Weekend Movie Viewing

Some interesting flicks over the weekend:

10,000 million BC

-- okay, modern day time traveling scientists end up in the past. They accidentally leave the very hunky Chris Atkins character and some hot athletic girls behind. Sixty years pass by -- it's very hard to pin-point dates when one goes back in time to a specific time-- and the original scientist returns with the military to get his friends back. But there's a problem. Because of the singularity wormhole issues (yeah, i know the lingo cause i watched way too much stargate back when it hadn't gotten so complicated and weirdly theological) the scientist --who feels guilty for having left his friend back in the day-- has to stay behind and shut off the singularity or else...well, dinosaurs or whoever will be able to get through into modern time.

Not that it helps. Scientist nobly stays but alas, a dinosaur gets through the wormhole and follows the returning aforesaid hunky Chris Atkins character back to LA. Dinosaur creates havoc...but one of the returnees remembers the 3rd street tunnel and they decide to trap the dino there. BTW, one of the returnees has a son who was left behind and who is angry because of the loss of his father. So the prelibration is pretty much us wanting this dad and son to reunite and be healed.

Not bad...but well, scifi channel special effects are none-too-great. A lot more time spent in the BC time than in the LA time. So there's this feeling of more a back in time flick than a Godzilla messing up buildings. Also, much of the dino damage is done at night so most of LA is blissfully unaware of rampaging dino. There was an attempt to do little trick ending stuff with time as in Timecop but it kinda fell flat. On the whole a good movie.

It was basically reptilian weekend on scifi channel. The worst of the lot being MegaSnake...with a hero who was emotionally scarred from being raised in a snake handling cult. For the record: Jesus DID say if you handle dangerous snakes they won't harm you. But he didn't say go out and pick them up. After all, the devil told him to dive into supernatural danger by jumping off the temple and used Psalm 91 in his temptation but Jesus declined. Also, the ability not to be harmed by snakes could pretty much represent demons as well as physical snakes.

A Walk to Remember. Young girl -- minister's daughter-- is dying of cancer and falls in love with juvie kind-hearted hunk. Hence, she gets a little happiness before she dies. In this flick miracles are defined as the fact that she got to have some marital sex before she died. Sweet movie but because of my particular health issues and my son's I always get annoyed with stories that define miracles in such a wussy way. I'll agree that God blessed her with a husband before she died but I think A) he would've blessed her with a good husband anyway and B) I think he could have given her a true miraculous healing in addition to this sentimental thing they called healing. I just hate sentimentality when what I want is a true acknowledgment of divine miracles.

Momma's Boys. -- Okay, this wasn't a movie but a reality show I discovered on WE TV. It's like a dating show except the moms are there too, helping their sons pick the right girl. And the girls are of course trying to butter up the moms. Sweet Jewish, italian, and Russian-American moms. The guys were okay but didn't do much for me. A lot of black girls made the cut...and a lot didn't. ::raised eyebrows:: made me wonder why black women put themselves into these situations where guys pretty much are hooked on the blonde ideal. Will see what happens to them.

Valkyrie -- another not-movie. On History Channel. This was about the conspiracy plot to kill Hitler. I honestly didn't like this much. First, trailers for the Tom Cruise movie kept popping up during the commercials. Which made me think the docu had been made simply to sell the movie. But I also disliked it, secondly, because the take seemed to be that the poor German folks were hijacked and only the Nazis were racist. Hey, I'd like to believe that an entire people could be duped but I don't really believe the regular German person was so innocent. Thirdly, they mentioned the holocaust against the 6 million Jews but not against the gypsies. My friend Cora Schwartz is Jewish and works so hard to commemorate the memories of the death of the gypsies that I've turned into a stickler about it too. Gypsies died too. About 4-5 million. Fourthly, they listed some groups that hated Hitler and Nazism: the noble monarchists, the idealistic secularists, the religious community, the Catholic community. But they forgot the Jehovah's Witnesses (yeah, although most christians think they're a cult, the Witnesses are great at standing up to persecution.) and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Why didn't they mention these folks? On the whole, it was okay.

The weird thing is that as I watched it I realized that what the Nazis did in their literature about Jews was what many novels, news programs, etc, do with Christians. Very weird. It kinda scared me because I saw quite clearly how Christian fanatics are now the new boogeyman...and Christian evangelicals are subtly blamed...as the Jews were blamed in Nazi germay. Trust me: I can totally see Christians being scapegoated and killed in a new government. There are very very very very few Christian fanatics in real life. And most of us -- I for one-- am very nice. But it made me see how close we are to being set up to being persecuted and destroyed. I mean, as I watched it, I could easily replace Jewish with Christian and see how hated we Christians now are. If I see one more book or read one more novel or hear one more newscast about evil Christians!

On the whole, not a bad weekend. But not a really great one. I think I'm gonna start watching Momma's boys. I really like the Jewish and Italian moms. -C