cwsox

the LOTR near sweep is happening - it is 4 for 4 already and other than adapted screenplay (which may go Mystic River) and possibly best song, LOTR should take at least 9 based on the current rate which is now 5 of 5 for sound mixing already has art direction costume make up visual effects sound mixing

as named by RibbieR and... someone else

out of my deep, deep respect for you and our friendship I shall not comment on a sermon that is based on a movie script for the proclaimed Word of God of the day. The passion stories in the 4 Gospels (which don't have the Gibson added touch) are the material I would preach from and will do as we get to Holy Week. Today's Gospel lesson was the Luke narrative encounter of Jesus and the devil and failed to include the Gibson touch. I find it sufficient to preach on the Bible as my text for things about Jesus. To preach on a movie script as filfillment of Scripture - that says much to me about what is wrong with preaching today among other things but I shall pass on sayng more out of, again, respect and friendship and may I say love, I shall leave it alone.

so Mel has to add an action that violates the teachings of Jesus because Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn't have the insight of Mel? to do that with integrity, the movie should never have suggested it was a historical account, the ad campaign lies by claiming authenticity when it adds this and so much other fanciful nonBiblical stuff

those interpretations of the Genesis passage are in my opinion not supportable, quite fanciful. The statement is made as an etylogical statement as to why the snake has no legs and the usual human dislike of snakes and that some snacks are venenous and dangerous. To say that somehow this refers to Christ is far, far, far fetched and not supported by context. As for Jesus - Jesus the one who said resust not evil, who in the tempation natrratives sends the devil away with a word, this cinema action violates all that the Gospels say and witness to of Jesus. Reaching for such which if the Genesis text were about Christ why wouldn't the Gospels have Jesus do it? Is Mel improving on the Gospels? Be careful in answering that one.

wrong, Illini boy you couldn't care less if you could care less, that means you care some

Had to go to and from Chicago yesterday and toik all 3 double cds that were put out in the 90s, the anthology stuff - I have never really listened to them in attentive detail - they were so interestting I started reading the liner notes song by song (granted, not a safe practice when driving 80) there is some great stuff on those (both cd and liner notes! have you heard them? One of my favorite moments was hearing them in the studio switch from 4/4 time to 3/4 time in 1 second flat because the original tempo was not working - they reworked that music on the fly - but there is sme incredible stuff on there - if you have not heard them, do so so we can talk and anyone else please join in the one palce I got moved to tears was they had All my Loving as played on the Ed Sullivan show on 2-9-64 - I don't have the dvd of that which you have and this is the first time I have heard the Sullivan intro with the song in full since that day 40 years ago - my father started yelling "turn that junk off" and I said the one word answer tha changed our family forever, a word the Italian father never expected from the only son: "No." I had expected to not like them and I really fell for them in those first few notes - we battled our way through the first set and for the second my mother made my father stay in the kitchen with the door closed and me in the living room with the door closed for the second set, not because she liked them at all but it was the only way to end the insurrection in the household - a scene repeated all across America that night of course last night my father choose to reminense abut how much yelling he did and how he fought with me constantly over things that were unimportant and I am going yeah yeah yeah --- from objecting to my getting Meet The Beatles for a present, to my slipping all the 45s into the hosue to buying me a radio and phonograph, my George doll, the White Album (you paid $6 for that yell yell yell) all the way to digging through my stuff and finding the original John and Yoko 2 Virgins picture in a box so he threw out the whole box of things (museum quality rarities) that I had collected in the 60s and early 70s enough nostalgia - George's first acoustic While My Guitar Gently Weeps is so moving as is the under rchestrated versions of All things Must Pass and Something in which he sings it with such blues passion - the way Paul and John rewrote words on the fly, the musical experimentation - it was so worth it to listen to all 3 double cds which as it worked out, got me to Chicago and back-

the show may suck it may be great or good or average I will be watching you will not different strokes for different folks

