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Platypus Pastimes

Thoughts from a weekend of art and entertaiment:

1. What are Mike Mignola's religious views? Del Torro's ex-Catholicism has been highly fruitful for his movie-making career, and he dumps a lot of it into the "Hellboy" movies. Mignola's work contains some strong Catholic undercurrents and I know that he helped out Christian comic book author Doug Tenaple (sp?). I can't wait until we get to see where he's going when volume 9 comes out.

2. Everything Pixar does seems to be some sort of commentary on the Imago Dei or, at the very least, what it means to be human.

3. The endings of Hayao Miyazaki's movies are often a tad confusing to an American audience, but man are they worth it if you take the time to do an extra viewing or two. I wish Disney could divest themselves of their California-American worldview and do some stuff that was as deep and meaningful as the movies that come out of studio Ghibli.

4. Sci-fi is alive and well, but the space program is on the verge of mothball-dom. Why is that?

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