Butt-Numb-A-Thon 5 12/6&7/03
“Become who you were born to be.”
Every year I have a birthday. Every year I try to get a big group of my friends together for some kind of fun event. Up until last year it always fell into a shambles and nothing happened. Last year I was able to get them to go to dinner with me and, somehow, it happened again this year. Strangely, even though I have all the same friends (for the most part) it was a completely different group both years. Nothing I have ever done for my birthday can match what Harry Knowles (he of Ain’t It Cool News) does every year. Hell, it can’t even lick the boots of what he does. For the past five years he has been using the Alamo Drafthouse as his personal party central for 24 hours of pure cinema-geek enjoyment. He has had movies that haven’t been released yet (Pitch Black, Lord Of The Rings, blah, blah, blah) and special guests (Vin Diesel showed up to that first one with PB).
This was the first year that I got in and I think it had to be his best one. There wasn’t a single horrible movie (although one came close, but it was still fun to watch until the end) and a couple of HUGE special guests.
As my friends and I descended on the Alamo there was much conjecture about who was going to be there and what movies we were going to see. We knew that Return Of The King was going to play because Harry has always had those and he said on his site that he was going to watch it like he always does: with a bunch of his friends. But maybe Kill Bill, Vol. 2? Maybe Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind? Perhaps even that cinematic epic Cheaper By The Dozen? (Someone on his site kidded about that. I would have been pissed.)
But no one knew what was coming. None of us could know.
We got started about an hour late. Harry tried to get us settled, but we were all too excited. We knew that the conclusion to the greatest fantasy epic was coming at the close of the party (it’s NOT a festival!! Some of these movies have to play Cannes.) and we couldn’t wait. But there were plenty of other surprises that we really wanted to know about, too.
HAUNTED GOLD (1932)
Directed by: Mack V. Wright
Written by: Adele S. Buffington
Harry started us off with the only horror movie that John Wayne ever made.
Ok. Horror may be kind of a strong word. More horrific. It was 1932 and this wasn’t exactly the Duke that we all know and deify. In fact, his horse was named Duke. John was just a skinny kid (24 at the time) who was in a bunch of B-movies. This was his 35th movie (according to IMDb) and still no one knew his name.
Haunted Gold is about a young man who is called to the town he grew up in because of a mine that his father owned with a long dead partner. The partner’s daughter, Janet (Sheila Terry from…um…it doesn’t really matter), doesn’t know why she was called here because her dad lost his half of the mine in a bet…or something like that.
But now dey’s spooks around. And dey’s spookin’ the walkin’ talkin’ stereotype that’s-a hangin’ out wit Mistra Wayne. Blue Washington plays Clarence Washington Brown, one of the worst portrayals of a black man I have ever seen. (Then again, I haven’t seen just a whole lot of movies with this sort of thing in it.) He is overly scared of everything and just doesn’t know what to do without his massa. (I seriously believe that ol’ Clarence was the inspiration for Scooby-Doo.) Oh, he doesn’t call him that, but he may as well. I guess back in ’32 he gave a lot of laughter to the audience, but these days, well…it was nervous and guilty laughter. It was more funny because people actually put this sort of thing on film than because it was actually funny. At one point, Wayne is getting put up for the night in the local hotel. He points at Clarence and says, “Well, what about…?” Everyone booed. Clarence had to either sleep in the old abandoned house across the street or, as Wayne said, “You could wait outside.”
Booooo.
Speaking of Scooby-Doo, the plot was a direct ancestor of our favorite scaredy dog. (Watch out for spoilers, but I doubt you’re going to be looking for this flick.) The ghost ended up being Janet’s supposedly dead dad who was just trying to scare people away from the mine. But he was a good guy. And if it hadn’t been for that meddling Duke…
But the movie was fun in a rather cheesy way. And Duke, the horse, did some things that no horse could ever do (“Go back and get the boys, Duke!” “Throw the lever, Duke!”) and Wayne threw some girly-punches. Fun was had by all.
After that Harry told us about his experiences with serials. He wasn’t able to get his favorite one (I forget the name, but I’m sure it’s great.), but was able to get:
THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941)
Directed by: John English/William Witney
Written by: Ronald Davidson/Norman S. Hall/Arch Heath/Joseph F. Poland/Sol Shor
Based on characters created by: Bill Parker/C.C. Beck
Many consider this the greatest serial ever made. It concerns a boy, Billy (Frank Coghlan, Jr.) who is transformed into Captain Marvel (Tom Tyler from Stagecoach) by a wizard named Shazam. Every time he says “Shazam!” Billy suddenly develops pubes and becomes a middle-aged man with the strength of ten men. And he can fly. And he has all kinds of other super powers. Kinda like Superman, actually. That’s mainly because it was supposed to be Superman, but DC wouldn’t let Republic do it.
