Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

• "I hope no reader will suppose that "mere" Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions — as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall, I have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think preferable."  - CS Lewis

CS Lewis was arguably the most powerful Christian apologist of the twentieth century. For those not familiar with what an apologist does, please don't be confused. Lewis' work didn't do for Christianity what Barak Obama did for US foreign policy. Lewis did not apologize for Christianity, for what it was or for what it has done. Unlike Obama's abject apologies for America and its success, Lewis fiercely defended the cause of Christ against all comers.

CS Lewis, an unimposing Oxford don and teacher of English literature was an unlikely defender of the Christian faith. Irish-born Lewis, embittered by the loss of his mother at an early age and years in the increasingly agnostic English boarding schools of his early education, Lewis did a stint in the Army during the First World War. He spent time in a hospital after he was gassed by the Germans and treated to the full horrors of trench warfare. On recovery, he went back to school and finished his transition to confirmed atheism. He even published a book of poetry expressing his skeptical atheism and his unhappiness with Christianity as a system of thought.

Later, in part due to his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic and later author of The Lord of The Rings, and fellow Inkling and firm Christian, Hugo Dyson, Lewis became a Christian. He had come to see that what he had earlier dismissed as plagiarism by Christianity was, in fact, convincing evidence that the Christian myth might actually be the truth after all. Lewis called himself "the most reluctant convert in all Christendom", but when he did convert, he came with all his heart and with all his not inconsiderable mind.

Mere Christianity is not a theological treatise. It conceives of Christianity as a whole as a great hall into which all are invited. He sets aside the problem of the multiple denominations into which Christianity is fractured as equivalent to rooms off the main hall. His purpose, he declares, is to bring you into the hall.

Inclusive brands of Christianity find much to applaud in Lewis' powerful arguments in favor of Christianity. Exclusivist Christian sects will no doubt condemn him in any place they can find him unorthodox. Lewis believed in Christ, not in sets of iron-clad doctrines. Like me, Lewis believed God to be powerful enough to find and save any honestly seeking Christian. While Lewis used magic as a metaphor for truth-seeking in his novels and books, he was not into mysticism as a shortcut to truth.

Lewis sought the truth in his Christian walk and where he was fuzzy on specifics, he sought to express the truth in metaphor and symbols. His clarity of reasoning where he is certain on a point, is stunning. I found myself reading his books and going, "Yes!" Exactly, what I thought. I just couldn't put it into the words I was looking for. Lewis' writing is dense, but not in the academic sense. He, rather, has the ability to thoroughly cover an idea in a comparatively short paragraph what many Christian writers spend chapters explaining not half so well.

Lewis is one of the most widely quoted Christian authors of the age. This is because his sentences convey such rich meaning in such a clear and succinct way. When you read Mere Christianity, Try to remember you are entering the great hall. Save having others for your theological lunch for the rooms "...where there fires and chairs and meals."

Highest marks for this ground-breaking book.

© 2017 by Tom King

© 2017 by Tom King

Haunted Honeymoon

The critics hated this movie, calling it "unfunny" and saying even Dom Deluise couldn't rescue it. Well, of course the critics didn't like it. There is no nudity in "Haunted Honeymoon". There are no grisly murders, no zombies, no vampires, and not once does someone use the "f-word" as an adjective.  It's a sweet silly romp with Gene Wilder, his irrepressible wife, Gilda Radner, and Dom Deluise. It's a story within a story possibly within a story and it's one of our favorites.

My wife and I simply love this movie and we watch it every Halloween along with a couple of other great old movies that I'll be reviewing later in the days leading up to the 500th anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the chapel door (October 31) and gave the Catholic Church the heebie geebies for the next half a millenium. We are not fans of slasher films and avoid them at all cost. Unfortunately, at Halloween there's hardly anything else, so we watch the same three films every year with three of the funniest people ever - Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, and Dom Deluise. Who needs to be deliberately frightened? Not this little black duck!

