review of 'The Passion'

[Rootsie]

The same people who are trying to tell the rest of us what is 'indecent' and 'obscene' and trash the First Amendment (largely successfully) are the ones who are flocking in droves to this pornographic spectacle.

From The New Yorker

Passion of the Christ
(2004)
Mel Gibson's bloody re-creation of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus is one of the cruellest movies in the history of the cinema. Gibson and the screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald selected and enhanced incidents from the four Gospels and collated them into a single, surpassingly violent narrative in which the incomparable glories of Jesus' temperament—the joyousness, the brilliance, the heart-stopping eloquence—are all but effaced by the spectacle of his physical destruction. The lashing and flaying, often in slow-motion, go on forever, and Gibson displays a curious technical fascination with the details of crucifixion—huge nails being hammered into hands and feet, with James Caviezel's Jesus howling at each blow. Here and there, the movie has a kind of grim power, and Caleb Deschanel's even gray lighting at the Crucifixion is stunning, but this is a sickening, unilluminating, and ignorant show. The filmmakers have also changed in small ways a number of things from the Gospels and ignored what historians know of ancient Judea, all with the result of making the Jewish leaders more, and the Roman leaders less, responsible for the death of Jesus. It's a deeply angry film, and one wonders how believers can react to it with anything but guilt, fear, or loathing.

— David Denby

[iyah360]

All is fair in love and war.

[iyah360]

from what I have gathered on the web, many of the anti-church type Christians see the Bush administration as a wicked incarnation of the beast of revelation.

it is indeed easy to polarize people instead of looking at the shades of grey that really compose the belief sytems of people.

imho this whole "christian" zealousness that is being pursued by the republican wing is merely to activate those people in the country who share christian beleifs to take action and vote for the person who APPEARS to stand for their beliefs against the tide of liberal corruption of America. they will be spit out too when they no longer serve a purpose, and this is something that we need to realize.

power uses what it can to gain a foothold. bush is probably more liberal than any president we have ever had if one looks at economics: export of jobs, allowing Mexican "illegal" immigrants into the country to do the dirty work, consolidation of power, relaxing anti-trust laws, etc.