So I was reading the Times this morning and this caught my attention. Yesterday I wrote about The Wild Boys of the Road and thanks so much for the thoughtful comments on that posting. Leaving kids on their own to fend for themselves is terribly sad. Good lord, I’m a full grown adult and I suck at it.
I couldn’t think of many films yesterday dealing with the plight of children, I don’t know why I didn’t think of Slumdog Millionaire but that’s a good one reflecting street life of children in Mumbai.
This film obviously was very popular. I think that this film could possibly be made in every country. Isn’t that horrible. I mean think about it, they could do an 8 Mile Millionaire and a Katrina Millionaire. I don’t think it would be that difficult to find true stories of children living on the streets across America due to financial distress and broken families.

Anyway, the article in the NY Times about the problems with youth prisons in New York is barbaric. Just so terribly sad. What’s worse, is that this is an old problem.

I wrote a bit about The Godless Girl, but I think it deserves revisiting for a different reason other than religion. The Godless Girl is famous for exposing the reform school system in the United States. Just like the New York Times article, the Los Angeles Times did a report in 1927 about Queen Silver, who was a child prodigy orator that ran an Atheistic Society for whom the film was based.

The two lead character’s in the film both end up in reformatories due to an accident from a death resulting from a conflict between the Christian and Atheistic Societies. The Aetheistic Girl and the Christian Boy are both sent to a Juvenile Reformatory. The conditions depicted in the Juvenile Reformatory were based on six months of extensive research done by Cecil B. DeMille. What is particularly cool about this is that he hired a girl to go undercover and do time in the Juvenile Reform system and the conditions were reflected in the film.

“According to journalist Dorothy Donnell, director Cecil B. DeMille spent eight months and $200,000 on research before the production began. This included the enrolling of a young male informant into a boy’s reform school and a female informant into a girl’s school. Two large scrapbooks were kept in DeMille’s archive, containing sworn testimonials by many former inmates, with graphic descriptions of the brutalities they endured. Donnell later said, “I have seen these books, and read in them things so revolting that they will probably never be printed.”"

Anyway, read the article Task Force Finds Crisis in New York’s Juvenile Prison System and see the films.

So this is why we no longer have rational, frank, interesting films which don’t equalize and victimize women. The Catholic League is throwing their weight around and are trying to paint an image of Ron Howard’s film Angels & Demons as Anti-Catholic.

I can think of a lot more things that are Anti-Catholic than a bad Dan Brown story. (To be fair, I just think Dan Brown is just not that good of a writer). I enjoyed Da Vinci Code, but this stuff is not exactly great literature.
But if we only made movies out of great literature than books that make great movies, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I recently went to a film festival and saw some serious Anti-Catholic behavior! Here is a description of the short film.
Our Lady Queen of Harlem by Trinidad Rodriguez (17:00)On a crumbling sidewalk in the heart of Spanish Harlem, a small but impassioned group of women are fighting for their community. When the Archdiocese of New York locked the doors of the church where many of them spent their entire lives worshiping, this determined family of parishioners decided to resist the ministerial decision and take matters into their own hands. A portrait of faith and disobedience, Our Lady Queen of Harlem is an exploration of activism and the very definition of church.

Anyway, call me crazy but kicking people out of their parish is a little more Anti-Catholic.

To me, all this boils down to power. Religion is going to have a rough go of it now. Nobody has complete power over their image anymore with the advent of blogs, twitter, Youtube, etc.

My advice is to watch The Godless Girl and let it offend you and inspire you.

To Mr. Ron Howard, I saw the Da Vinci Code and as much as I hated the book, I liked your movie. I thought it thought provoking to all sides involved. I have no idea how someone who is Catholic would be offended by that. If anything it was very pro-Catholic.
But what was important to me about your film as is with the Godless Girl is that it creates a discussion and forces people to ask questions about history. Why that is not important is beyond me. I mean if Frost Nixon

gives us an opportunity to take another look at our power culture I don’t understand why none of this applies to the questioning of the religious culture.
Also, Mr. Howard, if you are still reading that would be so cool, but anyway more importantly it brings to light again the Catholic League and what damage they did in the 30′s through their power and censorship. So much has been lost from film due to this. And from a woman’s perspective, I don’t think women in film have ever fully recovered. It is a tragedy that Norma Shearer

and her contemporaries were once so powerful and now Hanna Montana is what we have to look up to.

It is a tragedy. Thank you for pushing them Mr. Howard. Maybe someone will start talking about the damage they did.

My fiance was out at the bar and I had to opportunity to just enjoy a really fabulous gem. The Godless Girl is supposed to be one Cecil B. DeMille’s last silent film, but there is some debate about that, since there was some dialogue scenes found and added later.

What I found just stunning about this movie was the uninhibited debate the movie has with itself about the role of religion in society. It was just so open and honest about how people’s experiences and education shape their faith. There is no way that a modern audience would be able to handle this in such a rational and open fashion. Each main character gets the shoe on the other foot if you will and has their viewpoints tested and put into real life. I came away with the message that everything sounds great on paper, but until we are put into life’s challenges can we really decide what we believe. Interesting movie.

The fire in the jailhouse at the end of the film is really unbelievable. Watching it I was horrified, because I knew that special effects were pretty limited at that point and that was a real fire those people were in. I did a little research and found the the actors actually were injured in the making of the film.
The opening title cards are just fantastic. And I have never seen a film about Atheism before. It was just so refreshing and new to actually see what the atheists were debating and how it was done. I mean how on earth could a movie like this get made now!

It is not generally known that there are Atheist Societies using the schools of the country as their battle-ground – attacking, through the Youth of the Nation, the beliefs that are sacred to most of the people.

And no fanatics are so bitter as youthful fanatics.