Category Archives: Movies TV and videos

"Dog Days" Diversions, Conservative Perspectives, Fire This Time, Movies TV and videos, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Weird & Peculiar

Another “Rapture” Movie Is Here; But The End Is Not Really Near

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[NOTE: Luckily, I didn’t grow up evangelical, but old-style Catholic, which had its own hallways of horror. But that’s another story, or stories. The theology underlying the Rapture genre goes back to about 1830, and the work of a British preacher/teacher, John Nelson Darby. It’s commonly called Dispensationalism, and has spawned innumerable sects, rivalries, splits, and turgid novels. For more on its history and varieties, go here.]

I grew up evangelical. Terrifying rapture films scarred me for ever

The Guardian

Tales of wars, plagues and starvation left my friends and me fearing we’d be ‘left behind’. They haunt me to this day

Josiah Hesse — Wed 1 Feb 2023
After millions of people vanish from existence, the world is thrown into violent anarchy, the streets a playground of theft, murder, rape, looting and suicide.

Continue reading Another “Rapture” Movie Is Here; But The End Is Not Really Near →

Abortion, Current Affairs, Election 2022, Movies TV and videos, Signs of the Times, Stories - From Life & Elsewhere, Supreme & Other Courts, The Law — Inside & Outside it, To Save Democracy, Women & Girls

Dems on the Offense! A Compelling TV ad for reproductive rights

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California Dem. Congressman Eric Swalwell  is  throwing down hard in his competitive re-election campaign. His new TV ad is a shocker:

Lock Her Up Ad- Swalwell

It’s titled “Lock Her Up!” (Hint : it’s NOT about Hillary)

Look it over. It’s 90 seconds you won’t forget.

You may want to pass it on.


And you may want to pass it on:

Swalwell ad click here

Arts: Satire, Current Affairs, Election 2022, In The Yard, Journalism/Media, Movies TV and videos, To Save Democracy, Weird & Peculiar, Women & Girls

Political “Miracles” of the Week

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Some amazing things happened in public life the past few days. Here are a few of my picks:

Imagine that: Democrats came up with a brilliant political slogan.

I’m not sure that’s happened since “Yes We Can” burst on the scene with Barack Obama in 2008.

This one is the “rebrand” of the last year’s luckless “Build Back Better.” I was okay with BBB, but it sure went down, choked in  coal smoke from Manchin’s mines, then lost in Krysten Sinema’s deserts.

A caveat: I’m speaking here only of the title; what’s in it is another matter, as are its actual prospects for passage. But certainly it will be an asset in the Dems’ midterm electoral campaign.

Next, a spate of stunning campaign ads popped up. The best, which delivers a horror message worthy of Stephen King, with wickedly sardonic wit and wordplay, comes from Texas and a new PAC, Mothers Against [Texas governor] Greg Abbott “MAGA”:

In an instantly viral ad, a doctor tells a distraught couple that their fetus has suffered a catastrophic abnormality.
If she were to make it to full term, he continues, the baby girl would die just hours after birth. “She will suffer,” the doctor adds, before telling the tearful parents that a decision must be made on terminating the pregnancy — a choice that “only one person can make.”

“And that person is Greg,” the doctor says.
“Who the F—- is Greg?” The father asks. The doctor reveals a portrait of Abbott. With a direct phone line.
[Click here to watch the ad. ]

“Greg” turns thumbs down. Then . . . .

I think the ad is brilliant in every way: production, acting, targeting (Republican Abbott is up for re-election), its daggerlike wordplay, and packing its thrust into less than ninety seconds.

Speaking of a quick thrust . . .

 

PS. A real Grass-Roots snapshot, from In The Yard:

Welcome to your Weekend . . . .

 

 

"Dog Days" Diversions, Ecumenical & Interfaith, Movies TV and videos, Signs of the Times, Stories - From Life & Elsewhere, Uncategorized

For My King Chuck Hopes, “The Crown” Is A Royal Pain

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There’s not much left on my personal bucket list. That’s especially true when the dreamiest, yet most implausible items (e. g., hitting a homer against baseball’s Evil Empire in Yankee Stadium) are subtracted.

But one hope, after so many decades, still dances tantalizingly on my horizon: living to see a king of England named after me.

Chuck The Third. By the grace of God, yada yada.

The Bad Guy of Balmoral?

Not, let me hasten to add, that I fantasize about being king in his place. The royals are periodically interesting to watch, but would be purgatory to be. I’d rather be stuck preparing a tally of all the times You-Know-Who said “incredible” to describe something he knew absolutely squat about.

Nor am I counting down the days. After all, I know his queenly Mum is merely 94 & evidently immortal.

But still, it could happen, in my remaining span. I turn 78 next week, and that’s old enough to have seen the Cubs and the Red Sox win the World Series, and Mike Pence lose a race for re-election as Veep.

And just in time to put more flies in the ointment, the hit Netflix series “The Crown,” I gather, has been doing its best to besmirch my royal namesake as the Bad Guy of Balmoral, the Weasel of Westminster, the Cad of all the Castles, not to mention the Doom of Diana.

Sigh. The knaves.

Washington Post columnist Ben Judah did a valiant job of defending Chazzz’s reputation against such video slander on December 2, 2020. Judah said, in part: Continue reading For My King Chuck Hopes, “The Crown” Is A Royal Pain →

Agni ad Bellum/ The Lamb's War, Arts -Visual, Cross-Generational Conversation: YAFS & OFFs, Current Affairs, Fire This Time, Hard-Core Quaker, Movies TV and videos, Resistance, Signs of the Times, Social Justice

Cancel Cops, Cancel ALL Cop Shows, NO Exceptions. And Cancel Quakers Too?

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Just read a very striking piece by E. J. Dickson in Rolling Stone. It says the “Cancel  Cops Crusade,” in order to root out systemic police racism, killings & impunity,  also has to take down the media images of the police. Even — especially– those of the “good cop.”

Why?  because the problem isn’t “bad apples” but rotten trees — in fact, a national forest of 18000 rotten orchards.

To get to the core of the rot, this media dethroning, Dickson argues, has to include even the very best of the media good cops, including the clear favorite of the author and so many progressive TV viewers.

That would be Officer Olivia Benson (played so persuasively by Mariska Hargitay) the main character in “Law & Order-SVU.”  In this role she has fought the good fight against every kind of sex offender one could think of for 21 seasons.

An anguished sidebar here: in February 2000, SVU ran an episode called “Limitations,” much of which centered on Quakers. In it they  had to confront issues of forgiveness, defying the law because of conscience, and having a Quaker rape victim pay dues for her victimizer with no remedy in sight. Continue reading Cancel Cops, Cancel ALL Cop Shows, NO Exceptions. And Cancel Quakers Too? →