If you're a person who likes your movies clean and fun, this one is for you. It is guilt-free. You don't have to put a bag over your kids' heads even once during the movie. My favorite bit is the dance number with Gilda Radner and Dom Deluise in drag doing a wild version of Ballin' the Jack. The humor is not raunchy or mean and if you can bring yourself to laugh at screwball comedy without the aid of obscenities and bare behinds, you'll enjoy it.

It's a Halloween tradition with the Missus and me. It gets three pineapples from me. I don't care what the critics think!

© 2017 by Tom King

The Dark Tower by CS Lewis

Jack Lewis, Maureen Moore and the infamous Mrs. Janie Moore

Okay, by way of full disclosure, I'm a huge fan of CS Lewis. So when I saw The Dark Tower,  a collection of unpublished short stories of his on Kindle, I snapped the book up. I was all set to enjoy the book. These stories, only a couple of which are complete, were saved from the burn pile by a friend of the family. After Lewis' death, his brother Warnie was cleaning out their home and busily burning papers in the backyard. Fortunately, several friends were helping him and managed to save some of Jack's papers including these stories.

That Jack, himself didn't seek to publish these stories tells you something. In reading these, I found myself looking at the kind of thing a graduate student would dive into while writing a doctoral thesis about some literary figure.

The stories are interesting. They impress me as a kind of personal unburdening by the highly logical and deliberate writer/professor/theologian he was. I understand why he didn't release these stories. I think they reflect a side of Lewis that he wasn't really happy with. Many of them were abandoned after his brief marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham and afterward, I don't think Jack felt quite the same way about women that he did before.

Joy Davidman Lewis and CS Lewis

His female characters in this story do not come out well. Some of them are truly horrific and the males in the stories seem put upon by the females in their lives. Given the situation in most of his home life, the stories seem to be a way for Lewis to valve off his resentment at Mrs. Moore, his housekeeper/dungeon master who made Lewis' life something of a misery by all accounts.

Lewis had promised a friend and fellow soldier that should he not return, Jack would "take care" of his mother. Jack did so until she died in 1951. He refused to talk bad about Mrs. Moore directly, even with his brother Warnie who describes her as a bully and generally unpleasant woman. It appears that the only complaint Lewis ever made about the domineering virago who made his home a kind of torture chamber for him was to cast terrible women as characters in his books and short stories. Mrs. Moore appears vividly in The Screwtape Letters as the woman about whom Screwtape says, “She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”

In almost every one of these unpublished stories, Lewis makes women out to be relatively shallow and unpleasant characters. In one it gets so bad that crew members abandon two of them on Mars to escape their attentions. I suspect Lewis knew he was perhaps being unfair to women in general. Lewis' tendency to self-examination may have prevented him from finishing or publishing these stories. I suspect he'd rather have had them left on the burn pile.

Not everything a writer writes is meant to be published. It's interesting to look at Lewis as he struggles with the concept of time and space, no doubt a subject of much discussion among Lewis and his fellow Inklings - a kind of men's club and refuge from Mrs. Moore that Lewis belonged to with JRR Tolkein and other notable scholars in his circle.

It's interesting to note that while Lewis was always a strong advocate and admirer of a kind of idealized traditional womanhood, he really didn't write much about romantic spousal love relationships in his work until he fell in love with Joy Davidman near the end of his life. The book is a nosey kind of peek into Jack Lewis' maturation as a writer complete with echoes of his personal life throughout. Graduate students desperate for a thesis subject may find this book illuminating. The comments by the books editors will be helpful. One thing, however, can be gained from this volume. If you're a well-known writer, there are some things you should probably go ahead and burn before you die.

I've decided to reread Lewis' other published works and kind of flush out this one. I feel like I've rifled through Lewis' desk drawers and dug around in his private journals. I've always been uncomfortable doing that.

© 2017 by Tom King

Shadow Warriors by Bob Mayer

Section 8 is the lead-off novel in another one of Bob Mayer's action-thriller series - The Shadow Warriors. The book moves along at a brisk clip with all the military strategy, hardware and technology you expect from the genre. Section 8 is a good introduction to the Shadow Warriors series and I WILL be looking for sequels.

