Thanks to my NOW TV subscription, I've seen a few fun movies this week. They're not instantly useable in youth ministry, but they're a good watch if you're looking for something to do in your downtime.

Moneyball is the Oscar-nominated 2011 Baseball movie staring Brad Pitt. It tells the real-life story of Billy Beane and his struggle to compete against teams with far more resources and money than his. Beane decides to invent a new way of looking at the game, and it proves succesful. But then, they wouldn't have hade a movie about it if it didn't I guess!! It's a great movie about creativity and ingenuity!

Lockout, unlike Moneyball, isn't based on a true story. It tells the story of a former CIA agent, turned prison inmate, who is charged with infiltrating himself into a prison space barge where the inmates have taken over so that he can rescue the president's daughter. It's every bit as silly as it sounds, but it's also very, very good. Definitely worth watching if you're stuck for something to do one evening!

Contraband is probably the best of these three movies. For some reason this movie came out last year with that relatively little fanfare. That surprises me because it's a really, really good movie. It tells the story of a reform smuggler who is thrust back into the world of smuggling when his wife's younger brother gets in debt to seriously nasty drug kingpin. The story follows Mark Walberg's leading character down to Panama through a number of different scrapes. I won't tell you the whole story, but I will definitely recommend it.

Brilliant stuff, as ever, from Busted Halo, this time looking at how the character of Batman has evolved. Here's a slice...

Recently, the Vatican tweeted an article entitled "Holy Switcheroo! Batman has grown bitter, more vengeful with the years." In it, Adam Shaw discusses the increasing darkness of the character since Bob Kane and Bill Finger created him in 1939. While the Vatican has stated that the tweet was an accident, the article nonetheless remains on the Vatican Communications website and Twitter feed. It also begs the question — in the growing darkness that surrounds Batman in all media (from TV and movies to video games and comic books) is there any room for light?

The short answer, of course, is yes. Otherwise, this article would've been called "Batman Dances With the Devil in the Pale Moonlight" instead of "The Not-So Dark Knight." Still, what does the Bat have to do with the Catholic Church? Let's take a look at Bruce Wayne's alter ego in each medium, and see how he stacks up to the Church's teachings.

Serving others

Here at Busted Halo® we've already discussed Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, but one movie does not a character's history make. Since the superhero's debut, Batman has been the focus of at least eight feature films, as well as two serials, one in 1943 and one in 1949. While Adam West's 1966 Batman film certainly is the campier, more family-friendly sort of entertainment for which Adam Shaw professes love, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale's Dark Knight trilogy are not quite how Shaw presents them.

Shaw says Nolan's Batman "is obsessed with exacting revenge on the criminal underworld" rather than simply pursuing justice. This is how Bale's Batman gets his start, certainly, but it is not what the character is about. In fact, the major arc of Batman in Batman Begins (and the two movies that followed it) is transformation from a revenge-obsessed vigilante into something more than just a man.

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Thanks to my wonderful Now TV subscription, I spent a few hours last night watching Arthur. I had never seen the movie before, and to be honest I normally find Russell Brand a little bit irritating, but I wanted to watch this anyway, and I'm glad I did.

The movie follows a man in his 30s who has never really grown up. Thanks to a very rich family and millions of dollars to draw on, he doesn't really have to. He spends his life drinking, having sex, partying, and playing all kinds of silly pranks landing him in trouble with the police and in trouble with his mother who runs the family business.

Arthur's world is upset when his mother tells him one day that either has to marry somebody who he really doesn't want to marry or face being cut off from the family fortune. Arthur reluctantly agrees to do so, but at the same time falls in love with An unorthodox tour guide who we meet in the middle of the city.

Okay, from then on the story is fairly predictable and you can probably figure out how it ends up, but nevertheless it's a nice story of somebody discovering values and discovering love and I'd recommend it for youth group movie night!

[image hotlinked from Wikipedia]

This is an American documentary film about young ballet dancers competing in the Youth America Grand Prix for young performers (aged 9-19). All have a passion for Ballet, as dance. The dancers, supported by their families and coaches, are competing for scholarships that are coveted, and which potentially introduce them to professional ballet companies.

The film introduces the dancers, comments on their different backgrounds, and then focuses on the competition itself. It highlights individual dancers, often against expectations. The dancers, demonstrate startling cultural diversity, and come from a fascinating range of different socio-economic backgrounds.

For instance, there is a girl who lost both her parents in a civil war, another who grew up in abject poverty in Colombia, and a boy whose father took a military position in order to pay his child's way, so that he could arrange for his son to have the best dance-teacher he could find. Then there is a girl, who is called Barbie by her peers for her artificial looks. She is perfectly happy about the derogatory label; all she wants to do is to dance well, and to impress the judges. Another girl's family keeps her and themselves on a low-fat diet, to ensure that she stays slim.

The competitors in this documentary all stand out for different reasons. Three, who do that, are Aran Bell, Michaela DePrince, and Joan Sebastian Zamora.

Aran Bell began dancing in ballet as young as 4 and lived and trained in Europe, while his father was employed in an army base. He has an infectious personality, and a talent that shines.

Read the rest at CathNews.com...

This brilliant new book is now available on Kindle. It was written by three British pilgrims at World Youth Day and includes accounts from them as well as many others. It's available from Amazon for less than a fiver! Here's the blurb from amazon...

Here's the info from Amazon...

World Youth Day: Inspiring Generations brings alive the inspirational and vibrant atmosphere of the largest global celebration of young people and places it into your hands.

Inspiring Generations offers readers a collection of compelling testimonies from young Catholics who participated in World Youth Day. It also provides a guide for pilgrims, the history of World Youth day, words of wisdom from Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI and advice written by young Catholics, for young Catholics living in modern Britain.

Become part of a growing movement of young Catholics firm in the faith and passionate about life - become part of World Youth Day.

DecentFilms.com have another of their awesome 60-second reviews...

More of these reviews here

Quite an interesting science-fiction film, one with more thinking than action. The original novel was written by Stephenie Meyer, much better known as the author of the Twilight novels. She moves from vampire communities to futuristic alien/body-snatching communities. Once again people with significant differences can exist within the ordinary human community. Except that, this time, the aliens want to take over the humans as they have done on other planets.

Earth is a particular challenge, a dark planet with violent, greedy and wasteful people. At the opening of the film, the aliens boast that they have been able to create a perfect society, where nobody does any wrong, honesty is the only policy and hurting others is not part of the ethos.

Actually, this raises some philosophical issues right from the introduction. It concerns everything happening happily in our world where individual freedom has been taken over and nothing wrong can happen. This is akin to those desperate and suffering questions about God and why God does not intervene to make everything go well for us, that people do not harm others, that there be no pain and suffering, especially in illness and death. One of the morals of this story is that people want to be able to live in freedom, without the intervention of the aliens in any 'god-like way', to make mistakes, to love and assert themselves, not to be body- (and soul) snatched. Whether audiences will contemplate these issues and see the connections with the film's plot, one wonders. But, the foundation for thought is there.

This has been quite a theme for writer-director, Andrew Niccol, over 25 years. Audiences did realise these issues in his screenplay for The Truman Show. It features in the films he has directed, the futuristic Gattaca, the artificial, computer-personality, SimOne, the ruthless arms sales in Lord of War and separated communities in an artificial future in In Time.

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