these days, most film studios outside the faith-based sector don't bother to tell them at all.
That is what makes the upcoming film Moses the Black such an interesting event, along with its unique narrative framing. Saint Moses of Ethiopia served as a monk and abbot in the fourth century, transforming his life by accepting Christ after a life of bloody criminal activity. Moses the Black, recognized as a saint in the Orthodox and Catholic churches, converted after fleeing to a monastery after a career of murder, terror, and mayhem. He struggled in faith, finding it difficult to leave his life of criminality on one hand and despairing at redemption for it on the other.
Rather than take that story on directly, however, rapper Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson teamed up with Simeon Faith, the Nick Mirkopoulos Cinematic Fund, and Fathom Entertainment to exec-produce a film that sets the redemption question in a modern, violent setting. It mainly follows the recently released gang member Malik (Omar Epps) and his return to Chicago, seeking revenge for the murder of his mentor and partner Sayeed. His crew wants revenge, but Malik's grandmother introduces him to the story of St. Moses the Black, whose life parallels Malik's and is shown in flashbacks throughout the film. Everything escalates in Malik's life – a gang war, potential betrayal, and Malik's growing sense that he yearns for redemption, even if it comes in the harsh terms of the life he's led. //
Moses the Black would get an R rating for very good reasons. It has graphic violence, bad language, and enough emotional turbulence that children and teens probably shouldn't see the film. For those too young to see this film, may I suggest this YouTube video on Saint Moses himself. His redemption story may be lesser known than that of other saints such as Augustine, but it is no less inspirational. https://youtu.be/jCmn1ENRVLM?si=yUUqqrHeFKFr5kHr
Amazon Prime Video is under fire for streaming a butchered version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that guts the beloved Christmas classic.
Viewers say the abridged cut — roughly 22 minutes shorter than the original 130-minute film — removes the iconic “Pottersville” sequence, the pivotal stretch that explains why despairing hero George Bailey suddenly rediscovers the will to live.
In that part, Bailey declares his wish never to have been born and gets to see how crummy life would have been without him.
Without that sequence, audiences are left watching a man contemplate suicide one moment, then sprint joyfully through town the next — with no logical explanation. //
The “Pottersville” sequence is the portion most directly adapted from Stern’s story.
Legal experts say the abridged version appears to be a workaround — by removing that specific sequence, distributors may have believed they could avoid infringing on the short story’s copyright while still offering a version of the film. //
Amazon Prime reportedly carries both the full and abridged versions, but viewers say the platform does not clearly explain the difference — leaving unsuspecting viewers to click the wrong one.
Macaulay Culkin just wanted to stay home alone.
The actor, 45, revealed why he decided to step away from acting in 1994 after starring in the holiday classic “Home Alone” in 1990 and its 1992 sequel, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
“What I wanted is to be with people my own age. You have to remember: a lot of the stuff I did when I was a kid … I’m not doing ensembles. It’s me,” Culkin shared while appearing on Mythical Kitchen. //
In 1994, the child star led the family comedy “Richie Rich,” about a boy who has everything in the world except friends.
Afterwards, Culkin had the urge for a more normal lifestyle.
“I wanted to go out and I wanted to date girls, and I wanted to hang out with people my own age. I wanted to, you know, go to a party,” he detailed. “I wanted to do those kind of things. I can’t tell you how many bar mitzvahs I missed.”
Mike: (during his and Pearl's neighborly chat) So... you are gonna send us a movie though, huh?
Pearl: Yeeeaaah. And it's pretty bad. I hope that's okay. It was made in Vermont and it's about this guy who travels through time, and then he has to go back in time to change what he did in the future. It's- it's called Time Chasers. Oh, it's got that guy in it. Oh, and that other guy, too.
Film watched: Time Chasers //
[In the dystopian future, an eyepatch-wearing armed survivor leaps atop a smashed car for a better shooting angle]
Mike [as Gunman]: Arrgh! Sixteen men on a dead Dodge Dart! //
Crow: But I only have one jar of mustard!
Beyond the blockbusters: This watch list has something for everyone over the long holiday weekend.