Mayer always makes me want to read more without doing that cheap trick where the story is left unfinished. All of Bob's novels are complete in and of themselves, but he draws his characters so well that you want to come back later and see how they are doing in the new sequel. 

Mayer knows his military hardware and tactics. He's a worthy successor to Tom Clancy against whom all action-adventure thriller writers will continue to be measured. Really nice work, Bob.

Two pineapples

© 2017 by Tom King

Operation Hail Storm by Brett Arquette

Brett Arquette's first outing in the Hail series makes me happy. I've been trying to find someone else to get my Tom Clancy fix from. Arquette may just be it. There are a couple of things that are a little awkward with the book. He does this thing where he backs up a scene and repeats the same scene from someone else's viewpoint. I get what he's trying to do, but it interrupts the flow of the story. It's the only flaw I could find.

That said, it's a thumping good story and unlike a lot of action-thrillers out there, Arquette doesn't lean on hard profanity and sex to advance the plot. At least if any of that is in there I missed it. The story was compelling. It had all the military and techno-stuff of a Clancy novel and kept me glued to the page all the way to the end. I suspect Arquette is going to get better and better with each new novel. I'm really looking forward to his next one.

Congratulations on a great debut, Brett. I'm going to give it three pineapples for being a good story and for not using the f-wordand other such hard profanity and sex as punctuation! Operation Hail Storm is just a good old action story like I like 'em.

© 2017 by Tom King

The Railway Children

If I read a story to children, I want it to celebrate the goodness in people and I want it to have a happy ending. Elizabeth Nesbit's grand old story does all that. Some 21st century readers are kind of harsh in their criticism of these books. It's not layered with enough socialist principles, feminist ideals or criticism of all things corporations to suit them. The criticism is that the story is not "realistic".

With children's books, I will always allow a trip to fairyland idealism for the sake of the kids. Better they grow up on ideals than harsh realities in their bedtime stories. Let them learn the ideals first and when they are adults, they will have the ideals against which to judge the rightness of the harsh realities.

• It is good that Nesbit made her country-folk fallible and at the same time willing to admit their failings. 
• It's good that neighbors are shown being neighborly. Even Perks' pride is shown up for a flaw. 
• It's good that the "old gentleman" is a decent man. He serves to remind us that not every successful man is an evil capitalist with no heart. 

I wonder sometimes if part of the reason so many successful businessmen seem so hard-hearted is because we have been propagandized by a generation of literature that inevitably characterizes them as evil and hard-hearted. Perhaps they merely oblige us, given that we expect them to be so horrible and rotten. Wouldn't it be better to expect more rather than less to whom great wealth and responsibility has been given? The kindly capitalist may be a myth in this day and age, though having met a lot of them in my work in philanthropy, I doubt this caricature is entirely accurate.

The Railway Children is a classic
Three Pineapples!

Remember what we all learned from Joseph Campbell. Myth is the great teacher. Perhaps we should enlist our myth-telling powers to lift up and inspire rather than to tear down and vilify. Especially in children's stories, I wonder whether or not we shouldn't expect more of our leaders and our successful people instead of settling for the old saying, "With the rich and powerful, always a little patience." Maybe we should stop being shocked when they turn out to be kindly and go back to being shocked when they show themselves to be brigands.

Just a thought.

© 2017 by Tom

 

Jack Gregson and the Forgotten Portal

Peter Wilson's debut novel in the Jack Gregson series of young adult/fantasy novels is pretty much standard wander-around-picking-up-magic-stuff sorts of fantasy novels. It comes off like a video game plot. Peter asked me to read and review this because he saw my review of The Chronicles of Narnia. I get a lot of requests for reviews from new fantasy authors because of my Lewis review.

People writing novels that borrow the magical elements like the doors to other worlds and evil witches idea from Lewis and earlier authors of fantasy for children, see the Narnia Chronicles as simple fantasy based on a cursory reading. I tend to disappoint them when I review the books.

