I just watched one of the most disturbing and saddening videos.  The documentary, The Devil Came on Horseback, gets its title from the word 'janjaweed' meaning 'Devil on a horse', and is also the name of the mercenary group sponsored by the Sudanese government to conduct their genocide in Darfur.  The video follows the life of Brian Steidle as he joins a ceasefire monitoring group that goes into Darfur to document the attacks of the janjaweed on villages and determine whether or not they are backed by the government.  What he documented was hell.  

The video's most compelling aspect is the large amount of photos Brian took while in Darfur.  These photos depict the aftermath of the janjaweed attacks on villiages (some with populations as large as 20,000) that are laid waste by this Arab group in their (mostly successful) attempt to rid the land of black Sudanese.  As they go into a village they chant, "kill the slaves, kill the slaves".  Something should be happening.  But it isn't.  People should care.  But most don't even know.  

One of the most sobering facts about this documentary, aside from the hundreds of photos of men, women, and children brutally murdered, is that all this took place 3 years ago - and nothing has happened to stop it.

There is much debate about how to stop the genocide.  One of the most practical is by divesting in the genocide.  This is an attempt to put pressure on major firms that fund the genocide by investing in the Sudanese government.  You can find out more here.  

Posted In: social-issues movies

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Sarah and I had our first date in about 2 months tonight.  We had a great time, with only one awkward moment the whole night.  Dinner was great, conversation was great, the movie... not so great.  Due to the limited amount of time in which we had to accomplish our date (approximately 4 hours because it is a weeknight and our babysitter has school in the morning) our movie choices were limited to those that started between 7 and 7:30pm.  This gave us a few options.  Our toss up was between 'Superbad' and 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.  We have been avid Potter fans and were interested in the new movie, but the quality of the last 3 left a bad taste in our mouths.  So, we picked 'Superbad' which Yahoo! Movies describes as:

This, we found out 5 minutes into the movie, was a very tame and misleading description of the motion picture that made Beavis and Butthead look like Dorah.   However, I cannot totally blame Yahoo! because I failed to read the reviews of the movie, which mostly read something like,

So, about 5 minutes into the movie, after the first 2.5 of which was spent discussing which porn site the main character would subscribe to (and why) and the last 2.5 was spent discussing various other things which ranked this movie far beyond R in my opinion, we opted to switch theaters and watch 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'.  So - the awkward part isn't that we stumbled into a verbal porn film that we had mistaken for something more along the lines of Napoleon Dynamite.  But the fact that before we bought our tickets I asked the cashier which movie was better, Potter or Superbad - to which I received a resounding affirmation of the qualtity of Superbad.  Here's the rub:  I knew the young man from the funeral I preached earlier in the week.  We had met and talked and I had invited him to come to our new college program - so chalk one up for the Kingdom!

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What a hoot!  If you can handle the language (make sure the kids are in bed with ear plugs) this is a great movie.  Steve Carel plays a depressed gay scholar that gets stuck on a road trip with his sister's family because he was released into her care from the mental hospital after a failed suicide attempt.  However, every character in the family has a leading role in their tale of a frustration and angst that ends with a jolly kick in the butt to all the meaninglessness of this world. 

I couldn't quite figure out what the philosophical background of the writers is, but I am pretty sure it was anti-Nietzche, which gets them an A+ in my book.  The eldest child of the family (17ish) is a boy who wants nothing more than to fly jets in the airforce and reads nothing but Nietzche.  However, against all the Nietzchian principles he breaks down and cries and lays down his will when he finds his dreams crushed.  In fact, the whole family seems to find their dreams crumbling around them, and not to mention a dead grandpa in their trunk.  Yet they rise up from the ashes of their shared misery to join in support of the youngest and most innocent of the family, Ollie, with a rockin dance routine set to Superfreak.

Posted In: movies philosophy

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I just saw a trailer for a movie entitled Jesus Camp. The trailer seems to signify that the movie’s focus is a militant-like movement within the church to raise up an army of kids. Honestly the trailer makes the movie look kinda scarry. I hope the movie is a little more well balanced than the trailer suggests. If it is not then it seems to be equating ‘evangelicals’ with a very specific branch of Christianity that encourages their children to speak in tongues and convulse on the floor, as well as speak of the Kingdom of God in overly-militaristic language. It looks kinda like Children of the Corn meets Benny Hinn. If I were an unbeliever watching this film it would probably make me very suspicious of Churches. While it may have some eye-opening insider type of critiques like the movie Saved did, it still seems overly propagandised.

However, it does make one aware of the craftiness inherit in media that allows editors to spin images and soundbites so that one group looks better or worse in the final product than they actually are. It is especially alarming the amount of pathos that is carried in the background music of a scene. This makes me question the judgements I have made about other religous groups due to the news or some other video source.

The link for the trailer is http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=2&pmmsid=1698058

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Starring: Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore

Freedomland is a spiritually and emotionally intense movie. Richard Price, the author of the novel on which the movie was based, tells an amazing story with an underlying current of grace and redemption that flows through racial tension, oppression of the poor, and just the general depravity of our state.

Jackson and Moore both have excellent performances. Moore plays the character of a single mom who is poor, caring, very near acting strung out, and suspicious of mental problems. Disturbingly real. Jackson gives one of the best performances I have ever seen. However, he is one of my favorite actors so I am somewhat biased. He always manages to play the bad-A no matter what his character’s main role is. And in this story he is the incarnational hero of the masses and the villian. The beauty comes in his blending the ‘bad-A-ness’ and Christlikeness.

I do not want to go too far into the movie for risk of spoiling it, but I must say it is a ‘must-see’. When you see the box at the movie store don’t be fooled. It looks like a suspense thriller, which is sadly what Larry King categorized it as, but it is much more. Sadly, there is no real secret about what the ending is, you will probably be able to guess it, but that is not the point of the movie. It is not a ‘wait and see the twist at the end’ flick, the meaning is in getting there.

Posted In: movies social-issues

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