From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #110 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Monday, May 15 2000 Volume 02 : Number 110 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: o/lathe [Todd Huff ] Re: o/lathe ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: o/lathe [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: o/lathe [Todd Huff ] Re: o/lathe ["David S. Bratman" ] b/comments5/14 ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments5/14 ["Susan Kroupa" ] o/leguin ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/dogma ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: o/leguin ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: o/dogma ["Susan Kroupa" ] o / Bedazzled (was Re: o/leguin) [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: o/dogma [GHighPine@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 11:16:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: o/lathe > Ditto: thanks, Todd. I have been fortunate in > having seen the film twice > since the original broadcast (and a good thing, too, > as I saw the > original broadcast on a black & white tv set, which > rather put a dent in > the effectiveness of the "colorless" scene). This > was a film whose > faithfulness to the novel outweighed its own > creativity, and one made on > an extremely cheap budget which showed, but it was > nevertheless a > striking achievement and worth reviving. > > > That being said, =The Lathe of Heaven= is not a > favorite of mine > > among Le Guin's books; for me it's never really > gotten over the > > burden of being the first book she published after > =The Left Hand of > > Darkness= > IIRC, I hadn't read any Le Guin when the adaptation was aired, and it's quite possible that the film colored my view of the book. I do recall reading "The Left Hand of Darkness" shortly afterward (nothing sticks except that I didn't enjoy it) and "The Word for World is Forest" (which I loathed and had to reread in college). If I find a used copy of Left Hand lying around I might give it a shot again. I know my tastes have changed since then. Is the "Atuan" trilogy something that appeals to adults? I've never tried it, either. Hard to believe that Buffy's gonna wrap things up in 2 more episodes. I'm starting to expect a let down myself. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 14:55:43 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: o/lathe Todd: I'm less startled than you might expect by your not remembering _The Left Hand of Darkness_. It's not exactly a colorful book in the conventional sense, being rather subdued like most of Le Guin's work when she's not in sarcasm mode, and there's lots of books I read in high school that I can't remember much of either. What it's really famous for is as one of the pioneering gender-bending sf novels: it may seem a little primitive in that respect to someone encountering it for the first time today, though. It and _The Dispossessed_ are also among the very few sf novels in which alien planets have more than one country on them. _The Word for World is Forest_ is _supposed_ to be loathsome. This one is Le Guin in sarcasm mode - her longest essay into that form, perhaps a bit overlong - and whether one enjoys it or not will probably depend partly on making that leap, which is perhaps hard for many young readers to do. The Earthsea Quartet (4 books: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu, the last of which was written years later with a very different aesthetic) began life as a YA fantasy, but it's only the coming-of-age stories (all four books have them, though only in the first is it the sole center of the story) that forces them into that category. They can be read by adults, and will be enjoyed by most readers who enjoy the kind of old-fashioned, style-emphasized, mythic fantasy that I (and Donald, too, to some extent) spend our time bemoaning the passing of. If you really enjoy the way that _Buffy_ plays out mythic patterns in relatively novelistic storylines, you might well enjoy the same thing in Earthsea. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 15:06:49 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: o/lathe In a message dated 5/14/00 11:50:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << _The Word for World is Forest_ is _supposed_ to be loathsome. This one is Le Guin in sarcasm mode - her longest essay into that form, perhaps a bit overlong - and whether one enjoys it or not will probably depend partly on making that leap, which is perhaps hard for many young readers to do. >> As a Native American, I am sympathetic to the political position of that novel, but the message is so heavy-handed, the allegory so unsubtle, and the bad guys / good guys drawn so simplistically and two-dimensionally that, well, I have a reaction a bit like Susan's to The Iron Giant. To understand that book, however, one must know, though, that Leguin's attitude was shaped partly by her own personal connection with the issues she allegorizes. (Some people may not know that LeGuin's parents were the Kroebers -- the anthropologists who were the best-known chroniclers of California Indian culture, the curators of Ishi and the authors of the several books about him.) Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 12:15:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: o/lathe > > To understand that book, however, one must know, > though, that Leguin's > attitude was shaped partly by her own personal > connection with the issues she > allegorizes. (Some people may not know that > LeGuin's parents were the > Kroebers -- the anthropologists who were the > best-known chroniclers of > California Indian culture, the curators of Ishi and > the authors of the > several books about him.) > > Gayle This is quite interesting. I took it to be a heavy-handed poke at the Vietnam War. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 16:49:51 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: o/lathe It's not contradictory to say that _Word for World_ was both a poke at the Vietnam War (heavy-handed or otherwise, and if one wonders why so many pokes at the Vietnam War were so heavy-handed, one need merely remember what the war's defenders were like, and still are) and an expression of the parental anthropological influence on the author. It is both these things. One correction: Le Guin's father, Alfred Kroeber, was the head of the 3 or 4 anthropologists who took care of Ishi. Her mother, Theodora, never knew Ishi: she did not marry Alfred until years later. Theodora was not an anthropologist, but a writer, though one might want to consider her an anthropologist in practice because of her work in transcribing Indian tales. It was Theodora, though, who wrote the famous book about Ishi. Alfred wrote a lot about native cultures, but he felt too close to Ishi personally to write anything about him specifically. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 20:33:23 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments5/14 For starters, here are some speculations for Tuesday's episode: - -There are =still= important things we don't know about Riley, and we at last will find out about them--and they'll be crucial to the plot-resolution. - -Riley's participation in fact will be necessary. - -Adam will be "dismembered" in some manner. - -Spike, as Allen said, will betray Adam in some way; and he =won't= get the chip out of his head. - -Buffy keeps saying she knows Riley, and trusts him. This smells like a setup. - -=Somebody= (Xander, Giles, Willow in descending order of likelihood) will figure out that Spike was "playing" them, and everybody will get a grip and figure out a way to help Buffy. It's important to note here that =Buffy doesn't know= about Spike's "helpful hints" because he and she were never present at the same time. And I wanted to state that Buffy's line about there being no ancient prophecy about the Chosen One and her friends is one of the angriest and bitterest things she's ever said to =anyone= (even Faith), much less to her two nearest and dearest friends. She will regret saying it. It's also interesting to note how well Spike's ploy worked, because (as Susan pointed out) there was just enough of a grain of truth, or plausibility, in what he said for the victim to take him seriously. And he didn't even know about the whole Xander/Riley situation which also set Buffy off! (David: This is a case of painful truths that aren't =quite= true but believable nonetheless. And the prevalent modern tendency to think or assume "the worst" and assume denial is =in= denial is, I think, another case of "all Freud's fault.") Which brings me back to Susan's comment about the preachiness of "New Moon Rising." She acknowledged it was slight; and if she mostly means the use of the word "bigot" (which rather startled me), I suppose I agree; but otherwise I don't. The issue of Riley's attitude, and Buffy's reaction, is the central point on which the whole plot of the episode turns. And it's very consistent character development: Buffy had been struggling with the desire to be honest with Riley about her past with Angel, but his comment about Oz and Willow snapped her right back into pugnacious "don't talk about Angel" attitude we saw her exhibit several times (most recently in "This Year's Girl") towards Faith. And Riley's reaction was consistent with his outbursts in "Goodbye Iowa" about Spike, and Willie's bar; there it was clearly overboard, but we needed to know that it grew out of his true opinion. And it made sense to me that Buffy was still pissed the next morning, and that both would try and talk the issue out, without success; and then get interrupted by Forrest. Furthermore I think that Riley's change of attitude was well-earned