PrayTellBlog reports that the Final Mass at World Youth Day in Rio this summer will be in Portuguese and not Latin. If true, this could be interesting on many levels, and not just for Youth Ministry.

I seriously hope they'll chuck in a few more languages though. Spanish is sure to get a good airing, right?

Fast and Furious 6 isn't going to be troubling the jury at Cannes or next spring's Oscar voters, but if you're looking for a seriously entertaining few hours with some brilliant action sequences and some really good laughs, it's probably the best thing in the cinema at the moment. It's certainly ahead of the Great Gatsby, which seriously disappointed me a few days back. Make no mistake, this movie isn't great art, but there's a lot to be said for silly-and-fun action movies that don't pretend to be anything else, and this is certainly one of those.

The first movie in the series came out in 2001, a year after another big car movie Gone in 60 Seconds. The two naturally drew comparisons, with the Fast and the Furious winning with critics and Gone in 60 Seconds, the remake of the 1974 classic, winning at the Box Office. Personally, I thought Gone in 60 was the better of the two, but the fact that the former movie has spawned 5 sequels, and another on the way in 2014, perhaps suggests that I got that one wrong!?

Anyway, the sixth instillment (the one in the cinema right now) picks up sometime after the events of Fast Five. Toretto (Vin Diesel) and O'Conner (Paul Walker) are trying their best to retire only to be drawn back into things by a friend in trouble and the lure of the excitement now denied to them in their more sedate lives. So far, a fairly typical sequel setup, but yet this is more than an excuse for a studio to make money from an established product. Well, okay, it's probably that too but my point is, it's also pretty good!

Toretto is approached by Special Agent Hobbs (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) and asked for his help in tracking down a gang of road based villains who are running rings around law enforcement bodies the world over. A few cuts later and the team are back together with a load of cool devices, fast motors, well-timed wise cracks and a story which is engaging and easy enough to follow. It also offers some convincing characters, with the established names complemented nicely by Luke Evans' brilliant baddie.

The majority of the film takes place in London. I knew that in advance, which is why I went in expecting the typical Hollywood treatment of the UK: A few red phone boxes, a few policeman with old-style tunics and custodian helmets and shots of places that looked almost nothing like they do in real life. Impressively though - and surprisingly for a rough-and-ready action flick - they'd actually done their homework and gave London a fairly realistic, generous treatment. There were no red phone boxes, custodian helmets or Mary Poppins accents. Instead there were some shots of London that actually looked like London as well as a surprisingly realistic understanding of UK firearms laws and the prominent inclusion in the storyline of the UKs prevalent use of CCTV. Altogether rather impressive. They still had a few US federal agents running round London flashing badges (something which I really think Americans think can happen!) but I guess Rome wasn't built in a day.

Things to look out for in the movie include Dwayne Johnson's flying head-butt, a brilliant (if totally unrealistic) sequence involving a tank and a few unexpectedly good lines. All in all a movie really worth seeing. Hopefully next Years Fast 7 will follow in that trend.

If you're looking for a youth ministry angle, then the key word is family. Watch the film and you'll see what I mean.

[image hotlinked from Wikipedia]

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Baz Luhrmann is one of those remarkably distinctive directors. Like Scorsese, Zucker and Cronenberg and a handful of others, you can tell within the first few minutes of a movie exactly whose work it is. The hallmarks are everywhere.

My first reaction to the Great Gatsby was that it was Moulin Rouge. Moulin Rouge, that is, a generation or two later and relocated across the Atlantic, but with the cartoon-like sets, lavish dialogue and dance routines still pretty much in tact.

Despite appearances however, this movie isn't a patch on the one that made Luhrmann famous. It has it's good points, for sure, and it's not altogether bad, but it fails to make the audience really engage with the characters and care about them. For most of the movie, I sat there wondering how much longer there was left and lamenting the fact that I hadn't opted to go see Fast 6 or the Hangover 3 instead. It was a close call as I stood in the queue and ultimately, I think, the wrong call!

I had two major problems with the movie: the fact that it was strangely devoid of morality, and the fact that I found it really hard to care about any of the characters.

In Moulin Rouge Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman created characters that you really cared about. Ewan McGregor's naive, hopeful young Bohemian and Nicole Kidman's courtesan discovering a love that breaks the hold an immoral world has on her. Throughout the movie you pull for them both in a way that you just don't with the characters in Gatsby. Despite having the likes of Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio on board, the movie fails to make it's characters anything more than just vaguely interesting and a little quirky. At the start of the movie you sort of care about Macguire's Carraway, but it doesn't really last that long. The only character who came close to evoking any strong emotion in my mind was the Tom Buchanan character, played excellently by the hugely underrated Joel Edgerton. Mostly though, I just found myself unengaged by the characters, suspecting that Luhrmann had put far too much time into sets and visuals and far too little into directing his actors and getting the script right.

The other big problem I had was with the lack of morality in the movie. The plot revolves around a man trying to ruin a marriage. An intention which is only ever condemned by Tom Buchanan, a character painted as largely unlikeable. Also uncondemned are the fact that the title character made his fortune through crime and swindling, and the hit-and-run death late on in the movie which is essentially covered up by the characters. Only MacGuire's Carraway objects to this, but soon loses his objections once he realises that a different person was responsible to the one he originally suspected. It seems that throughout the movie the clear message is that if you're generally likeable (which they're actually not, but hey!) then you can get away with whatever you like. To be fair, the movie does open by flagging up the fact that it was an immoral age, but it takes the caveat no further than that. This isn't a Mafia movie or the Tudors, in which it's clear from the outset that the characters aren't being held up as a good example. Rather, it sends a clear message that the most important thing in life is to know your own mind and to be sort of interesting with it.

One interesting plot line was the fact that Gatsby first met Daisy when he was a penniless soldier, but felt that with no money he stood no chance with her. The same motiff pops up later when Nick's companion is taken from him by a guy with more money, and therefore with a chance at marrying her. In Gatsby's case he responds not by convincing Daisy of his love for her, but by going away and getting rich. The idea that you have to 'be somebody' to love somebody is perhaps the most dangerous idea in the movie with more than its fair share of them.

You can probably tell that I didn't like this movie, and that's quite rate for me. If you do get talking about it with your young people though, here are some questions you might want to look at...

• What did the characters do in the story that was wrong?
• Should Daisy have married Tom in the first place?
• What impressed Nick about Gatsby? Was he right to be impressed?

[image hotlinked from Wikipedia]

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Interesting news about the exciting Brightlights/ WYD@Home event, which is now just a few months away...

We have several exciting program updates to announce this weekend. The first of which is that star of the BBC shows 'The Monastery' and 'The Big Silence' Father Christopher Jamison will be joining us for the WYD@Home weekend! Here he is discussing the premise of 'The Big Silence' and be sure to check out his Twitter feed: @FrChrisJamison

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You can book here (and you should!)

So simple (and so beautiful), anyone can sing it!

Divine Praises

From a CD called "Hours" by the Seminarians at John Vianney Seminary in Denver.