A WRINKLE IN TIME – RE-REVIEW – A GLOWING EXAMPLE OF LIBERAL COMMON NON-SENSE

I have long maintained that liberals in Hollywood were willing to throw money away on financing abyssmal movies if they think it will further whatever agenda they are after: socialism, destruction of the definition of marriage, sexualization of children, artifically inflammed racial divisiveness, atheism. I have had a lot of conversations with people who don’t believe me – that they think “Hollywood” will learn their lesson when this or that movie fails.

I hate to disabuse them of the notion that liberals have the slightest bit of common sense but one only needs to read the following article on the deserved thrashing A Wrinkle in Time is getting to understand how far liberals will go: A Wrinkle in Time:…$100 million…Disney…Bomb

In this article you will read quotes by the sneering and smug Ava DuVernay, a stridently vociferous anti-Trump liberal and the director of this $100 million turkey. “I don’t care what anybody thinks about it,” she told the Times. “I know it’s $100 million for the studio. They’ll be fine.” In typical liberalese – she doesn’t care that Disney may have just lost $100 million so she could display her little propaganda tantrum – why SHOULD she care? It’s not her money she is wasting.

For a more detailed review about the movie in general go to my previous review of this waste of celluloid at: A Wrinkle in Time – Disturbing and Repulsive

I don’t feel sorry for Disney. After all they knew what they were getting into when they funded this bomb. But let’s be clear about what it is they have done.

Many of the reviewers went right along with Ms. DuVernay’s sentiment, bending themselves into pretzels attempting to avoid saying A W.I.T. is a BAD movie:

Marie Claire of the Hollywood Reporter: “’A Wrinkle in Time’ isn’t a great movie, but that’s completely irrelevant.”

Yolanda Machado, a free lance film journalist said, “Because of this film, my daughter will never question that she can be strong.”

The FOX article reads: “One reviewer called it a ‘big bold beautiful mess’ before praising DuVernay for ‘swinging for the fences’ with a ‘not great’ script.'”

Ms. DuVernay CLAIMS she is trying to demonstrate that black women can be shown as strong leaders. This is all a massive load of what Biff Tannen and his relatives kept falling head first into in the Back to the Future movies.

For the purpose of the following points some acquaintance of the original book’s story is necessary – check out: Wikipedia Synopsis of: A Wrinkle in Time

First, Meg’s race is irrelevant. Storm Reid is terrific as Meg. The only ones who care what race she is are the liberal racists. The story of A Wrinkle in Time depends on a daughter’s love for her family and not at all on the race of the family members. As long as the genetics are logical or there is a mention of adoption, the young lady could be Chinese, Hispanic, white, black, Indonesian, Aleusian or any combination. (As in, if two white people have a black baby or two black people have a white baby some mention of adoption would need to be thrown into the script for the sake of practicality.) Meg being black has NOTHING to do with the story one way or the other and I couldn’t have cared less. All that is required is acting ability which Ms. Reid has. Meg’s race is irrelevant.

Second, the original story HAD a strong female character that everyone followed. At the risk of SPOILERS, in the end, not even Meg’s father could go back and save Charles Wallace. ONLY – and I repeat this emphasized emphatically ONLY Meg could or was even allowed by the Mrs. W’s to return for her younger brother. Meg was the only one whose love was strong enough. (It was explained that her father had not seen his son in four years and Calvin had only just met him.) Calvin, in the book, followed Meg like a puppy the entire way. He was a strong character in and of himself, but recognized Meg’s purpose and inner vigorous soul. What Ms. DuVernay proposed was nothing Madeleine L’Engle had not already put in the original source material. In other words DUVERNAY IS TAKING PLAGERISTIC CREDIT FOR SOMETHING ALREADY IN THE BOOK!

Third, and most importantly, even if what Ms. DuVernay said was true or even believed was true – that she had sought to make a movie which showed a strong black woman in the lead – there was ZERO reason to make the single change which has made this movie such a spectacular BOMB. Ms. DuVernay has stripped the flesh off of the reason the story was written. She deliberately, and I believe with malice, removed every iota of Christianity there was to be found in what is essentially a Christian allegory.

