Echoes in Eternity

2011 was also the year that this blog died.  Tomorrow marks the 5th anniversary of the start of this blog, so it is appropriate that I wrap it up today 880 posts later.  The blog evolved a lot over the years, but recently my interest in keeping it going has waned (in case you hadn't noticed), along with the time required to invest in it.  Three kids can tend to do that.  It was fun while it lasted.  I got to give out a bunch of books via March Madness bracket competitions, and post Best of the Year movie awards, and highlight good articles and columns by Mark Steyn, Doug Wilson, Theodore Dalrymple, among many others.

The top 5 most viewed pages:
1. Pay No Attention to that Burning Ball of Gas!
2. Babies and Abortion, Part II
3. Wilson on Twilight, Cartoon Porn, and Domestic Abuse (the traffic for this post was largely due to the word "porn" in the title)
4. I See Old People
5. A Good Sign

The most commented on post was easily this one ("Mike" and I went back and forth for awhile about the ethics of killing in defense of an innocent).

For those still reading, thanks for joining me for at least some of this five-year journey and for the occasional comment.  Adios.

Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity. - Maximus in "Gladatior"

Another year in the bag, another opportunity to highlight the best (and worst) movies of the year. 2011 ended up being a pretty solid year as far as quality films go (a summer of almost entirely comic book movies and sequels notwithstanding). Here are the ones I enjoyed from the past year or so (some of these may in fact be several years old). As always, several of these may have crude language, violence, and/or sexual situations. If you want to know the content of any of these films, go to Screenit.com or Pluggedin.com.

Best Drama

~The King's Speech

This film started slowly but gained a lot of buzz, primarily from Oscar talk, and ended up setting many records for box office longevity (it was still in the box office top 10 four months in).  And all of that popularity was well-founded.  This movie is a highly enjoyable re-telling of the circumstances surrounding the rise to power of King George VI just prior to World War II, focusing particularly on the speech impediment of George (or Bertie, if you will).  This video gives a better understanding of King George's real-life speaking difficulty.  The one thing the movie lacks is a glimpse into the courage of King George and Queen Elizabeth in leading the British through the war against the Nazis.  If you haven't seen this film, you've missed a gem.

Honorable Mention: Solitary Man, Buried, Get Low, Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows II, Midnight in Paris, The Help, The Tree of Life, Moneyball, Harry Brown, The Way Back

Best Comedy

~ Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Steve Carell reigns a second straight year atop the Best Comedy category.  Plenty of high profile comedies were released in 2011, but not many particularly funny ones.  And those that were funny were also usually excessively crude.  Crazy, Stupid, Love. is one of the exceptions, and has a reasonably good message to boot.  The film focuses on 40-something Cal Weaver, who is blindsided by his wife's revelation that she's been cheating on him and wants a divorce.  What follows is his attempt to fill the void in his life with non-committal one-night stands (with the help of Ryan Gosling) and a bachelor lifestyle.  Throw in a hilarious twist and the movie is an all-around gem compared to its 2011 competition.

Honorable Mention:  Bridesmaids, Our Idiot Brother, 50/50, the Snake Kings scene in Courageous

Best Action

~ True Grit

The wicked flee when none pursueth. Proverbs 28:1

Thus begins the best overall movie of the entire year. I have not seen the original with John Wayne, but I find it hard to believe that it could dare approach the grandeur that is the remake. Jeff Bridges is fantastic as old Rooster Cogburn, but the real star of the show is Hailee Steinfeld as Maddie Ross, the sharp-tongued teenager bent on avenging her father's murder. The movie is first and foremost an action-filled Western, but it also contains some very humorous dialogue. Maddie's banter with a horse trader is particularly enjoyable. After watching this film, I read the book and found it to be fantastic and the film very faithful to it. Once again, the Coen brothers nailed it.

Honorable Mention: The Fighter, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, X-Men: First Class, Source Code, Drive, 13 Assassins

Best Family/Kids

~ The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Oh, what a difference a new director makes.  After nearly running the entire Chronicles of Narnia franchise into the ground with the terrible Prince Caspian movie, Michael Apted (director of Amazing Grace) took over and made what was largely a successful return to the series, though it still had some rough edges.  Particularly pleasing to me was that the most critical portions of the book were handled well in the film.  I look forward to the next Narnia installment, though reports indicate that could be many years away.

Honorable Mention: Tangled, Kung Fu Panda 2, Rio, Courageous

Best Chick Flick

~ Midnight in Paris

No, that's not (necessarily) an oxymoron of a title. But the competition is usually thin, that's for sure. Midnight in Paris is a delightful little film starring Owen Wilson as a daydreaming writer who spends his nights in Paris with the who's who of great 19th and 20th century authors, only to find that his nostalgia for better days is sorely misplaced. A good lesson for us all.

