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First of all, peace; I am not planning to start a regular movie review feature. But I did see this remarkable film recently, and I think it’s deserving a bit more notice. Those of you with kids might find The Secret of Kells especially laudatory as the wee’uns approach that age of watching movies over and over and over; Kells would almost have to offer more charm than Cars 2 or Shrek 17. Of course, I’m frequently among the last to know, so maybe you’re already way ahead of me. If so, well, I still want to make one or two remarks on this fascinating work.

So, summary version just in case: The Secret of Kells is an animated fantasy-story about the origins of the famous Book of Kells, the product of Irish monastic scriptoriums during the years when Viking raids were a constant danger. The key figures of the film are the young apprentice boy, Brendan, and the lupine forest spirit Aisling whom he discovers and befriends.

As an all-ages animated film, The Secret of Kells is in rare company. It probably raises a serious challenge to anything produced by Studio Ghibli, and that’s not a suggestion I make lightly. Visually, Kells is just a near-constant delight; Miyazaki’s Ponyo had many breathtaking, dazzling scenes, but I think Kells raises the bar even further. It’s a treat to watch during both the acid-trip fantasy scenes and during the relatively pedestrian scenes. (more…)

I was rather amused, yesterday, upon reading how Britain apparently feels so un-Christian that one of Pope Ratzinger’s hangers-on, Cardinal Walter Kasper, just can’t hack it. From The Guardian:

One of the pope’s top advisers on his visit to England and Scotland has dropped out of his entourage following the publication of an interview in which he said that arriving in Britain “you sometimes think you’ve landed in a third world country”. [Kaspar] made his remark after noting that Britain was a “secular, pluralistic” country, [complaining that] “above all, an aggressive new atheism has spread through Britain. If, for example, you wear a cross on British Airways, you are discriminated against.”

It seemed suspicious when Kaspar suddenly dropped out of the tour for “health reasons,” and yet perhaps he really was ill, after all. Pope Ratzinger clearly isn’t eager to distance himself from these charges (which, aside from the “third world country” weirdness, largely echo previous papal mutterings). Indeed, today, he decided to go nuclear with anti-secularist rhetoric, bringing in the N-word:

We can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society… As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society.

The ironies and absurdities in this are really so many, and obvious, that I’m not even going to start listing them. Fortunately all of this is really nothing but the delusional ramblings of a grumpy old man, whose archaic cult is increasingly irrelevant to the continent which it once dominated with a brutal, iron-fisted tyranny of its own.

Ah, fortunate Europe.

Y’know, at some point, I think Godwin’s Law must break down and drawing comparisons to the Nazis becomes legitimate. And I’m not 100% sure that heaping books into piles and lighting them on fire is that point… but it has to be awfully close, if not.

I wonder what hateful, pygmy-brained, bigoted angry mobs will do in the future if printed books go completely out of fashion. Thinking about it, the idea of a bunch of dimwitted haters downloading copies of some text that offends them to their electronic slates, then stacking them up and lighting them on fire is kind of amusing. I can’t help smiling at the thought of realization slowly creeping over them, as they watch their entire media libraries sizzle and fry, and choke on the toxic smoke released by the various hazardous components being incinerated.