I really didn’t care one way or another about The Golden CompassThe Golden Compass was another child’s story which was filmed as an anti-religious tome and bombed. The G.C. was written by Philip Pullman, a self-described atheist, as an atheistic yawner and was so filmed, receiving the attention it deserved – earning less than half of its production budget.

But A Wrinkle in Time was created as a CHRISTIAN allegory by a devout CHRISTIAN and DuVernay has gone out of her way to brutalize it. You’d think Disney, if not the agenda-driven Ms. DuVernay, would have exercised more foresight and not dumped quite so much money into a movie which shoves a middle finger in the face of the very demographic who made the source book a children’s classic. I mean – from a business P.O.V. alone you’d think they would have filmed it with the intent with which it was written to bring in the moolah from the audience who liked the book in the first place! But, in keeping with longstanding liberal “ethics,” as long as it is someone else’s money, they do not care if it is thoughtlessly and carelessly fizzled away.

Yes, make the lead child a black girl – make her Tibetan or Hawaiian – who cares one way or the other?  I LOVED Storm Reid as Meg. She brought a fierce intensity to the role as the determined and dogged young lady who devotedly goes to rescue her father in the face of tremendous uncertainities and great evil. It is a tragedy that DuVernay took a great performance and threw it away on her trash fire of New Age proselytizing.

DuVernay is a poster child for my now proven assertion that Hollywood is willing to throw away a fortune to foist their own ungrateful dystopian indoctrination into the very culture that tolerates them the way no other culture would. And until and unless they manage to chokehold us into sponsoring their ideologies through taxation or forced attendance, the movie going public will likely continue to vote with their closed pocketbook.

To sum up – Ms DuVernay is using the race of this lovely child actress as a smoke screen to hide her anti-Christian agenda. And to me this is not just nonsense – it a demonstration of racism, child abuse and religious bigotry. SHAME ON YOU MS. DUVERNAY!!!

The Orville – an update – NOW A WARNING?!!: Seth MacFarlane’s stand against science

On October 12, 2017 I posted a tentative but positive blog review of The Orville and told you I would update with any new insights or concerns. The very next show, "Krill," provided one. Originally I endorsed the show for mid teens and up. And while that continues to be true as far as content, visuals and violence go, I must in good conscience add a caveat. I would NOT encourage ANYone young or adult to watch who is not spiritually mature and confident.

The latest show, "Krill" while well written and in all fairness approaches the subject matter with an intelligent script, does state up front and baldly that the characters believe there is no place for religious belief in their society.

To give the writers their due – unlike a lot of other shows and movies – they do NOT disrespect or place as strawmen any Judeo-Christian philosophy or representative. The religion they face is more of an Aztec one held by the Krill, who apparently, as the writers created them, believe that all other creatures who are NOT Krill are like animals without souls and can be treated as cattle.

The premise of the episode addresses the hostilities between the Krill and the Union. During a firefight, the Orville manages with a Picard/Stargazer type maneuver to outfox and destroy a much more powerful Krill ship. They retrieve a Krill shuttle from the wreckage and Gordon and Ed are sent undercover as Krill to retrieve a copy of the Krill sacred book, the Ankhana, in order for the Union to study and perhaps find grounds for detente between the cultures.

While this all sounds like serious stuff, and the topic is treated with respect, in Orville fashion there are light moments. When Ed and Gordon, in the guise of the Krill and their far bulkier uniforms, approach the bridge of the Krill ship to pay respects to the captain, they get stuck trying to go through the doorway at the same time. It’s the kind of thing that happens that you suspect would have occurred in the course of all the Star Trek shows – something that would happen to normal people. Which is why in the previous blog I suggested that The Orville is what REALLY was going on behind the sanitized version brought to us by Kirk’s Star Trek and all of its conceptual descendants.

When Gordon finds out the Krill god is named Avis, the smart alec Gordon has a field day. Sidestepping the question of why Gordon would know of a 400 year old car rental company as irrelevant, when confronted by the Krill spiritual leader in unauthorized perusal of the Ankhana they explain they were seeking solace on the loss of their ship, to which Gordon intones: "Oh wise and powerful Avis cover the loss of our vehicle."

And yet this episode still manages to creatively and intelligently include issues on the morality of war time actions, respect for other culture’s beliefs and how far does one go to protect innocents in the line of fire. Heavy stuff in a show which still manages to evoke laugh out loud scenarios.

