Name

So, to be honest, up until last night, i had only ever seen two nooma videos. One, i watched while i was on internship - partially as a way to waste some time, and the other, i believe they played one at LYC in the not too distant past. I had always liked what i had seen - and everyone i know and respect seems to think they are ok, good even, but i had just never had the occasion to watch them.

If you don't know what nooma videos are click here.

Anyway, back in the fall i (and my wife and son) joined a small group through our church. Most small groups are people of like minded age, life stage, beliefs etc, getting together to learn, to hang out, to be friends. I had only really been in one small group before and it was short lived because Cara and I moved away from Calgary to V-town. So, we joined this small group, it has friends, we aren't all at the same stage of life, and we haven't done much learning. So far we have spent our time getting to know each other and having fun, which is cool. But last night, we kicked off the learning, deep talk type stuff that one would normally associate with small groupings of the church variety. And we decided to try out these Nooma videos (of which our church has the entire collection). I have to say that this video of approximatly 11 minutes was really sobering to me. It talked about our identity - who we are - what is our name - and as the speaker or narrarator spoke, we watched images of 4 people removing layers of shirts from thier bodies that had simple words on them. The words were all the names or identifying things about them. Some of them were connected to thier abilities or jobs, some were health and body type related, some were connected to faith or moral beliefs, some were beliefs that the person had about themselves and they seemed to get more personal as it went. I won't give away the ending in case you ever decided to investigate this little ditty yourself, but it was very powerful to me. It challenged our group to really give thought to where we place and recieve our identity, and what a healthy version of that would and should be. So, i recommend this "thing" i don't know if i would call it a film, but whatever it is, it was powerful in my life, as it caused me to wrestle with my identity and who i believe myself to be and why. The teaching was excellent, the imagery was excellent, and the discussion that it caused had depth.

Citizen Kane

So, over the last month and half my dvd players have died. In November my main dvd player (and VHS player) went belly up. The VHS part of it still works fine, but the playing of DVD's has become impossible. So because it was close to Christmas/Birthday, and because i know that i ususally get money at these times, i decided to wait to buy a new one. In the meantime, i moved my trusty "companion" (which according to the film "The Da Vinci Code" back in Jesus' time meant spouse) Playstation 2 out to the big tv, so that we could use it to play our DVD films for us. That was working out great, and it was almost Christmas, so i knew soon i could bring my gaming apparatus back to the bedroom where it belongs and have a new DVD-VCR out in the living room. But twas the day after Christmas, when my PS2 gave up the ghost. It too, has perished. I also feel the need to point out, that actually before i brought out my PS2, i tried playing dvd's in my Nintendo Wii. Let it be known to all - that the wii must be the only full size gaming system on the planet that does not play DVDs. That made me mad as well. Anyway, i was without a DVD player, well not actually, my computer plays DVD's but it's not a laptop, so moving it to an area where all can watch movies in unlikely, and i also have a mini-dvd player which we bought while we were in edmonton when Jude was sick. We also had loaned an ancient dvd player of Cara's to some friends whose DVD player had died. So my next move was to reaquire that player, which we did. Unfortunatly, either we didn't get the red, yellow, white cables back that go with it, or we never gave those to our friends, and we have ourselves misplaced them. Either way, our returned DVD player is currently of no use to us. So, yesterday afternoon, out of pure, lonely boredom, Cara and I watched "Stranger Then Fiction" on our tiny portable dvd player, while cuddled up on the couch with nachos, hot wings, and each other. It was a nice moment. Plus does anyone else think Maggie Gyllenhall (Jake's wife) is stunning? Anyway, later that evening, like around 10:10pm, as we were all headed to bed (ok, Jude was already in bed) i decided to watch one of my library movies on my mini portable dvd player, whilst i was in bed. Mostly because i didn't know when i was going to have a chance to watch it, especially since it was a film that Cara had no intrest in watching. The film was of course Orson Welle's masterpiece "Citizen Kane". So, recently i discovered borrowing movies from the library. What makes it really awesome is that, as a member of my local library, i have all the collections of all the libraries in alberta (pretty much) available to me. All i have to do is order the movie from the database and it gets sent to me in Vermilion. What makes this awesome is that our local movie rental store has an atrocious collection of classic movies, and by classics, i mean pre-1995. So i can never find old movies that i have never seen before, whereas the library system has an impeccable selection of pre-1995 movies. "Citizen Kane" is of course way pre-1995, as are some of the other movies i am awaiting the arrival of. Anyway, i'm not always sure how to approach old movies, because technology and culture were so different, they can sometimes be hard to appreciate. But i have to say that "Citizen Kane" was such a good film that technology and cultural differances and any other thing that might disqualify a modern-day film watcher to disappreciate a film of this vintage. I was totally into the plot, i was totally into the characters. It was a great film, and i was so happy that a film of such noteriety did not disappoint me the way other films of notieriety have. (See every Brat-Pack movie of the '80's except "The Breakfast Club"). Anyway, i'm not going to go into much detail about the film, cause the real point was the story of how i got to the film of which i now speak, only to say, that i enjoyed it, and was not disappointed by it, and would recommend it to any true fan of motion pictures. So long - and goodnight