"Hoist the Colours", also written as "Hoist the Colors", was a haunting sea shanty known by all pirates across the Seven Seas. The song was related to the action of hoisting of a pirate's flag, though it was mainly used as a call ... //
Lyrics by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio
Music by Hans Zimmer and Gore Verbinski //
Hoist the Colours was first mentioned in the 2007 reference book Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide,[1] prior to its first appearance as "an old pirate song" in T.T. Sutherland's junior novelization for the 2007 film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.[2][3] In addition, "Hoist the Colours" would be heard in full in the film's soundtrack as well as the film itself.[6][3] "Hoist The Colours — The Story Behind The Song" was a bonus feature for the various DVD/Blu-ray releases for the film, "The tale of house this haunting shanty was created. An anthem for pirates across the seven seas". //
I've always been a scaredy-cat. Horror movies were my kryptonite, the kind of films that left me sleeping with the lights on and checking under beds like a paranoid child. So this newfound ability to chuckle at cinematic terror felt like discovering I could suddenly speak a foreign language.
As I reflected on this mysterious transformation, three influences kept surfacing in my memory, all carrying the same powerful message: fear loses its grip when you laugh at it. //
The first was Stephen King's IT, specifically the scene where the Losers Club finally confronts Pennywise. These kids, terrorized by an ancient cosmic horror, make a crucial discovery: the creature that feeds on fear becomes pathetically small when mocked. They literally bully the bully, turning their terror into ridicule. "You're just a clown!" they shout, and suddenly this omnipotent force becomes just another playground antagonist.
The second was from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Professor Lupin teaches his students to defeat boggarts, creatures that manifest as your worst fear, with the Riddikulus spell. The magic isn't in complex incantations; it's in forcing yourself to imagine your fear in something ridiculous. Snape in your grandmother's dress. A spider wearing roller skates. Fear transformed into comedy. //
All three sources delivered the same revolutionary idea: laughter is fear's kryptonite. //
This shift represents something profound about how we consume media. Stories don't just entertain us; they literally rewire our neural pathways, teaching us new ways to interpret and respond to the world. Every hero's journey we follow, every coping mechanism we witness, becomes part of our own psychological toolkit.
If you wanted to build the quintessential fictional character that embodies the leftist trope of the “toxic male,” you would be hard-pressed to find a better avatar than James Bond. Find the male trait the activist set has railed against, and 007 has that tucked away inside his elitist tuxedo. //
Over the weekend, it was noticed that on Amazon Prime, they had a series of new series of promotional images for the collection of James Bond films on the platform. //
Also noticed: Every single gun originally portrayed was either airbrushed out or the image was cropped to remove the weapon from being visible
Redford’s masculine charm wasn’t at all boring, like the “Barefoot” bride perceives her hubby. Much the opposite. He was a complex, controlled and sly actor, who seduced with ease in every genre he touched.
“Like the greatest movie stars, Bob understands the power of restraint,” his “The Way We Were” co-star Barbra Streisand wrote in her 2023 memoir, “My Name Is Barbra.”
“You’re never going to get it all … and that’s the mystery … that’s what makes you want to keep looking at him.”
Making original films for young men isn’t that hard, but you have to quit pushing gay race communism and appeal to masculine virtue. //
If you understand that this is what appeals to young men, then the movie scripts pretty much write themselves. Make movies with masculine heroes — not necessarily muscle-bound meatheads or ridiculous superheroes, but real men who are heroes because they’re willing to suffer and deny themselves for a greater good, detach from their own desires to pursue justice, and lay down their lives to protect those under their charge.
Smart filmmakers understand this intuitively. Christopher Nolan is reportedly working on an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, due out next summer. It’s probably going to be a blockbuster. Mel Gibson is now finally filming “The Resurrection of the Christ,” a two-part follow-up to his 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ,” which grossed nearly $610 million worldwide. Gibson is also working on a limited TV series about the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, when a small contingent of knights and Maltese citizens repelled a vastly superior Ottoman force.
These are the kinds of films and TV shows young men want to see. If Disney, or any other production company, wants to appeal to young men and not just lecture at them, then make films that are unapologetically American and Christian.
