ROCKY BALBOA

I'm taking a break from all the politics and theology and foreign films and dramas and documetaries and 'worthy' shit --I'm going back to basics, and will try to stay away from this electronic crack pipe interweb for a while and try and get some stuff done. So adios, reader[s?] - I am off to watch Rocky Balboa and drink some Jamesons...

Check out the reviews at RottenTomatoes

e.g:

ROCKY BALBOA

by Mark Bell
(2006-12-20)
2006, Rated PG, 102 minutes, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

I spent the better part of my life in South Jersey, about 10 miles outside of Philadelphia. Most of my extended family and loved ones still call the area home. I offer up this bit of information because I’m admitting to a bias of being a Philadelphia loyalist all the way through. And beyond the Liberty Bell, Phillie Phanatic, soft pretzels and cheesesteaks, few things are as inherently Philadelphia as the character Rocky Balboa. Hell, a statue of Rocky (a fictional character) stood outside the Philadephia Spectrum for 25 years before being moved to the bottom of the Philadephia Museum of Art's steps. To know Philly and love Philly is to love Rocky. And I love Philly, which is why the latest installment in the “Rocky” franchise could be the greatest catastrophe (as if “Rocky V” didn’t already earn that status) or the most inspiring success...

...“Rocky V,” by and large, was a colossal disappointment and went a long way towards burying the Rocky franchise. What “Rocky Balboa” does is dig up the body and re-bury it, properly. When this film ends, and the credits begin to roll, there is finally closure for this franchise and for the Rocky character himself, as the final fight did what it needed to do, it sated and defeated the beast within. As a Philly loyalist, I was not disappointed at all with this effort, and at moments was even inspired. Stallone did what he needed to do, and he’s got my respect for taking all the criticism and flack just to end things the right way.

Chris Rock - How To Not Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police

Austin Freedom Fest, 8.10.07

The Frames, live in D.C., April '07

NPR Live Concert Series

Feed you soul [best with earphones]

Umberto Eco's piece on Mac and DOS, Catholic and Protestant

Good Video [Mediocre song]

6 Songs from NPR's 'The New Monastics' show

Jes Karper, Psalters, John Mallinen, Derek Webb, Mewithoutyou..

some good tunes, with heart, soul and spirit

Homer and Bart in 'Catholic Heaven'

Catholic Colbert

Lots of clips...

The Narrow Path, John Dear, SJ

Description: Following in the footsteps of the great apostles of nonviolence – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Oscar Romero – John Dear, SJ presents in The Narrow Path the challenging message of Jesus in a fresh way, speaking with new force and vision of God’s plea for peace. Fr. John Dear’s interpretation of the life and death of Jesus calls for the body of Christ, the Church, to follow in the way of Jesus to the very end, without compromise, no matter the cost. The Narrow Path is a bold and challenging film, a prophetic call to embody the nonviolence of Jesus and become instruments of peace. Available April 2007 from our website www.sandamianofoundation.org

Monks Who Play Punk

James Estrin/The New York Times




Father Luke in his room at St. Joseph’s Friary in Harlem.
By JOHN MITCHELL
Published: April 22, 2007

IT was 9 o’clock on a wintry Saturday night, and in the dimly lighted basement of Our Lady of Good Counsel, a Roman Catholic church on 90th Street and Second Avenue, the chatter of more than 400 young people competed with the din of a rock band. Those not shouting in one another’s ears were dancing, singing, laughing and jumping up and down while trying not to spill their cups of coffee.

“Who has ever heard of a monk playing funk music?” shouted Brother Agostino Torres, a 30-year-old friar wearing sandals and a hooded gray robe. Hands shot into the air.

“O.K., all right, but I’ll bet you never heard of this one,” Brother Agostino went on. “Because tonight, we’re going to have some monks play some punk!” Half a dozen other bushy-bearded, gray-frocked friars broke into a cacophony of drums, bass, saxophone and electric guitar... READ MORE

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Also, interview with Fr Stan Fortuna here during his recent trip to Australia:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2007/1888683.htm

So funny I almost want to drink their watered down beer...

You have to give these a listen...

Montage of the advertising and news clips from "Children of Men"

From ForeignOffice.com via Michael at catholic anarchy

Pre-apocalyptic blues? - The Antidote

Opening Spiritual Space

From Commonweal's blog 'dotCommonweal'

March 11, 2007, 6:31 am

German filmmaker Philip Groening's acclaimed film, Into Great Silence, has already been brought to the attention of readers of this blog.

In today's Boston Globe, there is an interesting interview with Groening. Two comments which caught my attention follow:

The film does not depict a monastery, but it transforms itself into a monastery, because a monastery is a place where, through the rhythm of time, which is very strict, and through [the monk's] confinement, the spiritual space is opened up for them.