Like most YA fantasy novels these days, Wilson's first Gregson novel has all the standard elements:

• Magic doors to other worlds
• Magic objects to be discovered
• Puzzles to be solved
• Magic families that protect the world from evil
• Magical and fantasy creatures
• Children who discover they have magical powers
• The wise mentor 
• The sinister relative

Magic doors and such were not new even in Lewis' time, nor were magical beasts, puzzles and special children. Unlike Lewis, however, the Jack Gregson tale is less strategic in how it uses these elements to advance the story. Lewis preserves the wonder, the dramatic tension and mystery throughout his tales, but he never makes magical solutions happen by accident. Even the visit of Father Christmas to the Pevensies in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" only happened because the witch's power to sustain winter was ending.

In Gregson, the magical stuff strains credulity, it comes so fast and furious. To be sure Wilson is busily setting up the sequels, but he falls prey to the new author's temptation to brush the magical paint in layers that are rather too thick. More is not necessarily better.

If you're a video-gamer, the book probably feels familiar in how quickly the magical stuff pops up and may serve to keep an ADD reader engaged. I think it's a mistake too many books in this genre make in that all that dense magical stuff doesn't encourage the reader to work harder for answers to his or her questions as the story runs along. Notice how slowly J.K. Rowlings advances the plot in the "Harry Potter" novels. If you've wondered why the kids don't use magic to solve every little problem at Hogwarts, it's because Rowlings understands how to use magic sparingly as a plot device. Her characters are deep and nuanced.  I kept hoping the Gregson clan would grow up a little during the book, but their development was unsatisfying.

You could see Wilson learning his craft as the book progressed. If you like this genre, keep an eye on Wilson. I think he could make a success of Jack Gregson. There's certainly an audience for it. I grew up in a different generation with somewhat longer attention spans, even though I have ADHD myself. Millenials probably will thoroughly enjoy these books. It does get a lot of five star ratings.

I'll be interested to see where Wilson goes with his next entry into the Gregson series.

Jack Gregson and the Forgotten Portal
gets one pineapple.

© 2017 by Tom King

A Coronation of Kings

The writer, S.C. Stokes asked me to review his new book, "A Coronation of Kings".  First off like many first novels, the writer gets better as the story moves on. You can feel him learning his craft as he advances the tale.

Once you get beyond the rather extensive initial back story exposition, and get down to knowing the characters, the book quickly becomes an engaging story. The salvation by magic genre always comes off as too contrived for my taste. In this genre, magical stuff keeps popping up a little too conveniently for credibility in my mind. I suppose to video gamers this is all pretty much de rigueur, but for me it strains my ability to suspend my disbelief.

Still Stokes weaves the bits and bobs together to give the reader an enjoyable ride. If you like the dragons, sword & sorcery tales, this one should give you your fix as it pretty much has all the standard elements of the genre.

A Coronation of Kings
gets one pineapple.

  © Tom King

Last Condo Board of the Apocalypse

© Nina Post

Was asked to review this by a friend, reminding me that one should be careful what you agree to. This very weird sci-fi/fantasy/video game narration or whatever it was, is not something I care for.

Quirky demons and spontaneously combusting tax accountants may seem like fun in the abstract, but let me tell you it gets tiring after a while. Way too random for my taste. Something an ADD gamer might go for simply for the occasional attention-getting explosion or the sudden disintegration of minor characters into variegated puddles of goo.

I did read the whole thing to give it a chance so I could do a fair review. I admit I speed-read the last half of it. Sorry I couldn't give it better rating. I hate to be discouraging to young authors. Unfortunately, this was not at all my cup o' tea (or even my pan-galactic gargle blaster for that matter).

Not my cup of tea

© 2017 by Tom King

Freedom: The End of the Human Condition

Thank goodness I didn't have to
pay the $16 for this monster.

This book comes off like a pseudo-scientific version of a David Koresh sermon - one of those all-nighters where the cult leader harangues his followers spending hours telling him he's going to tell them some great and magnificent "truth" and that all these other so-called experts are against him because they can't handle the truth, but if they'll just listen to him, the truth will be explained. Then he never quite gets to the truth and tells you that you'll have to come back tomorrow night and he'll explain the rest of it. Griffiths spends the first two chapters of his book telling you what he's going to tell you and why you won't like it and probably won't understand it unless you read the book two or three more times, but he promises that that in chapter 4 paragraph 7 or something, the truth of the human condition will be explained and will set you free from guilt. 