I respect people who honestly speak their minds and MacFarlane does exactly that. With no pussy footing around, in the course of being briefed on the Krill political situation the Union Admiral Ozawa says "…generally when a civilization becomes more technologically advanced their adherence to religion declines…" and everyone nods sagely and approvingly. Of course, this is a blind denial of the devout men upon whose shoulders those "technologically advanced civilizations" stand: Galileo, Newton, Mendel, Pascal, Descartes, Pasteur are just a handful of the most famous superstars. And it might comes as a shock to these sadly ignorant writers that the theory of the Big Bang on which they hang so many of their hats was FIRST postulated by a Roman Catholic priest, WHILE a Roman Catholic priest – Georges Lemaitre TWO YEARS BEFORE Hubble suggested it, and whose theory was lauded by none other than Albert Einstein, who publically endorsed Lemaitre’s theory even as Hubble’s was being published.

There are literally thousands of devout Catholic contributors to the sciences who were trained in Catholic founded and funded universities. Not to mention the devout Christian Protestant contributors NOT to mention devout practicing Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims who – all the while adhering to and practicing their faith, believing in a Divine Creator and PRACTICING THEIR RELIGION, discovered brilliant insights in every discipline: biology, astronomy, paleontology, optometry, genetics, physics, chemistry, algebra, calculus – etc. BELOW FIND A SAMPLING OF CATHOLIC SCIENTISTS AND A SMALL EXCERPT A-C FROM AN EXTENSIVE LIST OF CATHOLIC SCIENTISTS THROUGHOUT THE AGES.

Sadly, it never occurs to anyone to mention that the likes of Pasteur and Mendel were as cutting edge and "technologically advanced" for their time as the people of The Orville believe they are…or that WE, in our egotism, believe WE are. It is what CS Lewis might have called chronological bigotry – wherein people who are anti-theists rely on a false assumption that events and concepts closer in time to their point in history – the "NEW" – have more merit, JUST because they are "new", than those events or concepts which preceded them.

It is tragic that Mr. MacFarlane's atheism, based upon what I have read from his interviews, stems from a hero worship of Carl Sagan and the classic misapprehension that science and religion are at odds – that to believe in one you must dismiss the other. This is, of course, absurd on a number of counts, not the least of which is the Catholic Church's support – at periods in time the SOLE support – for scientific study in the West. AGAIN – CHECK OUT THE TRUNCATED LIST BELOW THEN CHECK OUT THE WIKIPEDIA.COM PAGE FROM WHICH JUST THIS SMALL ENUMERATION COMES: LAY CATHOLIC SCIENTISTS then TAKE A LOOK AT THE CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN SCIENTISTS:

Although the ethics of waging war are treated with a balanced hand, the treatment of belief in God is not. The belief in even a philosophy as nebulous as an Intelligent Designer is dismissed out of hand and assumptions are made from that premise with no counter argument.

So while I still conclude I can endorse The Orville as a clever, well written, mostly balanced view of social issues from a humorous Star Trekkian POV, I must in good conscience, temper my praise with a warning for those who are unsure of their belief system. While I commend MacFarlane for his openness on the subject, I must warn that you will find neither answers nor a constructive contribution to your search from MacFarlane’s theologically biased anti-theistic Universe-view.

IRONICALLY – as Seth MacFarlane stands against the very institutions which produced, is populated and defended by priests and churchmen who broke frontier scientific grounds aided and funded by the church –  by his own words Seth MacFarlane stands against science.

Ampere  Pasteur  Lavoisier  Kolbika  Eccles Zahm

 Chardin  Copernicus  Gassendi  Bacon  Ockham  Pacholczyk  Mersenne

 

IN PRAGMATIC DEFENSE OF TWILIGHT

Bella and Edward

"….not only would I recommend this rather awful film series but had I the authority I'd be tempted to make it required watching for teens."

To quote my favorite expression from the re-booted Dr. Who series, oft spoke by Dr. River Song: SPOILERS!!!!