The show was gearing up to be good and everybody was into it, but the film stopped about 20-25 minutes into it. Just when Captain Marvel got ahold of a machine gun!
But all was forgiven when the New Line Cinemas title screen came up. The crowd went insane. We all knew it was:
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens
Based on book by: JRR Tolkien
Harry knew he had to surprise us with it somehow, so he showed it to us early.
How do I review a movie like this? Seriously. It’s the culmination of everything that we’ve been seeing and dreaming of for the past three or four years. Ever since I heard that Peter Jackson was doing these films and I read the books I’ve been wondering how he was going to pull off some of these scenes. I’ve been waiting to see what the fires of Mount Doom look like and the Battle of Minas-Tirith and the Halls of Gondor and, and, and….
Well, this is how: he makes the absolute perfect ending to the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time. As great as everyone thought the Fellowship and Two Towers were, this one is twice as good. By about half way through there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The film would get quiet for a second and you could hear little nerdling sniffles all through the theatre. For three and a half hours we were right there with Aragorn and Frodo and all the rest. When Legolas said to Gimli, “How about dying with a friend?” and Gimli said, “I could do that.” we knew that things could be over for one of them. And we were afraid for them.
If this movie doesn’t absolutely sweep at Oscar time I am actually giving up on Oscar. No, really. This time I mean it. Come on, guys. SHUT UP!!
I can’t say enough good words about this movie. Everyone in it was awesome. The battles are fucking amazing. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen walls of men and orcs hit each other at top speed. And they’re incredibly violent, too. I’m surprised it got a PG-13 rating.) And if you loved Legolas in the last two movies thinking he was the coolest character, you’ll want to suck his dick after this one. He does some pretty amazing shit here.
I don’t want to say too much about it because I wouldn’t dare ruin it for anyone. But it is the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. There really hasn’t been a better film this year. I’m happy to have seen this (happy isn’t even nearly the right word for it), but I’m sad that it’s over. There’s nothing else to wait for until New Line gets the rights to The Hobbit and offers it to Peter. So far, that hasn’t happened, but it could. Who knows? Peter and Ian McKellen have both said that they’re game.
I cannot wait to see what Peter does with King Kong.
After the movie was over you could tell that Harry was just filled with every emotion. He told us all to be patient and sit down because he had some very small guests coming out. My first thought was, “If he got all four of the Hobbits here I’m going to freakin’ explode.” He told us that we were going to watch The General as a thank you to the guests for making these movies. We all laughed at Harry for starting to cry while he said that. But a laughter of comrades. We all had the same feelings he did.
That’s when he brought Peter out.
Holy shit. Peter Jackson was there along with his writers Fran Walsh (Peter’s wife) and Philippa Boyens (a big fan of the books and the mouthpiece of the writing team). I had heard rumors that Peter and Elijah Wood were going to be there. I just knew that there was no way that Peter would be there because he’s too busy with the extended version of this film and getting ready for King Kong. But he wanted to be here in Austin so bad that he skipped out on a Q&A in LA that New Line really wanted him to do (they forbade him to come to Austin, pretty much) and hopped a flight as quickly as he could. He lied to his production company for us! I love him!! He was off to Berlin soon after The General, but he was a very cool guy.
Elijah wasn’t there.
After that big surprise and amazing piece of film there was no way that Harry could top himself. He had shot his wad (as I’m sure many members of the audience did during the movie and Q&A). But it was no longer about topping ROTK. It was just about having fun.
Directed by: Clyde Bruckman/Buster Keaton
Written by: Clyde Bruckman/Buster Keaton/Al Boasberg/Charles Henry Smith/Paul Girard Smith
Based on books by: William Pittenger
I’m sure most of us have seen The General. Hell, it’s required viewing at UT and most film-ophiles check it out just because it’s got such a great reputation as one of the greatest silent films. But it’s one of Peter’s favorite movies and it IS a great film, so that was where we went next.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton, one of the greatest silent comedians of all time and Jackie Chan’s main influence), a lowly train engineer in the Deep South during the Civil War. Johnnie’s girl, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), really wants him to enlist and fight off the Yankee menace. Unfortunately, the top brass figure he’s more useful as an engineer than a soldier, so the won’t take him. For some reason they wouldn’t tell him why. I guess there would have been no movie if they had. He goes home, dejected, but not before Annabelle’s brother and father tell him that her “good for nothin’” suitor didn’t even get in line to enlist. She tells him that he can’t talk to her anymore until he’s in a uniform.