by his going through the experience with Oz; and it made sense to me as well that the Initiative's attitude towards Oz would tip the balance in Riley's fence-sitting on where he stood. Also mitigating the preachiness on Buffy's part is the parallel with her own badly-hidden reaction to Willow's revelation; and note her very clever ambiguous phrasing in the last scene with Riley about Willow's "unconventional relationship" and being "thrown." And all of this going down brings her to a comfort zone where she finally =can= take the opportunity to tell Riley about Angel... ...but even so she doesn't tell him quite everything, which causes a great deal of trouble. David: It wasn't the =fact= that Buffy and Angel's relationship was sexual that upset Riley (though I'm sure he wasn't happy to be reminded of it), but that it was the trigger for Angel losing his soul, and that--so he surmised--it had happened again. (If Angel =had= lost his soul again, wouldn't we have felt his actions to be entirely justified?) Meredith: You're asking the right questions about Riley, it seems to me. I'm not sure Forrest's death acted as a "trigger" (in the metaphorically mechanistic sense of Angel's "trigger"); I'm more inclined to use Occam's Razor and say that it was merely the last straw for Riley. But how he found Adam so quickly and easily demands an explanation, and the vitamins and a possible implant are certainly interesting areas of speculation. You know, when you mentioned the preview for this Tuesday, I realized I'd =completely forgotten= it; when I went back and looked, I realized that I saw it only "on the fly" "live" and must have stopped the tape before I got to it when I rewatched the episode. On the whole it doesn't tell us anything we hadn't guessed (Buffy fighting Adam, etc.); but that last image is really bizarre. I remember now the first time I saw it I thought "Aha! Dream sequence!" but on review I'm not so sure. In slo-mo it's clear that it's some kind of small shell (or large bullet) that Buffy stops with her hand, and then it turns into birds. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I've always felt that Buffy's superpowers were nicely delimited, that they solved problems only up to a point, and she also needed her heat-of-battle ingenuity and the help of her friends to solve the rest of the problems. (This is what separates her from Kendra and Faith.) If they're going to turn her into Supergirl, I'm going to take some convincing. I agree that 1) it was a good thing for Angel to apologize 2) it seems like an awful long way to come just to do that. (And they made it pretty clear like he went back to L.A. immediately.) It did set up a really interesting series of scenes, as I said, with Riley and Angel and Buffy interacting. The =most= interesting was Angel's apology scene. Very curious reaction from Buffy, still angry, when Angel says he was just trying to make things better (which echoes Faith's last statement to Buffy on the roof!): Buffy laughs. Which breaks the tension. Also worth note is that Angel says he's sorry, but =Buffy never does=. The best she does is admit that Angel "wasn't entirely wrong" with what he said to her. Meaning she still feels somewhat justified. (Xander: "Just because you're better than us doesn't mean you can be all superior.") Buffy's behavior in "Sanctuary," and some of her behavior in "The Yoko Factor," reminds us that this show isn't afraid to portray even its star in an unsympathetic light. Yep, Willow with the kitten was almost insufferably cute. Hilary: You know, I'm feeling stupid. I went into two comic book stores the last week and couldn't find the Hellcat comic. That's the title? (No, I didn't ask; I'm allergic to helpful clerks.) Good point about Buffy, then Angel, then Faith "dying" and coming back later. (Throw in Kendra, who didn't come back.) Which certainly suggests that Riley is next. (But let's remember he's =already= been stabbed in the side--see Angel and Faith--and that several of his "doubles"--Walsh, the other doctor, Forrest--have been stabbed and killed, all by Adam.) And another good point about alienation being one of the key themes of the season; Spike's little speech about the Yoko factor was dead on about people growing apart. A brief comment about "Warzone" on =Angel=. I was expecting little or nothing from it, being a standalone in between the Faith "two-parter" and the upcoming two-part finale; but it actually was a pretty good episode, with some things to say on the racial issue (which we were just talking about the other day). Still, I haven't been inspired to return to it. And a comment to Gayle about "Hush." A triumph of style over substance? Not much plot? I don't agree. Let's see what material we have: - -The fairytale plot about the Gentlemen (very similar to the plot of "The Puppet Show," one of the series' most complex plots), where we see only one of their