Between being sick on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and being generally lethargic on Saturday, I movie binged this week, seeing:

* The Mission
* The Black Cauldron
* Dead Man Walking
* Shocked
* Leap of Faith
* Cast Away

I think I *might* have seen “Shocked” before, many years ago, but I’m not certain. The rest of them, this was the first time to see. And, also with the exception of “Shocked”, they were all movies thave have been on my list for a while. I tend to be rather selective when I go to rent movies, and seldom get things by whim.

“Black Cauldron” was a book that I read when I was young, and was, I believe, my introduction to the Tolkein-esque genre. Although I may have already read, or had read to me, The Hobbit, by then. It is unabashedly derivative. And the movie, almost as though to mock this, has the same illustrator for the kid as did arthur in “Sword in the Stone” and the same illustratof for the pig as did the pig in Charlotte’s Web. I don’t know either of these for certain, but the drawing is so exactly the same, that I don’t see how it could not be.

“The MIssion” was very interesting. The footage of Iguacu was pretty amazing. And the history lessons about Paraguay were helpful in understanding some of the Jesuit buildings that we saw in the area. Shame so many things have to be politically motivated in the church, even today.