Showing posts with label Movie Related. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movie Related. Show all posts

Monday, April 12, 2010

Losing

A fun movie to watch is A Knight's Tale. We own it and the other night while watching I had to stop it and write down a certain dialogue in it. To set it up: William (a peasant) is posing as a knight and traveling around to jousting competitions. Jocelyn is a rich man's daughter that also travels around to these competitions (no idea why). William and Jocelyn have seen each other and flirted and danced and whathaveyou. Upon entering a new town and therefore a new competition this is their exchange inside a church building:

William: Jocelyn, how may I prove my love to you?

How?

Jocelyn: Do you ask in earnest?

William: Yes.

Jocelyn: If you would prove your love you should do your worst.

William: My worst?

What do you mean?

Jocelyn: Instead of winning to honor me with YOUR high reputation, I want you to act AGAINST your normal character and do badly.

Lose.

William: Losing proves nothing except that I'm a loser.

Jocelyn: WRONG. Losing is a much keener test of your love.

Losing would contradict your self-love and losing would show your obedience to your lover and not yourself.

William: (thinking, reeling, not happy)

Jocelyn: What is your answer?

William: (deciding)

I. will. not. lose.

Jocelyn: Then you do not love me.

He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it. -Jesus Christ (Matt. 10:39)

For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it. -Jesus Christ (Matt 16:25)

Jesus wasn't just speaking of dying. He was speaking of laying down our own personal dreams, goals, desires, and seeking after God's dreams, goals, desires. God's eternal purpose.

If you would like to know more about God's eternal purpose than I highly recommend the book From Eternity to Here.

And just in case you think you have God's eternal purpose figured out (I know I once did) let me say that, no, it's not JUST saving lost souls or fellowshipping with us or having us worship Him.

It's MUCH grander than that!

And it's for Himself.

Praise God!

Bridget

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Gingerbread Houses

Here's another activity for you and your crazies. First you need graham crackers and vanilla icing. Using a knife, cut the grahams in half. This gives you more usable grahams then just breaking them along the 'perforated' lines because so often they don't actually break straight across.

After you have six halves per house just use the white icing as glue and make a box with a triangle on top. I made ours the night before. You don't have to make them that far in advance but you do need to let the 'glue' harden before you let the crazies start decorating. At least 30 minutes or so.

We didn't have any foil to wrap the plates in, nor did we have any plain white paper plates. So I used what I had, which were princess birthday plates, but turned them upside down. I used more icing to stick the houses to the plates. One of the advantages to using white paper plates right side up is that the rim of the plate helps keep any stray sprinkles or candies from ending up all over your house.

Husband lovingly offered to go to Dollar Tree for me and buy the candy. We buy the cheap stuff for gingerbread houses. However, part of the fun of making gingerbread houses is eating the candy while you decorate them so feel free and justified in buying the better stuff.

I poured the candy into small bowls, filled the icing bag with icing, and then let the crazies at it. I will offer one piece of advice here though: We actually invited friends to join us which always makes it that much merrier, and we had Transformers on the t.v.. Well, that was two pieces of advice but whatever.

Here's our reason for the movie: We have a ClearPlay DVD player and the kids have been waiting like forever to see this movie while our clearplay was being fixed and the friends that we invited happen to own it and offered to bring it over. So, basically, I lucked upon this little gem, but with the added distraction of the movie the kids were so much better at waiting their turn for the icing bag and candy!

Some of the crazies jumped right in while others were busy watching the movie. This was NOT a bad thing.
Here is Popeye. Remember this post? Well, here he is lining up the candy in perfect little rows. I really won't be surprised if he ends up building something for his career.
I was gonna ask you to please not look at my kitchen counters, but then I realized that by asking you to not look you would absolutely have to look and so then I just decided that this is my reality and you're just gonna have to live with it. My kitchen counters get crazy dirty and cluttered sometimes. I know it's hard to believe, but now I have proof. This is my life.

See? Here is proof of the movie distraction. He's having to look around me to see it, BUT he's waiting patiently for what he needs. =)

This is Babygirl. Her mom writes a blog too and that is her nickname there so I figured "why reinvent the wheel? If it's good enough over there, it's good enough over here." She is in the same grade as Bear. They are good friends.

