I’m a firm believer in power naps and in condensed recreation. There are only 24 hours in a day, and most of us don’t have enough of them to waste.
Even my prayer life has had to conform itself, more often than I’d like to admit, to this hectic pace in which everything is instantaneous and present.
What we can control is the way in which we spend the precious few hours - or minutes - of our personal time, and the stuff which our minds ingest.
With technological advances in cinematography, in digital sound, and in the ability of theatres to deliver a compelling, at times cathartic experience, movies are a great alternative. Despite the rising price of tickets, millions continue to flood these halls of illusion with the hopes of a big thrill, fresh insight, new inspiration, a chance to vent latent aggressions, or a good nap.
So it was that I decided, after yet another day-off working in the office, to make sure that my eyes didn’t close on another pile of unfinished work. I called a friend at 8:35, and we deliberated as fast as we could. “Inception” I had already seen, with its multi-dimensional play amidst deepening layers of consciousness. “Salt” would just be another opportunity to watch our beloved Angelina take out dozens of male attackers. Both would immerse us inevitably in a firestorm of flying bullets, hardly any of which hit target.
“Let’s see ‘The Expendables’,” I suggested, in what appears to have been a total lapse of brain activity. Having seen Sylvester Stallone interviewing with Kelly and Regis as I ran the machines a few days before, I was certain that he’d matured a great deal in the past thirty years, and that we wouldn’t have to endure a mindless barrage of gratuitous violence. Hastily checking the reviews quickly by I-Phone, my friend found nothing too objectionable.
The previews went on for twenty minutes. The only one that wasn’t very violent was for “The Last Exorcism”. That one just featured a possessed girl twisting like the pretzel I was eating, to the grating of braking bones.
Finally, we got to “The Expendables”. And soon I wished that we hadn’t.
You know exactly what’s coming when the show begins off the coast of Somalia, with a dozen terrorists impatient for a pay-off after holding the crew for over three months. Enter Stallone and company, and the rest is already history. Whether the hero is Chuck Norris, Stephen Siegel, or any number of the characters embodying our national craving to take bloody revenge against our enemies, the basic formula is always the same: create a demon everyone loves to hate, allow him time to inflict some senseless damage on enough innocent people, throw in a beautiful woman who gets victimized and needs deliverance, and then, in the darkest hour of brutal oppression, let loose the muscle-bound agents of Almighty God’s wrath.
Admittedly, with some good acting, a marginal plot, likable personalities and occasionally witty conversation - not to mention the cameo appearance of California’s own Terminator - the movie has its attractive features. By far the most notable of these is Giselle Itié, whose character Sandra Campos stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the cast. Her presence is enough to save any storyline, yet only highlights the movie’s weakest element. The Americans who come to deliver her island from the grips of a puppet dictatorship manipulated by a less virtuous American will ultimately destroy much of what they came to rescue.
I don’t know what Stallone thinks of his audience’s IQ, but I didn’t feel flattered by a twist in the plot which would seem to justify the detonation of the presidential palace and the massacre of the island’s entire military.
As the beautiful national treasure collapses in what is altogether too reminiscent of the 9-11 images, a burgeoning cloud of dense white dust allows the five mercenaries to escape in the face of machine-gun fire.
For a full twenty minutes, bodies are shattered, heads exploded, necks and bones broken, and every available object blown to pieces in what can only be described as an orgy of adolescent aggression. It’s bad enough that the heroes do anything but the heroic thing, and that the plot can’t orchestrate a rallying of the troops around the vision of a liberated nation. It’s much worse that, following the unmitigated carnage, Sandra (who otherwise is extremely courageous in the defense of her people) has to give Sylvester an extended embrace of gratitude. For what great favor, I ask myself, is she so indebted to this blood soaked pit bull, beyond the fact that he rescued her from her torturers? But no: the audience must be entertained.
Following the first day of bombing sorties over Iraq, a pilot was quoted as saying, “It was as exciting as being there at the Super Bowl.” I wish the news hadn’t aired that interview. Violence has its victims, and none of them are so clearly evil as to justify the millions of civilians and soldiers conscripted into service who perish, or rot away in hospitals, or witness their families brutalized, or their lives and livelihoods torn to pieces, by the scourge of war. Yes, we clearly made a mistake by watching that movie.
On the other hand, Stallone made his mistake in making it the way he did.
