Journal MonTemplar's Journal: Late News - 8th August 2003 1
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Mother Teresa festival drops film
Malaysia delays Carrey movie
All over for blogs?
Escape to Colditz
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Mother Teresa festival drops film
from BBC News Online
A Channel 4 documentary that criticised Mother Teresa has been dropped from a festival in Calcutta celebrating her beatification.
The film Hell's Angel questioned her acceptance of donations from former Haitian ruler Jean-Claude Duvalier and US financier Charles Keating.
The documentary, based on a book by journalist Christopher Hitchens, accused her of consoling and supporting the wealthy and powerful - while preaching to the poor that they should accept their lot.
It has now been withdrawn after objections from the Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa to care for the poor, sick and dying.
The order has also objected to the showing of French author Dominique Lapierre's film In The Name Of God's Poor, starring Geraldine Chaplin as Mother Teresa - however, this film will still be screened.
A 1969 documentary, Something Beautiful for God, will also be shown.
The festival will be held as Mother Teresa is beatified at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on 19 October.
The ceremony will be shown live in downtown Calcutta, which Mother Teresa made her home in 1929. She died there in 1997, aged 87.
In December, the Pope approved a miracle attributed to her - the reported healing of a woman's tumour - which paved the way for her beatification.
According to Roman Catholic belief, a second miracle would make her eligible for sainthood.
Needless to say, my opinion of the Catholic Church just went down another notch...
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Malaysia delays Carrey movie
from BBC News Online
Government censors in Malaysia have postponed the release of the Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty.
Authorities are concerned the film, in which Carrey gets to play God for a day, is offensive to Muslims and are considering banning the film.
The film was due to be released on Thursday but the Film Censorship Board is now rethinking its earlier decision to approve it.
"We have not decided whether to ban it, but we have instructed distributors not to show it until a decision is made," said board secretary Lukeman Said.
In Bruce Almighty, Carrey is challenged by God to take over the running of the world to see if he can do a better job of it.
Earlier government minister Abdul Hamid Zainal Abidin called for a ban because the theme was "not appropriate".
"We cannot equate ourselves with God almighty even as a joke," he said.
The predominantly Muslim country has a history of outlawing American films, or censoring scenes on moral or religious grounds.
The award-winning film The Hours saw several scenes cut that depicted kissing between two women to protect the "interests of the country and people from bad influences and negative elements shown in films".
And the big screen adaptation of the comic book hero Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck, was also outlawed because of "excessive violence".
The cartoon Prince of Egypt, an animated epic about the life of Moses, was deemed "insensitive for religious reasons", while Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me featured too much sexual innuendo for Malaysian censors.
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All over for blogs?
from BBC News Online
Blogs have been seen by some as a new wave of internet development but are they losing their appeal, wonders technology analyst Bill Thompson.
"One of the most useful things about being away from home - I'm writing this in Venice and then I'm off to California - is that it gives you an opportunity to reflect on the sources of information you really need and trust.
After all, if I wanted to I could be as connected from my little apartment as I am from home.
I've got my laptop with me, even if it does only have a rather creaky dial-up connection over a GSM mobile since I've been unable to get the local GPRS service to recognise that I might possibly want data from a server in another country.
But I can easily use one of the many friendly cyber cafes in the city, charging reasonable rates for a fast service.
Away from the net, there is the TV and, of course, international editions of the UK papers. Or I could listen to the radio.
Yet I have hardly taken notice of any of them. I use my mobile connection to send some e-mail, and I go into a cyber cafe to download the torrent of spam and occasional useful message.
But apart from a brief glance at a couple of news sites to check that no major disasters have befallen the world - and the hottest day on record in London doesn't count - I have hardly used the web at all.
The TV remains switched off, the radio is silent and the papers are on the newsstands. I am largely unaware of all the many things that have happened in the wide world since I left the UK 10 days ago.
I am also, it must be admitted, unaware of what is being said on the various e-mail lists I subscribe to, or on the regular round of blogs that I read when I have time.
I should feel guilty about this, and I am sure that I'll get back into it when I am home and in my normal routine again.
And it is not that there isn't occasionally something of interest to be found in discussions of the future of journalism, government plans on ID cards, the impact of the internet on democratic politics, or the nature of community in a digital society.
It is just that none of it seems essential, so I am giving it a miss. Instead I have been spending time thinking about the net's future and how we can make sure it serves people's needs and not those of business.
In fact, I had stopped paying careful attention to the lists and the blogs even before I left the country. It seemed to me that the number of useless postings and blog entries was starting to increase and there was less and less there that was really of interest.
This could be the sign of a worrying phenomenon. Perhaps the blogs, after a brief time when they were seen by some as a wholly new wave of internet development, are losing their appeal.
The earliest bloggers have been at it for two years now - how many days can someone keep on posting to their LiveJournal site, or visiting Blogger to add more details about their cat's mysterious illness?
Or it may be that the blogs are going through the same thing as UseNet, the internet's original bulletin board system."
What do you think? Read the rest of the article, then add your comments at the end...
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Escape to Colditz
from BBC News Online
With two new films about it in the pipeline and a youth hostel about to open there, now might be just the time to pay a visit to Oflag IVc, better known as Colditz castle, the world's most famous prisoner of war camp.
Colditz. The name conjures up so many different images: a vast dark castle towering over a tiny German hamlet, Bond director Guy Hamilton's stirring 1955 film starring John Mills and Eric Portman, the 1972 TV version with David McCallum and Anthony Valentine and the oddly addictive board game, Escape from Colditz.
And the castle has also entered popular usage, "It was like being sent to Colditz" holds its own with "Who do you think you are: Stirling Moss?"
But today, this 1,000 year-old schloss, some 26 miles from Leipzig in the former East Germany - now served by the Irish budget airline Ryanair - is transforming itself into a holiday destination after a £9m refit.
Dr Manfred Gergs, the castle manager, is proud of Colditz. "We have lots of visitors from all around the world, especially to the Escape Museum," he says.
"The State of Saxony - which owns the castle - has just renovated the attics and one of the courtyards and 2004 will see the opening of a European Youth Hostel in another courtyard."
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opinion of church (Score:2)
Why is that? I don't see any new or startling information in this article. It's not surprising that the SoC would object to the film, and the process of beatification/sainthood seems to be proceeding as it normally does.