the reasons are not minor to others who have seen it I see where you are coming from for the rest and I am taking your comments as pleasant natural exchanges amongst friends actually many times I have expected to hate a movie that I ended up loving - my friends love the 180s I can pull on a film - Star Wars most obvious example ("it glorifies warfare, makes a cartoon of war, yada yada yade" turned into seeing it four straight weekends and thinking it one of the best movies ever made) but there are many others, many of them in my dvd/video collection, which includs a movie I expected to love and did, Breaker Morant with Mel Gibson I decided to go, ok, I'll give it a shot - when I went to get the advance ticket, there were 4 left, I bought 1 - by sheer coincidence my pastor friend got there right afterwards and 2 of the 3 remaining for he and his wife when I got in line and ran into my friend, we decided to hope that it was better than we were expecting based on the script it was worse than I expected and worse in ways that grieve me theologically imagine a Reagan movie that opens with Nancy in 1981 getting an abortion as Ronald beamed about it - the act of Jesus stomping a living thing to death is so antithetical to the Gospel and all that Jesus taught and did - with the Reagan movie I am conjecturing for an analogy, you'd expect it to go downhill from that supposed opening - this one did for me and believe it or not, as I stood in line, I had hopes that once again I'd pull a 180 and this one took me a full 360. right back to where I started

sure bets: picture LOTR actress Charize Theron director Jackson score howard Shore LOTR orig screenplay Sophia Coppola animated Nemo documentary Capturing the Friedmans foreign Barbarian Invasions very probable actor Sean Penn sup act Tim Robbins

1. it's a rare talent! 2. I remain intensely troubled by the opening scene in which Jesus kills, indeed stomps a living thing to death. Today's Gospel Lesson was the Luke temptation narrative, in which Jesus responds with affirnmations of faith. Gibson removes the incredibly moving prayer of Jesus in the Garden and replaces it with an act of antiGospel violence done by Jess - just incredible. If Sermon on the Mount, indeed, all the teachings of Jesus say anything it is that Jesus would not have committed such an act of vicious violence (or any violence) - and the Gospel thus undercut by Gibson's fradulant act of violence that he has his Jesus commit. The problem with heathens and those who ruin America is that those to claom to be most relighious do not comprehend the Scriptural versus the antiScriptural, have replaced violence where the life and teachings of Jesus are, and think that is a witness. The Golden Calf still is worshipped Texsox. And so they spoke badly of the prophets and the faithful before you. Thnak you for sharing about the other clergy you have spoken to on this, and what they said. It is encouraging to know part of the Church is speaking against this, or at least, telling the truth about it and have been co-opted by the hype and the marketing ploys offered to congregations.

gotta go with witesoxfan here

what crimson said... howver, I listen to what you say to and I take that as a caution my distaste for this movie is that it is going to look to lot of people that this is what "Christians" believe and I resent heavily that the marketing within the churches and to the society at large is that this is representative of the Church which is my life what crimson said works for me, and thank you crimson but I understand your post is well intentioned and if that is the way it comes off to you than I need to consider that seriously so I thank you but as luck has it I am going to be gone for a while so you get a respite from my posts, Bob!

