I went to see “Atonement” at City Screen.
I left the cinema wondering why I liked it so much. I thought the acting and action was good, I loved the scenery and sets. I liked seeing Keira Knightley looking elegant in her green dress. These things all engaged me in the story and, looking back, pulled me along through the adventures. But as I left City Screen I knew I felt there was more to it than that. It had connected with me deeply. Why should that be?
See TheMorningFlight to find out my thoughts about it.
Graham
Chihiro and her family are on their way to their new home when they stumble across an abandoned theme park. On further inspection the theme park turns out to be a magical bath house for “the spirits”. Chihiro is trapped there and forced to work in the bath house while her Mother and Father are turned into pigs. To save her parents and get back to her own world she must defeat the evil witch Yubaba. Spirited Away is a tale of trial, longing, friendship, love and magic. An utterly spell binding masterpiece of animation from Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli (Jiblee) Studios.
I love this film for its storyline, beautiful animation and music not because of its shinto overtones or demonology. As a christian I am instinctively drawn to the Kingdom values in things I see and read.
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) is a typical Miyazaki creation. It stars a brave and sensible young female protagonist. This is unusual for Japan which is one of the last great bastions of chauvinism among developed countries. Japan’s birth rate has been below replacement level for 26 years straight. This is partly because Japanese women now have the same educational opportunities as men. They quite rightly don’t want to give up high flying careers to become submissive, child bearing house wives. Recently LDP Policy Minister Syoichi Nakagawa lamented this “Women have their proper place: they should be womanly. They have their own abilities and these should be fully exercised, for example in flower arranging, sewing, or cooking. It’s not a matter of good or bad, but we need to accept reality that men and women are genetically different.” This was in 2007!
Usually if a female takes the lead role in an anime she is ultra-feminine and naive with a voluptuous figure. But Miyazaki’s animes have a little more depth. As well as honouring women, he’s pro environment and anti-materialist. Not to mention his fathomless imagination and breathtakingly beautiful animation. Read more »
Some 182 MPs voted against and 107 in favour of backbencher Ann Winterton’s 10-minute-rule bill Termination of Pregnancy (Counselling and Miscellaneous Provisions) in the House of Commons on Tuesday 5th June.
See TheMorningFlight.com for full article and extract from Ann Winterton’s speech.
‘Enlarge 07′ will be a dynamic, inspiring and empowering weekend where the focus is on releasing you for greater effectiveness.
Serious4God & Serious4Kids are hosting this combined Youth & Childrens Workers conference with an excellent line up of speakers with track-records of effectiveness.
Highly recommended!
Go to the Serious4God site to book.
Abortion Bill, June 5th, 2007. Write to your MP without delay urging support.
Ann Winterton MP – supported by Labour, Lib-Dem and Conservative MPs - will be introducing a Bill on Tuesday, June 5th.
The aim is to ensure that women receive proper counselling warning them of possible dangers to their physical and mental health, informing them of alternative help available, and providing them with a delay of seven days before making a final decision.
The Bill will also require doctors to state on the notification forms whether the abortion was carried out on physical OR on mental grounds (instead of grouping the two together as at present and thus obscuring the real reasons for the abortion).
Please write to your MP at the House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA. Or you can telephone him/her at 020 7219 3000. Ask for your MP (by name) or his/her secretary. Give your name and address to show that you are a constituent. Alternatively, you can find out who your MP is and email them at www.writetothem.com
Urge the MP to attend the debate on Tuesday, June 5th and to vote in support of the Bill.
See TheMorningFlight.com for more.
Dawkins, a frequently ferocious critic of religion, told Times reporter Ruth Gledhill that he subscribes to ‘Einsteinian religion’. He defined this as a ‘reverence for the Universe and life, which has nothing to do with the supernatural’.
He says he is open to Einstein’s belief in ’something that our mind cannot grasp’ that is behind everything, but he wouldn’t call it God.
See TheMorningFlight.com for more details.
In an article on the BBC web site (‘Catholic Church tested in Brazil’ by Gary Duffy, Sao Paulo) the Pentecostals are mentioned.
The Pentecostal churches, referred to here under the umbrella title of “evangelicals” - which includes other Protestant churches - are a powerful force in Brazil, with growing media empires, significant political representation, and more than 24 million followers.
Brazil still enjoys the position as the largest Catholic country in the world, with some 125 million followers recorded in 2000.
But according to the US Pew Forum on Religion and Public life, successive Brazilian censuses show the Catholic share of the population decreased by 4.1% in the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, and dropped almost three times as much in the next 20 years.
By contrast, the number of Protestants increased by 2.6% between 1960 and 1980, but more than tripled the rate of increase in the following 20 years.
The country’s best-known RC priest, known to everyone as Padre Marcelo. The former aerobics teacher turned cleric is now very popular.
He conducts “charismatic”-style masses. The article goes on to claim that one form of response from the Catholic Church to this growing challenge has been, “To imitate at least some of the spontaneous style of the Pentecostal services.”
My initial reaction to the movie was that I want to read ‘Persian Fire
‘ again. I was surprised at the level of historical accuracy, given that this is Hollywood.
Am I slow or is it simply that I’m not wired up that way? It was an hour and a half into watching before I wondered if there was meant to be an homo-erotic element to the film? Slow? Or a case of “to the pure all things are pure”? Surely, never has there been such a gathering of ‘iron pumpers’ and oiled at that! For portraying the 300 Spartans, how did they get so many people with such similar physiques? Was the cast really made up of a load of ‘gym haunters’ or were they digitally altered? Or perhaps they were the real actors heads on other people’s bodies. I thought the Spartans fought naked, unsurprisingly they were not portrayed like that in the film, they all very tastefully sported leather ‘Y fronts’.
While the historical accounts tell us of an amazing military feat by so few, I was wondering, before I saw ‘300′, how they would manage to make a story out it. The use of the romantic link between Leonidas and his wife, between the battlefield and the home, was a clever one. Though in such a strange brutalising society I am not convinced such romanticism existed. After all, this was a society where boys were taken away from their parents and entrusted to ‘boy-herders’ to be turned into warriors, and where girls were similarly treated that they might produce more warriors. A whole society dedicated to breeding fighters, where love was scorned.
