Uplifting and well made story about an unconventional lady minister and her congregation. I cried happy tears at the end. There is no language, violence, sex, politics or bad acting.
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Welcome-to-Paradise/70078448?trkid=5966279
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Filed under Movies & Television
I’m especially excited about this, because I have been following Joni’s career since her first book came out. I remember my kids had a Joni tape when they were little and one of the songs was, “Wheels, I’ve got wheels, and they take me where I want to go.”
Her organization http://www.joniandfriends.org/ helped us out when we were at risk of losing the kids to foster care simply because my husband’s full time job didn’t earn enough to pay for all our expenses with full time day care. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but it came at a critical time as we waited for our day care provider to get through the state approval process so the state would pay her.
Looking at the trailer, I’m astonished anyone in Hollyweird tagged this film for applause, rather than derision.
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The screening of FrackNation scheduled for Sunday at the Frozen River Film Festival in Minnesota has been canceled. This is the first such cancellation in the festival’s nine year history.
The organizers gave several contradictory reasons for the cancellation. FrackNation Director Phelim McAleer chalked it up to a cowardly response to Left-wing bullying.
FrackNation was funded through the most successful Kickstarter crowd-funding documentary campaign ever, raising $212,000 from more than 3,300 people.
I’m proud to say I was (a very minor) one of those crowdfunders and that the documentary is excellent. Dearest went to the screening in Binghamton and got my DVD signed by Phelim. 🙂
Source:
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=65361a4a899c736f66ed8fb13&id=8fe96a65b6
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Filed under Environmentalism, Fracking, Movies & Television
You may or may not have heard of the anti-fracking movies “Gasland” and “Gasland II”” by Josh Fox. The fake “David and Goliath” myth about him is presented uncritically at the beginning of this trailer as absolute fact.
Gasland Trailer [2:47]
According to the Josh-as-David myth, a natural gas company offered him $100,000 for permission to frack on his property. Josh-as-David nobly declined. Instead of taking the money and keeping quiet about the alleged evils of fracking, Josh stood up to the Philistine natural gas giants and made “Gasland.”
The thing about heroes is … they’re supposed to be honest. Josh Fox is not. In the movie’s opening segments, Fox often refers to the 19.5 acres in Milanville, Pa., as “my land.” He also talks about “my $100,000″ in reference to money allegedly offered to him by an unnamed gas company to frack on “his” land.
1. The land belongs to his father.
2. The property consists of two parcels each about 500 feet wide and totaling 19.29 acres. One is fairly steep in parts; the other is near a stream. A typical fracking well pad is slightly less than 500 feet square and requires fairly level ground. It also must be sited a minimum of 500 feet from any major stream, building, well or septic system. Neither of Josh’s father’s parcels are suitable for fracking.
3. Natural gas leases are easy to identify, because each company uses a unique format. In “Gasland,” Josh shows the lease offer he claims he turned down. It’s from Hess Corporation, a company that has done zero business in the township where Pater Fox’s parcels are located.
4. Josh claims he received “his” offer in 2008. But the Hess company didn’t start soliciting fracking leases until 2009 when Josh was already making “Gasland.” However, once Hess came into the general area (though not the specific townships where the Fox parcels are), their lease forms became widely available.
5. When challenged, Josh says he no longer has the original documents. What … this was SO IMPORTANT that he turned up his nose at $100 grand, but then he misplaced the evidence? Maybe the dog ate them.
6. Josh likes to cast himself as this altruistic savior of the planet, but anti-fracking has paid much more than $100,000, even if that latter money had ever even existed, which it clearly did not. HBO paid him $750,000 in upfront money to shoot “Gasland”, then publicized it for him. The Park Foundation paid him $150,000 to promote anti-fracking. And he gets paid $5,000-$7,500 to lie out his lying liar hole about his personal saintliness and the evils of natural gas.
Gasland II Debunked [2:44]
Source:
Something Rotten in Gasland by Tom Shepstone – June 7, 2011
http://energyindepth.org/marcellus/something-rotten-in-gasland/
H/t J-bob
Filed under Energy, Environmentalism, Fracking, Movies & Television
I loved the book and I WANT to see this movie! Sadly, it doesn’t even come to theaters until Easter. Dunno when DVDs will be available.
Heaven is for Real Official Trailer #1 (2014) [3:02]
One of the things I loved in the book was the story about a game Colton’s family got into, because Colton had seen Jesus for real. They’d show him an artist’s image of Jesus and ask, “Is this what Jesus looks like?” And he’d say no every time, so they switched to asking, “What’s wrong with this one?” One day, his dad showed him the painting by Akiane and said, “What’s wrong with this one?” and Colton said, “That one’s right.” Wow. When I saw the portrait a nun had painted based on the image on the Shroud of Turin, I had to put it next to Akiane’s painting. Double wow.