please read this review NAILED by DAVID DENBY Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” Issue of 2004-03-01 Posted 2004-02-23 In “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson shows little interest in celebrating the electric charge of hope and redemption that Jesus Christ brought into the world. He largely ignores Jesus’ heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism and personal radiance—Christ as a “paragon of vitality and poetic assertion,” as John Updike described Jesus’ character in his essay “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.” Cecil B. De Mille had his version of Jesus’ life, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese had theirs, and Gibson, of course, is free to skip over the incomparable glories of Jesus’ temperament and to devote himself, as he does, to Jesus’ pain and martyrdom in the last twelve hours of his life. As a viewer, I am equally free to say that the movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agony—and to say so without indulging in “anti-Christian sentiment” (Gibson’s term for what his critics are spreading). For two hours, with only an occasional pause or gentle flashback, we watch, stupefied, as a handsome, strapping, at times half-naked young man (James Caviezel) is slowly tortured to death. Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagrely involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus’ message of love into one of hate. And against whom will the audience direct its hate? As Gibson was completing the film, some historians, theologians, and clergymen accused him of emphasizing the discredited charge that it was the ancient Jews who were primarily responsible for killing Jesus, a claim that has served as the traditional justification for the persecution of the Jews in Europe for nearly two millennia. The critics turn out to have been right. Gibson is guilty of some serious mischief in his handling of these issues. But he may have also committed an aggression against Christian believers. The movie has been hailed as a religious experience by various Catholic and Protestant groups, some of whom, with an ungodly eye to the commercial realities of film distribution, have prepurchased blocks of tickets or rented theatres to insure “The Passion” a healthy opening weekend’s business. But how, I wonder, will people become better Christians if they are filled with the guilt, anguish, or loathing that this movie may create in their souls? “The Passion” opens at night in the Garden of Gethsemane—a hushed, misty grotto bathed in a purplish disco light. Softly chanting female voices float on the soundtrack, accompanied by electronic shrieks and thuds. At first, the movie looks like a graveyard horror flick, and then, as Jewish temple guards show up bearing torches, like a faintly tedious art film. The Jews speak in Aramaic, and the Romans speak in Latin; the movie is subtitled in English. Gibson distances the dialogue from us, as if Jesus’ famous words were only incidental and the visual spectacle—Gibson’s work as a director—were the real point. Then the beatings begin: Jesus is punched and slapped, struck with chains, trussed, and dangled over a wall. In the middle of the night, a hasty trial gets under way before Caiaphas (Mattia Sbragia) and other Jewish priests. Caiaphas, a cynical, devious, petty dictator, interrogates Jesus, and then turns him over to the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), who tries again and again to spare Jesus from the crucifixion that the priests demand. From the movie, we get the impression that the priests are either merely envious of Jesus’ spiritual power or inherently and inexplicably vicious. And Pilate is not the bloody governor of history (even Tiberius paused at his crimes against the Jews) but a civilized and humane leader tormented by the burdens of power—he holds a soulful discussion with his wife on the nature of truth. Gibson and his screenwriter, Benedict Fitzgerald, selected and enhanced incidents from the four Gospels and collated them into a single, surpassingly violent narrative—the scourging, for instance, which is mentioned only in a few phrases in Matthew, Mark, and John, is drawn out to the point of excruciation and beyond. History is also treated selectively. The writer Jon Meacham, in a patient and thorough article in Newsweek, has detailed the many small ways that Gibson disregarded what historians know of the period, with the effect of assigning greater responsibility to the Jews, and less to the Romans, for Jesus’ death. Meacham’s central thesis, which is shared by others, is that the priests may have been willing to sacrifice Jesus—whose mass following may have posed a threat to Roman governance—in order to deter Pilate from crushing the Jewish community altogether. It’s also possible that the temple élite may have wanted to get rid of the leader of a new sect, but only Pilate had the authority to order a crucifixion—a very public event that was designed to be a warning to potential rebels. Gibson ignores most of the dismaying political context, as well as the likelihood that the Gospel writers, still under Roman rule, had very practical reasons to downplay the Romans’ role in the Crucifixion. It’s true that when the Roman soldiers, their faces twisted in glee, go to work on Jesus, they seem even more depraved than the Jews. But, as Gibson knows, history rescued the pagans from eternal blame—eventually, they came to their senses and saw the light. The Emperor Constantine converted in the early fourth century, and Christianized the empire, and the medieval period saw the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. So the Romans’ descendants triumphed, while the Jews were cast into darkness and, one might conclude from this movie, deserved what they got. “The Passion,” in its confused way, confirms the old justifications for persecuting the Jews, and one somehow doubts that Gibson will make a sequel in which he reminds the audience that in later centuries the Church itself used torture and execution to punish not only Jews but heretics, non-believers, and dissidents. I realize that the mere mention of historical research could exacerbate the awkward breach between medieval and modern minds, between literalist belief and the weighing of empirical evidence. “John was an eyewitness,” Gibson has said. “Matthew was there.” Well, they may have been there, but for decades it’s been a commonplace of Biblical scholarship that the Gospels were written forty to seventy years after the death of Jesus, and not by the disciples but by nameless Christians using both written and oral sources. Gibson can brush aside the work of scholars and historians because he has a powerful weapon at hand—the cinema—with which he can create something greater than argument; he can create faith. As a moviemaker, Gibson is not without skill. The sets, which were built in Italy, where the movie was filmed, are far from perfect, but they convey the beauty of Jerusalem’s courtyards and archways. Gibson, working with the cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, gives us the ravaged stone face of Calvary, the gray light at the time of the Crucifixion, the leaden pace of the movie’s spectacular agonies. Felliniesque tormenters gambol and jeer on the sidelines, and, at times, the whirl of figures around Jesus, both hostile and friendly, seems held in place by a kind of magnetic force. The hounding and suicide of the betrayer Judas is accomplished in a few brusque strokes. Here and there, the movie has a dismal, heavy-souled power. By contrast with the dispatching of Judas, the lashing and flaying of Jesus goes on forever, prolonged by Gibson’s punishing use of slow motion, sometimes with Jesus’ face in the foreground, so that we can see him writhe and howl. In the climb up to Calvary, Caviezel, one eye swollen shut, his mouth open in agony, collapses repeatedly in slow motion under the weight of the Cross. Then comes the Crucifixion itself, dramatized with a curious fixation on the technical details—an arm pulled out of its socket, huge nails hammered into hands, with Caviezel jumping after each whack. At that point, I said to myself, “Mel Gibson has lost it,” and I was reminded of what other writers have pointed out—that Gibson, as an actor, has been beaten, mashed, and disembowelled in many of his movies. His obsession with pain, disguised by religious feelings, has now reached a frightening apotheosis. Mel Gibson is an extremely conservative Catholic who rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican council. He’s against complacent, feel-good Christianity, and, judging from his movie, he must despise the grandiose old Hollywood kitsch of “The Robe,” “The King of Kings,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and “Ben-Hur,” with their Hallmark twinkling skies, their big stars treading across sacred California sands, and their lamblike Jesus, whose simple presence overwhelms Charlton Heston. But saying that Gibson is sincere doesn’t mean he isn’t foolish, or worse. He can rightly claim that there’s a strain of morbidity running through Christian iconography—one thinks of the reliquaries in Roman churches and the bloody and ravaged Christ in Northern Renaissance and German art, culminating in such works as Matthias Grünewald’s 1515 “Isenheim Altarpiece,” with its thorned Christ in full torment on the Cross. But the central tradition of Italian Renaissance painting left Christ relatively unscathed; the artists emphasized not the physical suffering of the man but the sacrificial nature of his death and the astonishing mystery of his transformation into godhood—the Resurrection and the triumph over carnality. Gibson instructed Deschanel to make the movie look like the paintings of Caravaggio, but in Caravaggio’s own “Flagellation of Christ” the body of Jesus is only slightly marked. Even Goya, who hardly shrank from dismemberment and pain in his work, created a “Crucifixion” with a nearly unblemished Jesus. Crucifixion, as the Romans used it, was meant to make a spectacle out of degradation and suffering—to humiliate the victim through the apparatus of torture. By embracing the Roman pageant so openly, using all the emotional resources of cinema, Gibson has cancelled out the redemptive and transfiguring power of art. And by casting James Caviezel, an actor without charisma here, and then feasting on his physical destruction, he has turned Jesus back into a mere body. The depictions in “The Passion,” one of the cruellest movies in the history of the cinema, are akin to the bloody Pop representation of Jesus found in, say, a roadside shrine in Mexico, where the addition of an Aztec sacrificial flourish makes the passion a little more passionate. Such are the traps of literal-mindedness. The great modernist artists, aware of the danger of kitsch and the fascination of sado-masochism, have largely withdrawn into austerity and awed abstraction or into fervent humanism, as in Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), which features an existential Jesus sorely tried by the difficulty of the task before him. There are many ways of putting Jesus at risk and making us feel his suffering. What is most depressing about “The Passion” is the thought that people will take their children to see it. Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” not “Let the little children watch me suffer.” How will parents deal with the pain, terror, and anger that children will doubtless feel as they watch a man flayed and pierced until dead? The despair of the movie is hard to shrug off, and Gibson’s timing couldn’t be more unfortunate: another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism is the last thing we need.

