I came across this Catholic analysis of Star Wars by accident, but I find it rather intriguing…

OK, I’m not one to say anything, but it just seems odd that folks working on Mel Gibson’s new film have been struck by lightning. Twice.

Of course, I’ve been reading a lot of Pratchett lately, and that may be influencing my perspective on these things.

I love well-researched overview articles. The Independent has a great one about the issues surrounding Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion. Basically, it’s likely to be: hard to watch, because it’s gruesome and in Aramaic; hard to believe, because it’s presented as “what really happened” but has major factual errors; and hard to swallow, because it will be seen as blaming Jews for the death of Christ.

It’s not the kind of film I’d watch, because the subject matter doesn’t interest me. More interesting to me are Gibson’s reasons for making the film and the general reaction to it. I actually like his idea of offering the film in Latin and Aramaic (with no subtitles, apparently). It will be interesting to see what kind of audience it can muster, since most Americans won’t even watch a foreign-language film with subtitles.

From Miramax Films:

The Magdalene Sisters, an unflinching and compelling emotional drama, charting several years in the young lives of four “fallen women” who were rejected by their families and abandoned to the mercies of the Catholic Church in 1960s Ireland. While women’s liberation is sweeping the globe [I wish!], these women are stripped of their liberty and dignity and condemned to indefinite sentences of servitude in the Magdalene Launderies in order to atone for their “sins.” The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed in 1996, and only since has the true horror of conditions in these institutions begun to emerge.