Bitch.
A year later his beloved engine, The General, gets kidnapped by the North. This is where the movie truly begins. It’s non-stop sight gags that even a verbal comedy lover would love. They’re all classics, from the soaking of Annabelle to Johnnie using one railroad tie to get another one off of the tracks. There’s no calculating how much influence this movie had on comedy and film in general. Watching it today it’s hard to tell just how revolutionary it was at the time, but it’s still funny as hell and should be seen by anyone who likes to laugh even a little bit.
Was Buster better than Charlie as Peter says? I don’t know. I love both of them equally. They really are completely different kinds of comedy. As someone once said (I wish I could remember who), Buster is comedy of the mind, Charlie is comedy of the heart.
The new score by Guy Forsythe and his band was great. Very down-home country and lots of cool sound effects.
The only bad thing about this film is that it really glorifies the South. They are the heroes of the movie and Johnnie is a die-hard Dixie Man. There’s no mention of the reasons for the war at all, but I do seriously wonder if Spike Lee likes this movie. (Although I think it’s supposed to be a direct spoof of The Birth Of A Nation, so maybe that helps.)
From there we moved on to another country. There was a lot of that this year. Of the 11 movies we saw, 4 were subtitled and one other one was from another country. It’s apparently some kind of record. And most of the subtitled ones were between about 2am and 6am. Bastards.
Directed by: Chan-wook Park
Written by: Jo-yun Hwang/Chun-hyeong Lim/Garon Tsuchiya
Based on manga by: Nobuaki Minegishi
Chan-Wook Park is apparently building up quite a cult following lately. His last film, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, got a lot of applause this year and, when Harry said that he liked Oldboy better, everyone seemed shocked.
I’ve never heard of the guy or his other two movies. (The other one is Joint Security Area.) But I liked this one quite a bit.
Oh Dae-Su (Min-Sik Choi from Shiri-you may have seen that one on the shelves of video stores lately) has been imprisoned for the last 15 years. Funny thing is, he has no clue why or by whom. He was pulled into this hotel room and left there being fed and drugged occasionally. Now that he has escaped, he has vowed to find out the whos and the whys.
Along the way he meets Mido (Hye-Jeong Kang), a beautiful young sushi chef, and falls in love with her. He also finds out that the person who imprisoned him is still trying to torture him.
The story takes some very weird turns and has a pretty sickening twist ending, which makes me think that the boys at Miramax (or whoever it is who is buying the rights to this one–by the way, boys, this review was posted AFTER Dec. 8th, no matter what date it says on top.) are going to screw it all up when they do their remake. I haven’t seen a lot of Korean films (Tell Me Something and Lies are about it for me), but none of them would be made in America. The Koreans aren’t afraid of any subject and they show it all. Gotta love that.
This is a very good film with lots of darkness and, of course, violence. It’s the first film of the day that is just rife with violence and the second where someone’s hand/finger gets taken off. But I think it’s the tooth-pulling scene that gets everyone.
This is about the time that we saw a couple of new trailers.
HELLBOY TRAILER
I’ve been waiting for this one ever since I saw Blade II and Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman were talking about it so much. I don’t know anything about the comic, but I want to see this movie.
The preview, though, almost seems to leave something to be desired. Yeah, it’s cool to finally see it on the big screen, but everything looks VERY cartoony. Hellboy looks like a kid with sawed off horns. (A very tall and big kid to be sure, but still a kid.) I guess it’s just not as dark as I would have hoped.
But Selma Blair looks great.
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
Not so sure about this one, either. It’s about a reporter (Gwyneth Paltrow) in 1939 NYC. She and a couple of pilots (Jude Law and Angelina Jolie…waaaaaiiiiiit a minute…did they let women become pilots back then?) are the only ones who can save the scientists of the world and, in fact, the world. There are robots with lasers and big flying machines and stuff being destroyed.
What I like:
It looks like a movie made in the 30s about the World Of Tomorrow. That’s pretty damn cool. It’s very comic booky (but it works in this one) and even the trailer is done in a comic book style.
What I don’t like:
The whole movie was done on green screen. That means that it may very well suck because it’s sometimes hard to act with just a screen behind you. AND that also means that they’re going to pay more attention to special effects and background than story.
