To act quickly often means that we can take preventative action rather than remedial damage control. The old proverb “he who hesitates I lost” comes to mind.
That old line by Alexander Pope about 'angels' and 'tread' also came to mind, after he berated shameless bards, mad abandon'd criticks, bookful blockheads with loads of learned lumber, and a tongue that edified their own ears:
Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Church-yard:
Nay, fly to Altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread. (and more about treading angels here)
Archie's having none of it:
I want to advocate trusting your observations and playing your hunches.
At last an explanation of how the Sydney Anglicans dropped a bundle of moola - some say as much as 160 mil. - on the stock market. They were playing their hunches, and to the devil goes the hindmost.
Perhaps the news that the principal of Moore College is retiring and in twelve months there will be an election of the Archbishop due, with a changing of the guard for the Sydney Diocese, is causing deep introspection and concern. What if a moderate, or a liberal tried to wrest away control from the more angry Anglicans?
Quick, appoint a fundamentalist. Just do it, do it now.
But that's about it at the website. Michael Jensen continues to suffer writer's block - it was back on the fourth of the fourth that he berated brawling Sydney for its brutality - and the pond continues to wait impatiently for number five of Sydney's seven epic sins.
There's not much in the way of turnover of other stories, though it is pleasing to see that one of the Anglican websites won an award for its cool teen vibe. After a competition to see who could provide the best five word acceptance speech required by the rules, the result turned out to be 'Jesus nailed it for us'.
Oh dear. From Alexander Pope to the Urban Dictionary in search of the true meaning of "nailed". Let's print one of the cleaner definitions:
To have sex with, especially spontaneously and/or with great passion/force.
I nailed her out of the blue last night.
Jesus fucked it for us? Is that the cool vibe of the average angry Sydney Anglican teen?
Whatever you do, don't look up 'nailed' on Google images with your filter off ...
Meanwhile, changing the subject and segueing to Cardinal Pell - presumably still on his international European junket - the Cardinal hasn't advanced beyond Assisi this week in terms of hard copy, and so didn't file a piece for last week's Sunday Terror.
The thought of forking out money to find out whether he makes it into today's Sunday Terror is simply too Sydney Anglican, too much playing the hunch, too 'rushing in where angels fear to tread' and wasting valuable coffee money.
So the pond has had to look elsewhere for its cult fix, and where better than the cult of scientology, and the publicity already whirling around Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, due out in October. While ostensibly there's no connection to the cult, the storyline sounds suspiciously like the early life and times of L. Ron Hubbard, visionary volcano and inter-planetary cultist.
It seems that Tom Cruise has already copped a screening (here) - or so it's alleged, and Cannes copped a trailer, which also turned up on YouTube here, but the question remains, will Anderson run up against the cult and friend Cruise, and recently in the wars John Travolta, and do a Paul Haggis on the cult, or will he somehow find a middle path?
Phoenix plays a troubled drifter seeking a path who becomes Dodd’s right-hand man.
Both the director and movie distributor, the Weinstein Company, are debating how to approach the similarities with Scientology - whether to acknowledge them openly or keep the matter at arm’s length.
The reaction of the group’s most prominent members will likely be a part of that decision.
Yes, but will Anderson show it as a cult, and give it the same vigorous treatment he gave Christianity, bashing it around the head with a bowling pin as he did in such fine style in There Will Be Blood?
Does he really care what a short man over-compensating, like Tom Cruise, thinks? Does he really take the opinion of the recently in the wars John Travolta seriously?
Is Hollywood these days run by the Scientologists? (So much for all that talk about the Jews).
Of course the film wouldn't have been made at all if Silicon Valley billionaire Larry Ellison hadn't given his daughter Megan Ellison some play money, and she just went out and bought herself a $42 million dollar film, as you do when you've got a little cash to splash.
And now the question is whether Anderson will stick it to the cult.
In the usual way there has already been much speculation - an early draft of the script was leaked and immediately subjected to exhaustive, and exhausting analysis (here) - and it can still be found out there in the cloud in pdf form, but the pond isn't in to teasers or spoilers, and will wait until October.
Come to think of it, the pond isn't in to free plugs for Harvey Weinstein, who picked up world rights last year.
And deep down, the pond is fearful. Anderson is a favourite film-maker, but from all the idle chatter, it seems he might have fudged the job, given The Master a fine old showcase, and turned the question back on the audience. On the other hand, nobody does dark and sick like Anderson, and where better to find all that stuff than in a cult?
Ah well, while we hang out yearning for a bowling pin, here's a couple of cartoons for the sake of balance:
Perhaps watching the movie Seven might inspire Michael Jensen to write about the terrible city he finds himself living in because movies in the past seem to have been a source of inspiration.
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