Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality, Catholiccontriversy's Fathom Reviews

A fathom event about the first millennial saint, this aught to be interesting. Hello catholiccontriversy here, and I'm getting back from the documentary Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality, a documentary about Bessed (or Saint depending on when you read this) Carlo Acutis. I don't know much about Carlo, but my priest at my home parish talks about him regularly, mostly because he's a recent young future saint (he was 15 when he died and was born in 1991, he'd only be 2 years older than me) and that inspires people because he wasn't "an old man that devoted his entire life and is like your grandpa" and he isn't "a young martyr from hundreds of years ago." Also, a little about me, I am a millennial online content creator, I've been doing this since the early days of youtube starting not long after my 16th birthday, and for a little while now I've been thinking "we need a patron saint of online creators," because we online evangelists could use someone to help inspire us as we use new media to spread the word of God, who himself/herself used new media to spread the word of God. So when the movie started talking about modern technology and how Carlo is "the influencer of Christ, growing up in a technological world," I got excited because maybe that would mean that we finally have our patron saint of online content creators and this would be about how he used the internet to spread the word of God.

Well...about that....I guess I should start out with my first major criticism of this movie, and that is "who/what it is REALLY about." I wasn't like "taking notes with a stop watch" so I can't be fully sure in my proportions, but this movie spent very little time talking about Carlo, like I'd estimate that less than 50% of it was spent talking about him. I would say that 40% of the movie was about how technology is designed to be addictive and is separating people from the church (a modern idol), 15% is about a school's unplugged pilgrimage to Rome an Assisi and how the teens are handling it, 20% is about the Eucharist and Eucharistic miracles, and 25% of it is about Carlo and his relationship to technology and the Eucharist. Initially, this made me quite frustrated, I came to learn about the first millennial saint, the saint who is 2 years older than me and died 3 years before I had my call to profess my beliefs online and was 1 year younger than when I started my journey in using the internet to spread the good news whenever God calls me to. In terms of what Carlo would want (at least based on what is presented in the movie), it makes sense. Carlo was "obsessed" with the Eucharist (and I say "obsessed" with the upmost respect, like how people say "I'm addicted to Jesus, I'm a Jesus freak"), he wanted his first communion as soon as he possibly could, and went to Eucharistic adoration and daily mass all the time, and his websites were dedicated to the Eucharist and Eucharistic miracles and never wanted it to be about himself. So I get where the directors were coming from with what they did. However, I came here for a movie about Carlo Acutis the first millennial saint who died young and had a lot in common with the youth of today, not a movie about technology addiction and the Eucharist. Like, they showed paintings of him and instead of a halo he has wifi bars, because "he is the modern saint." I want to know that story, because that's what I and my online brothers and sisters in Christ do.

Now I'm not saying it's bad to make a movie about those topics, but it's not what the title was saying it was. Another fathom event my wife and I went to was "Super Man, the Christopher Reeves story," a movie about Christopher Reeves before and after his accident. If that movie was like this one, it would be primarily about dressage and different kinds of paralysis with some mentions of Christopher Reeves and his life with quadriplegia. It would be like if we went to a movie called "Matthew the Evangelist" and it looks like it will be about Saint Matthew but then it's just the gospel according to Matthew. Again, it's not like that's a bad story to tell, but we would be coming to learn about Matthew, not his account of the life of Jesus. It just felt kind of dishonest.

My second major gripe is how the movie portrays technology. Here's the thing, I have lots of problems with technology and what is has done to society. I don't like social media, I generally stay away from facebook and it made my highschool and college years kind of empty because all my friends were terminally online and didn't like to talk IRL. I hate LLM GenAI because it's a solution in need of a problem and is being forced down our throats despite no one wanting it. Like all online content creators I hate the algorithm. There are a lot of ways that technology sucks. On the flip side, I love technology. Right now I'm using the internet to reach potentially billions of people with my opinions and message. I've documented all my major (and sometime minor) life events through blogging and vlogging for 15 years and have enjoyed looking back at my memories and one day know I will be happy to have such a complete account of them. I used to annoy my friends and family with my ramblings because I had to speak my mind, and now I tell strangers online that actually want to hear what I have to say instead of annoying my friends and family. I have made "actual works of art for which I am proud of" and I wouldn't have done that if not for the internet. I have made actual close friends online and have been able to find community with people who I otherwise would never know. My point being is that technology is not inherently good or bad, it's a tool that can be used positively or negatively. This movie though, it focuses on the negative applications, drawing significant attention to social media addiction and how people have religious devotion to science and technology in an absence of religion, how "people wait for hours to see a concert but can't find the determination to go to church," and how people are trying to use technology to achieve some kind of immortality here on earth when instead they should be looking towards living eternally with Jesus, and all that bad stuff. Again, I get where they're coming from, modern technology has caused a lot of problems with society. However, it's condemning a tool, the whole "blame guns for gun violence" thing, and that is the WRONG way to go about this conversation.