baggio, one of the few timesa I will say that you are flat out wrong map out the 4 Gospel's passion scenes anfd lay out that unfolding script and that movie script is not Biblically based - so many additions, so many changes - and as for the historical reality, FlaSoxxJim has said it, I have posyed on it before - that mvoie twists the historical realiity - the line about Caiphas' having a rebeliion is utter bulls*** falsehood - what was the movie's motivation for killing Jesus - Baggio, you brought your piety into the movie and saw it with those lens - I was genuinely prepared to revise my pre-seeing opinion as I have done many times with movies - show me Jesus killing in the Bible show me where any of those lines are in the Bible close to the Bible? That is pure bulls*** that Pilate's wife comforted Mary throwing Jesus off a bridge - scene after scene has material not in the Scripture that whipping scene - the Bible is specific - the soldiers are even counting in the movie in latin (albeit they spoke Greek) and then keep on going and why, other to show the goodly Roman wife comforting mary whiel the Jewsih leaders delighted in the whipping - why put Jews in a scene where they do not belong, is that in your Bible, read it again, add the Pilate's wife thing, add the Jewish leasders getting off on the whipping - here's a fact, they wuld have been now here near there and it all keeps pointing fingers at the Jewish leaders and it just is not so and on and on and on and on and on when you and I watch a football or baseball game I will bet you any money that you see more technique and subtle things about the game that I will never will because you know more about that sort of thing - that is what I am saying - from an academic, schlarly perspective this movie is porno violent antiSemitic trash King of Kings,m Jesus of Nazareth, any of those movies were far, far closer to the Gospels than this thing Last Temptation of Christ takes speculation and makes something meaningful - this is just Mad Max/Braveheart obsession with males being tortured and it is sick