Of course if you go to chapter 4, paragraph 7 you'll be treated to another repetitive, name-dropping, collection of confident assertions that the "human condition" is clearly explained or will be in Chapter 8 or that it was in Chapter 3 and you were just too stupid to get it. And then Griffith sets sail on another of those boundless oceanic sentences from which my college grammar instructor would be hard pressed to extract a subject and predicate from somewhere within the tangle of hyphens, semi-colons and parentheticals. (Griffith just loves his hyphenated words).

I got the impression that he was leading up to the idea that our natural state was running around naked and not having much sex and living as a cooperative member of the collective. He mangles up a mish-mash of academic sounding references to Plato, Darwin, Moses and a panoply of religious and scientific characters, flinging them at you so quickly and in such a disorganized way, it's like stepping into the mind of someone with severe bipolar experiencing an almost psychotic manic episode. Having two bipolar family members, I recognize the pressured speech and the skirting along the edges of word salad that characterizes the prose in this book, pretending to be academic brilliance. 

This gets my lowest rating for
poor writing, muddled logic
and creepifying content.

Hey, Mom, look at all the citations! This must be brilliant because I can hardly read it. Of course, Griffith dodges that problem by starting out claiming that people are so resistant to knowing the truth about the mystical "human condition" which is the root of all our problems, that we may find that we cannot understand what we are reading. (see David Koresh, Reverend Moon, the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi, Charles Manson, Ervil LeBaron, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite)

I'm not saying Griffith is going to go off and commit human sacrifices, but the style of the book has and website, his array of followers who shout his praises and who actually vow that Griffith's brilliant work is going to "save the world", give me pause. Of course, as a Christian I follow someone who claimed he would save the world (at least the bit that wanted to be saved). I suppose a fairer comparison between Griffith and a similar leader would be to compare him to L. Ron Hubbard. He started out with claims that he could save the world and a scientific sounding book. I tried once to read "Dianetics", Hubbard's book and Scientology's "bible". Hubbard's reminds me a lot of Griffith's work.

Will understanding the "human condition" save the world from war and stuff? I don't think so. Okay, confuse the world maybe, but save it? I'm not sure letting our reasoning mind assent to our stumbling around naked, merging with the collective and following our instincts is going to solve any world problems. Of course, I suppose if the enlightened folk who belong to Griffith's gang of acolytes are put in charge, we won't have to actually think about such things anymore.

This book has a creepy sort of vibe to it. Griffith would say it's because I am in denial and cannot deal with the truth. Jack Nicholson should play Griffith in the movie. Sorry guys, I don't think this awkward and oppressive book solves anything. I just don't.

© 2017 by Tom King

Hacksaw Ridge

Hacksaw Ridge is the incredible true story of Corporal Desmond T. Doss, a mild-mannered Seventh-day Adventist medic who joined up in World War II as a conscientious objector. Doss rejected the label, calling himself a conscientious cooperator.  His stubborn faith is something we don't see much in this world anymore. His exploits as a medic changed the way the Army utilized medics in the Pacific. Doss actually badgered his commander into letting him go out with his unit. Ordinarily stretcher bearers brought the wounded back to the aid station where the medics would treat them. A lot of guys didn't make it back. By going with his unit, Doss was able to save a lot of lives. At first the men in his unit hated Doss and mistreated him trying to force him out. He stood firm and eventually not only won the respect of his fellow soldiers, but they came to consider him their lucky charm, at one point balking at moving forward without Desmond with them.

Three pineapples for this one.