I’m afraid.
More violence? More subtitles? Ok. Here we go!
WASP’S NEST (NID DE GUEPES, AKA THE NEST, 2002)
Directed by: Florent Emilio Siri
Written by: Florent Emilio Siri/Jean-François Tarnowski
Who remembers Assault On Precinct 13? Ok, who remembers The Nebraskan? Yeah. Not as many. I had never heard of it until Harry told us that it was the actual basis for Precinct 13.
Why am I talking about these movies? Because Wasp’s Nest (The Nest according to IMDb) is a direct remake of AOP13. (I’m sure Tarantino would LOVE this movie.) A group of cops are in charge of getting an evil killer/rapist/Albanian revolutionary to a maximum-security prison. A group of robbers are robbing a warehouse. Somehow the two get stuck in the same warehouse while a bunch of faceless (literally-they all have gas masks with night vision goggles covering their faces) Albanian mafia troops besiege them, picking them off one by one.
It’s been done many times, but never quite as confusedly. It took me a long time to figure out that the people shooting at the cops weren’t part of the thieves’ group and that the cops weren’t shooting at the thieves. When I finally understood what was going on I realized that the action was great. Yeah, the characters are pretty stock (although they’re cool, too) and the story is simplistic (once you figure it out), but it’s action packed and very violent. Director Florent Emilio Siri is next doing the Bruce Willis action flick, Hostage, and the new Splinter Cell video game. I can see Hollywood loving this guy. I hope Hostage has a better story.
Now let’s move on to a REAL horror movie.
GINGER SNAPS: UNLEASHED (2004)
Directed by: Brett Sullivan
Written by: Megan Martin
Based on characters created by: Karen Walton
Yes, it’s time now to revisit Ginger’s little sister, Brigette (Emily Perkins). You remember them from the original Ginger Snaps back in 2000, right? Well, as we all know Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) and Brigette, erm, parted ways…of sorts. But not before B injected herself with some of Ginger’s tainted blood and started to become a werewolf herself. (All of this is sort of explained along the way in this new movie.) Now, with daily injections of wolfsbane, she is able to keep her inner beast under control to a degree. But that doesn’t mean that she’s cured. She still feels the hunger at times and it keeps getting stronger. It’s not helped any when she gets thrown into a rehab center for girls because someone thinks she’s hooked on heroin.
She meets a strange and unlikely ally in Ghost (Tatiana Maslany), a young girl who is in the center to take care of her grandmother, a burn victim who doesn’t seem too happy about Ghost being around. There’s also Tyler (Eric Johnson-not the guitarist), a nurse who trades drugs for sex.
The movie is sufficiently creepy in all the right places and kind of keeps the mood of dark comedy and horror that the first film had. The last half reminded me a bit of Alien because they were stuck in the basement of the center and then in Ghost’s grandma’s house running from a mostly unseen evil.
I also really like where they’ve taken Brigette. She’s not just another goth kid who has something actually wrong with her. Like Sarah Connor in the second Terminator film, she’s highly disturbed by what she’s becoming. She’s all alone in the world and knows it. There’s no going back to what she once was even if she does manage to find a cure, which she doesn’t have much hope of doing.
What I wasn’t all that happy with was the ending. It seemed like they just wanted to tack on a twist ending that would creep us out even more than just another werewolf. And, I guess it is creepy, but it almost seems out of nowhere.
It’s by no means as good as the first one, but I still thought it was better than a lot of the crap that has been called horror lately.
It’s coming out on DVD pretty soon and the prequel should be out soon after that. Too bad the first one didn’t get a theatrical release, because they both look great on the big screen and are much scarier in a dark room with a bunch of other horror fans.
How ’bout some more horror? This time with subtitles!
HIGH TENSION (aka SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE, HAUTE TENSION) (2003)
Directed by: Alexandre Aja
Written by: Alexandre Aja/Grégory Levasseur
France has started making horror movies. Well, I guess they always have, but I’ve never seen one that I can remember. Most of what we get over here are the really pretentious French films that end in the death of a child or the diseasing of an entire city. You know: their comedies.
This one, however, is a pretty tense little slasher flick with a twist ending that nearly negates early scenes in the movie.
Ok, it completely negates them. But I didn’t really care. It was a fun ride.