This is where I get really scared with that kind of messaging, if you do not accept that smart phones and social media and the like are now part of the world we live in, you are going to lose people faster than you already are. I'm going to give an analogy, instead of modern technology, let's talk about alcohol. Alcohol is not a "wholly positive substance;" people use it to get drunk and make bad decisions like drunk driving or becoming violent, people get addicted to alcohol and it ruins their lives, alcohol is medically classified as a poison and does damage to the body. However, a lot of people like alcohol; beer, wine, and liquor tastes good, after a particularly stressful day alcohol can help with relieving the tension built up during the day, and for people with social anxiety can help relax them in social environments, and a majority of the people who use alcohol do so responsibly without any major problems. Jesus's first miracle wasn't making the blind see, it was turning water into wine. Jesus didn't tell his disciples "drink this milk or cranberry juice, it is my blood," he said "drink this wine, it is my blood." All this to say, there isn't anything inherently wrong with alcohol and even the King of Kings recognized the good it can do. Here's where you run into problems, there are people who like beer and are uncertain about religion, a religion or denomination or evangelist preacher who says "alcohol is evil, nothing good can come from it, it's Jesus or beer" is going to lose that person because "I don't know about Jesus, but if he's against beer that's not for me." However, if one approaches it from a position of "you drink a lot of beer, Jesus liked to drink too but not that much, there can be room in your heart for both the Lord and the fruit of the vine but you'll need to make some room, next time share that beer with Jesus instead of just hogging it for yourself," that's going to be more welcoming and is completely consistent with a legitimate faith journey. A non-drinker is going to say "I don't get what the big deal is, just don't drink and instead focus on Jesus," but then they'll turn around and say "why is my church empty." Now replace what I said with technology, you as an older person are the "non-drinker" who can say "I don't use technology and my life is fine, and you can live without too," but to say "it's incompatible" to someone who already uses technology, it's going to lose people. Like, there was a 4 or so minute part of the movie where a priest said "if Saint Paul had social media, he would be using it to reach people, modern technology can be used for spreading the good news," but that was 4 minutes out of 82 minutes, where at least 40 had to have been spent saying "and this is why modern technology is bad" in some way. The movie really shouldn't have spent so much time on "you're missing the Lord because you spend all your time online" and spent a lot more time on "is Jesus in your instagram story, he wants to be in your instagram story."

If nothing else, this movie inspired me to look into Carlo's story and journey to sainthood and what he did from an online space. We online content creators could use someone whose story is super similar to our own for guidance and intercession. There are plenty of great evangelist saints we can look to as a blueprint for how to spread the message, and patron saints of video production and authorship and such, but right now at the time of writing there isn't a patron saint of online influencers whom we can say a prayer of intercession to and look to see how they did things and what we could learn from them. Carlo seems like he might be that saint for a modern time, but this movie didn't do a very good job at showing us if he is, and unfortunately might scare people away from the faith in it's conversations surrounding modern technology. For now though I'll just continue doing what I do and pray for God to use me to spread his word however he sees fit. This has been Catholiccontriversy, signing off, and may God bless you.

The Video Librarian, An Interview with America's Oldest Video Rental Store

Additional pictures I took of The Video Library

Alternate video players

AKA Jane Roe Review

#vidmewashere The Community 1 Year Later

Check out the awesome contributors
Animat: https://www.youtube.com/user/ElectricDragon505
Nodetect: https://twitter.com/nodetact
St. Clinton: https://twitter.com/St_Clinton
Kids at Heart/Right Left of Center: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNb8ZS62nNwGebwRhDvZyWw
Link the Informer: https://www.twitch.tv/Linktheinformer
Dos Gaming: https://twitter.com/CD_DOS_Gaming
iJim: 
MadMattInc: https://www.youtube.com/user/madmattinc1
TheOldSparrow: https://twitter.com/theoldsparrow1
AxxL_Afriku: https://www.youtube.com/AxxLAfriku
WaterSurfian: https://twitter.com/WatersurfianTV

Pokematic Reviews Dogtown and Z-boys

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic, "hi."

I recently watch the documentary Dogtown and Z-boys, a documentary on the original skate punks of Dogtown, the pioneers of modern extreme skateboarding. Now I myself am not and never was a skater, and never really had any desire to. However, I did love me some Rock Power and Tony Hawk Pro-skater, and wore out my tape of An Extremely Goofy Movie, so it is a bit of an interest for me. Though I must say, I think this is the first documentary I've ever reviewed, so I don't know exactly how this is going to go down.

