XII, this document declared that any and all Catholics who professed materialistic and atheistic communist doctrine were automatically (latae sententiae) excommunicated as apostates. The automatic part of the penalty was eventually removed in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (CIC), but don't go flaunting your Marxist manifestos just yet. The Church's doctrinal opposition to atheistic communism remains, and openly professing such views could potentially fall under Canon 1364 (§1), which still imposes automatic excommunication for apostasy, heresy, or schism.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) College nerd Dexter (hard to believe there was a time Kurt Russell ever played a character with that name) convinces local businessman Arno to donate a computer to the university. When lightning strikes the machine while Dexter is working on it, the lad discovers his mind has been super-charged, granting him encyclopedic knowledge and the ability to make calculations almost instantaneously. It also transfers all of the contents of the computer into Dexter's brain, including evidence of Arno's illegal gambling operation. Needless to say, this causes Arno to mark Dexter for immediate deletion. This is another pleasant enough distraction made back in the days when Disney's live-action movies were original ideas rather than rehashed versions of their animated hits.

TIL: While The Church views human intelligence (aka reason) as a gift from God, it also recognizes it has limits due to its created, finite nature and the effects of sin. For instance, the document Dei Filius notes that the intellect (presumably even a computer boosted one) can never fully comprehend divine mysteries like the Trinity and Incarnation, even with the revelations that have been given. The encyclical Fides et Ratio recognizes further restrictions on human intelligence due to sin, including impediments such the tendency of modern philosophies to reduce reason to subjectivity, relativism, or empiricism, causing it to, in JPII's words, wilt under the weight of so much "knowledge" that it loses its orientation toward ultimate being.