Last movie you saw?

[red solo cup]

Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks. Meh.

[LouisIX]

I'm watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (finally). I just love watching the actors eat all of that delicious-looking candy. And Gene Wilder. Such a sweetheart.

Edit: Holy moley, it's an allegory for the spiritual life! 

Lol! One of Wonka's combinations is the Ivory Soap slogan! 

This is one of my favorite films. It's underappreciated for a number of reasons, not least of which is the moralizing aspect to it. There are so many fantastic quotes (of quotes) from Wonka, but the best is saved for the end, when Charlie Bucket gives back the Everlasting Gobstopper instead of selling it off to Slugworth. Wonka quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, "So shines a good deed in a weary world."

Beautiful.

[Gardener]

I'm watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (finally). I just love watching the actors eat all of that delicious-looking candy. And Gene Wilder. Such a sweetheart.

Edit: Holy moley, it's an allegory for the spiritual life! 

Lol! One of Wonka's combinations is the Ivory Soap slogan! 

This is one of my favorite films. It's underappreciated for a number of reasons, not least of which is the moralizing aspect to it. There are so many fantastic quotes (of quotes) from Wonka, but the best is saved for the end, when Charlie Bucket gives back the Everlasting Gobstopper instead of selling it off to Slugworth. Wonka quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, "So shines a good deed in a weary world."

Beautiful.

Yep. The various children represent vices, with Charlie being the "every man" who struggles as well but does not have the financial ability to engage in them at such a level as the others. His spiritual poverty allows him the ability to grow in virtue. He has the world at his fingertips by taking from others and yet cannot bring himself to do it. All he owns is his integrity and in the end he cannot sell it. The trade-off is not worth it to him. He'd rather be a good poor kid than a slightly wealthier one with no honor. The other children already have their reward. Yet, he is guilty. He DID take the Everlasting Gobstopper. He simply returns it.

A character study of each child and their parent(s) would likely reveal combinations of the 7 deadly sins and other vices.

There are 4 children aside from Charlie. They represent the opposite of the 4 cardinal virtues (Prudence Justice Fortitude Temperance). All 4 violate these in their own way, with an associated Vice being prominent -- Augustus violates temperance primarily, etc.)

It could be a full on study for a Masters level thesis paper, I bet.

The only qualm I have with the allegory is the use of an employee playing Slugworth. This lends credence to the idea of Satan actually being on the side of God as a way to sift good from bad. In that aspect, Wonka is actually tempting rather than allowing temptation.

[LouisIX]

I'm watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (finally). I just love watching the actors eat all of that delicious-looking candy. And Gene Wilder. Such a sweetheart.

Edit: Holy moley, it's an allegory for the spiritual life! 

Lol! One of Wonka's combinations is the Ivory Soap slogan! 

This is one of my favorite films. It's underappreciated for a number of reasons, not least of which is the moralizing aspect to it. There are so many fantastic quotes (of quotes) from Wonka, but the best is saved for the end, when Charlie Bucket gives back the Everlasting Gobstopper instead of selling it off to Slugworth. Wonka quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, "So shines a good deed in a weary world."

Beautiful.

Yep. The various children represent vices, with Charlie being the "every man" who struggles as well but does not have the financial ability to engage in them at such a level as the others. His spiritual poverty allows him the ability to grow in virtue. He has the world at his fingertips by taking from others and yet cannot bring himself to do it. All he owns is his integrity and in the end he cannot sell it. The trade-off is not worth it to him. He'd rather be a good poor kid than a slightly wealthier one with no honor. The other children already have their reward. Yet, he is guilty. He DID take the Everlasting Gobstopper. He simply returns it.

A character study of each child and their parent(s) would likely reveal combinations of the 7 deadly sins and other vices.

There are 4 children aside from Charlie. They represent the opposite of the 4 cardinal virtues (Prudence Justice Fortitude Temperance). All 4 violate these in their own way, with an associated Vice being prominent -- Augustus violates temperance primarily, etc.)

It could be a full on study for a Masters level thesis paper, I bet.

The only qualm I have with the allegory is the use of an employee playing Slugworth. This lends credence to the idea of Satan actually being on the side of God as a way to sift good from bad. In that aspect, Wonka is actually tempting rather than allowing temptation.

That is an interesting thesis. It seems clear that:

Augustus x Temperance
Veruca x Justice

However, one might have a hard time with the remaining two. It seems that both Violet and Mike violate prudence more than fortitude.

