Sr. Rose Pacatte's blog

Sr. Rose Pacatte looks at Oscar nominated films for 2010 using the theme of "human connections" as lens through which to view them.

Best Motion Picture of the Year

Out of the ten films nominated, I think this may come down to "The Hurt Locker" or "Avatar." In the interest of full disclosure I admit that I have been a fan of "The Hurt Locker" since September 2008 when I was president of the Catholic Jury at the Venice Film Festival and we gave it the SIGNIS Award. It was the best film in competition at Venice that year. My vote goes to "The Hurt Locker," but anything can happen.

Sr. Rose Pacatte looks at Oscar nominated films for 2010 using the theme of "human connections" as lens through which to view them.

Best animated film of the year
I love the quirky humor of "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and the depth of feeling in "Up," but in such a worthy category, on principle I would be happy to see "The Princess and the Frog" or "Coraline" win because the films are good and the protagonists are girls. There are so few heroines in animation that I like to celebrate them when I can. All of the stories in these films are about being connected in the family (or animal version of it) or the community. I didn't see "The Secret of Kells."

Achievement in directing
Any of these five directors: James Cameron ("Avatar"), Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker") Quentin Tarantino ("Inglorious Basterds"), Lee Daniels ("Precious") and Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air") could walk away with the Oscar. My vote goes to Kathryn Bigelow for her intelligence, heart, and artistic restraint that she brought to "The Hurt Locker."

Best documentary feature

Forty-two feature films have been nominated in a variety of categories for the 82nd Academy Awards, which will take place at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles on March 7. In a throw back to the 1930s and 1940s, when anywhere between eight and 12 films were nominated for Best Picture, the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) decided in 2009 to expand the category to 10 feature films so that additional deserving films might be considered. For a film journalist this provides a banquet of stories to explore but makes it nearly impossible to predict a winner.

Human connection, and therefore human dignity and justice, is a theme that runs through many of the films nominated. Using this as a lens, here are my views on some of the 29 films that I have seen of those nominated as worthy of an Oscar.

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“Scenes from a Parish” is a 90-minute experience of inner-city change seen through the transformation of St. Patrick’s parish and its persevering pastor, Father Paul O’Brien.

Filmed over four years, director/producer James Rutenbeck made this film out of a desire “to find communion with the forgotten and the marginalized.”

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, a lone man walks the bleak, deserted roads of what was the United States. The landscape is torched and his dark glasses signal that there is no longer any natural protection from sunlight. He carries a weapon and a backpack. His name is Eli (Denzel Washington) and he is on the alert for thieves and marauders.

When the hour-long primetime "The Jay Leno Show" (NBC weeknights 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific) premiered last Fall, I watched the first five programs and a few here and there afterward. I was so unimpressed that I called the show "dull and disappointing" in my brief review in the January 2010 issue of St. Anthony Messenger.

If it was evident to me in those first five shows, why wasn't anyone at NBC paying attention? Because Jay Leno is a golden goose, and they thought he would keep laying golden eggs no matter what. Alas.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana star in the animated movie "Avatar."'Avatar,' like all good sci-fi films, asks, 'What does it mean to be human?'

Burning thoughts about new films

These past few weeks has seen the release of several surprisingly good films (though some will receive wide release in January). Here are some of the best:

Burning thoughts about new films

These past few weeks has seen the release of several surprisingly good films (though some will receive wide release in January). Here are some of the best:

Burning thoughts about new films

These past few weeks has seen the release of several surprisingly good films (though some will receive wide release in January). Here are some of the best:

These past few weeks has seen the release of several surprisingly good films (though some will receive wide release in January). We could bicker about what makes a film "good" forever, but for the sake of argument, let's define say that a good film as one with images and sound so well integrated that the story satisfies, inspires, is through-provoking, entertaining, and sometimes offers a glimpse into the soul.

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering around Barnes & Noble bookshop next to the movie theater where I see many of the films that I review. I was with one of the sisters of my community. After a few minutes she called out to me and said, “Hey, look at this; it’s really funny.” She held up Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions (Random House, 2008, $14.00).

Two films currently in theaters, at least in Los Angeles and New York, probe two key dimensions of modern life and seek to jump start conversations and active solution-seeking: "Oh My God" and "The End of Poverty."

On Nov. 19, between NBC's "Today Show" and the Los Angeles Times, it seemed like a concerted effort to scare us away from concessional popcorn.

This past weekend was a fine one for religious life in the U.S. On Friday I participated in the 16th National Congress of the Religious Formation Conference in Denver and on Sunday, 60 religious women of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles gathered at the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Culver City for the "Women of Faith" lecture series. Both events were energizing and reinforced my belief that religious women and men believe in their vocation and are working hard to grow spiritually and foster vocations and the perseverance of new members. I wish so many more religious could have been there.

I wrote the following based on my handwritten notes and those tapped into my iPhone.

Sr. Donna Markham, the prioress general of the Adrian Dominicans, presented a morning session at the religious formation conference: "Blessing and Hope: Creating a Vision for Religious Life in the 21st Century." She spoke of dreaming and quoted Don Helder Camera, "When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality."

With all the coverage of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I tried to think of a way to commemorate this historic, history-changing event that happened 20 years ago. A generation ago. Anyone 30 years old and younger probably has no emotional link with images of a bunch of young people dancing while they tore down a far away wall covered in graffiti.

I grew up under the Red Menace; like many others reading this blog. I imagine you, too, practiced what to do should the sirens signal an attack. My dad started digging a bomb shelter in the backyard of our house in San Diego but as the Cuban Missile crisis ebbed, he decided to use the five gallon water jugs he bought for storage for home brew instead. How quickly we forget.