And this is Babygirl's big brother, Studly. He's a year older than Bobo almost exactly. They are good friends.
Princess with her house almost all done.
Princess' house.
You can never have too many sprinkles.


Popeye is done! His house was very simple and symmetrical. And his smile is more than I can handle. SO CUTE!
Studly's house. Us moms weren't sure how interested Studly would be in this activity. Not only did he participate but he actually enjoyed himself. His only disappointment was that he couldn't eat the house when he was done.

Babygirl's first house. Yep, I said first. Not because she just wanted to make two but because when she picked it up to take it home, her arm bumped the chair and it went crashing to the ground in a million cajillion pieces. Luckily, Bobo hadn't decorated his yet (he wouldn't budge from the movie) and so he let Babygirl decorate his. I still haven't made him another yet which is why you don't see any pictures of him, but I promised to remedy that today.
Bear's house. I don't have much to say except that when I see a picture of Bear smiling like that I laugh out loud. Every time. He is so much fun.

Here are the three Babione houses. They now reside on our mantle. For the last many years we have made a gingerbread house. Usually though, I buy the kits from the grocery store and we all make one house together. After the stress of last year's house with so many opinions and decorating plans I decided that we needed a different plan for this year.
What wouldn't be happening though is buying four different kits. Not only is that WAY more money than I want to spend but that is way more gingerbread house than I want to display. This plan was perfect. I only wish I could remember where I found this idea so that I could give credit where credit is due. Just know that this was NOT an original idea.

Bobo will get his done today and if I am on top of things I'll post an update with his picture later.
Bridget

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Christmas Sounds of Babione6

Last week MIL, myself, Bobo, and Bear went to the high school's winter musical. They did White Christmas.

My history with White Christmas is special. You see, For three years in a row I traveled with a competition cheer squad to Nashville, TN at Christmas for our cheer nationals. Everything was held in the Opryland Hotel.

Everything.

Our rooms were there and the competition was in their ball rooms. It was actually a brilliant plan bc the cheerleaders, coaches, and families never had to fight traffic or parking, and during down times we could hang out in our rooms instead of in hallways or foyers.

But you didn't really need to know that.

Anywho, the Opryland Hotel has one channel on their t.v.'s that loops White Christmas during...well...Christmas. I honestly don't think I had ever seen White Christmas straight through from start to finish. I'm pretty sure I had seen the whole thing just in bits and pieces here and there.

I'll be honest, I was disappointed with the high school's production. But it did make me want to find the movie to watch at home. So Husband rented it for me the next day and we all sat down to watch it together.

I was so excited when the kids loved it! We watched it again before returning it and before the kids knew that Hubs had taken it back they asked to watch it again. They sing the songs and talk about the scenes and regularly remind us of their favorite parts. Bobo is loving 'What Do You Do With a General?' and I've heard Popeye singing 'I Wish I was Back in the Army'.

It's been fun to see the kids embrace an older movie. I guess it just shows that White Christmas really is a classic that stands the test of time.

What are your favorite Christmas movies? What Christmas cd's are you listening to? Are there any great songs we all need to hit itunes for? Please share.

Bridget

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Midweek Movie Review

My wife has asked me to contribute to the blog. I have quite a bit I could talk about, but I just can't talk about it yet. So, today, I shall do a Midweek Movie Review. Here we go:

This week's movie: Star Trek (2009)

Rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content.

Brief Synopsis: Writer/Director J.J. Abrams (tv's Alias, among others) beams the Star Trek franchise back to the beginning and sets his phasers to stun. As in, he stuns the audience with brilliant storytelling, subtle and not-so-subtle tributes to the original series, and flat out cool action and adventure.

The opening sequence rocks the audience to it's emotional core and pushes it to the edge of it's seat with some high drama and intense action. Then, it just gets better from there.

