This movie has been out for some time, but I recently saw it and want to recommend it here. I have for some reason been avoiding it, thinking it would be an hurtful experience which good movies often can be. It is powerful, and creates the feelings I am sure the director wanted. This one brings my memories back to “Schindlers list”.The music, the pain, do you remember the little girl depicted in red in Schindlers list? A similar visual instrument is used in this animated documentary. The pictures are beautiful and the voices are real interviews from the real people involved in this story.

This time the roles are changed from the Nazi Germans hunting for jews. The Israeli army are the powerful, and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are the week and the hated.

The biggest injustice and evil done in the aftermath of Lebanon 1982 is making the man responsible “Sharon” prime minister of Israel 20 years later.

Put this one on your “to see list”!

Read more about the movie below and

the history of Lebanon 1982 below.

In 1982, Ari Folman was a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. In 2006, he meets with a friend from his army service period, who tells him of the nightmares connected to his experiences from the Lebanon War. Folman is surprised to find that he does not remember a thing from that period. Later that night he has a vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the reality of which he is unable to tell. In his memory, he and his soldier friends are bathing at night by the seaside in Beirut under the light of flares descending over the city. Folman rushes off to meet another friend from his army service, who advises him to discuss it with other people who were in Beirut at the same time in order to understand what happened there and to relive his own memory. Folman converses with friends, a psychologist and the reporter Ron Ben-Yishai who was in Beirut at the time.

While giving a speech at the Phalangist headquarters in East Beirut, Bashir Gemayel was killed by a massive explosive charge. To this day it is unknown who was responsible for the murder, but the assumption is that the assassination was orchestrated by Syrian or Palestinian factions or that they collaborated thereon.
That afternoon, Israeli troops penetrated a region in West Beirut that was mostly populated in those days by Palestinian refugees, and they surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Towards evening, large Phalangist forces made their way to the area, driven by a profound sense of revenge after the killing of their revered leader. At nightfall, Phalangist forces entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps aided by the IDF’s illumination rounds. The declared objective of the Christian forces was to purge the camps of Palestinian combat fighters. However, there were virtually no Palestinian combat fighters left in the refugee camps since they had been evacuated on ships to Tunisia two weeks earlier. For two whole days the sound of gunfire and battles could be heard from the camps but it was only on the third day, September 16th, when panic-stricken women swarmed the Israeli troops outside the camps, that the picture became clear: For three days the Christian forces massacred all refugee camp occupants.

Men, women, the elderly and children, were all killed with horrific cruelty. To this day the exact number of victims is unknown but they are estimated at 3000.

News of the massacre shocked the entire world and a spontaneous protest of hundreds of thousands Israelis forced the Israeli government to create an official inquiry committee to investigate the liability of Israeli political and military authorities. Minister of Defense Arik Sharon was found guilty by the committee for not having done enough to stop the horror once he became aware of the massacre. He was dismissed of his duties and prohibited from serving as Minister of Defense for another term. This did not stop him from being appointed Prime Minister of Israel twenty years later.

Have a look!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I watched a few movies at Gothenburg filmfestival last week. Two outstanding ones were Slumdog millionaire by Danny Boyle and the Danish Lime and Citron.

Slumdog millionaire is about a Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums, he becomes a contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” He is arrested under suspicion of cheating, and while being interrogated, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers. It will be on my top 3 movie this year for sure.

See it!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fl ame

and Citronen is a drama centered on two fighters in the Holger Danske World War II resistance group. Certainly worth watching.

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All is well with me and watching this put lots of smiles on my face.

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I saw “Shut up and sing” at the Gothenburg film festival yesterday and it was fantastic.

In 2003, the female country band, The Dixie Chicks, are at the top of their game being one of the most successful bands of all time.

However with the US invasion of Iraq about to begin over frustrated worldwide objections about this needless war, one of the Chick vents off the cuff in concert about being ashamed of US President George W. Bush. This statement sparks a firestorm of organized and personal right wing attacks against the Chicks for daring to think they have the right to express a negative personal opinion about the President. This film covers the band’s effort to ride out the turmoil that would leave their careers under a cloud, but would eventually give them a opportunity to grow as great artists who bow to no one.

It surprises me to see the hate and the oppositsition the girls would get for quite an innocent bunch of words. Anyways a great documentary about 3 inspiring rich texan girls.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A super matinée flick. Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving, a mediocre author who tries to turn his fortune with an outrageous literary coup – that he is engaged to write the autobiography of reclusive magnate Howard Hughes. Gere captures the chutzpah and nervous opportunism of Irving; he is helped by director Lasse Hallström with unfussy sequences of intoxication, dream and surrealism as the project takes on a terrible life of its own.

Hallström is well-attuned to the natural drama in the story, using period footage and bleaching his shots beige with filters. Yet he really wrings the drama from the situation and has made a nail-biting and often funny film.

