Posts by TerryWalstrom

46

Season 1 Episode 1 A&E Cults and Extreme Belief (Video)

by TerryWalstrom in

https://www.aetv.com/shows/cults-and-extreme-belief/season-1it will post soon on site..

TerryWalstrom

Without proper permission to show a non-public person's identity, a legal problem could arise. (Not that the Watchtower would ever sink so low...:)

I think scratching out the faces created a disturbing sensibility, like a Japanese horror movie.

10

News from Australia: Tasmania Anglicans to sell property for redress

by AndersonsInfo in

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/tas-anglicans-to-sell-property-for-redress/news-story/f56eb0caabc16212229c3b0d6d940e3c.

tas anglicans to sell property for redress.

survivors of child sexual abuse in tasmania will get a payout after the anglican diocese announced the sale of more than 120 churches, halls and houses.. kaitlyn offer - australian associated press april 22, 2018 2:30pm.

TerryWalstrom

The parishioners who DONATED the land and property to the church are not exactly thrilled at this. The intention of a donor is thwarted by converting to cash.
Not all the money will be used for victims of abuse either. The donated land is a kind of get-of-trouble-easy solution if you stop and think about the details.

The Watchtower will go down with the ship before they'll stop fighting. Why? Because their Self-Belief is absolute.

49

Favourite Quirky / Low Budget / Non-Mainstream Movies

by Simon in

so the recent topic about film franchises got me thinking.

sure, we all love the big budget, mainstream releases that are so successful they spawn never-ending (it sometimes seems) sequels.

we could watch marvel and star-wars movies for the rest of our lives (and we might just ...).. but y'know what i love?

TerryWalstrom

Muscle Shoals is awesome!

49

Favourite Quirky / Low Budget / Non-Mainstream Movies

by Simon in

so the recent topic about film franchises got me thinking.

sure, we all love the big budget, mainstream releases that are so successful they spawn never-ending (it sometimes seems) sequels.

we could watch marvel and star-wars movies for the rest of our lives (and we might just ...).. but y'know what i love?

TerryWalstrom

I hesitate to recommend my favorite movie of all time because it is really, really, really weird, bizarre, and esoteric.

It is written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.
Kaufman is a genius at off-beat, meta-lunatic story lines, a surreal settings.

He wrote such films as:
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
ETERNAL SUNSHINE of the SPOTLESS MIND.
_____
Unless you love (not "like") the above films--you shouldn't tackle the one I'm about to suggest.
The lead actor is Philip Seymore Hoffman.
Hoffman is Caden Cotard. Cotard is a theater director who wins a MacArthur genius grant. Instead of making his life easier, the money gives him the opportunity to indulge his neurosis. Besides being a hypochondriac, he's obsessed by the notion of re-creating in a giant warehouse (drum roll please.........) New York City in miniature and depicting not only everybody he knows, but everybody else.
I know, I know--that doesn't sound exciting. But "weird" is a fascinating plunge into the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole of the lunatic genius imagination of Charlie Kaufman.
I will attach a video of just one scene.
One of Cotard's love interests is in love with a house she's always had her eye on.
It is perpetually burning.
The scene (in context of watching the movie) gave me chill bumps (a thrill) for the monumental abstraction and insanity of its daring to be normal.
Without context, it will probably leave you scratching your head and wondering if I should be locked up someplace secure for suggesting the movie.
_____
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFwS_Dqd-IU

____

SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK is the title.

(Note: what does the word mean? It is a figure of speech in which part of something ----Cotard's play about everybody in New York-- represents the whole.)

I doubt one person in a thousand can "get" the film and love it as much as I do.
You have to have a kink in your DNA and a twist to the brain pan.
I think it is simply a brilliant masterpiece.

49

Favourite Quirky / Low Budget / Non-Mainstream Movies

by Simon in

so the recent topic about film franchises got me thinking.

sure, we all love the big budget, mainstream releases that are so successful they spawn never-ending (it sometimes seems) sequels.

we could watch marvel and star-wars movies for the rest of our lives (and we might just ...).. but y'know what i love?

TerryWalstrom

Real kick-ass movie: EQUILIBRIUM
Dystopian future not unlike Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) and 1984 (G. Orwell)
in which ~~Batman~~, I mean, Christian Bale is an enforcer of a tyrannical government police force in an oppressive future where all forms of feeling are illegal. (Bale) John Preston a man in charge of enforcing the law, stops taking his tranquilizers and has an aesthetic awakening to the beauty of art, music, and individualism.
This clip will give you a hint of how awesome this movie is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U02E2sjwlLM
________________________

Next movie: CREEP

This is a no-budget movie which works like crazy. Why? The story is splendidly contrived and acted by a cast of 2 people.
When a videographer answers a Craigslist ad for a one-day job in a remote mountain town, to video the last messages of a dying man, he finds his client is not at all what he initially seems.
This movie really frightened me and I'm a big boy all growed up.
Yes, there is a sequel, CREEP2
_____

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp7tBypjwDo

46

Season 1 Episode 1 A&E Cults and Extreme Belief (Video)

by TerryWalstrom in

https://www.aetv.com/shows/cults-and-extreme-belief/season-1it will post soon on site..