murders (the implied ones =could= have been dramatized, but they didn't have the space!). - -The introductory, very rich dream sequence and its context (the classroom, the waking-world relationships) and content (information about the Gentlemen, including the solution to the problem). - -Major Subplot: Riley and Buffy's relationship, its state, its progress, its fate in light of their covert warrior natures. - -Minor Subplot #1: the introduction of Tara and the beginning of her relationship with Willow. - -Minor Subplot #2: Anya and Xander having a spat about whether he cares, which is solved (mirroring Buffy and Riley) by wordless action, not speech. - -Minor Subplot #3: What To Do With Spike. - -Minor Subplot #4: Giles' friend Olivia showing up again, and making a contribution to the research with her drawing. Seems to me that that is rather a =lot= of material, which of course is overlaid by a good deal of bits of business about the no-speaking situation. Very complex episode in every way, I think. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 21:22:30 -0700 From: "Susan Kroupa" Subject: Re: b/comments5/14 I wondered if the magic might not come from Willow and Tara helping Buffy to defeat Riley. I agree that the friends will most likely see through Spike's manipulation and come to the rescue. (Although with Joss, one never knows.) Sue - ----- Original Message ----- From: Donald G. Keller > On the whole it doesn't tell us anything we hadn't guessed (Buffy fighting > Adam, etc.); but that last image is really bizarre. I remember now the > first time I saw it I thought "Aha! Dream sequence!" but on review I'm not > so sure. In slo-mo it's clear that it's some kind of small shell (or large > bullet) that Buffy stops with her hand, and then it turns into birds. > > I'm not sure how I feel about this. I've always felt that Buffy's > superpowers were nicely delimited, that they solved problems only up to a > point, and she also needed her heat-of-battle ingenuity and the help of > her friends to solve the rest of the problems. (This is what separates her > from Kendra and Faith.) If they're going to turn her into Supergirl, I'm > going to take some convincing. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 23:17:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/leguin David: That particular period of Le Guin's career (right around =The Left Hand of Darkness=) is very confused in my mind. For one thing, I'm sure I didn't know about =A Wizard of Earthsea= (published as a children's hardcover in 1968) until at least two years later, definitely after =LHoD=. And I'm sure, as I said, that I read =Lathe of Heaven= when it was serialized in =Amazing=, and that was likely in 1970, not 1971 (which if I remember--my books aren't here--was the book publication date). Did =Tombs of Atuan= come earlier in 1971? Anyway, I =think= I read the novella version of =Tombs of Atuan= in the short-lived =Worlds of Fantasy= magazine, in later 1970 or early 1971. So the chronology is very confused. Sorry to be so pedantic. Hm. I remember that quote about love, now that you mention it, but I don't remember it being quoted that often. Gayle: One of the things I remember about =Lathe of Heaven= is the strong sense it gives of the way that Mt. Hood "presides" over Portland (which I noticed the couple times I was there), much as Mt. Rainier does for Seattle (where I lived for quite a few years) from a somewhat greater distance Was it David who brought up =Bedazzled=? Wonderful movie, one of the best things Peter Cook and Dudley Moore ever did. I've been reading that there's a remake in the works (usually a bad idea), with Elizabeth Hurley as the Devil and Brendan Fraser as the wisher. (Can't remember now who plays the Object of His Affection.) It =could= work, but of course a good script will be necessary. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 23:21:17 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/dogma I'd read some reviews of Kevin Smith's =Dogma= that made me take an interest in it. Not that I was that familiar with his other films: I haven't seen =Clerks= or =Chasing Amy=, and only saw part of =Mallrats= (which I thought was fairly funny) on TV. But I happened the other day on a display in the Virgin Megastore that was playing the just-released DVD of =Dogma=, so I put on the headphones and sampled it. I happened on a scene where Alan Rickman, playing an angel, is trying to explain to Linda Fiorentino, playing an abortion-clinic worker named Bethany, that it was her job to save the world. The scene was very amusingly written, with a nice contrast between his world-weary British sensibility and her sarcastic American dry wit. It didn't hurt that the scene had definite overtones of Giles trying to explain to Buffy how =she= had to save the world, nor that it was a dream sequence. The next scene shows Bethany leaving work and