Ratzinger's War on Personal Control

Well it looks like the Vatican feels it hasn't done enough to help the movie Golden Compass become a success, so it decided to write an editorial slamming the movie. And as we've seen in the past, there's no better way to get people to watch a movie than for a religious figure to say they shouldn't. Unfortunately, the makers of this film weren't smart enough to include any softcore sex scenes, which surely would have brought a papal condemnation worthy of an extra $20 million in business, at least. Better luck next time, heathens.

But this line from the editorial really caught my eye:
"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events."

Really? They're going to go with that? Catholics are now taking a firm stance against people dealing with their own problems, and are basing their protest on that? Ok. I think that would have been construed as an insult if an atheist had said it, but whatever. If Pope Ratzinger is really that intent on reversing the Catholic Church's war against irrelevancy, I guess that's his deal. Better to control a handful of sheep than corral a boatload of freethinkers, I suppose. But having personally seen how my parent's church is slowly starting to resemble an old folks home, I'm not convinced this is the best of strategies.

Anti-Christmas Film

Oh, and apparently they labeled this film "the most anti-Christmas film possible," which means they still haven't gotten around to watching the copy of my film "Death in the Manger" I sent them last Christmas. It's about how the Three Kings raped and murdered Mary and Joseph before slaughtering Baby Jesus and replacing him with the second king's halfwit nephew Curtis. Curtis then grows up, does all the stuff that Jesus did, but when it comes time for him to die on the cross, he says "Ha, just joking" and they let him down and have a good laugh. He then walks off and no one sees him again.

And because of that, Christianity never forms and the Roman empire continues to expand indefinitely until it reaches our level of technological sophistication nine hundred years earlier than we did. And then on Christmas Day, exactly two thousand years after Jesus was born, they figure out how to get to Heaven and destroy God with a weapon that we can't even imagine. And then everyone on earth has a massive orgy before blowing up the entire universe while grinning manically.

The movie ends with everyone being tortured by the Devil in Hell during the closing credits. At the very end, we see Curtis on the receiving end of a particularly horrible torture. He turns to the camera and says "But you know, it was worth it. It really was." He then starts yelling some more and the film ends.

Wow. I just came up with that as a joke for this post, but it's really not a bad movie idea. Particularly not if I can count on the Vatican's opposition, which I think I can. Now if I can only find some backers, it looks like I'm good to go. Heathen Hollywood, here I come!