Saw "The Invention of Lying" this week...

[onager]

If you are a cultural laggard like me and have not seen it, this one is definitely worth your time. (It was just released on DVD this week.)

As always, I don't want to give away any ***SPOILERS*** and ruin it. But I certainly LMAO almost all the way thru. By now, most of you have probably heard exactly which big "lie" gets invented in the movie.

They did wrap the story around a rom-com sort of plot, but in this day and age that's understandable.

At least this one doesn't wimp out at the end and claim "there must be a Higher Power." Like Saved, which pissed me off immensely by doing that.

Half the fun is watching for the cameos from Ricky Gervais' friends, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ed Norton as a psycho traffic cop.

You just have to love the concept of an alternate universe where nobody lies. In a casino, the operator of the roulette wheel tells all the customers: "The zero and double-zero on the wheel mean the house has an advantage of better than 50/50."

:rofl:

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Very good movie

Funny and with a straightforward message making fun of religion.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Great movie, really funny. nt

[onager]

3. And admit it - you've always wanted to say this to somebody...

"Your baby is S-O-O-O...ugly! It looks like a little rat."

:rofl:

[Soylent Brice]

4. on my netflix queue

the wife and i have been anticpating it's DVD release for soem time. missed it in the theater.

looks great.

[amyrose2712]

5. What else is on you queue?

Just signed up for Netflix, looking for suggestions.

[onager]

6. Oh goody! An excuse to do this again!

Please excuse me for butting in on your question.

But every once in a while, we have a thread in here about "atheist movies." Here are a few I always recommend:

Wise Blood - FINALLY available in the DVD release it deserves, a great 2-disc, re-mastered Criterion package. I bought this at Fry's, so Netflix should have it.

Just amazing. John Huston struggled for decades to film Flannery O'Connor's bizarre sex-and-salvation tale. He finally did it in 1980, with a pitch-perfect cast.

But with dialogue like this, it was never going to break box office records in One Nation Under JeBus: "I'm gonna start me a new church. Where the blind don't see, the crippled don't walk, and what's dead stays that way."

The church he starts is The Church Of Christ Without Christ...

:rofl:

The Rapture - Asks the question - "Even if an omnipotent God exists, is it worth worshipping if it turns out to be a cruel and heartless deity?" Well, that's my take on it, anyway. Written and directed by a secular Jew, starring a pre-X Files David Duchovny, with $cientologist (and former Mrs. Tom Cruise) Mimi Rogers.

A winner because it takes mindless Xian Fundamentalism to its logical conclusion, in a horrifying and heart-breaking scene. And it actually shows the damn Rapture! Unfortunately, it was so low-budget they could only afford ONE Horseman of the Apocalypse.

A Love Divided - true story set in an Irish village of the 1950s. Catholic church tries to bludgeon a mixed-marriage couple (Catholic/Protestant) into raising their two kids as Catholics.

One of the VERY few movies with an atheist as a sympathetic and major character.

For Catholics Behaving Badly, I'd also recommend The Magdalene Sisters and the stunning 2007 documentary Deliver Us From Evil.

I don't know if Netflix has this one, but the 3-hour British documentary series Disbelief is good. Hosted by Jonathan Miller, it's sort of a history of atheism.

In fact, IIRC the British title was Disbelief - A Short History of Atheism. The U.S. distributors didn't want to deal with the dreaded A-word, so over here it was re-titled A Brief History of Disbelief.

You can watch the trailer here: http://americanhumanist.org/hnn/archives/index.php?id=296&article=4

[amyrose2712]

7. Thanks! nt

[Synnical]

9. In my Netflix Que, too, but says it doesn't release until 02/16/10

Netflix hates me! ;-)

Seriously it does. It makes me wait weeks and weeks for the latest releases. It's because I rent too many movies - not that I watch them all.

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

[amyrose2712]

10. They have a deal with some

of the production or distribution companies not to make DVDs available until 30 days after the release date. Cuts into DVD sales.

[ihavenobias]

8. The concept sounds great.

I know it got mixed reviews (because it turned out to be pretty conventional at times from what I understand), but I want to see it on concept alone.