Make films about crusaders in which the crusaders are the heroes (unlike Ridley Scott’s botched effort in 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven). Make films about the American Revolution (there are precious few good ones). Make sympathetic films and TV series about the great European explorers and conquistadors, the pioneers who settled the American continent, and the soldiers who fought in the Civil War — on both sides. Revive the great tradition of the American western that gave us the catalogues of Sam Peckinpah and John Ford. Make a TV series based on the Hardy Boys — one that actually resembles the original books. Make sci-fi action films about America competing against China to colonize the moon or Mars — in which China is the villain, just like in real life.
And don’t worry about the Chinese market at all, or any international markets. Just make films for American audiences that are pro-American. One of the reason’s Tom Cruise’s 2022 film Maverick was so successful is that it wasn’t preaching woke nonsense. It was just a fun, patriotic action film with awesome stunts, a great cast, and a compelling storyline. Just do that.
If Disney wanted to — and it doesn’t, not really — it could make countless films and TV shows that deeply appeal to young men. It would be the easiest thing in the world to do. But to do that, Disney would have to repudiate its woke ideology and quit trying to lecture young men about how masculinity is toxic, America is bad, Christianity is oppressive, and everything should be gay. And let’s be honest: Disney is incapable of doing that.
But beneath the onslaught of celebrity cameos — including the Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, pop singer Bad Bunny (Gilmore’s caddy!), and many PGA golfers — a plot line that asks audiences to expel rather than merely suspend their disbelief, and the gratuitously silly scenes that populate the film from start to finish, the movie is shockingly profound and profoundly conservative.
The movie’s core messages are the importance of family, the meaninglessness of hedonism, marriage’s eternal nature, the defense of tradition, the reality of gender roles, and the integrity of the human body. These are provocative and courageous messages to bring audiences (and leftist movie critics) in 2025.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the most pro-life Hollywood blockbuster in a long time, and maybe ever.
The great movies, directors, actors, and writers of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s produced what has since been called the Golden Era of Hollywood. Technological advances, especially sound and color, also contributed. Scripts came from great novels and works of history, and from compelling stories serialized in magazines. One of those who contributed mightily to the Golden Era, in particular to the movies of John Ford, was the writer James Warner Bellah. His stories were powerful, poignant, and filled with men of character and courage. He himself was a veteran of not only World War I but also World War II. //
From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Bellah published eight books and three dozen short stories and articles. He also wrote or co-wrote nine screenplays. He will probably be best remembered for his work with the legendary director John Ford. The two first met, not in Hollywood, but in India during World War II. Ford’s famous cavalry trilogy, Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), came from the pen of James Warner Bellah. //
Probably the best of these films is The Sea Chase (1954), starring John Wayne and Lana Turner.
THE BOURNE IDENTITY
by
Tony Gilroy
Based on the novel
by
ROBERT LUDLUM
Paris Draft
9/20/00
The characters in these movies have no philosophical or thematic weight. Many serve no narrative function beyond dying to a dinosaur's jaws. I can remember feeling at least a little sympathy for Gennaro when he was eaten by the T-Rex, because he was a man so focused on doing his job (making the board money) that he failed to grasp the power they were working with until it grasped him in its jaws.
All of Jurassic Park's deaths had some sort of meaning. Nedry tried to control his destiny by betraying everyone and fleeing with dino DNA, but lost control during a storm, winding up in the jaws of a dilophasaurus. Arnold, responsible for controlling the systems across the park, lost control when the hurricane hit and died to raptors while he was trying to restore it. Muldoon, the man responsible for controlling the animals, died by them even though he knew them better than everyone else.
"You never had control. That's the illusion."
These deaths give weight to Sattler's line. Now? When a person dies to a dino... I don't care. They serve no purpose other than being a shallow reinforcement of a lesson we learned back in 1993. Today, we're still being told the same thing, but in a way that's shallow, tedious, and misses the mark entirely.
Jurassic Park was a movie with depth and philosophical importance, delivered with master-class acting and a focused narrative that included stunning visuals and thrilling moments.
Every subsequent one was a monster movie.
Hollywood should take its cues from the original. They should just leave the dinosaurs alone.
Ron Howard's 1995 love letter to NASA's Apollo program takes a few historical liberties but it still inspires awe. //
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Oscar-winning film, Apollo 13, director Ron Howard's masterful love letter to NASA's Apollo program in general and the eponymous space mission in particular. So we're taking the opportunity to revisit this riveting homage to American science, ingenuity, and daring. //
Howard ultimately shot most of the weightless scenes aboard the KC-135 since recreating those conditions on a soundstage and with CGI would have been prohibitively expensive.