Marie (Cecile de France) and Alex (Maiwenn le Besco…credited as just Maiwenn) are best friends in college. They’re going to Alex’s house for the summer (I think) and Marie couldn’t be happier. We kind of get the feeling that Marie may be a bit happier than Alex really wants her to be.
The first night, though, something horrible happens. An old man comes in a kills everyone in the family except for Alex. Marie sees what’s going on and hides, trying occasionally to save Alex to no avail. The man carries her off in his truck to some horrible destiny. Luckily Marie manages to get in the truck.
That’s the whole story until the twist at the end. Not much there, but it’s enough to show us some really cool gore effects and some horrible, horrible deaths. Director Alexandre Aja has a future in horror films, but he needs to work on plugging up those plot holes.
Now, on to a horror of a different kind.
[Rating:.5/5]
Directed by: Jerry Gross
Written by: Jerry Gross/Nicholas Demetroules
Jerry Gross made a lot of exploitation flicks in the 60s. Strangely, a lot of them were hits. His biggest deal was actually releasing Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadaaaassss Song. (Talk about exploitation. That one is blaxsploitation AND child porn!)
This is one of the more disturbing of Gross’ films. It’s about a young Swedish woman (with a slightly British accent) who is hired by a small-town high school to start teaching sex-ed. Of course, all of the parents are against it, but the kids love to laugh about it. As soon as the kids become more sexually active, the parents blame it on the teacher, not the hormones. (Apparently they were never teenagers themselves.)
There’s a lot of stuff that happens involving the bad kid, Fred Willard (yes, he’s in it…ask him about it the next time you see him) and the golden couple. But none of that really matters. By the end of it there were only about five minutes that anyone actually remembered.
The hot new teacher is talking to the school board and some parents (which consists of about five people) while they are attacking her. They scream about the books and films that she “makes” the kids read and watch. (It’s all actually voluntary.)
It’s all well and good until they decide to “take a look at that film.”
Oh my God, it’s probably the most horrible birth I have ever seen. It’s an actual birth, but it’s an actual birth circa 1968 when they used forceps and “blades” and salad spoons. There’s fucking blood everywhere and the baby looks dead. There’s no way that can be good. Afterwards I said, “It’s vagina, but it’s ALL WRONG!!” The screams were amazing. People were hiding their heads, but they couldn’t hide forever. We were all stuck watching this train wreck.
Then the movie returned to its normal badness, but by then no one was able to tell anymore. At least the torture had stopped. It was over.
What exactly did Gross (good name) hope to achieve with this movie? Yeah, it had hot babes in it and the tagline was “She was a motorcycle mama!” (No motorcycles, by the way.) But did he expect kids to go see it after their friends told them that there was a real birth in it?! I would have avoided that like a bad date with Estelle Getty! I mean, we all wanted to see pussy, BUT NOT BEING FORCED OPEN BY FORCEPS!!! NOT WITH A GIANT HEAD COMING OUT OF IT!!! NOT BEING CUT OPEN!!! After this we had breakfast.
Bastards.
After breakfast it was time for more horror. This time from New Zealand.
Yay!
Directed by: Michael Spierig/Peter Spierig
Written by: Michael Spierig/Peter Spierig
What happens when you cross Peter Jackson’s early zombie flicks with…um…well…I dunno what else. This seems to be a direct homage to the master himself.
Rene (Felicity Mason) is the Fish Queen of her hometown. She won a beauty contest that she didn’t even want to enter and royally pissed off the reigning queen.
But none of that really matter since meteors are hitting the town and turning the townsfolk into brain-hungry zombies. The only person who seems to know what the fuck is going on is Marion (Mungo McKay), a farmboy with some pretty tricky gun stylin’s and a kick-ass multi-shotgun.
There are other survivors of the shower/feeding frenzy (my favorite is the cop who spews stuff like, “When I was a kid, we fuckin’ respected our parents, we didn’t fuckin’ eat ‘em!” and “I’ll fuckin’ finish you off faster than a fuckin’ birthday cake at a fat chick’s fuckin’ birthday party!”) but none of that matters. What matters is that this is one fun zombie flick with some great gore and pretty good special effects for a couple of guys sitting home alone with their computers. The Spierig boys (Peter and Michael) obviously know what they’re doing and they love it.
My main problem with the movie is the ending. It made NO sense at all. It was another twist ending that came out of nowhere and then they twisted it two more times. Didn’t work for me at all.
But the ride to that was a lot of fun. If you’re a fan of the genre, definitely seek it out. It’s at least as fun as Bubba Ho-Tep.