I'm not a big fan of sappy stories. I've watched more than my share but it's not my favorite genre. There are a few exceptions. Jane Eyre was my favorite book as a kid. Helped that George C Scott did an amazing movie version back in 1970. But Jane Eyre is less romance than it is a tale of righteousness over romping – that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And I did see Titanic a couple of times over the years but frankly enjoyed the rather droll How it Should Have Ended animated satire more.

Which brings us to the Twilight series.

Bella Edward 2

Is the movie badly acted? Why, yes, the acting is terrible. Kristen Stewart's whispering, sniveling, gasping response to EVERYTHING has become a cliché of pitiful thespian skills. The Everything Wrong With… Twilight is hysterical and worth watching for their "Breathing, Laughing and other Bella Noises Bonus Round" alone. IMPORTANT CAVEAT – while I LOVE the "Everything Wrong With…." series on youtube.com, it is chock full of sexual innuendo and raw language, the latter of which is, while bleeped, pretty obvious.

Is Twilight well written? I'll let you judge:

Edward Cullen: I don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore. Isabella Swan: Then don't.

Edward bedroom

Edward Cullen: Uh, yeah this is my room.   Isabella Swan: …No bed?  Edward Cullen: Ah no I don't, I don't sleep.  Isabella Swan: Ever?  Edward Cullen: No, not at all. Isabella Swan: Ok, hmmm, boy you have so much music, what were you listening to. Edward Cullen: It's Debussy. Isabella Swan: Clair de Lune is great.

Edward Cullen: I hate you for making me want you so much.

And these are from us.imdb.com as memorable quotes. Need I say more?

So, it's sappy, badly acted, awkwardly written, ham handedly directed but——-not only would I recommend this rather awful film series but had I the authority I'd be tempted to make it required watching for teens."

But, you might reasonably ask…………..WHY!?!?!?!

BECAUSE – This movie advocates powerfully for some of our modern culture's most vitally important but least present virtues and makes those virtues irresistible to the very demographic audience who most desperately need to witness them.

Edward Bella wedding

Edward is a 100+ year old vampire in love with the atheistic Bella. (Quick quiz: Edward is played by Robert Pattinson. What other iconic movie series does he appear in?) Edward is in a family of vampires who have sworn to abstain from human blood, led by the beneficent and altruistic father-figure, Carlisle. I could and probably will add Carlisle to the Back to the Father series but that's for another post. Bella is a child of the current age anxious to demonstrate her affections for Edward and not afraid to make those feelings obvious. Edward ——– refuses.

Edward in Bella's room

Not only does he refuse but states that:

1. He will not put her IMMORTAL SOUL in danger, especially as he is already worried about his own given that he is now a vampire, and

2. He will give in to her amorous desires ONLY after they are married. It is Bella who drags her feet on matrimony, having watched her distant-cop Dad and hippie free love mother destroy their own marriage through self absorption and cluelessness. But Edward is true to his word all the way (so to speak). And, atypically for a modern movie, nuptials are NOT had until the nuptials are — well performed by a minister at the end of the third book. Yes, dear friends there are FOUR books and FIVE movies!!

Now let's think about what Ms. Meyers has written. Her story involves a vampire. And vampires have been analogous to sexuality since the inception of the idea was made popular by Bram Stoker 118 years ago. Twilight proposes, if a VAMPIRE – who is the very embodiment of lust – can restrain himself for moral reasons for the woman he loves, then Mister-taking-his-girl-out-to-this-movie, so can you. If Edward can keep himself from both Bella's blood and bed, then you, oh mortal boy, no matter how much you may tell your girlfriend you love her, should too. Because NO one can emote more than the Bella-Edward characters about how devoted they are, how much they love each other, how thoroughly they would die for each other than this sappy over the top couple. Furthermore Edward is abstaining for the right reason – for Bella's soul, and he is clear and blunt about this DESPITE Bella's insistence that she does not believe in God.

I can just hear the after movie conversation – "If EDWARD can restrain himself then YOU should be able to, too! Don't you love me as much as Edward loves Bella?" And the more the young man may try to convince his lady friend that he wants to show his affection for her, the more he will be hoisted by his own petard of love. I can't help but chuckle.

The second reason I would advocate for this movie strongly comes in the form of the unbelieving Bella. In the fourth book/movie she discovers, soon after the honeymoon, that she is what everyone thought impossible – she has been made pregnant by Edward.