Sr. Tracey, a sister in my community said that when Michael Jackson extends his arms up and out, he surrenders to the universe. As if he is saying, this is it. I have given you everything; I can give no more.

Last Saturday I traveled from Chiang Mai, Thailand, home to Los Angeles. I was feeling content and energized after participating in a week-long world congress of SIGNIS, the world association for communication. The theme of the gathering was “Children’s Rights Tomorrow’s Promise.” Everything on this trip had gone well.

I am so glad that Newsweek (“Why are all the really old people women?” Sept. 28, 2009, page 72) has finally answered a media literacy education question that I have had for years: why great women never die. In fact, if you read the four or five enhanced obituaries of daily newspapers in major US markets, women seldom die at all.

A few years ago I heard Sr. Helen Prejean speak at a Catholic Press Association meeting in pre-Katrina New Orleans. I paraphrase but the gist is, “When a white man is murdered in New Orleans it is front page news; when a black man is murdered it is on page 30.”

I had some sad news this morning. It came out of nowhere.

Someone I have known for several years, someone very talented and genuinely prayerful and good, entered rehab for a gambling addiction. For several moments, I was stunned.

As I try to wrap my head around this information, clichés drop in and out of my consciousness and sorrow. The default reassurance is the refrain in my head: There go I, but for the grace of God.

But no. No! I cannot comfort my soul at the expense of anyone. For in fact, there go I.

Friday, the anniversary of 9/11, I went to see "The September Issue", a documentary about Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine, and the lead-up to the magazine's largest issue ever.

After a fairly good showing in this summer’s romantic comedy “The Proposal”, Sandra Bullock now plays Mary Magdalene Horowitz (a Jewish-Catholic) crossword puzzle creator in her new film "All about Steve." She has a bad case of logorrhea (verbal diarrhea).

Although today, August 5, 2009, is the 42nd anniversary of my entering my religious community of the Daughters of St. Paul, it’s not the commemoration of “the call” that brought me here. I got my vocation on the 4th of July, 1967, right after lunch, at the Del Mar County Fair in San Diego.

When Walter Cronkite, former long-time anchor for CBS evening news died on July 17, I took a trip down memory lane.

It was on New Year’s Day 1960 that I first remember “the news.” I was eight years old and Chet Huntley turned to David Brinkley and said “good night” noting that it was now 1960; a new decade had begun.

I was ten when I sent in a post card from the laundry mat and subscribed my family to Time magazine. My dad never knew where it came from, but when the bill came he said, “OK”, and paid it. For years, I used to like reading “Milestones.”

My grandparents who lived next door got the San Diego Union in the morning and we got the San Diego Tribune in the evening. The Union had a whole page of news photos every day. The Tribune always had news that seemed more up-to-the-moment.

In October 2007, I reviewed a feature-length documentary, "The Price of Sugar." I wrote:

The film informs viewers about human-rights violations that are almost invisible. It inspires and illumines the meaning of Catholic social teaching by showing exactly what it means to put the gospel into practice and empower the poor and stateless. Intriguing, heartbreaking, informative and hopeful; intense. (See: Eye on Entertainment, St. Anthony Messenger).

A year later I wrote a blurb about the film in view of its release on DVD.

An article the New York Times Magazine by Rob Walker "Consumed -- Remixed Messages" is, to me, a perfect example of how the process of postmodernization functions.

My take on this article is to ask: "Why do we moderns seem so random and un-tethered at times?" Because we don't know, remember, or think to ask: where did this slogan, image and perspective come from?

The definition of postmodernism is as contested as the field it seeks to define. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as either "of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one" or "of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)", or finally "of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language."

In Memory of Karl Malden 1912–2009 R.I.P.

Th great Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden died yesterday. He is remembered for being a fine character actor. Charles Gibson, the ABC news anchor, quoted Malden as saying he was the only actor in Hollywood whose nose qualified him for handicapped parking.

It’s been a hard week for Hollywood. Three show business icons finished their earthly journeys. First Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s long-time side kick, passed away. Then on Thursday, June 25, both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died.

I don’t know much about Ed McMahon except that my grandmother, who could have been Ed’s mother, was in love with him. Back in the 60’s, when she wasn’t gushing over daytime television’s Betty White and Alan Ludden’s Password romance, she had her eye on Ed McMahon. My memories of him are mostly associated to McMahon’s Furniture Store in Lemon Grove, CA. There was no relation, I’m sure, but I think my grandmother liked to shop there for patio chairs hoping there was. Later, when I started getting interminable Publishers’ Clearing House mailings, I began hoping McMahon would get a new job. I never did watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but whenever scenes of Johnny and Ed have replayed over the years, you know they made people laugh. They still do.

Today, June 13, is the first anniversary of Tim Russert’s unexpected death. He was 58 years old. Time magazine called him one of the most 100 influential people in the world. I watched him every Sunday morning for 12 years except when I was out of the country. Russert’s “Meet the Press” was a great way to be part of the public debate, even if confined at times to the convent refectory.

It’s just not the same without you, Mr. Russert. I hope you are resting in peace, but I bet not too much!

Here is my tribute that I wrote that sad day:

My Tribute to Tim Russert:
Tim Russert’s Sunday morning Academy of Public Affairs
By Rose Pacatte, FSP June 13, 2008

I haven’t missed Meet the Press in 12 years. After Mass it is an essential part of my Sunday morning ritual. I am listening to MSNBC’s ongoing coverage of Tim Russert’s sudden death today, June 13, as I am working. I have this great sense of loss, as if a family member has suddenly gone to heaven without warning.