the antiSemitism -remembering this scrpt is based on the mystic visions of Anna Catheirne Emmerich - who also believed that Rome was the True Church and only Rome, all other church bodies were satanic - how does one reconcile that Rome killed Christ when Rome was the True Church (this was her issue, not mine) at every point, Rome is taken off the hook - the Roman soldies were sadistic but they are all so moved at the end of the movie, all those cut aways to those far off glances Pilate's wife in a major gag me with nonBiblical material comforting Mary - Pilate's reluctance to crucify (which is so historically untrue - the movie thus leaves unanswered, where did these only two crucifixions come from if Pilate was so reluctant to do this) while the Jews were lusting for the blood of Jesus Caiaphas at the cross - almost the ultimate in going out of one's way to blame the Jews - the Jews through out just lusting for Jesus' death - when the death occurs, the Scriptures tell us the veil in the Temple was rent and there was an rumbling earthquake almost as creation cries in anguish but in Gibson's movie the Temple is wrecked as if God has now damned the Jews for killing Jesus - that is the very subtlle technique to repeat throughout the message that the Jews killed Christ - and what motive has he moviue given other than Jews hate Christ and Roman nobles were against it but went along with the controlling, manipulative Jews - that line from Pilate (not in the Bible but that goes without saying) that Caiaiphas will cause an insurrection if Pilate does not kill Jesus is the most flaming antiSemitic remark that could have been made, is anti the Gospels, Biblically untrue, and a new low in blaming the Jews and it disgusted me as well as so historically untrue - so anti history but it sure balme the Jews, huh? other movies, and again I go to Superstar for contrast, manage to get Jesus crucified while making the point that Jesus died for people, not because of the Jews

graphic violence I am not at problem with if the material jusifies and this matierial does but the lack of Gospel message other than disjointed flashbacks which only speak of death rather than Gospel leaves us with nothing but violence - none of the flashback set up scenes place any content on what we are seing - this is an S&M movie - if you bring a lot of your own knowledge into this it may work but the audience I saw it with, other than my clergy buddy and his wife, were almost all members of a local congregation that would be perhaps one like you belong to and I was curious that they were not moved, unmoved - it was just too much speciasl effects S&M graphics with no explanation as to why - the movie begins in a way that lost me, Jesus killing - I understand the symbolism they were going for but the last thing that I think Jesus would do is to kill and that undercuts a whole context of the passion - to tranpose a scene not in the Gradon into the Graden is one thing but Jesus triumphed over the situation with faith and words, not with killing - and that began the nonBiblical mateiral we all know crucifixion was the most vicious Roman execution method - the point is what does it mean - there is no teaching of atonement - all it is, is vicious Jews want to kill this guy with no motive, just want tio kill him - noble Romans blanche at the thought but every Roman realizes this is wrong while almost every Jew other than Mary, John, Magdalene, and Simon of Cyrene (who no context is goven to as a character) rejoices all the way through - to me, in Jesus Christ Superstar the prayer in the Garden sets up the human cost to Jesus that Gibson's movie fails to do - and in Superstar it cuts away to show us a series of crucifixon paintings by great artists - that sequence removes to me very moving and effective - plus of course JCSuperstar makes a strong statement on the resurrection which is the a burst of life after the crucifixion and then the movie ends with every character pausing to look at the cross and ponder its meaning - this mvie ends with an almost afterthought special effect on resurrection that focuses on stigmata and then before there is a nano second to reflect on the meaning of what one has seen there it is, the words MEL GIBSON flashing on the screeen in Godspell, Jesus is taken away and we see no crucifixion but the disciples' reaction conveys that something horrific has happened (and also ends with a strong statement on resurrection that you walk away singing rtaher than being numb) too much special effects is too much - at the end the violence is so unmoving that Jesus' body might as well ahve been from Ghostbusters and slimed by a strawberry jelly busmarck all covered with goo - pardon the pun but the overkill did not work for giving meaning- the current New Yorker has a great review better than I can express it