Edward had promised to make Bella a vampire, against his own better judgment, after they are married. Bella wants to start their honeymoon as a human. So subsequent to the mortal/vampire coupling and before the vampire changing process can begin, Bella finds herself with child. Rushing back to Carlisle, who is a doctor, they are told that a full term pregnancy will be terminal for Bella.

Bella, the atheist, in a welcome about face to her up to now single minded obsession with Edward, decides to die for her baby. And in a surprising but believable character shift, the life respecting Cullen family, so desperate are they to keep Bella alive, try emphatically to convince Bella to abort. Up to now Bella has almost worshipped the Cullens. But not only does Bella successfully fight them on this, she enlists the assistance of the one Cullen who hates her, Rosalie.

Rosalie and Bella pregnant

Rosalie is a vampire who was turned by Carlisle, in what he thought was an act of mercy, when he found Rosalie left for dead after a brutal attack. While grateful for the rescue she has grieved the loss of her  ability to bear children ever since. (Why male vampire have sperm which are alive enough to impregnate women but women vampires do not have living eggs is never explained, but is convenient to the plot, so just go with it.) And she hates Bella because Bella is voluntarily throwing away what Rosalie rightly sees as a blessing. So when Bella asks Rosalie for help to protect the unborn baby, Rosalie is more than willing to stand guard.

Bella alienates ALL the Cullens who love her and welcomed her to ally herself with the one Cullen who would be happy to kill her — all for the sake of her unborn child, whose continued existence is guaranteed to kill her.

Pregnant Bella

You really can't get a more pro-life scenario than that. With that one decision I became rather fond of the up-to-then rather annoying Miss Bella. You can't help but respect a woman readily giving up: the love of her life, the approval of the only real family she has ever had, and her best chance at immortality she believes she has, since she does not believe in an afterlife and the Cullens doubt they will be able to change her to a vampire after the birth of her child in time to save her — well, not life — but continued existence.

As it so happens they do, of course, save Bella, or it would have been a much shorter book, there would have been no fifth movie and the series would not have been NEARLY as popular with the teen crowd as it is.

So —- having created characters and a love story rivaling in the youth popularity pretty much every love story since Gone With the Wind and Love Story combined, Ms. Meyers makes a lust-representing vampire chaste, THEN turns a self-absorbed and atheistic modern female into a self-sacrificing pro-life mom.

Twilight fight

Then I'll go you one better – now this is a big spoiler so be warned. At the end of the series there is a climactic battle between the Cullens and their allies against the Volturi – bad scary vampires who want to take away or kill the Cullen child for her powers. But vampires from all over the world are enlisted to come to the aid of the Cullens. Those coming to fight side by side with the Cullens include: your traditional 1,000 year old vampires who snack on people as a matter of course, other "veggie" vampires who abstain from human blood, and…werewolves. OK they aren't your run of the mill werewolves, but more shapeshifters as they can change at will and are around to PROTECT humans rather than eat them, but these guys DO change INTO wolves.

Now many of the ancillary reasons these disparate groups have for fighting the Volturi include: vendettas against the Volturi, desire for autonomy from the Volturi, respect/affection/old debts owed to the Cullens. But all are drawn primarily under one simple principle: to protect the life of —- a child. An innocent whose one life is properly seen as more important than the dozens of grown ups who have pledged to protect her.

And you wonder why I endorse this series of books/movies? Stephanie Meyers takes virtues we need more desperately in this culture than Bella needs Edward – chastity, protection of the unborn child, and protection of child against the forces of evil – and plants them right into two characters who have fired the imagination of the very demographic part of our culture which needs to hear this the most – the teen and twenties. From a pragmatic view to culture change she has done an enormous good.

Twilight movies   Twilight books

God bless you Ms. Meyers. I own and have read every page of all your books and have sat through every single minute of all five movies – it's the least I could do to thank you.

Answer: He was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as the ill-fated Cedric Diggory.

Photo credits: empireonline.com, amazon.com, fanpop.com, arkansasbride.com, iamnotastalker.com, twilightfanpage.blogspot.com,  twilightsaga.wikia.com, dailymail.co.uk, geeksofdoom.com, wordsfueledbylove.com, iTunes.apple.com