It seems, that in the future, Ambassador Spock doesn't quite make it in time to save the planet Romulus from destruction. A band of Romulan survivors, led by the menacing Nero, follows Spock back in time through a black hole and ends up annihilating a Federation starship helmed by George Kirk, our beloved James T. Kirk's dad, on Jim's actual day of birth. This sequence of events effectively alters the Star Trek universe as we know it, and allows Abrams to tell a new story with the same characters without completely changing everything we know. The longstanding Star Trek universe still exists, but we are now following this new set of events and new stories. (You've got to really see the movie to understand it.)

We see some scenes from both Kirk's and Spock's childhood, as each deal with his own set of circumstances. We then flash forward roughly 10 to 15 years where the original crew of the USS Enterprise meet up at Starfleet Academy. The whole thing drums up nostalgic memories for Trekkies, as the cast of this movie does well, in my opinion, in capturing the essence of the characters played by the original actors.

The main tension comes when Starfleet receives a distress call from the planet Vulcan. The young cadets are assigned to the newly built Enterprise under the helm of Captain Christopher Pike to investigate and conduct a grand rescue mission. From there, the action gets even better with hand to hand combat, space monster chase scenes, and epic space ship battles. Through it all, the new series of events have to unfold in a way, with the help of Leonard Nemoy (the original Mr. Spock), that sets our original understanding of the Star Trek universe at ease with some form of familiarity.

Overall Thoughts: This movie is extremely fun. I got a kick out of watching these old friends meet for the first time. Abrams brought some serious creativity to the sequence of meetings that, for me, stayed true to each character, as I remembered them. I know this movie was received well, both critically and popularly (is that a word?), but I don't know how the true, hardcore Trekkies would deal with their universe being altered. I think if they could keep an open mind, they would actually enjoy the movie. Also, you don't have to be a fan of the original Star Trek to really like this movie. It is a good movie.

I took my 1o year old son to see this movie in the theater back in May. He handled it well, but be advised there is a brief scene with Kirk and a green girl in their underwear. Uhuru comes in and undresses to her underwear before Kirk pops out from under the bed and Uhuru rushes him out. My kids love the explosions and lasers and sci-fi fantasy violence. There is no major cringe factor due to language for me, but there are plenty of d***s and other variations scattered throughout. I don't remember the Lord's name being taken in vain, but it doesn't mean one couldn't have slipped passed me somewhere in there.

We have a ClearPlay DVD player, if ever they will send me my replacement unit, and that would be the only way I would be really comfortable allowing my children, even my now 11 year old, to see Star Trek. Clip out that 60 to 90 second scene, and mute some of the language, and I would gladly allow my children to watch it. Over and over again. Just like I plan to.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. I have now devised my own rating system for movies and other media that I may or may not ever review:
Pre-order - worthy of putting money down in advance to secure your ownership
Immediate Buy - worthy of buying the day it comes out
Eventual Buy - worthy of owning, but it can wait a few days/weeks/or months
Five Dollar Bin - worthy of owning if you can find it for $5 or less
Acceptable Gift - worthy of owning if somebody buys the movie for you
Don't Bother - not worthy of owning - EVER

My Rating: Immediate Buy - I actually had thoughts of pre-ordering this one, but I just couldn't do it. Honestly, it would have been the first time I ever pre-ordered something. Maybe that's why I had a hard time pre-ordering it. I did, however, buy this yesterday, the first day it came out. I loved Star Trek. It is my latest favorite movie.

Tune in next week, as I review something else. Or, maybe I'll have opportunity to talk about other stuff. Or, maybe I'll give my critique on my wife's decorating. Or, maybe I wish to continue living in my house.

Later,
R.C.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Obsessed?

Maybe. I like the movie, so I think about it from time to time. Ask my wife about Pride and Prejudice. I've been re-reading my previous post. Man, the movie is good. God has given me a mind for things. I think part of it is discernment in areas that not everybody sees. Sometimes when I read scriptures, things just leap out at me. At first it was quite frightening, but I've developed cat-like reflexes. I can also see things in movies, tv shows, songs, books. Even a dream or two. Allow me to draw from the movie a little more.

WARNING: If you haven't seen The Dark Knight, and would like to, then take caution in reading on; I may spoil a few things for you. Also, if you haven't seen it, and can't get anybody to go with you, buy my ticket and I'm there. I don't know if my wife will let me buy any more.