this is my day for agreeing with you

I have always wondered the same thing and have the same conclusion

they have made a history of ripping us off - singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame - that one really irks me -

this stuff is looking good Murcie -

the title is not classy but given the circumstances, I am not touching it!

remembering Gibson thanks the Legionnaires of Christ (and not one theologian or Biblical scholar) in the credits and I posted that is not a good thing, I thought what better insight into why I say that than a description of them from the National Catholic Reporter - NCR

I am posting this twice because this movie is very disturbing and those who think the Gospel needs Holywood padding - whatever - think about it there is nothing here that I want to associate myself with as a Christian - nothing I ran into another pastor in line at the theatre - we both agreed that we needed to see it in self defense since it is The Issue today - he and his wife and I sat together - I don't know which one of us went numb first from shock that this movie is as unBiblical is it is - you think driving a nail through someone's hand would gross you out but like a porn film, when you've seen 18,000 blow jobs the 18,001st is boring and numbing - if you had a drinking game, had a drink every time the script actually says something from the Gospels or portrays something in a Gospel, you'd be stone sober at the end of the movie - the three of us sat and watched the credits to look for one theologian, one Biblical scholar that credit was given to and as we suspected, there was none - but they do thank the Legionnaires of Christ and that is not a positive thing if this is the Jesus you need, I am glad you got it but there is nothing here that I want to associate myself with as a Christian - nothing let this fad pass quickly I am being kind by the way, because I'd rip this movie every which way, anti-Semitic and unBiblical - that lack of Biblical fidelity surprised even me (I loved it when everyone speaks Latin when in fact that dialogue would have been in koine Greek - but I hated the nonBiblical dialogue that dominated the script placed all the blame on those hooked nosed Jews and took Rome right off the hook) I have gone to many movies that I thought I would dislike and been won over but this one was the most mind numbing sick thing - if that's what you need to love Jesus - that is scary considering Gibson's fetish with torture/violence in Mad Max and Braveheart, this still went further than I expected and had less and less meaning as it went on - only Gibson would think the whipping scene in the Gospels didn't have enough violence - count - this is almost a Bible denying movie but for fans of Anne Catherine Emmerich and stigmatas, it is a blood festival this movie has a political agenda and that was clear - it is a promo for the Pius X Society - not a good thing in my view - the anti Semitism of the 19th century mystic stigmatists was both very clear and carefully choreographed - the most antiSemitic part of thge script is the false words they put in Pilate's mouth and the attempt to whitewash Rome over the embarrassment that Rome did this was cinematically clever but disgusting there is nothing here that I want to associate myself with as a Christian - nothing I can love Jesus without the orgasms of violence - it scares me that some people need that be thankful that I am not going point by point through this movie - it is so unBiblical - reminds me of a time I looked at a flashy car and I know nithing about cars and I said to a mechanic what a cool car it was and he told me it was junk - this slow plodding sick film is not based on the Gospels - it looks like it is but it was stunning how it wasn't - there was more Gospel and truth in Kangaroo Jack BrandoFan - you may note that the suicide of Judas visually and the entire Jesus before Herod scenes are directly ripped out of Jesus Christ Superstar - and JC Superstar, Godspell, far more effective at conveying the Passion and certainly the Resurrection than this thing