Honorable Mention: Water for Elephants, all but the last ten minutes of Jane Eyre

Best Foreign

~ 13 Assassins

This Japanese film is a great piece involving samurais and honor, superb sword fights and witty banter. Unlike some other recent Asian action films (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), 13 Assassins doesn't involve the same unrealistic stylized martial arts where gravity comes optional to every fight. Instead, it's the story of twelve honorable samurais who take on a vicious and cruel leader at no thought to their own lives.

Honorable Mention:  White Ribbon, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, John Rabe, Intacto, Downfall

Best Indie

~ The Tree of Life

I've already reviewed this film here, so suffice it to say that this great work is well-worth watching for the patient film lover.

Honorable Mention: Solitary Man, Get Low, Kill the Irishman, The Way Back, Harry Brown, Midnight in Paris

Best Documentary

~ Waiting for Superman

This doc gives a maddening inside look at some of the reasons why the public school system in this country is in the terrible state it is.  It follows the story of several students (mostly lower class, but does include an upper class child as well) as their parents attempt to find the best education possible for them, and the struggles they encounter along the way.  Every American should watch this film.

Honorable Mention: Kimjoniglia

Best Movie You've Never Heard Of

~ Get Low

This delightful little drama stars Robert Duvall as a southern hermit who has cut himself off from everyone because of guilt over past sins and mistakes.  He eventually decides to host his own funeral while he is still alive.  Check it out.

Honorable Mention: Buried, Harry Brown, The Way Back

Worst Movie of the Year

~ Easy A

While there was some competition for this award (Jason Bateman nearly took it home for a second straight year with The Switch), ultimately I had to go with this Christian-bashing, unfunny modernized telling of The Scarlet Letter.

Honorable Mention: The Switch, Due Date, I am Number Four, the last 10 minutes of Jane Eyre

The Paul Harvey of the TV world passed away today.

So I had my first direct run-in with (I believe) the effects of Obamacare today, and it left me with mixed feelings. The company where I work sent out the annual email update regarding the costs of health insurance premiums. Usually, we see a bit of an uptick in costs, but this year, I saw a pretty significant dip in what it will cost me to cover my family with health insurance. Pretty sweet, huh? But then I read the details a bit further and discovered that the insurance company is going to an age-based premium grid. In other words, it depends on your age for how much you pay for your insurance. And, as one would expect, the costs increase with age. So I, as a 32-year-old, pay significantly less for my insurance than I would if I were 52. And this applies to the spouses of employees as well. So while I am seeing a decent decrease in the cost of premiums this year, my fellow employees over the age of 50 are getting hit by a huge increase.

Here is my theory for what is behind these drastic changes. Obamacare has a number of policy measures which could affect the state of health insurance, but two of the most egregious are the ban of pre-existing conditions exclusions and increasing the age that dependents can remain covered to 26. Obviously, both of these have significant costs involved. And since the costs of insurance have already been skyrocketing in recent years, insurance companies have to be a little creative in how they pass along the costs to their customers (you and me).

I mentioned this before, but here is a great clip from the movie, A Solitary Man.

"Take a people who are able and strong. Place them in the wealthiest land on earth. Surround them with unparalleled opportunity. Then pay them not to work, not to strive, not to achieve. Pay them to accept nonproductivity as a way of life. Agree to subsidize their families with food, shelter, health care, and money if the fathers will leave.

Do this for two or three generations and see what you produce. You will have a people who are unmotivated and dependent, whose hopes and dreams rise no higher than their subsidies - a people who have lost the work ethic, who have learned that others will take responsibility for them and who therefore assert little discipline or control over their own lives. You will have emasculated their men, making them expendable and unnecessary to their families' existence. You will have created a generation of prideless, fatherless youth who believe that receiving and taking is better than working and investing. And when you have seen the hope disappear from the eyes of the young, you can be sure you have developed an effective formula for the destruction of a people. We call it welfare." - Robert Lupton

This is a really good column by the son of Nate Saint, who was killed by the Waodani along with Jim Elliot and other missionaries in 1956. For more good reading on this subject, check out When Helping Hurts.

Often charity to help the poor attracts more people into poverty. One example I have noticed takes place when North Americans try to care for the needs of orphans in cultures different from our own. If you build really nice orphanages and provide good food and a great education, lots more children in those places become orphans. I see this happen all over. When we attempt to eradicate poverty through charity, we often attract more people into “needing” charity. It is possible to create need where it did not exist by projecting our standards, values and perception of need onto others.

