Catholic in Film School

Despite the fact that I have been incredibly excited about the movie all year, I have not seen The Dark Knight just yet. I went to the movies last Friday, but my mother refused to see it due to Christian Bale’s erm…legal troubles…so we went and saw the latest installment of one of her favorite franchises, The Mummy.

My verdict: Parts of it almost made me cry from boredom. It was too short, the development was predictable, the action sequences were typical, Rachel Weisz wasn’t in it, the list goes on. It was lame, don’t waste your money.

But back to The Dark Knight, both Mark and Clayton have had interesting takes on the film. Mark was slightly troubled by it:

As I came out of the cinema last night I was searching to identify what exactly the overall message was that The Dark Knight was communicating. I couldn’t identify that message then, and I’m still struggling to identify it this morning. That is never a good thing in a film, but for a film laden with brutal and intense violence as well as diabolical personas and demonic actions, it’s made all the worse.

And Clayton saith:

After viewing the film a second time, I have to take back the part about the satisfying ending. There is a line given to Batman near the very end about people needing something better than the truth. Either this attractive lie was a very sloppy piece of writing, or the whole movie collapses into nihlism and becomes a pointless charade of over-earnest silliness.

Very interesting…I’m hoping I will get to see the film in the next few days and let you know what I think. I have a feeling it’s going to reawaken the old debate of whether or not evil on film is necessarily always a bad thing. (I say it isn’t. It depends on the intent of the filmmakers.)

In other news, the X-Files is doing decently, and rumor has it that there are some seriously Catholic themes in the movie. But more on that later…

I have a super random prayer request. I would greatly appreciate it if you could pray that I pass my driver’s test next week.

My new car was sitting in the driveway when I got home from the airport last week and I have been practicing driving every day since. I drove us to the movies last week and to and from church on Sunday (my first time on the freeway). The only maneuvers I’m still having trouble with are going in reverse with relation to backing out of our driveway that has an odd curve to it, as well as parallel parking.

Funny story: I practiced parallel parking for like an hour yesterday afternoon, and apparently it was pretty evident that I was a new driver because some random man walked up to the car and said, “Are you practicing parallel parking? Let me help you. I used to be a driving instructor.” I did it a few times without any verbal help, but still…it’s the one thing I still suck at…

If I don’t pass the test then I can’t take my car with me to school, which will seriously screw me over this semester and I will have to change my schedule and everything.

Our Lady of the Road, help me pass! (And not kill anyone…that too…)

Pax Christi, Rebecca.