And last, but not least:
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004)
Directed by: Mel Gibson
Written by: Benedict Fitzgerald/Mel Gibson
Based on book by: A committee of Christians
Harry said that every year there’s a movie that he goes for that he knows he won’t get. This year it was this one. And, obviously, he got it. And that’s not all he got, but I’ll get to that later.
This is Mel Gibson’s dream project. The man is a very devout Catholic and has been trying to make this movie for a long time. Ever since he was a little boy he thought that it was a strange thing that ALL movies about Jesus were in English. It just didn’t work for him.
So, now that he has pretty unlimited clout in Hollywood, he has made the definitive Jesus movie. It is quite possibly the most realistic depiction of the days leading up to the crucifixion that has ever been put on film. And, in fact, the entire day of the crucifixion is amazing. The bearing of the cross, the nailing to the cross and finally the actual slow and torturous death. It was gory, bloody, disturbing and awe-inspiring.
What I didn’t think was so good was everything leading up to that. The characters didn’t seem to be very different and I couldn’t tell them apart even if they were. Everyone had big, bushy beards and even Jim Caviezel (who is the only known face besides Monica Bellucci who played Mary Magdalane) didn’t look like himself, so I was never sure if I was right that he was playing Jesus. It turns out that they put a very small prosthetic on his nose so that he didn’t look so pretty. But every time I figured that I had the right guy, it ended up being Jesus who betrayed himself. And that certainly doesn’t work right.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so damn tired I would have understood it a bit better. Maybe if I knew the story better. But, since I got most of my Bible knowledge from Jesus Christ Superstar, I’m a little lacking in that department.
This was a good film with great acting all around and when it’s actually projected on film it will look beautiful. (We saw a very rough cut with a few scenes and all of the special effects left to be added in.) But character development was a real problem for me. I’ll check it out again when it comes out for real, though. Hopefully it’ll be better.
Now for the controversy. Will it start a whole anti-Semitic movement in the Catholic church again? Well, I certainly hope not, but here’s the deal: the film does depict the Jews in a pretty disturbing light. They are portrayed as pretty blood-thirsty. They wanted this Jesus guy dead with a capital D. The Romans were actually starting to falter, but the Jews spurred them on.
But what can be done about that? That’s the way it’s portrayed in the Bible as far as I know. At that time and place in history that’s what happened. It’s not like we can change the Jews into a more hate-friendly group like Nazis or Arabs.
Kidding.
Bushes…how ’bout that? The Bushes killed Jesus.
I think that what we need to do is take a step back and say, “Ok, that’s the way that group of Jews was at that time. Of course they are no longer like that.” If people can’t do that then they shouldn’t be allowed to see ANY movie. Hell, they probably shouldn’t even be allowed to read the Bible because they won’t be able to tell that these stories are parables and probably didn’t actually happen.
Oh. Wait…That’s what most religion is based on: these stories being absolute T-R-U-T-H.
Since I don’t know very much about the Bible specifically I called a buddy of mine who knows it pretty well. According to him, this whole controversy of whether or not the Jews are horrible people because they “killed Jesus” should be null and void. Jesus’ death was prophesied to the Jews, so they knew that they were going to have a hand in it. AND, if they had not had that hand in it, there would be no Christianity! Jesus had to die in this specific way. In a way all Christians should be grateful to the Jews because they made Jesus the martyr that he was. They enabled the Christians to live with sin and still get into Heaven.
Besides, if they hadn’t done it (or even existed) someone else would have done it.
So, those are my thoughts on that whole stupid argument. What were Mel’s thoughts? He said that what he believes is not necessarily in this film. The film is completely separate from his religious agenda, so he only put what he saw in the Bible and many other scholarly tomes.
Yes, that’s right. Mel Gibson was at Harry’s birthday party.
Holy shit. I saw Mad Max. Riggs. William Wallace! Fuckin’ awesome! I’m still excited about him and Peter.
Anyway, Mel talked to us for about an hour about the film and where he’s going next. (He actually wouldn’t say what it was, but he “really wished that he could.” He said it was something really cool. Hopefully it’s not something like Waterworld or The Postman.) He will probably be directing again before he acts. Whatever he does, I can’t wait to see what it is.
So, thus endeth my first BNAT. I had a LOT of fun and I hope it happens again next year. It probably won’t be nearly as fun because Harry is starting to produce his film and doesn’t have time to program a party like this. But it’ll still be 24 hours of movies and I’m sure there will be something to crow about.
Until next time, fearless readers, keep watchin’ the movies.
