Random stuff--October 8

Here's an article from Meridian discussing the current and future state of LDS film, with a few brief reviews of current films thrown in there. While I don't agree with his assessment of "The Home Teachers", Bro. Baggaley makes some interesting points about both that one and "Pride and Prejudice".

There was a discussion in the LDS blogosphere about how many 'Church' movies people had seen. Many people admitted out of the 15 or so LDS films released since 2000, they had seen maybe one...often none. Not that surprising since if you don't live in Utah you probably have very little opportunity to see any LDS films as local theaters don't usually carry them, and local film critics don't review them.

That's one reason why I've tried to emphasize 'reviews' of LDS films on my site, since other than the columnists for local Utah newspapers, and Eric D. Snider--who else is going to tell you about whether they're worth seeing or not? I've even gone to see films this past year that I probably wouldn't have seen on my own if I didn't have a website and felt a certain 'responsibility' to see and write about them ("The Book of Mormon Movie","The Home Teachers", and the new "Johnny Lingo" come to mind...See what sacrifices I make for my readers!)

I even spent more than a few minutes contemplating renting "Saved!" on DVD recently--a movie which I'm sure I'd be avoiding if I didn't have a website, that all of you probably would to--but is guaranteed to give me a whole boatload to things to write about in an essay...which is attractive in and of itself.

A few other articles of note from this week:

In keeping with the trend of Hollywood romances being so volatile that even definitions of 'long' lasting relationships have had to drop to keep up (see the last article mentioned here), look at this article, a short note about actress Andie MacDowell's recent divorce. Note the phrasing: '...after NEARLY THREE YEARS of marriage" as if reaching that three year milestone was some kind of great accomplishment, like us non-Hollywood types would say 'they were married for nearly FIFTY years". A subtle distinction, yes...but don't you think if the article writer really thought a three year marriage was on the 'short' side versus the 'long' side--wouldn't he or she have written '...after LESS than three years of marriage'?

Random thought: Just to make a point, someone should calculate the raw number of people who got married and later divorced between the time Pres. and Sister Hinckley got married, and Sister Hinckley's death this April (ignoring the eternal marriage aspect for now...) Anyone want to give it a try?

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For example, this guy would count 52 times by himself... (Note, however that he does have a 20-year marriage to his 'credit' in the middle--more than an awful lot of people can say) The article doesn't say, but you just know this guy must be filthy rich...

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Oh, like this is really a surprise...

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Funny/sad article of the week: Newly unveiled library mural contains 11 misspellings.

The sad part is: the artist (a) doesn't care and (b) why should she?--when she's actually going to make more money by messing up and having to fix it than she would have doing it right the first time...