Filed under Movies & Television
I happened to get these three movies in my Netflix mailings during the past two weeks. I didn’t plan it, but they proved to be even better in combination than alone. Watching them so close to one another has left me very thoughtful about some themes they share. Each is about someone with Daddy issues and how these broken relationships get healed. And each is set in the context of a craft-based family business that is renewed along with the healing of the relationships.
They’re all well-written, well-acted movies with no sex, violence, drugs, car chases, or politics. Unconditional has one bit of language, which I think is responsible for the PG-13, but it’s important to the character development and everyone gets really upset with the guy for saying a bad word. I wouldn’t have had a problem letting my kids watch any of these. In fact, I would have wanted them to watch them because of the good values they portray.
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Nelson Mandela’s long walk ended yesterday. He was a truly great man. As we mark his passing, I want to recommend this movie.
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Filed under Movies & Television, Nelson Mandela
Yesterday, Dearest and I were watching a documentary – The Case for Christ – and I just had this huge eye-rolling moment at the number of people on the street saying, “Jesus, so what?”, to which I had to hit pause and spew,
“Good grief! This peasant in the worst backwater in the entire Roman Empire walks around his teensy little country for three years, yapping about this and that, gathering some followers and pissing off the local Powers That Be so much they manipulate the Roman Procurator to put him to death. Then, when His followers insist He was risen from the dead, the Powers That Be make their cult illegal and torture and kill them. … Yet two THOUSAND years later, the whole world still remembers Jesus! Our calendar, most of our major holidays and a good deal of our best art, architecture and music are all based on His life and hundreds of millions of people in every single nation on Earth worship Him and follow His teachings. I mean … think about it. Who today even remembers Jim Jones?”
So imagine my surprise when I logged on to the internet and saw that today is the 35th anniversary of the Jonestown mass suicide! Weird, huh? For the many who do not remember Jim Jones … he was an American who founded a (not Christian) church in the mid-1950s. In 1973, he moved everyone to a commune in Guyana where “total economic and racial and social equality” would be enjoyed by all.
He was such a charismatic leader that he convinced nearly 1,000 people to cut off all ties at home, sign over all assets to the commune, and move to the middle of a jungle in South America to live out his dream. Five years later, he ordered them all to kill themselves and more than 900 of them not only voluntarily drank cyanide mixed into kool-aid, but also fed it to their children.
A 2006 documentary – American Experience: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple – tries to answer how one man could persuade more than 900 people to drink cyanide. I haven’t seen it … yet. It’s next up in my Netflix queue.
Sources:
Filed under Christianity, Movies & Television
I hesitate to say anything much, because I think watching this movie is like going on a retreat or making a pilgrimage. It’s going to affect each person differently. It’s too deep and too slow for kids, but for adults looking for a rich journey that will stay with them after the movie ends, it’s wonderful.
They filmed it on the Camino, so there’s scenery, culture, religion and history, if you like that kind of thing. It’s gender-neutral with that “going from here to there” thing that guys seem to enjoy combined with the “characters in a slice of life” thing that gals seem to prefer. Zero action, sex, violence, language. A little bit of mild drug, drink and smoking. Very respectful of personal faith issues.
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We didn’t know Oct 13 was special when we picked our wedding date. We just wanted to enjoy the fall foliage on our honeymoon trip through New England and the best guess dates six months ahead of the season were the two middle Saturdays in October, the 13th and the 20th of 1979.
My family has a special attachment to the number 13, because my brothers wore it for their sports jerseys. One of them was such a super-star, his league retired his number. When he and his fiancĂ©e were planning their nuptials, he told her he didn’t care about anything except that she pick a 13th, so he’d be able to remember their anniversary! LOL So they married on Sept 13th, just two weeks into his first semester of graduate school!
So, really … it’s because of my brothers that I voted for the 13th and Dearest didn’t care, so that was that. It was only years after our wedding that we learned about Our Lady of Fatima and were so thrilled to realize our wedding anniversary was on the same date as the Miracle of the Sun.
October 13, 1917: The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Portugal, was seen by tens of thousands of witnesses of all ages and dispositions, including newspaper reporters hostile to the Catholic Church who took photos and interviewed many who also witnessed extraordinary solar activity. According to these reports, the event lasted approximately ten minutes. Pope Pius XII himself said he saw it from the Vatican gardens. The event was officially accepted as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church on October 13, 1930.
Click on graphic to embiggen. It’s easier to read that way.
Yesterday, in addition to standing with the Million Vets March at our local war memorial, we also celebrated the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by Pope Francis at the Vatican.
For our 34th anniversary date night, I chose the excellent movie about Fatima, The 13th Day.
Sources:
Filed under Catholic Church, Movies & Television, Pope Francis, Sky Signs
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