Not only is the movie great allegory for the fight between good and evil, I can see Batman as a Christ-figure. No, Batman did not, nor does he, die on a cross for our sins. No, he is not God's only son. No, it is not a perfect representation; there is only one of those. I shall now explain:

In the movie, Harvey Dent is seen as Gotham's white knight. He is the new district attorney, and he is taking a stand against corruption and the mob. The mob comes after him. The Joker gets to him. He loses a very dear loved one, half his face, and his mind. He becomes "Two-Face". He ends up killing a few people. Batman inadvertently kills him.

Jim Gordon and Batman are down and almost out. The Joker "took the best of us and tore him down," says Gordon. Batman says the people must never know what Dent did. Batman tells Gordon to say that he (Batman) killed those people. That he can be whatever Gotham needs him to be. In order to sustain the reputation of Gotham's white knight, Gotham's dark knight becomes the "bad guy". Sounding familiar yet?

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." - 2 Corinthians 5:21

Batman basically said to put it all on him. Gordon says they'll have to chase him. Batman says he can handle it. Jesus took on our sin. We chased and crucified him. He handled it. In fact, Gordon's son says, "why's he running, Dad?" "Because we have to chase him." "But he didn't do anything wrong." Gordon then goes into a great little speech about being "the hero Gotham deserves but not the one it needs right now."

Jesus didn't do anything wrong. He is the hero mankind needed and needs. Now and forever. Do we deserve it? No. But that's the gift of grace. Did Dent's reputation deserve being spared. Not necessarily, but the hope of Gotham depended on it. The hope of the world depends on Christ. More than a white or dark knight. He is THE TRUE KING!

Obsessed? Sure. But not with what you think. Just the King and His stories.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Storm's Coming

As I sit to write this morning, a nice little storm system is rolling in from the west. A little thunder, but nothing too severe. We need the rain.

Have you seen The Dark Knight yet? 3 times, here. It's simply the way things have worked out: 1st time with my dad and a few buddies, 2nd time with a couple different buddies including my boss, and 3rd time with my mom, sis, and bro-in-law. Wife hasn't seen it yet, so maybe there's a 4th time in there somewhere - if I can talk her into it.

The movie is that good. It paints a vivid picture of how chaotic and hopeless evil can make the world seem. There just comes a point in the movie when it all seems pointless to go on. Reminds me of our non-movie world. Evil, when left unchecked, can sustain a great level of chaos, anarchy, hopelessness, hate. But neither in the movie, nor in real life, is evil left unchecked.

Batman, Gordon, and Dent, with the help of others, stage an epic "battle for Gotham's soul" against the Joker and others (don't want to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it yet) in the movie. Jesus Christ won an even bigger battle, the war in fact, for all mankind's soul in our world. IN OUR WORLD.

But as the movie points out, evil doesn't go down without a fight. That would be our enemy. He's lost the war, but he's bound and determined to take down all that he can before he goes. "Some men just like to watch the world burn," says Alfred. So, Satan has unleashed his hounds. The closer we get to Christ's return, the worse it's going to get. "It's always darkest before the dawn." Jesus is on His way back. But... He's not here yet.

So, that leaves the church, the body of believers in this world, as the guardians of culture. Frankly, we've done a poor job. However, "the Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was unable to convert the world." (Charles Haddon Spurgeon) So, we, like Batman, must stage an epic battle with evil. The good news is, we've already won, and we fight with the power of the Holy Spirit. God equips us for the fight. The daunting news is, this is an everyday battle. Just like the movie seemed ongoing and almost hopeless at times, life can feel that way, too. But, remember the good news. We must fight for our culture. We must redeem this world. It is, after all, the one in which we live.

Satan will continue to put up his fight. But not easily. The Joker was a formidable foe for Batman. We have one, too. And just like the movie, the forces of good were starting to hurt the forces of evil, so they struck back. As we advance the Kingdom of God, the enemy will strike back. He will bring the storm. But we're covered. The storm's coming. I, for one, want to face it head on. Let's roll.