going to her car; there she is attacked by a demonic trio of...rollerblade hockey players. With ominous music. Quite surreal. Well, I was in stitches. Then she is saved by Smith's continuing characters Jay and Silent Bob (the latter played by Smith himself). Jay never shuts up; and his nonstop profanity and obscenity makes him a live-action =South Park= kid. (To which Bethany can only roll her eyes in dismay.) Well, that was it; I was hooked. The next night I rented the movie and watched it through, and if it levels off just a bit after those scenes I first saw (about 10 minutes into the film), it continues to be most enjoyable. Very pomo: constant changes of mood between and during scenes, a steady stream of new characters (Bethany acquires a team of helpers and adversaries as she goes along), many different levels of humor (this characteristic it shares with =South Park=) from the most inane to abstruse mythological and Catholic doctrine jokes ... ...but at the same time, there's a serious underpinning to it: as a number of reviewers pointed out, it's a =very religious movie=. Bethany has to save the world, and the movie therefore is a heroic quest-fantasy (meaning it continues to share tropes with =Buffy=; and remember also that the life of Jesus follows the "hero monomyth" as well). It's "offensive" on a lot of superficial levels, irreverent at the way it pokes fun at the =institution= of the church...but it isn't blasphemous, and protestors against it are (as usual) beside the point. Linda Fiorentino has been a favorite of mine (she should have won an Oscar or something for =The Last Seduction=), and it's nice to see her with a major role again. Her wry attitude is one of the things that makes the movie go. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are good as the fallen angels who are her adversaries (Affleck's role is particularly complex, and he handles it very well). Jay and Silent Bob are pretty funny sometimes, and Chris Rock (as the 13th apostle) adds considerable energy. Not a perfect movie; some scenes go on too long, some others give off an air of too much fun being had filming them, there's a little too much grossout and carnage for my taste (fair warning)...but in the end most of it works, much of it is very funny, and it delivers at the end. I recommend it. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 00:03:29 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: o/leguin I'm not sure exactly when the books of _Tombs_ and _Lathe_ came out, except that they were both in 1971, and _Tombs_ was first. The abridged version of _Tombs_ in _Worlds of Fantasy_ was in the Winter 1970/71 issue, and the serialization of _Lathe_ in _Amazing_ was in the March and May 1971 issues. Except for the _Worlds of Fantasy_ publication, there's no reason why a specifically sf reader should have been aware of the original Earthsea books as they were coming out, as Parnassus and Atheneum were off the sf radar. But I suspect, knowing your interest in fantasy, that you had an eye out for Atheneum at least. They were doing a lot of good stuff at that time, for instance publishing McKillip's _Forgotten Beasts of Eld_ a few years later. Anyway, the complete order of Le Guin's books in the prime '68-'74 period was: Wizard, LHD, Tombs, Lathe, Fathest Short, Dispossessed. WWF came out in ADV between Lathe and Shore, but it wasn't published in book form until several years later. She's publishing a new Ekumen novel this year: this is her first actual novel since _Tehanu_, ten years ago. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 22:25:36 -0700 From: "Susan Kroupa" Subject: Re: o/dogma Thanks for the review. I'm very interested in seeing this film, in fact, I _thought_ I had rented it Friday, but in a brain-dead moment (it was Friday, after all) I got STIGMATA instead, which also has a religious theme but which I can't recommend. (It's also rather heavily and simplistically anti-Catholic, imho. But mostly it's grim and not too well done.) Sue - ----- Original Message ----- From: Donald G. Keller To: Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2000 8:21 PM Subject: o/dogma > I'd read some reviews of Kevin Smith's =Dogma= that made me take an > interest in it. Not that I was that familiar with his other films: I > haven't seen =Clerks= or =Chasing Amy=, and only saw part of > =Mallrats= (which I thought was fairly funny) on TV. > > But I happened the other day on a display in the Virgin Megastore > that was playing the just-released DVD of =Dogma=, so I put on the > headphones and sampled it. > > I happened on a scene where Alan Rickman, playing an angel, is > trying to explain to Linda Fiorentino, playing an abortion-clinic > worker named Bethany, that it was her job to save the world. The > scene was very amusingly written, with a nice contrast between his > world-weary British sensibility and her sarcastic American