Monthly Archive for March, 2005

Presley was busy study­ing tonight (damn MBA school), so I fig­ured I’d check out a movie. But what to see? An Oscar winner? Avi­a­tor? Mil­lion Dollar Baby? nah.

Since I enjoy read­ing reli­gious texts, I thought I’d check out the latest Keanu movie, Con­stan­tine. From the trailer, I thought it looked cheesy, but chock full of demons, and the occult… fun on a wednes­day night, right?

Well, yea… it was fun. Despite what the New Yorker might think:

Con­stan­tine turns Catholic doc­trine, ritual, and icono­graph into schlock… Imag­ine Jewish ver­sion of the spec­ta­cle – Angel, star­ring Vin Diesel, in which God’s mes­sen­ger stays Abraham’s hand in mid-​sacrifice and then earns His approval by low­er­ing him­self into cursed pharaonic tombs with tied-​together prayer shawls. In a Hindu ver­sion – Vishnu, with Nico­las Cage – Shiva unleashes his snakes on the out­skirts of Pough­keep­sie and starts a war between truck dri­vers and apple pickers.

Oh, you’re no fun Mr. Denby…

Then again, my par­tic­u­lar reli­gious inter­ests tend toward “heretical” Chris­t­ian texts, such as the Gnos­tic gospels, so I sup­pose I’m not as con­cerned about pro­tect­ing the Faith.

If Con­stan­tine whets your appetite for all things dev­il­ish, I’d rec­om­mend read­ing Elaine Pagels’ mono­graph, The Origin of Satan… oh, and it’s noth­ing like the movie.