Groening then explains why he chose not to film formal interviews with the monks:

If you give too much information about the monks, then something flips around and the audience gets curious to know more. And then they stop wondering what would make themselves come to a monastery. For the film to be a deeper experience, it's much more important that you sit there and ask yourself, "Why did this guy come [to the monastery]?" And by asking yourself that, you start to wonder: What would make me come there? And that's the moment when the film starts to really touch you -- when you come to your own questions. Because a monastery is a place where you encounter yourself and open up a spiritual space.

I have not yet seen the film. (It opens in Boston on Friday.) But I would appreciate hearing reactions from any who have already seen it.

March 11, 2007, 6:31 am Posted by Robert P. Imbelli

Posted by william collier
on March 11, 2007, 10:25 am

Unfortunately, the film will have very limited release over the next several months. There is a list of the venues and dates at the Zeitgeist Films website for the film (as well as info stating that the film will likely be released on DVD late in 2007):

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=intogreatsilence

Our parish book club is already making plans to see the film in a few months at the one venue available in our state. Until then we'll have to satisfy ourselves with the many positive reviews and stories, including this excellent article at the PBS website for the "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly":

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:SNsH7MMNXUUJ:www.pbs.org/wnet/religion
andethics/week1027/exclusive.html+into+great+silence&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&cl
ient=firefox-a

The article contains the following comment from Kierkegaard about the necessity for monasteries in Christianity:

"The 'monastery' is an essential dialectical element in Christianity. We therefore need it out there like a navigation buoy at sea in order to see where we are, even though I myself would not enter it. But if there really is true Christianity in every generation, there must also be individuals who have this need…"

Life among the monks.

March 7, 2007, 4:52 pm From the Revealer, an interview with the director of a remarkable-sounding new film (I haven't seen it yet):

Tiny bottle of Chartreuse in hand, I emerged in mid-town a few weeks ago from watching Into Great Silence,, my promised dinner date long-gone. The two-hour documentary about a monastery that I'd thought I was going to see had morphed into an amazing three-hour experience of silent imagery. Groening’s documentary (he hates the term) of life among the Roman Catholic monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps opens this week at the Film Forum in New York city, its U.S. theatrical debut. (Visit their site for Zeitgeist Film’s trailer )

Groening requested permission to shoot in 1984. Sixteen years later they got back to him, inviting him to come on in. He did so alone, managing the camera-work and sound as a one-man filmmaking team while keeping the rules of work and silence of the monastery. Their conditions of no artificial light, no additional music, no commentaries, fulfilled exactly Groening’s own initial treatment. The Order of the Carthusians, founded in 1084, supports itself on its green, herbal liqueur so it can devote the lives of its monks and nuns to perpetual, contemplative silence—they live alone together, each in a cell (really a suite of several rooms, with a tiny garden) meeting only for regular prayer vigils. The resulting film, a mix of HD video and super-8 film, is so exquisite and so surprising that critics rave while viewers return as often as they can during its European runs.
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[interesting quote from the interview: "... And it’s very deliberate that I did not do this film on Buddhist monasteries. This is where the collaboration with my friend Nico ended. When we could not get into the monastery he asked, why don’t we go to Tibet? I said I want to do this for myself, to find out why I am so anti-religious, having being brought up so strictly Catholic. I want to heal some wounds and go back and understand where I’ve come from. I cannot understand that by going into a Buddhist monastery. I was not a Buddhist child, and my audience did not have a Buddhist childhood either. There is a problem with all those beautiful films which are for us a sort of religious tourism. Nice, but it’s not really going very deep. Just on a theoretical level there is a mistake in going from the background you come from to an entirely fresh background. The way you know that a religion is your religion is that you have problems with it. If you don’t have problems with it, it’s not your religion."]

Nun, a part of civil-rights history, documentary ‘star’

Nun, a part of civil-rights history, documentary ‘star’

During the past few weeks Sister Antona Ebo, a Franciscan Sister of Mary, has been making national news – again. She and a number of Catholic sisters were pioneers in the struggle for civil rights in Selma, Ala., back in 1965. Now a PBS documentary, “Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change,” is telling their story, 42 years later.
...more

Mission Inspired Ennio

Ennio Morricone, the famous composer who wrote the musical score for many films, at age 78 has received a long- awaited Academy Award.This year he received an Honorary Oscar for his whole career. Among all the scores he has composed, he is particularly attached to the music he created for The Mission, the well received film about the Jesuits inParaguay. Back in 1987 he was a contender for the Oscar for original score, and in a recent interview with Vatican Radio he expressed his disappointment for not having received it. He said that, in his opinion,The Mission was the most beautiful music he had ever composed. When asked why he said: "Perhaps itis due to thedeep empathy I felt with the joint sacrifice of the Jesuits and Indios…This communion between Jesuits and Indios impressed me profoundly".