Gere has classy support from the versatile Alfred Molina, a grandstanding Hope Davis as his agent and, latterly, the ever-watchable Stanley Tucci (Julie Delpy simply fleshes out a cameo). Worth a watch but not asgood as matchstick men or Criminal as I mention below.

Catch Me If You Can was overlooked by the Oscars, though it did get nominations for the Original Score and Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken).

The Acting is mostly pretty good in Spielberg’s movies and this is no exception. Dicaprio was excellent as Frank Abagnale Jr., a teenager who commits Bank Fraud. This is by far his best performance I have ever seen from him, there wasnt a moment when he was bad. Tom Hanks is good in his role, but this is easily one of his least memorable performances. Christopher Walken is Great as Frank’s father. You could tell immediately Frank was influenced by him.

Overall, Catch Me lacks some of the “stuff” for it to be a Great movie, but its very entertaining and worth your while to see.

The film is a classic con-artist flick, and those are awesome to watch. They make you think, and they’re fun.

John C. Reilly is a terrific character actor, a good choice as a leading man!

Maggie Gyllanhaal was great, and well casted for this part. I think she is a very overlooked actress and in a way follows Johnny Depp’s paths, as a somewhat newcomer to Hollywood, picking films that are more interesting than cliché or stereotypical Hollywood, so to speak.

The film itself though, was well-written, a good John C. Reilly as I said before in the lead, and the rest was well-casted also.

With that, I will say it’s one of the better interesting films I’ve seen in a long time, and will keep it in mind for recommending it to people that I see. See it!

“Matchstick Men” is a film with extremely difficult characterizations and plot twists. Under a different director, and with a different set of stars, this may have been a complete failure. Ridley Scott directs with a level of professionalism that he has built up over the years, but adds some very nice stylistic “heist movie” touches. When it comes down to it, “Matchstick Men” is very much a 60s-70s con/heist film, and has it’s fair share of homage.

Nicolas Cage is wonderful as an obsessive-compulsive man, (amoung other disorders) and does not over-do the symptoms. This is something I appreciate, since I suffer from a milder form of OCD. It’s important to remember that we’re not all Howard Hughes. Sam Rockwell is excellent, and a bit slimy, and Alison Lohman shows her range by playing a dramatically younger character than herself.

This is a wonderful and entertaining film, yet doesn’t fake it’s way through the real emotions. Definitely worth the watch.

Todd Hunter took over the leadership of Vineyard after John Wimber passed away. He has now founded a new organisation called “3hreeisenough.” He is also working with the Emerging Church in different ways.

In an interview with Next-wave was asked about Vineyard and John Wimber;

What was the most important thing you learned from John Wimber (one of the key founders of the Vineyard movement)?

That the Kingdom of God was the main message of Jesus and the main reality in which Christians are to walk and invite others. Christian life is “eternal life” and that life starts now.

I love the way Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message: “real life…life, life and more life to come”. It is life derived from and lived in the Kingdom God by the power of the Holy Spirit—in a way that others experience as for their good, especially the least, the last and missing. And…that pursuing this kingdom life necessitates risk and learning—especially on the part of leaders. There is a reason the disciples sometimes came off as nerds or dummies in the New Testament—they took the risk of walking a totally unknown road—life in the kingdom.

Todd, as Director of the Association for Vineyard Churches for 7 years, what did you learn about the church by the time you left in 2001 that you didn’t know in 1994?

As president of Vineyard churches, I was asked to serve as a board and executive committee member of the National Association of Evangelicals. This gave me the wonderful benefit of a behind the scenes look into scores of denominations. Plus, as an avid observer of the sociology of religion, I participated in think tanks at some of the best academic institutions in the country. I had no business being there; I didn’t earn it—it was sheer gift. But it gave me a great view of the wider church. Here is what I learned: the church knows it is increasingly marginalized by society. This reality is often called “post-Christendom”. There is a large and legitimate debate about what form that will take in America, whether it will follow the pattern of “secular” Europe or take on some distinctly American version. Here is what I took away from what I learned: what a great time to be alive, to be a Christ-follower, to have a chance to shape what “the new normal” will look like.

I’ve been trying to make a contribution to the new normal ever since.

The Danish poet is a fantastic little piece of film history.

This is a Norwegian/Canadian production that won an Oscar for best short subjects animation.

Can we trace the chain of events that leads to our own birth? Is our existence just coincidence

? Do little things matter?

Click here to view the embedded video.

The narrator of The Danish Poet considers these questions as we follow Kasper, a poet whose creative well has run dry, on a holiday to Norway to meet the famous writer, Sigrid Undset.

As Kasper’s quest for inspiration unfolds, it appears that a spell of bad weather, an angry dog, slippery barn planks, a careless postman, hungry goats and other seemingly unrelated factors might play important roles in the big scheme of things after all.