So what is poverty? We in the “Wealthy West” have little understanding of “poverty.” As our standard of living has risen in developed countries, our perception of poverty has changed.

Consider how our definition of an orphan is different from most other cultures. In the U.S., you are an orphan if your mother and father have died. In South America (where I grew up), as in other contexts where extended family structures are intact, you are not really considered an orphan as long as you have a living grandparent, uncle, aunt or older brother or sister who is capable of helping take care of you. So when North Americans build an orphanage in South America, we “create” orphans by tempting family members to take advantage of our well-intentioned largess. This is seldom in the best interest of those children who are “orphaned” by our desire to meet what we perceive as their need.

"There are two ways through life. The way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you will follow."

I went with a bunch of buddies to see The Tree of Life last night and while I knew that it was going to be a unique experience, I still wasn't quite prepared for how artsy yet amazing it would be. A movie with incredible cinematography but little dialogue (I don't know that we hear the main actors speak in front of the camera until 45 minutes into the film), it centers around one main question: Why is there suffering?

Without spoiling it at all, I will say that it will make you think like few movies, and you need to be patient. The film demands an approach to it as a piece of art and to be appreciated as such. And Terrence Malick, the director, hits a couple points a little too long. But don't let that scare you off... it is an astoundingly profound movie. Don't just sit down expecting entertainment; it deserves so much more than that and will disappoint you if you don't put in the intentional effort to engage it emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. Watch it with friends, and then talk about it. It's not a film that you're likely to grasp well without discussing it with others.

This is so, so good.

For every gallon of gas that is sold in the United States, on average, the local, state and federal taxes come out to 48 cents. The average profit taken away from every gallon of gas by Exxon is --brace yourselves for unsavory news about the oil buccaneers -- 2 cents. If you don't like oil profiteering, then you really have to learn how to see our public servants as the equivalent of 24 Exxons, stacked on top of your travel plans like they were so many leeches.

Exxon feels free to take that 2 cents because they explored, researched, drilled, transported, refined, transported, and sold the gas that you were interested in buying. The government is entitled to it . . . why?

God says not to steal, and not even to think about stealing by means of coveting. We have to learn that our bad attitude toward free enterprise is caused by the larceny in our hearts. We think the way we do about oil companies because we want a piece of the action, for nothing. We don't think that way about predatory taxation for the same reason that one thief doesn't see the larceny in the heart of his fellow thieves. We are looking for the kickback.

As a wise man posted somewhere, "It's not theft if you have to fill out a form." So the devotional thought for the morning is that Jesus wants you to feel sorry for Exxon. And when we hear this call to radical discipleship, our faith staggers. Who can do these things? And the reply comes, comforting our hearts, that with God all things are possible.

This report came out this week which shows that children are at significant risk when not living with both of their biological parents.

I was just thinking that very thing recently when I kept seeing stories in the news of deaths and abuse of children. Almost without exception, there is consistently only one parent in the picture. Example A: this gruesome story. Example B: this sad news in Missouri. Example C: the well-known Caylee Anthony death.

So sad. Hollywood doesn't show this very often ("Gone Baby Gone" is probably one of the few recent films that did). Usually, what our society (of which Hollywood is merely a mirror) tells us is that parents aren't that important. They don't have to be married, they don't have to live together. Hell, they don't even have to be different genders. No, as long as they are in love and happy, that's what matters. Meanwhile, their progeny suffers the consequences.

My man Jim Thome went deep for the 600th time of his career last night. For your viewing pleasure, I give you his 596th, hit on July 17th this summer, a game I was at with my parents and my daughter for her birthday. It flew an estimated 490 feet (longest ever hit in Target Field). 52 seconds into this clip, check out Delmon Young's reaction.

This a helpful column by Dalrymple in showing what America has to look forward to if we continue to follow the leftist policies of Obama and his ilk.

The rioters in the news last week had a thwarted sense of entitlement that has been assiduously cultivated by an alliance of intellectuals, governments and bureaucrats. "We're fed up with being broke," one rioter was reported as having said, as if having enough money to satisfy one's desires were a human right rather than something to be earned.

"There are people here with nothing," this rioter continued: nothing, that is, except an education that has cost $80,000, a roof over their head, clothes on their back and shoes on their feet, food in their stomachs, a cellphone, a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, an electric stove, heating and lighting, hot and cold running water, a guaranteed income, free medical care, and all of the same for any of the children that they might care to propagate.