I watched several ignorant critics review the movie who marked it down because Doss's exploits in the movie were unrealistic. The truth is that director Mel Gibson actually toned down Doss's history for the movie because he didn't think people would believe what actually happened. A lot of people didn't believe it anyway. Unlike the movie, Doss continued with his unit after the action on Hacksaw ridge and was wounded by the grenade a couple of days later. After he was wounded, the stretcher bearers taking him to the aid station came under fire. Doss saw other wounded men, rolled off the stretcher and went to treat them. He ordered the stretcher bearers to carry the other wounded to the aid station first. While treating the wounded, Doss was himself wounded in the arm by a sniper, bound it up with a rifle butt and crawled 300 yards to the aid station on his own.

It's a story of faith and courage and patriotism, something a lot of this generation's precious snowflake movie critics just don't get. One of the best war films, if not the best war film I've ever seen. I just wish Gibson had shown the rest of the true story - the bit no one would believe. Unlike the movie depicts, Doss fought on Guam and Leyte before he went to Okinawa, earning two Bronze Stars before he won the Medal of Honor at Hacksaw Ridge. A former Japanese sniper who fought on Hacksaw years later told Doss he'd had the young medic in his sights multiple times that day, but every time he tried to pull the trigger his gun jammed. You kinda have to believe in the supernatural to believe that one. I do. He lost his Bible crawling back to the aid station. Months later, in the hospital, Doss received a package in the mail. It was his Bible. His whole unit had scoured the battlefield, with snipers still taking potshots at them, found his Bible and sent it to him.

His unit was remarkable in and of itself. The 77th division fought alongside a Marine Battalion who were so impressed by the courage of the Army guys, they nicknamed Doss's Division the 77th Marine Battalion, a mark of real respect by the Marines.

Doss was protected by angels. Even toned down, the movie leaves little room for doubt that Doss was protected. I do believe the devil wanted him badly. He didn't get Doss though. He came home and lived to a good old age, though disabled by his wounds.

This movie gets 3 pineapples for staying as close to the truth as any recent movie based on a true story.  Good for you Mel.

© 2017 by Tom King

The Princess Bride

There are a handful of movies that I consider perfect movies. With the ones on that list, I brook no nonsense from critics who nitpick over perfection.  I figured I'd start off my review columns with the best. You'll notice I'm not terribly interested in being current as a critic. My reviews will be more tailored to folk who watch old favorite movies and don't care for screenwriters who don't know how to write an English sentence that doesn't contain nouns, verbs, or adjectives that don't begin with "F".

The Princess Bride, by author and screenwriter, William Goldman, is one of those movies on my perfect movie list. It's one of those where you find yourself quoting dialogue from it at odd times and watching it sometimes when you just need to see the best danged sword fight since Errol Flynn.

And the dialogue was incredible. I steal lines from The Princess Bride all the time. The lines are wonderful.

Great lines include: 

Buttercup: You mock my pain!
Man in Black: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Inigo Montoya: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.
The Man in Black: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.


Valerie: The chocolate coating makes it go down easier. But you have to wait fifteen minutes for full potency. And you shouldn’t go in swimming after, for at least, what? Miracle Max: An hour?
Valerie: Yeah, an hour.

Prince Humperdinck: Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I’ve got my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I’m swamped.
Count Rugen: Get some rest. If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.

Miracle Max: Sonny, true love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT – mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They’re so perky, I love that.

Vizzini: Finish him. Finish him, your way.
Fezzik: Oh good, my way. Thank you Vizzini… what’s my way?
Vizzini: Pick up one of those rocks, get behind a boulder, in a few minutes the man in black will come running around the bend, the minute his head is in view, hit it with the rock.
Fezzik: My way’s not very sportsman-like.

Vizzini: He didn’t fall?! Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 Vizzini: You fell victim to one of the classic blunders—the most famous of which is, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”—but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…[thunk].

Best sword fight ever...

Three Pineapples for the Princess Bride

Inigo Montoya: Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father! Prepare to die!
Count Rugen: Stop saying that!
Inigo Montoya: HELLO! MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA! YOU KILLED MY FATHER! PREPARE TO DIE!
Inigo Montoya: Offer me money.
Count Rugen: Yes!
Inigo Montoya: Power, too, promise me that.
Count Rugen: All that I have and more. Please…
Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for.
Count Rugen: Anything you want…
Inigo Montoya: I want my father back, you son of a bitch!

