Movies and Book

I took a couple of days off this week.  Just a little decompression time after working six days a week for the last three weeks.

I picked up a copy of “Avatar” and a copy of “The Shoes of the Fisherman“.  The first was a sci-fi movie which came out a few months back and was meant to transform the movie experience (because it was filmed and shown in 3D).  My DVD is not 3D, but I believe I enjoyed it more on the regular screen (TV) than I did at the theater.  Of course, the size was not as good, but the movie itself was more watchable for me – without the glasses or the distraction of flat 3D.

The second movie I watched was Fisherman, and it was (is) terrific.  It was movie of the year when it came out back in the 60’s.  It starred Anthony Quinn as a Russian archbishop who becomes Pope and who then turns around and pledges the wealth of the Church to help the starving Chinese.  This movie continues to touch me.  It leaves me wondering why our “real” Church can’t be more like Hollywood.  Why can’t the Church risk all it’s material wealth to help humanity?  I look at AIDS, starvation around the world, and so many other things the Church could do – not solve, but help with – and I have to ask why and why not?

I just finished the twelfth book in the Dresden Files series: “Changes” by Jim Butcher (2010©).  Dresden is a wizard who lives in Chicago.  This book is about him trying to assist a little girl who is to be sacrificed by some baddies.  There is a lot more to the story, but to say much more is to reveal good chunks of the story.  In any case, it is a good, fast, entertaining read and I highly recommend it.

Family Notes:

Today I spent a couple of hours looking at colleges with Sarah.  She has pretty good grades so she’s looking at some pretty elite schools: Princeton, Harvard, Duke, Penn, Stanford and Bowdoin.  Not really schools I would consider, but if she were to get in, I’d really try to see how we could help her.  Hil, of course, wants Sarah to go to DVC for two years to keep the cost down.