[Bernadette]

the use of an employee playing Slugworth

God often allows us to be tempted even via the behavior of good people. St. Teresa writes about this in one of her books (Way of Perfection?) when she encourages her daughters to strive for humility and detachment:

You will say that these are natural little things to which
we need pay no attention. Don't fool yourselves, they increase
like foam, and there is nothing so small in which there is so ob-
vious a danger as this concern about honor and whether we
have been offended. Do you know why besides many other
reasons? Perhaps this concern begins in someone as something
small and amounting to hardly anything, and then the devil



The Way of Perfection - Chap. 13 85

stirs another to think it is something big, and this other will
even think she is practicing charity by going and saying to the
offended nun, "How do you put up with such an offense? God
give you patience to offer it up; a saint wouldn't suffer more."
The devil puts such malicious talk on the other Sister's tongue
that though you barely overcome the offense, you are still
tempted to vainglory, when in reality you did not suffer with
the perfection with which you should have suffered.

9. And this nature of ours is so weak that merely by telling
ourselves that the offense should not be tolerated, we think and
believe that we have done something; how much more is this so
when we see that others feel this way for us. As a result, the soul
loses the occasions it had for meriting; it becomes weaker and
opens the door for the devil to come again with something
worse. And it could even happen, when you want to suffer the
injury, that they will come to you and say: "Are you a beast or
what? It's good for you to feel things." [Huh, and if one of them
is a friend!] Oh, for love of God, my Sisters! May no one be
moved by an indiscreet charity to show pity for another in
something that touches upon these false injuries, for such pity
is like that of Job's wife and friends 6 (Way of Perfection, 12:8-9).

St. Teresa says that she knows this danger well, having seen it in other monasteries (she's always vague about where, exactly); and those nuns probably weren't all that evil. God allowed them to serve as a temptation to their sisters, in the way that He allows all other evil. 

[Bernadette]

That is an interesting thesis. It seems clear that:

Augustus x Temperance
Veruca x Justice

However, one might have a hard time with the remaining two. It seems that both Violet and Mike violate prudence more than fortitude.

I think Mike would probably sin against fortitude, by perverting it and practicing it incorrectly. He was all gung-ho to be transmitted by Wonkavision, remember, and even asked to do it again!  And remember those shoot-em-up cowboy, cops'n'robbers shows that he loves? He's trying to put into practice what he sees there, but in an inappropriate way.

Violet seems to be the one who sins most against prudence: she was warned not to chew the gum because the bugs hadn't been worked out yet, but she thought that she knew better, and ended up as a blueberry. Lol.

[LouisIX]

That is an interesting thesis. It seems clear that:

Augustus x Temperance
Veruca x Justice

However, one might have a hard time with the remaining two. It seems that both Violet and Mike violate prudence more than fortitude.

I think Mike would probably sin against fortitude, by perverting it and practicing it incorrectly. He was all gung-ho to be transmitted by Wonkavision, remember, and even asked to do it again!  And remember those shoot-em-up cowboy, cops'n'robbers shows that he loves? He's trying to put into practice what he sees there, but in an inappropriate way.

Violet seems to be the one who sins most against prudence: she was warned not to chew the gum because the bugs hadn't been worked out yet, but she thought that she knew better, and ended up as a blueberry. Lol.

Yes, I had thought of Mike's decision in a similar vein as Violet's but when you include Mike's obsession with being a cowboy and getting a gun as soon as possible ("Not until you're 12, son"), I suppose that that is a good argument that he is on the excessive extreme (as opposed to the extreme of deficiency) in regard to the golden mean of fortitude.

[angelcookie]

Big Fish. Loved it and I'm not a Tim Burton fan.

[Bonaventure]

Fast 8

[Graham]

Big Fish. Loved it and I'm not a Tim Burton fan.

That's a decent movie.

[Bernadette]

Big Fish. Loved it and I'm not a Tim Burton fan.

That's a decent movie.

I loved it, except for the fake accents. Those were a huge drawback.

[Bernadette]

Secondhand Lions. This was my favorite movie to watch with my uncle. This is the first time I've been able to watch it since he died. God, I miss him. But in a good way.

[Graham]

Big Fish. Loved it and I'm not a Tim Burton fan.

That's a decent movie.

I loved it, except for the fake accents. Those were a huge drawback.

The accents are part of the intention to create a pointedly (or stereotypically) wholesome and sincere atmosphere. It was probably done knowing that it would sound artificial.

[Graham]

We live in an insincere world and that's why a movie that's over-the-top sincere can endear itself to some of us. I think what makes Big Fish artistically tolerable (other than it's imagination) and not just sentimental is that it knows what it's getting up to.

[red solo cup]

Child 44 with Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace. Not bad. Set in Stalinist Russia and pretty grim.