I guess I'll start with what the movie is about. Dogtown tells essentially the complete history of the Zeffer skate team, and how they pioneered skateboarding to be the main stream hobby/sport that it is today. Seeing that this is a documentary, I'll summarize the complete history that it covers. I'm not sure if this is a "spoiler" per-say, but if you don't know the Z-boys' story from The Lords of Dogtown or skate history and want to get it from this documentary, consider yourself warned.

It starts with the early introduction of skateboarding, and what made Dogtown the perfect breading ground for modern day skateboarding. We also get some backstory on how urethane wheels made skateboarding possible. Soon following we get our introduction to the Z-boys, and how they took skateboarding from a children's toy to a main stream sport, bread out of "urban surfing." We see how they entered early competitions, and how the judges never saw anything like it before. Then there was the backyard pools that they skated, and how from empty in-ground pools vert skating was born. How the z-boys found sponsorships and made a career of skating. And coming to an end with the Dogbowl, a place where one of their fiends who was dying of brain cancer convinced his dad to drain their pool and let his z-boy friends skate it. It was all the old crew coming together once again, like the old days.

Now I will talk about the more "technical" aspects of how the story is told. The primary way the story is conveyed is through archived footage, still images/magazine clips, and interviews with the Jay, Stacy, Tony, and Peggy; and some other commentators such as Skip and the writer for Skateboard magazine. Seeing that it was the 70s, I'm a bit surprised that there was so much archived video of these guys. Then again, when you pioneer a sport, people take notice and record it. I noticed that there was more footage post skate competition, and that is to be expected because before the initial competition the Z-boys were just a group of surf punks in Dogtown. This was before home video recording became mainstream. Then when they were doing the interviews, it was all in black and white with a bit of a tilted camera angle. I don't know if this was common in the 70s skate scene, but it sure was common with 90s X-treme, which is fitting seeing how influential the works of the Z-boys was on 90s X-treme (Rocket Power and Tony Hawk Pro-skater come to mind). Speaking of interviews, I really liked how a majority of the narration was was through interviews with the original Z-boys. It's one thing to have a voice actor say "Jay was not one for corporate sponsorships, he could have been super successful but he chose not to," and it's another thing to hear Tony say "Jay was amazing, he gave me a run for my money" and then to hear Jay say "yeah, I could have gone full corporate sponsors, but it just wasn't me." While there was a narrator, he wasn't all that common like I've seen in many other documentaries. There's also the story transition cards. Overall the presentation was great. You aren't getting "high-def video," but you also have to remember that the archive footage was shot on 70s news cameras, and photos on Polaroids. It was quite well done.

So now the main question is, "is this entertaining?" As someone who has a mild interest in the extreme sports, this was very interesting. It was really cool seeing where it all came from, from the mouths of those that lived it. How it tells the story is alright, even if things just kind of "happen." We hear about the Z-boys, and how they got picked-up by big sponsors, and how that just kind of ended Zeffer surf shop, and then how these guys just kind of "got sponsored." It flows kind of like a well written history book. It's not perfect, but it's still entertaining. You might not like it too much if you don't have any interest in skateboarding, or don't like documentaries, but otherwise you will probably like it.

Now some of you may be wondering, "is this better than Lords of Dogtown"? Well, that's the topic of a different post (which I will make sometime in the future). This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Catholiccontriversy's Review of 2016 Obama's America

Warning, the following post is rated PG for mild instances of language.

Hello Catholiccontriversy here and I just got back from seeing 2016 Obama's America. As I have shown before, I don't agree with Obamy and his twisted politics. Want proof, see the video below I made about his "you didn't build that" speech.


Let me make this perfectly clear, I refer to Barack Obama as Obamy because I have such lack of respect for him after his "you didn't build that." I invested my hard earned money and many hours into an eBay business of which I had mild success. I got that money from carrying golf bags for golfers as a caddie. That right there is hard labor, something I wouldn't expect him to know about. I could have spent that money on something else but I tried to build a business with that, like a real American pursuing the American Dream. And to suggest that I don't deserve the small amount of success that God graced me with, because I didn't build eBay, the camera, the laptop I used, the postal service, etc.; you do not deserve my respect, thus I call you Obamy.

