The Phoenix

Papal bull; Beck talk

As I’ve mentioned before, whenever I wax a little political or philosophical in discussing films like, oh, "300" or any of The Lord of the Rings movies or any other movie in which crypto fascist fanboys can act out their sad little gotterdammerung fantasies, I am always reminded , “It’s only a movie” (among other usually unflattering or otherwise anatomically dubious suggestions). Well, all I can say is that at least I don’t have a history of burning people at the stake for deviating from my critical opinion.

After enjoying a brief honeymoon with Hollywood after the late Pope John Paul II gave an infallible thumbs up to "Passion of the Christ," the Vatican has once again soured on the studios over Shepak Kapur's “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” To my surprise, they objected not to Cate Blanchett’s resemblance to Gary Oldman in “Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula,” but for bad-mouthing the Inquisition and other Catholic institutions. To quote the London “Times:”:

“Writing in Avvenire, the official organ of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Franco Cardini said that the film formed part of a ‘concerted attack on Catholicism’ by atheists and ‘apocalyptic Christians.’”

Furthermore, the good prelate asks prophetically, “Why put out this perverse anti-Catholic propaganda today, just at the moment when we are trying desperately to revive our Western identity in the face of the Islamic threat, presumed or real?”

Sign me up for the Tenth Crusade!

Closer to home, that watchdog of American values and subversive left-wing conspiracies, Glenn Beck of CNN, has pointed out what everyone suspected but no one has had the cojones to say out loud: the new G.I. Joe movie is part of a United Nations plot to take over the world. You remember that Beckhad it right on the money not long ago when he tore into "Happy Feet" as “propaganda” and “the animated version of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’” Backing him up is critic and talk show host pundit Michael Medved, author of “Hollywood vs. America,” who ominously notes that the Pixar release was “the darkest, most disturbing feature-length animated feature ever released by a studio.” Medved goes on to hint, “There’s also a bizarre anti-religious bias operating unmistakably and gratuitously in the film... As in so many other recent films, there’s a subtext that appears to plead for endorsement of gay identity.”