Zombies

It is always distressing when some factory or works closes and people's jobs are lost, but I can't help feeling that when that workplace is a Hershey's factory, some good will come of it. I apologise to my American friends, some of whom love their Hershey's, but come on Canada, we can do better than this, we have Purdey's, we have our own Cadbury's plants. Buy more Canadian and European chocolate and let's hope that the good people of Smith's Falls find new meaningful jobs.

I do believe I have discovered the very worst film on general release last year, 'The Colour of the Cross'.

I will be more specific, in fact I will be supremely specific because I could very easily be misread.
To begin, I wasn't offended by the film even though I found various aspects of it insulting.
I have no quarrel with Jesus Christ being played by a black actor, people frequently complain about Jesus being misrepresented when he is played by a tall, good-looking white actor. I feel it is inaccurate, but ok, go ahead.

What I find insulting is the notion being explored here that Christ was persecuted and executed because of his race. Contrived? I think so. Insulting because the Christian Faith is founded on the subversiveness of its message, that God is love, that Christ brought a message of redemption and hope, of personal salvation, with himself as mediator. Jesus was stirring up the people by giving them this message, interfering with the status quo, the authorities of the Sanhedrin and the Roman occupiers. God was available to all of them and would forgive them their sins, that there was something marvellous to look forward to. It really undermines all of his teachings to suggest that no, it was because he was black. It also makes a mockery of the racism that many black people actually do suffer today.

Jean-Claude La Marre was the director and writer and he played the part of Christ. Yep, I know, difficult to keep the 'Little Britain' portrayal of Dennis Waterman out of your head. And in fact La Marre does it just as badly.
The screenplay is terrible. It lurches between almost quotes from the Bible and toe-curlingly inappropriate colloquialisms. It is about as real as Stephen Harper's integrity.
The Sanhedrin have some great costumes going on there and they really work them, you know, in the way that small children in a school nativity work their shepherd's tea-towel headgear, constantly fiddling with them. And for some reason, the Sanhedrin all speak with the most bizarre accents. Or, no, more like speech impediments than accents.
The acting is of the type that is normally accompanied by wobbling scenery, in fact it reminded me very much of really, really bad am dram. Let's take this bunch of disciples and have them all wander across the stage then back again.
Even the music was bad, it was intrusive and just verging on melodramatic.
The characterisation was poor. It made the disciples look like a bunch of cowering simple-minded weasels to Jesus's manipulative, pretentious man with a Messiah complex rather than a complex Messiah.

Still, having said all that, I'm glad that someone is able to make a film like this and no-one's embassies or families are threatened, that we can watch the film and just think it's rubbish without having to go out and kill people over it.

On the subject of people coming back from the dead, I found this week's ep of Ghost Whisperer rather puzzling. Most of the storylines work if you either believe in ghosts or can suspend belief. But the idea that a different ghost can leap into someone else's body and work it while the original owner of that body hangs around looking pissed off is a bit much. If one ghost can do it, why can't the other? Nope, sorry, I can really get into the imaginary, but it has to be consistent for me otherwise it doesn't work. I'm not sure about the 'Giles' character either. I like that there's an expert to go and talk to, just, it seems a bit too derivative of Buffy.
But then the other side of that is....could anything ever be too derivative of Buffy?