Hey, all you End-timers trying to immanentize the Eschaton...
Forget the Pope.
Kiss off Henry Kissinger.
Stress not over Skull and Bones.

Michael Eisner IS the Anti-Christ.

There. I said it. He and his miserific underlings at Disney have foisted yet another travesty upon the "family movie" faction. What's worse is that they had to import it from CANADA (and here I thought that the Sci Fi Channel was the holding tank for the Canadian tax-subsidized effluent that passes for programming now). What could drive me to such invective?

A Wrinkle In Time.

Madeline L'Engle approved the script, and all, but something got lost twixt script and screen. I know, big surprise. Meg is not mousy as in the book. She looks like she should be playing soccer or volleyball. She is less assertive...merely unpleasant. Charles Wallace is, OK, he's weird, like in the book, but also kind of HIP weird; not like the book, Using terms like "cool", rather than quoting from classical literature. The less said about Mrs. Who, Whatsit, and Which, the better. Alfre Woodard was charming, but the character was less like Broomhilda, and more like an afternoon chat host. That, and I couldn't get the fragging Borgs business out of my head. Shallow me.

And here's the kicker. The Happy Medium, an endearing, jolly WOMAN in the book, is played by a GUY. Apparently Canada has cross-dresser quotas in cinema, which fits with current Disney policy as well. Nicely played, but less dimensional than the book.

And I shout "HETEROPHOBES"! One of the sweetest moments in the book occurs when Calvin pulls Meg to him and kisses her before her last-ditch attempt to rescue Charles Wallace from IT's tendrils. Not in THIS version.

The best line in the whole book: "IT sometimes calls ITself the Happiest Sadist." Gone.

Jesus and the Buddha are lauded in the book as foes of the Dark Thing- almost like a Dr. Bronner's soap label. Not in THIS version. But they DID add Martin Luther King Jr. for the movie. As great a role as he played in the Civil Rights efforts of the 60's, MLK doesn't quite stack up to Jesus or Buddha.

Camazotz, the Bureaucratic Planet, came off well, but it had color. The Red-Eyed Man is like a possessed and tragically with-it Prof. Harold Hill. "IT" is more a system rather than a giant disembodied, bloated, pulsing brain, except, no, the whole PLANET is the giant brain: more gross than horrifying.

Oh, and there is a fair amount of marginal-at-best wire work for flying sequences.

Oh, OH. There is also CGI effects work. REBOOT was better. Much.

I have wanted a film version of A Wrinkle In Time.
A lot.
Billy Mumy would have been the PERFECT Charles Wallace. Alas.
If you want to see Wrinkle, fine.
See it in theater of your mind.
Read the book. I'm going to, again!

Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz.

Gad, how accurate could it be? THIS WAS HIGH SCHOOL! (The gender is wrong, though. The USE of "gender" is wrong, too. It should be sex. DON'T GO THERE, filth-mind...)
Oh, the pain, the pain...

Bedtime....and here I am at a keyboard. No biggies yet. I'm still at work on my Major Concerns entries, as I want to be clear in making my points. Passion is good, but polemic does get in the way of reasoned discussion.

Just a preview, though. The Charismaniacs of today (as opposed to charismatics and classic Pentecostals) are all about 3 miracles before breakfast, and being unable to get through the day without God's direct intervention or "leading". Yet, frankly, as one who operates Biblically in spiritual gifts, I have a great deal of puzzlement. For all the foofooraw about present-day miracles, healings, and "signs following", I have YET to hear of a single documented case of an eyeless man receiving sight, a legless woman becoming mobile, an armless child receiving new limbs. NOTHING of New Testament proportions; all "hidden healings": my headache's gone. The pain in my back is diminished. I will not deal with leg-lengthening parties, save that I find NO evidence of these methodologies in the New Testament.

A definitive picture of the correct "use" of spiritual gifts follows
And he (Jesus) said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. Mark 16:15-20

(Note that "them" is italicised. It does not appear in the Greek text, so a more accurate reading would be:

"And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.")
My concern is- and I hold the Dispensational doctrines of Darby and Scofield as error to rival the Gnostic heresy of the early church- my concern is that if signs are not confirming what we are preaching, then does God not consider what we are preaching to be worthy of confirmation?

How does the preaching of the Church at the beginning of the 21st Century measure up to the apostolic preaching of the New Testament? I believe our message is weighed in the balance, and found wanting.
The Gospel has been changed.