Fr. Dean McFalls, St. Mary’s Parish, Stockton, CA August 20, 2010
Even my prayer life has had to conform itself, more often than I’d like to admit, to this hectic pace in which everything is instantaneous and present.
What we can control is the way in which we spend the precious few hours - or minutes - of our personal time, and the stuff which our minds ingest.
With technological advances in cinematography, in digital sound, and in the ability of theatres to deliver a compelling, at times cathartic experience, movies are a great alternative. Despite the rising price of tickets, millions continue to flood these halls of illusion with the hopes of a big thrill, fresh insight, new inspiration, a chance to vent latent aggressions, or a good nap.
So it was that I decided, after yet another day-off working in the office, to make sure that my eyes didn’t close on another pile of unfinished work. I called a friend at 8:35, and we deliberated as fast as we could. “Inception” I had already seen, with its multi-dimensional play amidst deepening layers of consciousness. “Salt” would just be another opportunity to watch our beloved Angelina take out dozens of male attackers. Both would immerse us inevitably in a firestorm of flying bullets, hardly any of which hit target.
“Let’s see ‘The Expendables’,” I suggested, in what appears to have been a total lapse of brain activity. Having seen Sylvester Stallone interviewing with Kelly and Regis as I ran the machines a few days before, I was certain that he’d matured a great deal in the past thirty years, and that we wouldn’t have to endure a mindless barrage of gratuitous violence. Hastily checking the reviews quickly by I-Phone, my friend found nothing too objectionable.
The previews went on for twenty minutes. The only one that wasn’t very violent was for “The Last Exorcism”. That one just featured a possessed girl twisting like the pretzel I was eating, to the grating of braking bones.
Finally, we got to “The Expendables”. And soon I wished that we hadn’t.
You know exactly what’s coming when the show begins off the coast of Somalia, with a dozen terrorists impatient for a pay-off after holding the crew for over three months. Enter Stallone and company, and the rest is already history. Whether the hero is Chuck Norris, Stephen Siegel, or any number of the characters embodying our national craving to take bloody revenge against our enemies, the basic formula is always the same: create a demon everyone loves to hate, allow him time to inflict some senseless damage on enough innocent people, throw in a beautiful woman who gets victimized and needs deliverance, and then, in the darkest hour of brutal oppression, let loose the muscle-bound agents of Almighty God’s wrath.
Admittedly, with some good acting, a marginal plot, likable personalities and occasionally witty conversation - not to mention the cameo appearance of California’s own Terminator - the movie has its attractive features. By far the most notable of these is Giselle Itié, whose character Sandra Campos stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the cast. Her presence is enough to save any storyline, yet only highlights the movie’s weakest element. The Americans who come to deliver her island from the grips of a puppet dictatorship manipulated by a less virtuous American will ultimately destroy much of what they came to rescue.
I don’t know what Stallone thinks of his audience’s IQ, but I didn’t feel flattered by a twist in the plot which would seem to justify the detonation of the presidential palace and the massacre of the island’s entire military.
As the beautiful national treasure collapses in what is altogether too reminiscent of the 9-11 images, a burgeoning cloud of dense white dust allows the five mercenaries to escape in the face of machine-gun fire.
For a full twenty minutes, bodies are shattered, heads exploded, necks and bones broken, and every available object blown to pieces in what can only be described as an orgy of adolescent aggression. It’s bad enough that the heroes do anything but the heroic thing, and that the plot can’t orchestrate a rallying of the troops around the vision of a liberated nation. It’s much worse that, following the unmitigated carnage, Sandra (who otherwise is extremely courageous in the defense of her people) has to give Sylvester an extended embrace of gratitude. For what great favor, I ask myself, is she so indebted to this blood soaked pit bull, beyond the fact that he rescued her from her torturers? But no: the audience must be entertained.
Following the first day of bombing sorties over Iraq, a pilot was quoted as saying, “It was as exciting as being there at the Super Bowl.” I wish the news hadn’t aired that interview. Violence has its victims, and none of them are so clearly evil as to justify the millions of civilians and soldiers conscripted into service who perish, or rot away in hospitals, or witness their families brutalized, or their lives and livelihoods torn to pieces, by the scourge of war. Yes, we clearly made a mistake by watching that movie.
On the other hand, Stallone made his mistake in making it the way he did.
Fr. Dean McFalls, St. Mary’s Parish, Stockton, CA August 20, 2010