Now I'm no stranger to political documentaries. Just to name a few; I.O.U.S.A., Media Malpractice, Fahrenhype 9/11, Celsius 41.11, Michael Moore Hates America, Indoctrinate U, and others. I've even seen the Michael Moore work of fiction Bowling for Columbine. I only include it in the list because it is definitely the black sheep of the bunch and while it has been proven fiction on multiple occasions, it still won "best documentary" for some strange reason. Sorry if the link doesn't work. That site is a little finicky. So yeah, this isn't my first political documentary. But enough about other films, lets talk about 2016.

Despite what the title says, it doesn't focus to heavily on predicting the future, but rather explaining Obamy's past. Here we learn about the past of the current president man. To any sound minded American who actually listens to what Obamy says, like "you didn't build that" and "I feel it's important to spread the wealth around," you may be wondering; A) how the hell did this guy get elected, and B) where the hell does this guy get his information from. Please pardon the language, but it reflects the mood and what said sound minded American are thinking, maybe even stronger. Now for the elected part, I recommend "321Media Malpractice." It doesn't vilify Berry here, but rather the media and how their decision on which stories to run gave Obamy the win. 2016 on the other hand, explains where Obamy got his info from. We learn about his past with anti-colonial thinkers, steadfast communists, and even terrorists. We learn about his father, and his lack of involvement. We learn why he has been so nice to the radical Muslims while alienating our ally Israel. We learn why he has blocked domestic oil drilling while funding drilling in other countries. We learn why he has piled on so much debt. I challenge you liberals out there to watch this documentary and see if you learn something new.

OK now I know you might be wondering "how can you be so sure that the picture is accurate? You said you've seen Moore and are convinced that he's full of sh-" LET me cut you off right there. I will not deneigh that there is a bit of a point there. It is very easy to say that something you disagree with is lies while something you agree with is truth. It is EXTREMELY easy to do that. Here is where this film is different. Instead of just saying "Obama said this," it has sound bites of him saying them and video from various speeches he's given. It has interviews with his one African "grandma" and his half brother. I use quotes for grandma because she's one of five wives that Grandpa Obama had, since he was from a polygamist culture. It quotes Berry's autobiography "Dreams From My Father" many times in the beginning and middle, many times with the man himself reading from it.

Now the little Devil's advocate on my shoulder keeps yelling "HESTON HESTON HESTON HESTON HESTON!" of course refering to the infamous editing of the Charlton Heston speech during Bowling for Columbine where Moore makes Heston look like a gun nut who "held a big pro-gun rally right after the Columbine massacre." Morres words, not mine. The reality of the subject turns out being that the meeting was scheduled many months in advance and that it was illegal to cancel an event such as that in such a short time span. During the speech Heston explained how he sympathized with the families but that this is American, how members of the NRA are everywhere and that most of the events were canceled out of respect for the mourning families. Unfortunately that filthy liar Moore cut the speech in a very unfaltering way, and the "from my cold dead hands" line wasn't even from that speech. 2 different shirts, don't think a need for a wardrobe switch so quickly is necessary at an NRA convention. Why do I have reason to believe that this isn't the case for 2016, because I haven't heard a single thing about it. If there was any inaccuracies in the way that those soundbites and video clips were edited together, you, I, your parents, your kids, your coworkers, and everyone would have heard about it through some form of news, whether that be through liberal news outlets such as MSNBC condemning the film for it's inaccuracies or the various independent conservative news outlets such as PJMedia proving the failings of Main Stream Media. But the truth is, nothing has surfaced. I follow PJMedia and other conservative news outlets and haven't heard a single thing about MSM accusing 2016 of supposed quote mining. I haven't heard any students and/or professors complain about quote mining. Plus I've heard and read some of the quotes used. I think it's safe to say that nothing is taken out of context.

Now that the politics and fact checking are out of the way, time for presentation. Aside from some shaky cam in the beginning, the flow and visuals are great. Instead of just putting up pictures and jump cutting to interviews, there is some quality animated diagrams explaining the graphs and time lines, the fonts used for captions and subtitles is well chosen for this film, editing is generally smooth, and it follows a logical line of events, starting with examining the hype for "Hope and Change," learning the past of Berry and his influences and how they influenced him, examining how said influences influenced the decisions he's made as president, ultimately leading up to a projection of what his plan is for America based on his influences and history in first term. Quite compelling.

Bottom line, you have to see this documentary. If the Oscars weren't run by the same type of liberals who got him elected in the first place, it would win Best Documentary. If you're on the fence about it, ask around. A local Republican chapter in my district was sponsoring a free event to see it as a way to get the word out about who this president man is. You might be able to find someone doing just that in your area. It's going to come out on DVD and Blu-Ray soon, and now a-days rentals tend to be cheap if you know where to look. Go see it now. You will be happy you did. Well this has been Catholiccontriversy signing off and may God bless you.