dry wit. > It didn't hurt that the scene had definite overtones of Giles trying > to explain to Buffy how =she= had to save the world, nor that it was > a dream sequence. > > The next scene shows Bethany leaving work and going to her car; > there she is attacked by a demonic trio of...rollerblade hockey > players. With ominous music. Quite surreal. Well, I was in stitches. Then > she is saved by Smith's continuing characters Jay and Silent Bob (the > latter played by Smith himself). Jay never shuts up; and his nonstop > profanity and obscenity makes him a live-action =South Park= kid. (To > which Bethany can only roll her eyes in dismay.) > > Well, that was it; I was hooked. The next night I rented the movie > and watched it through, and if it levels off just a bit after those > scenes I first saw (about 10 minutes into the film), it continues to > be most enjoyable. Very pomo: constant changes of mood between and > during scenes, a steady stream of new characters (Bethany acquires a > team of helpers and adversaries as she goes along), many different levels > of humor (this characteristic it shares with =South Park=) from the most > inane to abstruse mythological and Catholic doctrine jokes ... > > ...but at the same time, there's a serious underpinning to it: as a > number of reviewers pointed out, it's a =very religious movie=. > Bethany has to save the world, and the movie therefore is a heroic > quest-fantasy (meaning it continues to share tropes with =Buffy=; > and remember also that the life of Jesus follows the "hero > monomyth" as well). It's "offensive" on a lot of superficial levels, > irreverent at the way it pokes fun at the =institution= of the > church...but it isn't blasphemous, and protestors against it are (as > usual) beside the point. > > Linda Fiorentino has been a favorite of mine (she should have won an > Oscar or something for =The Last Seduction=), and it's nice to see > her with a major role again. Her wry attitude is one of the things > that makes the movie go. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are good as the > fallen angels who are her adversaries (Affleck's role is > particularly complex, and he handles it very well). Jay and Silent > Bob are pretty funny sometimes, and Chris Rock (as the 13th apostle) > adds considerable energy. > > Not a perfect movie; some scenes go on too long, some others give > off an air of too much fun being had filming them, there's a little > too much grossout and carnage for my taste (fair warning)...but in > the end most of it works, much of it is very funny, and it delivers > at the end. I recommend it. > > > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 01:18:10 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: o / Bedazzled (was Re: o/leguin) In a message dated 5/14/00 8:18:52 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgk@panix.com writes: << Was it David who brought up =Bedazzled=? Wonderful movie, one of the best things Peter Cook and Dudley Moore ever did. >> I saw BEDAZZLED in an art house theater a couple of decades ago (with a print so mangled that only five of the Seven Deadly Sins made an appearance and who knows what else I missed) and still remember it as one of the funniest, wittiest, most hilariously blasphemous movies I have ever seen. I strongly second the recommendation. (But it's a very hard movie to find, never seen it out on video.) Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 01:18:33 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: o/dogma My sister was just telling me about DOGMA yesterday, because I was telling her about the movie that I had just rented, PRIEST. And as long as we discussing religious movies, about Catholics, that have inspired protest but are definitely not blasphemous... well, this one is not a comedy at all; it is an intense drama, very honest and believable, and it made me cry at several points. PRIEST (a British movie, BTW) has been attacked as "anti-Catholic," which it most emphatically is not (I can understand why some people might be upset by the passionate male/male love scenes, but even though they involve a priest that doesn't make the movie anti-Catholic or blasphemous). I think that Catholics tend have an expectation of superhuman perfection of their clergy beyond the practitioners of any other religion, and some tend to take offense at the depiction of priests as flawed and weak human beings like the rest of us -- human beings upon whom those expectations (including expectations the priests have of themselves) place extreme pressure. I found this movie very honest, powerful, and moving. Saw FREQUENCY this weekend, liked it very much and recommend it; full of twists and suspense and overall excellently done, but at the end it had never answered the original mystery in the setup. Gayle. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #110 *****************************