TerryWalstrom

Michael Moore set the standard of the "little" guy against the corporate giant.
This is the keystone documentary approach when a powerless person succumbs to undue pressure by bureaucrats. The GB before their TV career were at least mystical and mysterious and a certain cachet and rubric of charisma prevailed. However, in this instance, the WORLD HEADQUARTERS and "nobody home" paints a stark and eerie picture of the monster under the bed.

46

Season 1 Episode 1 A&E Cults and Extreme Belief (Video)

by TerryWalstrom in

https://www.aetv.com/shows/cults-and-extreme-belief/season-1it will post soon on site..

TerryWalstrom

I was finally able to penetrate the firewall of A&E and watch
the documentary presentation of CULTS & EXTREME belief.

From the text intro:
"Former Jehovah’s Witness Romy Maple–a survivor of child sexual abuse–embarks on a journey to uncover why her pleas for justice were systematically ignored by top members of the organization."
______

First off, this production is first rate as to sound, story, photography, lighting, hosting, and handling of sensitive materials.
Let's face it, there are more ways to go wrong or too far or not far enough in an expose' and the unfamiliarity of a densely hermetic organization over a hundred years old is a tough nut to crack. Simple is best.

Kudos are due Barbara Anderson! Barbara was a writer and researcher at Watchtower headquarters...until....(no spoilers...yet.)

Had she made one false move this program would have been easy to dismiss. The burden was on her shoulders to be clear, concise, empathetic, neutral in tone and non-histrionic. She passed with flying colors!

Barbara is saved for the latter half of the presentation as a bridge or link to the interior workings at the hive central headquarters.
The fact that Barbara was not kicked out of headquarters is important. She left with the horrific discoveries uncovered in her proper job as researcher and writer with access to history and documentation.

Child abuse cover-up popped the cork and she was outta-there post-haste!
Thank you, Barbara for opening up your private home to TV crews and to the invasion that entails as well as the unpaid hours devoted to making certain the story came across with i's dotted and t's crossed properly.

The end of the program was rather creepy in my eyes and I'll tell you why.

The victim traveled to the new headquarters in Warwick.
The car trip with a very nervous grown-up abuse victim agonizing over her decision to disconnect formally and face to face (if possible) with the leaders of the cult spoke volumes. The location really felt like an isolated bunker not unlike the creepy David Koresh compound in Waco, Texas!

The man-behind-the-glass was the cherry on top with his impersonal paid-to-lie conversation and abrupt dismissal of the obviously distressed lady standing on the other side of his cage.
She is directed to a big electronic fence and told someone would come down to talk to her.
What follows was a tone not unlike Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
A truck appears after an uncomfortable wait and parks with engine running on the other side of the fence (which never opened). Not a soul got out to walk down for a conversation. The "standoff" (again a Waco flash in my mind) continued for 40 minutes. It was Psych-out pure and simple.
I'd bet a dozen donuts the goons in the truck had binoculars and were frozen in place by the sight of video cameras in the lady's vehicle.

Back to the glass window.
She is upset. The JW inside is squirmy and simply wants her gone as fast as possible. This is way above his pay grade. (Not that I think he's paid.)
He half-opens the security door and snatches her Letter of resignation as a JW and quite rudely (I thought) dashed back inside like a genuine gutless character.

A dyed-in-the-wool Apostate JW activist will complain there were missed opportunities. Yes, of course.
However, while agreeing there are a great many levels and depths of complaint yet untouched in this presentation--the simplicity of the story is impactful in a way that a more dense and polemical slant would not have done.

I'm guessing this A&E JW topic is deliberately simple because a more profound forensic investigation is soon to appear with the Leah Remini series (formerly Scientology exposed.)

I've give this a gleaming B+ mostly thanks to Barbara Anderson.

45

A&E - Cults and Extreme Belief - Jehovah's Witnesses

by Incognito in

jw
friends

i haven't seen this posted.. tuesday may 29, 2018 @ 10pm (new york time zone).

cults and extreme belief - jehovah's witnesses.

TerryWalstrom

So, guess who did NOT get to see the A&E program on cults and extreme belief?

Yeah, me!

I had procrastinated on signing up for my Roku link and discovered I don't have the proper credentials (no TV provider).

Well, bloody hell.

Did anybody record it?

46

(both) jehovah’s witnesses and marxist communists concern themselves with something called “the end of history.”.

the end of history means the end of a struggle between groups with conflicts of interest.

TerryWalstrom

Baptism by fire, I'd call it, Waton. Have you ex-posited that story here for all to read?