In fact, Howard didn't rely on archival mission footage at all, insisting on shooting his own footage. That meant constructing realistic spacecraft interiors—incorporating some original Apollo materials—and reproducing exactly the pressure suits worn by astronauts. (The actors, once locked in, breathed air pumped into the suits just like the original Apollo astronauts.) The Mission Control set at Universal Studios was so realistic that one NASA consultant kept looking for the elevator when he left each day, only to remember he was on a movie set. //
Is every button pressed in the right way? No. Does it bug the crap out of me every time Kevin Bacon answers Tom Hanks' "How's the alignment?" question by nonsensically saying "GDC align" and pressing the GDC align button, which is neither what Lovell was asking nor the proper procedure to get the answer Lovell was looking for? Yes. But's also pure competence porn—an amazing love letter to the space program and the 400,000 men and women who put humans on the Moon.
And like Lovell says: "It's not a miracle. We just decided to go." //
Purpleivan
For anyone wanting a more extensive Apollo 13 experience, then have a look at LunarModule5's YouTube channel.
They've created an end to end (from a few hours before launch, to a few after splashdown) series of videos. These use the entire recorded audio for the mission, both for the crew and controllers on the ground. Long periods of silence have been edited our, but enough silence/static gaps between audio, for the cuts not to feel strange. They've also included some backroom discussion recordings, to fill some of the empty sections audio.
The videos show a simulation (I don't know the software used) to visualise the events of the mission, as well as a huge collection of photos from the mission.
I've watched a few of the videos and plan at some point to watch them all (something like) end to end. However, as the set of mission videos comes in 19 parts, with many 10 hours long, for a total of about 120 hours, it's a serious commitment of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4gb6Eb_Mes&list=PLC1yaZz2qeGrj_-TCMeupfzRUmf6CysdF
June 29, 2025 at 7:15 pm //
postpar Ars Centurion
6y
221
Subscriptor
FWIW, and this is a throwaway here, Chrysler never really got the credit they deserved for their stellar work on those rockets, or on the electronic communication and diagnosis devices, which were quite advanced and reliable under tough circumstances. When Apollo ended, a lot of those guys went back to Detroit. Some of them worked on the racing program, doing aero and diagnostic work; others worked on electronic ignition and on-board automotive computers. They did all this for relatively small profits.
https://www.motales.com/chrysler-corp/aerospace-defense/rockets-by-chrysler.php //
Those Mission Control consoles were built by Ford (Philco division.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbEIMcxl04)
Most fittingly, the Lunar Roving Vehicle was built in part by General Motors.
And with all that fresh space-age engineering experience under their belts, the American auto industry...basically fell apart at the seams for the next decade. //
JoHBE Ars Tribunus Militum
14y
2,881
Subscriptor++
The movie is now older than the mission was at [the movie's] release.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws, Steven Spielberg's blockbuster horror movie based on the bestselling novel by Peter Benchley. We're marking the occasion with a tribute to this classic film and its enduring impact on the popular perception of sharks, shark conservation efforts, and our culture at large. //
A lot of folks in both the marine science world and the ocean conservation communities have reported that Jaws in a lot of ways changed our world. It's not that people used to think that sharks were cute, cuddly, adorable animals, and then after Jaws, they thought that they were bloodthirsty killing machines. They just weren't on people's minds. Fishermen knew about them, surfers thought about them, but that was about it. Most people who went to the beach didn't pay much mind to what could be there. Jaws absolutely shattered that. My parents both reported that the summer that Jaws came out, they were afraid to go swimming in their community swimming pools. //
The movie also was the first time that a scientist was the hero. People half a generation above me have reported that seeing Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper on the big screen as the one who saves the day changed their career trajectory. "You can be a scientist who studies fish. Cool. I want to do that." In the time since Jaws came out, a lot of major changes have happened. One is that shark populations have declined globally by about 50 percent, and many species are now critically endangered. //
And then, from a cultural standpoint, we now have a whole genre of bad shark movies.
Ars Technica: Sharknado!
