16 posts tagged “movie”
Thanks Ana for letting me watch this previously unopened DVD while you are at camp. I think you will enjoy this as much as the other two!
Are you less human if you have no home but a bumpy wagon, the breeze and the trees?
If the way you communicate is through vibrant colors floating around melancholy music?
If instead of smiling, you look into people's souls with sad eyes.
I've consolidated my "Collections" in the bottom right column so that all of our Alaska and western national park vacation pics are in "Way Out West Vacation". And I've added "My kids' video creations" which includes the newest from my previous post, as well as their experiment in cloning, and their first with special effects. I hope you enjoy them.
But still the film and music are most beloved for very good and deeply human reasons. Unfortunately you can't get the original soundtrack, so instead of purchasing Donovan's recent solo re-sing with guitar only, I purchased Buddy Comfort's renditions with more voices and instruments, especially for "Stone by Stone", sans essential geese, which is sung at the end of the above clip. I'm finding it very nice Pysanki making inspiration.
Another reality check though, according to Wikipedia, the Prayer of St. Francis, "Make me an instrument of your peace" cannot be traced before the 20th century. That doesn't bother me so much as how the first part of the prayer now affects me,
- Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
- where there is hatred, let me sow love;
- where there is injury, pardon;
- where there is doubt, faith;
- where there is despair, hope;
- where there is darkness, light;
- and where there is sadness, joy.
This part is a little better, but I think being consoled, understood, and loved is necessary, but may not come in the form we expect. Though it should lead to understanding, loving, giving, forgiving, and dying to selfishness to receive Eternal Life.
- O Divine Master,
- grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
- to be understood, as to understand;
- to be loved, as to love;
- for it is in giving that we receive,
- it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
- and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
- Amen.
Spoiler warning!
The only thing about that otherwise delightfully refreshing movie is the thing I've complained about before in other movies. The heroes get guilt-ridding permission from their dorkily portrayed fiancee's to go after someone else. Richard Gere in Shall We Dance didn't go quite that far because he was already married, even though he flirted with the idea. Besides, he liked how his wife made him feel worthy of being loved. But as in the others, his wife comes off looking like a pale consolation prize. I think a big problem with these movies is that the grass on the other side of the fence is always portrayed as greener. That's because you can't see the warts from here. Covetousness and discontent are the problems. A look inside is what is needed, not a roving eye.
Also, people who have been marginalized and dis-favorably categorized are really diamonds to the perceptive eye. Salvation is not only in personal glowing, but in community glowing. We are not saved alone, and our spouse is given to us for salvation, not personal, selfish, fulfillment. Communion isn't about condescending condescension either, but about mutual and humble, I'm the chiefest and ugliest of sinners, giving and receiving from the Lord.
Giselle and Robert's fate with their previously intended seems worse than death. But that's what marriage is, dying to self, martyrdom. It is only through death that true-needs-met life is attained.
It's Robert's daughter's well-being, not Giselle's and Robert's, that is justifiably worth the new liason, imo. And this is more possible with Giselle because of her beautifully portrayed transcendence. She is a true Spiritual Mother that all women should aspire to be, and can be by the grace of God, no matter if your hair is strawberry blond and you have a dainty nose, or if you're brunette with a disproportionate jaw.
I liked the complexity and logical cause and effect in this movie. And I kind of liked that there wasn't a clear "good guy". We sympathized with one more than the other, but he is not put up on a pedestal. And the less sympathetic character has other qualities that enable his accomplishments to be noteworthy. I was especially intrigued by the way his duplicity was manifest. If we can't have a truly Saintly hero, then I'll take an honest depiction of common humanity's quests, accomplishments, ruining failures and struggles.
The snow began to fall as I was explaining my difficulty with the movie Ratatouille over Thanksgiving dinner.
So with my best friend since highschool sitting across from me, my dear husband beside, and all the dear children around the warm colored table cloth with warm colored food on cobalt blue plates, the fire in the hearth behind me, I explained that what I didn't like about the rat inspired cooking, was the instrumental method of using the human. I used to think that that was what inspiration was - get out of the way and let God do it through you. He had to learn to disengage his mind and will to let the master do his best work. Now I believe in a much more synergistic approach to creativity - God empowering humans to make something new and beautiful through conversation and gentle nudgings which open the mind to new possibilities or at least tools.I don't want to define the conditions any more than that because if we aren't precisely balanced in human contribution and the activities of God, we can easily slip into destructive error or judgmentalism.
Anyway, I thought about taking a picture of the snow falling with my icon shrine of Mary holding Jesus on the tree in front of the swimming pool, but I was a little too mellow to go to that trouble, so you'll just have to imagine it instead - be sure to make it peaceful as well as beautiful. Oh, and if you need sound, when I went to take the brown oak leaves out of the skimmer, the snow hitting the leaves all over the ground made a bright tinkling sound all around me. C'est magnifique!