Fezzik: We face each other as God intended. Sportsmanlike. No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone.
Man in Black: You mean, you’ll put down your rock and I’ll put down my sword, and we’ll try and kill each other like civilized people?
Fezzik: [brandishing rock] I could kill you now.
Man in Black: Frankly, I think the odds are slightly in your favor at hand fighting.
Fezzik: It’s not my fault being the biggest and the strongest. I don’t even exercise.

The Princess Bride is written and flows visually like a prose poem. There is a rhythm to it, a kind of song-like quality. The opening and closing are the overture and postlude and carry the viewer into the story, peak into it from outside along the way and then tucks you in at the end. It's the loveliest film I know for when you just want to smile for a couple of hours.
So, bye bye boys. Have fun storming the castle!

© 2017 by Tom King

 

My Rating System

A Little About My Rating System.  I have chosen to use a fruit-based rating system for my reviews. It works like this:

Three pineapples is my highest rating. It is reserved for perfect things - the kind of movies you quote, the foods you dream about, the TV shows you hate to see end, the restaurants you take special people to for special occasions, the music that's high up on my I-pod list. 

Two pineapples is the rating I give to stuff that's good. TV shows you watch every day. Movies that make you go, "Hey, that's a good movie!" or "It's Monday! The John Doe Show."

 One Pineapple is "the evening wasn't a total waste rating. Things with this rating are good for a one-off, but no great loss if you miss a movie, a TV series it's no big deal. It's a restaurant that's okay but maybe a little expensive for what you get. These are everyday pleasant books and movies and TV shows. 

Jackfruit. This rating I give to stuff that you kind of go, "What the heck was that?" You didn't not like it, but you don't know if you liked it either. So that sort of stuff earns a jackfruit - which nobody knows what it is.

One Raspberry is something I don't really like, but I don't really hate it either. It's just not my cup o' tea that's all. You might like it and I'll probably find something nice to say about it, but it's not something I'll ever go back to though I might sit through it with a friend or loved one if they like it.

Two Raspberries is the rating I give to something I just flat don't like. It's not something I particularly hate or something I would make a special effort to say unkind things about. It's just not something I want to see or hear or do again.

Three Raspberries is the special rating I give to things that really hack me off. This rating is reserved for things that clearly bear the mark of Satan. Seriously, though, to get 3 raspberries, it probably has to be the product of a communist or a terrorist operation.

I know a fruit-based rating system is unusual, but everybody does stars, thumbs up or down, and that sort of thing. Since I'm not limiting myself to movies or television, none of those industry symbols like film reels, cameras, or spotlights really lend themselves either. Raspberries have a certain connotation to them and I like pineapples and I don't know what in the heck a jackfruit is supposed to be, so I figured I try a six point rating system based on fruit.

So why a review blog?  That's because I'm congenitally opinionated and rather than waste reviews on the comment section of Facebook, I'm going to see if I can earn a little ad revenue..  Now if I want to shoot my mouth off I have my own personal shooting range.
How cool is that?

© 2017 by Tom King
 

The Handmaid's Tale - Feminist Fantasy

Note the corpse dangling in the background.

"BETTER NEVER MEANS BETTER FOR EVERYONE"

I've resisted watching this TV series since they started advertising it on Hulu. It's been nominated for something like 13 Emmys. That should have been my first clue. They've been running promos for it for months and what I saw I did not like. So let me be up front about it. I came into this show with more than a little prejudice against it. The wife wanted to check it out, so we did.  It was exactly what I expected. 

Here's the bullet point backstory.