David Shiffman: Yes! Sharknado is one of the better of the bunch. Sitting on my desk here, we've got Sharkenstein, Raiders of the Lost Shark, and, of course, Shark Exorcist, all from the 2010s. I've been quoted as saying there's two types of shark movie: There's Jaws and there's bad shark movies. //
Ars Technica: People have a tendency to think that sharks are simply brutal killing machines. Why are they so important to the ecosystem?
David Shiffman: The title of my book is Why Sharks Matter because sharks do matter and people don't think about them that way. These are food chains that provide billions of humans with food, including some of the poorest humans on Earth. They provide tens of millions of humans with jobs. When those food chains are disrupted, that's bad for coastal communities, bad for food security and livelihoods. If we want to have healthy ocean food chains, we need a healthy top of the food chain, because when you lose the top of the food chain, the whole thing can unravel in unpredictable, but often quite devastating ways.
So sharks play important ecological roles by holding the food chain that we all depend on in place. They're also not a significant threat to you and your family. More people in a typical year die from flower pots falling on their head when they walk down the street. More people in a typical year die falling off a cliff when they're trying to take a selfie of the scenery behind them, than are killed by sharks. Any human death or injury is a tragedy, and I don't want to minimize that. But when we're talking about global-scale policy responses, the relative risk versus reward needs to be considered. //
In all of recorded human history, there is proof that exactly one shark bit more than one human. That was the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks around Christmas in Egypt a few years ago. Generally speaking, a lot of times it's hard to predict why wild animals do or don't do anything. But if this was a behavior that was real, there would be evidence that it happens and there isn't any, despite a lot of people looking. //
One of my favorite professional experiences is the American Alasdair Rank Society conference. One year it was in Austin, Texas, near the original Alamo Drafthouse. Coincidentally, while we were there, the cinema held a "Jaws on the Water" event. They had a giant projector screen, and we were sitting in a lake in inner tubes while there were scuba divers in the water messing with us from below. I did that with 75 professional shark scientists. It was absolutely amazing. It helped knowing that it was a lake.
Ars Technica: If you wanted to make another really good shark movie, what would that look like today?
David Shiffman: I often say that there are now three main movie plots: a man goes on a quest, a stranger comes to town, or there's a shark somewhere you would not expect a shark to be. It depends if you want to make a movie that's actually good, or one of the more fun "bad" movies like Sharknado or Sharktopus or Avalanche Sharks—the tagline of which is "snow is just frozen water." These movies are just off the rails and absolutely incredible. The ones that don't take themselves too seriously and are in on the joke tend to be very fun.
Tom Cruise has broken an insane Guinness World Record, and it's because of one of the many crazy stunts he did for "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning," and we are all here for it.
During production of the final movie in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, the 62-year-old actor was awarded the Guinness World Records title, and it was for doing 16 burning parachute jumps, The Wrap reported. It all happened while filming the unbelievable plane sequence for M:I 8 that can be seen below.
It's like Disney is trying to push the message that love isn't worth sacrificing for, and that women should pursue their own interests instead of fighting for something far more worthy than a degree. Abandon your charges. If your family is broken, leave the responsibility to someone else and go get yours, girl.
Disney really had the opportunity to show its fans it learned from its mistakes after repeated massive failures, including "Snow White," but it would appear that it's still high on woke. //
Gandalf
3 hours ago
'It's like Disney is trying to push.....'
You do not need the first two words .. Disney knows exactly what it's pushing, and it's what all progressives are committed to push for: the destruction of the family. //
7againstthebes
3 hours ago
Seems to me that Disney doesn't understand their own story. That about sums up the malfunction of the left. Failure to understand the moral, the morality, the decency, the necessity of all things of good report.
Everything the left touches they defile.
Istandforfreedom 7againstthebes
2 hours ago
Oh, they understand it perfectly well and the DESPISE it and as a result they are tirelessly working to destroy that message. It reveals a deep level of narcissism - selfishness - that is utterly contrary to love. This would be hatred towards everyone who is not them.
Command and Control, Goldsboro 1961
Clip | 2m 6s
Sometimes all that stands between the world and nuclear disaster is the flip of a switch.
Aired 01/10/2017 | Rating NR