Anybody wanna weigh in on "Revelations"?

[onager]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x3047727

I guess there are other threads, but this was the first one I found. Even the believers hate this POS. I already left my $0.02.

Fortunately, being godless, I was able to just kick back with the popcorn and enjoy the incredible, jaw-dropping stupidity of it.

And this thing does stupid like Michelangelo did ceilings. Jebus!

In one scene, Natasha The Nutball Nun invokes Galileo...you know, the guy that HER CHURCH put under house arrest for the earth-is-round thing. She also yammers some BS about the mystical practices of Buddhist monks, which would have certainly got her burned at the stake back in The Good Old Days, a/k/a "The Dark Ages."

I'm not sure I can stay with this Apoca-looza for all 6 weeks, but it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

[displacedtexan]

1. "The Whining Nun" would be a much better title.

As if the Holy Roman Church^® would ever allow a woman to investigate potential signs of the end of days!

Dollars to donuts, the last episode will leave the whole mess unresolved.

Poor Bill Pullman! He looks like he's just phoning his performance in.

[GOPFighter]

2. Love it!

I haven't watched it...and don't intend to. But I just love the way all the media are scrambling to cash in on the current religious bonanza. Why, because nothing will kill this whacky religion craze like going mainstream.

[trotsky]

3. "Apoca-looza"... LMAO

Didn't watch it, ain't gonna watch it. Why waste my time on f*cked up Xian mythology?

[Discord]

4. I'd watch it if it had a religiously realistic ending...

like watching all the holy rollers being tormented and burned here on earth while all the good PEOPLE were ushered into heaven for their good deeds, and not simply good words.

[trotsky]

5. I'd settle for...

them all standing around looking stupid when they find out it's all a bunch of hooey.

[Discord]

6. Now THAT would be comedy!

:evilgrin:

[onager]

13. Because it's fun!

Some people even came up with the name "Recreational Xianity" for those of us who have a car-wreck fascination with this stuff.

e.g., in Revelations, we get to see the Sky-Pixie hurl a lightning bolt at a girl walking to school. It knocks her right out of her Nikes and into a tree. (???)

Then, proving the old saying about Gawd having bad aim, I guess, a second lightning bolt knocks her out of the tree but doesn't kill her. She ends up in...wait for it! A Persistent Vegatative State in the hospital.

You'd think an omnipotent, omniscient sky-critter would be more...efficient.

[LisaLynne]

7. It's going on for SIX weeks????

Dang.

Anyway, my local "news" show did a little propaganda piece entitled "Revelations: Fact or Fiction" or something like that. One of my many, many, many problems with that (besides the corporate news factor, the propaganda factor, the news being taken over to promote a TV SHOW, etc) is that we are talking about something that most christians view as a prophesy. So, even if you were a total believer, could that even be referred to a fact? I mean, if it hasn't happened yet? Ugh.

[onager]

8. What annoys me about those things...

They never bring on a skeptic to say: "This is all a bunch of raving nonsense, and here's why."

:evilgrin:

I hear you on the propaganda. I'm not sure when that trend got started, of using the news to hawk the Special Of The Week. But it seems like every time a network runs a mini-series, the "news" gets temporarily taken over and becomes a long, free commercial for the damn thing.

Well, it's not like TV news actually INFORMS us or anything, most of the time...

[Warpy]

9. Skeptic? They never bring on a LEGITIMATE THEOLOGIAN

either. Those guys all say it's a bunch of garbage, too, but since the GOP is using the hysteria around those idiotic pulp fiction books to whip up a frenzy and generate votes from the stupid, they'll never bring on a theologian to discount it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Are Americans really unable to tell fact from fiction?

I haven't noticed that The West Wing has to say "by the way, the current president is really a Republican", or Star Trek has to remind people that the 24th century hasn't actually happened yet. Was Buffy the Vampire Slayer a problem? If not, why worry about this?

[Warpy]

11. The problem is that we have a cadre of believers

out there who desperately want this horseshit to be true so that they'll get swooped up to heaven and be able to look down on the rest of us with contempt and glee.

Yes, they've missed the point completely, but that's beside the point.

They're like stalkers who have put some unfortunate person's face on a fantasy life. Yes, it's a form of psychosis. Yes, it's astonishingly widespread. It has nothing to do with stupidity, though, and everything to do with free floating anger and a mass media that has failed miserably at informing them why their lives are the way they are.

[onager]

12. Well, Muriel, since you asked...

...(IIRC) something like 80% of Americans claim to believe in angels. Over 60% believe Jesus H. Christ will return to Earth someday. And huge percentages also believe in astrology, faith healing, psychic powers and all sorts of other Woo-Woo flummery.

So, um, yep. I'd say many Americans really are unable to tell fact from fiction.

[fshrink]

14. Yes.

[Bill McBlueState]

15. that's a good point about legitimate theologians

Many of the ones you call "legitimate theologians" are far closer to us philosophically than they are to the Rapture Republicans. But we won't hear from them on the news because the news exists to reinforce people's existing beliefs, rather than to teach them anything new.

[orleans]

16. can't/won't deal with it

i watched the first few minutes on the first week and that was it. i was so done with it.

[Az]

17. Thats one I knew to stay away from

And I often like apocalyptical mystical stories of this venue.

[onager]

18. It stunk so bad this week...

I'm giving up on it. I usually like this sort of hokum myself. But SHEESH! I tend to pay attention to story, and this one has so many plot holes, all four Horesemen Of The Apocalypse could comfortably ride thru them.

This week alone...

--a nun and an astrophysicist kidnap a girl in a coma and drive her several hundred miles in an ambulance van!

--they take her to a convent of nuns who are "in trouble with the Vatican," yet brag that the gates "can only be opened under Papal authority." (Hey Sister, this is Pennsylvania, not Vatican City. Anybody with a legal warrant can open those gates.)

--the nun and professor end up on the picturesque Isle Of Patmos, where two Satanic fashion models in Goth makeup stalk them in a red Ferrari. Naturally, nobody pays any attention to the models. They blend right in with the locals.

--half a church falls on the addled heads of the nun and professor, but naturally nobody is hurt. I guess Satan's aim is just as bad as God's.

The one detail they got right? The nuns are being bankrolled by a rich guy. I immediately thought "Richard Mellon Scaife."

[progressoid]

19. From what I've read and the few minutes I could bear to watch

it seems ridiculous. But maybe that's a good thing. The more ridiculous the better. Heck, even if it wasn't over-the-top, it would still be ridiculous. But maybe this way it will turn a few people off to this nonsense (hey - I'm trying to be optimistic here).

[neebob]

20. You couldn't pay me to watch it

and I was just saying to my son last night, when a commercial for it came on, that Bill Pullman really has no shame anymore.

Seriously, I think something happened to him on the set of Independence Day.