1. The United States has fallen to the gun-toting religious right dominated by oppressive males who believe they are superior to women and have a right to a better life just because.
2. The remnant of the loyal US military is fighting it out somewhere in Alaska. All the good progressives, LGBTQ et al people and Marxists tried to escape to Canada.
3. Women are immediately denied property rights, their money is confiscated.
4. Gays, transgenders and liberals are hung from a wall and their bodies left hanging as a warning to the disobedient.
5. Young tough looking guys with guns are everywhere making sure the oppressed stay oppressed.
6. In a flashback to a feminist protest, these young toughs with machine guns mow down lesbian women and metro-sexual men.
7. The greedy corporations have wrecked the environment and caused most women to become sterile.  The few women that are not sterile are kept in religious gulags where they serve as baby machines for the "commanders" - elite male leaders of the new regime.
8. Lesbians are murdered if caught, but not if they are fertile. Men treat women as objects. Books are burned. Women aren't allowed to read.
9. Women who are not useful or who are uncooperative are sent to work cleaning up toxic waste or presumably working farms and factories. As women in nun-like outfits pass on the street on their way to shopping, you see corpses of the typical people Christians are supposed to hate hanging from the sides of buildings.
10. In the backstory, "they" set up false attacks on the US and blamed it on terrorists and then proclaimed marshal law and took over the government. The US Flag now flies over Alaska and only has 2 stars.
11. God is the bad guy here. All good liberal churches (Catholic or Episcopal churches for instance) are burned down and wrecked by these fanatic Protestants. The Bible is quoted in church and taken quite literally where punishments are concerned (although the texts get taken out of context.
12. Liberals are the oppressed and slavery is back - fertile women are being traded on the international market.

The Hand Maid's Tale Earns 3 Raspberries - my lowest
rating. Watching this thing is like having a root canal.

Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the producers of "The Handmaid's Tale".  That's some seriously sneaky propaganda going there. The idea that is being promoted here is this.  Christian conservatives have apparently decided to overthrow the government and set up a strong oppressive central government that deals in human trade. In doing so, they have apparently adopted Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals in a twisted sort of Westbrook Baptist Church sort of Facist Nationalism. Note this, like Hitler's version is not called socialism, although it bears all the earmarks of socialism - gulags, stormtroopers, oppressive government, militarism, uniforms, propaganda and fear tactics. They accuse the obviously conservative oppressors of abolishing the constitution and the rule of law, which is, of course, and Alinsky tactic used frequently by the left.With the slave trade and all, it looks like the Democrat South won the second Civil War, except it's couched in conservative/libertarian memes.

The main protagonist is the quintessential oppressed female. In the opening sequence, she and her black boyfriend and their child are pursued by paramilitary soldiers. The boyfriend is shot, the child stolen and she is taken to the women's cow barn to serve as breeding stock. She is pale, thin, and they make up her eyes with dark circles under them so she'll look like one of those abused women from Auschwitz.

It's a feminist/liberal fantasy of how oppressive a male-dominated Christian society would be.

Moral of the Story:  This is what it will be like if we don't oppress these awful Christian right wingers first. The only way to achieve the worker's utopia is to rid ourselves of the guns and the religion and the conservative opinions.

The writers of the story are wonderfully dishonest people. The trouble with this kind of story is that it doesn't fit with reality at all, unless you live in a surreal fantasy world, which I'm beginning to believe is where most progressives live these days. Even with one of my favorite actresses, Yvonne Strahovski, who played Sarah on "Chuck", the series falls short. It's absolutely depressing and miserable and insulting to me as a Christian, but the progressive left, unlike if I were Muslim, does not allow me to feel insulted when my religion is maligned.  Catholics and liberal Protestants are given a by with "Handmaid's Tale". They are, after all, progressives by and large.

Women seem to particularly like this show, oddly enough. Even the Christian women being maligned in this TV show seem mesmerized by it. I believe that this is how it happens that we slowly shift the culture toward some really awful ideas and attitudes. How else do you get people to become Nazis, Communists, or Maoists. How else do you get people to stand above a field full of human beings with a 50 caliber machine gun and mow them down row on row or drop gas pellets into a shower room full of Jews.You pound people with the kind of ideas that, true or not, make enemies and not people out of some segment of the population. Hitler did it with the Jews. The progressive left is doing it with the Christian right. Once we reach a tipping point where there are more progressives than conservatives, then the hunt will be on.

It's propaganda like Handmaid, masquerading as entertainment that will do it to us.

© 2017 by Tom King