I love animation. Computer generated, hand-drawn, 3D, 2D, stop-motion—makes no difference to me; as long the movement is dynamic and the story is engaging, I’m all for it. Especially if it’s a short film. They’re just the right length for my tiny attention span.
This short film about an octopus won overwhelming critical acclaim at a horde of foreign film festivals. And it’s easy to see why: the artistry is bright and fun, the pace is brisk and the action is delightfully slapstick.
If you’re interested, there’s also a making-of video about the movie here.
As we slog through the current economic slump, our national dept—one of the nation’s most vexing problems—has been weighing on my mind a lot lately. I can’t understand how our elected leaders can continue to plunge us deeper into the red, as if they had no clue what a balance sheet was (in all honesty, a lot of them probably don’t). And the higher the deficit climbs, the more checks the bureaucrats seem bent on writing. When it comes to the Federal Government handling our money, it often seems there’s little accountability, no logic and even less restraint.
A new documentary film that opened this weekend, I.O.U.S.A, looks like it will expose some of the all-too-ignored realities of this dilemma.
Here’s the I.O.U.S.A. trailer.
How to deal with this crisis is a conversation that desperately needs to be hashed out. I don’t care what your political background is; this much is certain: if our government continues to spend with reckless abandon it will result in national financial suicide. As a democrat friend of mine put it,
“It’s high time we stopped passing the buck, both figuratively and literally. And who pays? In the short term, it’s people like you and me. But, I feel the long term may not be so far away. We need pragmatists in Washington, yesterday.”
I couldn’t agree more. One such “pragmatist” is BJ Lawson, a congressional candidate in North Carolina’s 4th district. Wisely, Lawson sponsored the premier of I.O.U.S.A. in his neck of the woods to help spark a healthy discussion on the topic among his constituents.
These ads for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known as the Mormon Church), aired last year in specific markets.
“Eternal family”…”softened my heart”
“Welcome home”
“Return to be with God”…”was I with God before?”
“Families should be eternal”
“How could it be cut off by death?”
The high-contrast black-and-white footage, stark white background and gentle soundtrack do a great job of standing out from the business-as-usual ad clutter. The most emotionally stirring thing about these ads is the “performance” of the actors; but that’s because they weren’t actors. Truth be told, none of them even had a script. They simply retold their real conversion stories while sitting in front of a camera. There’s no pretense, no sales pitch, nothing superficial. Just real people with real questions and trials, all longing for truth. I’m familiar with the background on these ads because I was lucky enough to get a little behind-the-scenes info from my former professors, Kevin Kelly, Adrian Pulfer and Steve Wonderli, while they were working on the campaign.
At the end of each ad, the viewer is introduced to mormon.org, where one can learn about our basic beliefs. The tagline “Truth Restored” refers to the restoration of the same Church Jesus Christ established during his ministry in Jerusalem. Hence, the name The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
