Matt Maher Sings from the Heavens

Apparently an astronaut on a recent shuttle mission played Matt Maher's Empty & Beautiful CD in space while praying for the band.

Pretty cool. You can read about it here at the Christian Retailing website.

Bad Sports Day

Yesterday was not a good sports day...

• In the morning, Gabe's travel baseball team gave up four unearned runs and lost 7-3.
• In the afternoon, the Rays blew a 3-1 lead to lose to the stinking Yankees 4-3.
• In the evening, the Gators blew a 6-1 lead to get kicked out of the College World Series tourney by losing to Southern Miss 7-6.
• At night the Magic missed a last second shot to beat the Lakers and ended up losing in overtime 101-96.

Yeah... kinda stunk yesterday in my world of sports.

PUSA - Quick Take 3: Idol Dreams

Here's the last of the Quick Takes for PUSA...

PUSA - Quick Take 2: Vanity

Here’s the second of three PUSA Quick Take vids.

This one is titled Vanity…

PUSA - Quick Take 1: Reunion

For people who haven't seen the series, we've created some Quick Takes so they can understand the humor, style and production value.

The first one is called Reunion.

Article on Christian Film Market

I've posted a thorough analysis on the challenges of the Christian Film Market on the Sonlight Pictures Blog website.

Read at your leisure.

New PUSA Trailer

I've posted this on Facebook, the Sonlight Pictures website and on the SLP blog... but not here. So, here it is :)



We'll be posting more marketing and behind-the-scenes vids soon.

The Human Experience

Grassroots Films, the same company that made the amazing Fishers of Men film about being a priest, has released a trailer for one of their other films called The Human Experience.

It's amazing. Check it out.

Ordination

We had the honor of being invited to a priest being ordained at St. Jude Cathedral in St. Petersburg last Saturday. One of our priests from Espiritu Santo was praying and asking who he should invite when our son's name and another altar server's name came into his mind.

So, he tracked us down and invited us to the special, holy event.

We were afforded special seating near the front and we were able to view one of the most holy sacraments the church offers. The event was lead by the Bishop and almost every priest in the diocese was in attendance.

You don't really appreciate just how many priests and holy people there are in our area until you see them all at once. To watch them, over a hundred in all, process together down the aisle of the church, along with seminarians and acolytes, was a special moment.

One of the things I adore about the Catholic Church is the rituals that add depth to our faith. The garments, the chalice, the candles, the incense, the music... all so wonderful.

We were very blessed to have the choir and music provided by the Florida Orchestra. They filled the rafters with angelic hymns that lifted your spirit.

When the new priest was being ordained the Bishop choked up, barely able to hold back his joy. And when all of the priests raised their hands and, in unison, participated in the consecration of the bread and wine, well, it was like experiencing a little piece of heaven.

When the Bishop completed the ordination, the new priest then kneels and promises obedience to the Bishop. At the end of the ceremony, the new priest lays hands on a bowed Bishop to offer his first official blessing. Wonderfully cyclical. Great, amazing stuff.

Many times I was brought to tears and such a holy event made me realize how temporary and completely unimportant our daily lives can be in comparison.

As the mass ended and our local priest processed down the aisle and passed the two young men he had invited, he gave them a joy-filled hand shake as we all sang the last hymn.

That ordination was one of the most special Catholic moments of my life. I cannot imagine a greater joy a parent could feel than to offer their child up to God in such a way.

For any Catholic reading this, I implore you to offer an extra hour of your life next year and attend the next ordination in your area. It is something that will touch your heart and infuse you with a renewed faith in Jesus, in your church and in your leaders.

The American Trinity

Thanks to Charles for bringing this excellent video to my attention. The American Trinity is not the Holy Trinity, but the three beliefs which make America different than any other nation on earth...

Check it out below...



Good stuff...

No One Reads This Blog Anymore

Okay, No One is pretty extreme.

ALMOST no one. Like, under 10 people... intermittently.

So, if I decide to can this thing AGAIN, I don't want to hear any complaints. I haven't made up my mind yet, but the thought is floating around the old noggin'.

Funny Star Trek Vids

Two funny videos in relation to the new Star Trek film...

The first compares Star Wars and Star Trek...

Watch My Favorite Movie (Star Trek vs. Star Wars) and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

The second plays on the fact that Star Trek director, JJ Abrams, loves to use lens flares to augment the scenes... he actually had people standing off camera shooting flashlights into the camera while filming. In any event, this video shows what would happen if that were to have been done on the original series...

Anti-Catholicism in Hollywood

Angels & Demons is coming out soon. Of course, its full of misrepresentations of Catholicism (big surprise there). Where Hollywood goes out of its way to equalize Muslim characters (one bad is countered with one good), no such courtesy is given to the big bad Catholic Church.

There's a great article about this at Christianity Today located here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/news/2009/ishollywoodanticatholic.html?start=1

One of my favorite quotes from the article is as follows:

Rome's foes today "aren't debating transubstantiation, they're debating transgender," said Catholic film critic David DiCerto. "They aren't debating the real presence [of Christ] in the Eucharist, they're debating the real presence of humanity in the womb. It's much more the hot-button moral issues than the hot-button theological issues."

That's why we created Sonlight Pictures, to help bring a positive face to Catholics through positive portrayals of Catholic characters.

Star Trek (2009)

J. J. Abrams is a humble genius. The creator of televisions Alias and Lost hopped into feature filmdom with his directorial debut on Mission Impossible: III, which is by far the best film in that series.

He followed up his MI:III success with the impossible task of rebooting the Star Trek franchise, a franchise which is embedded in the very social fabric of the world.

Such an effort would seem much like the kobayashi maru test (a no-win scenario).

But the fearless Abrams takes a stagnate franchise and re-energizes it with a top-notch sci-fi film.

First, the cast is perfect, top to bottom. Chris Pine, as Kirk, captures the charm and confidence of the Captain, Zachary Quinto, as Spock, relays a more subtle, human performance than his predecessor and Karl Urban embodies McCoy flawlessly. The other characters are filled out with excellent performances by John Cho as Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Checkov, Simon Pegg as Scotty and Zoe Saldana as Uhura. Completing the cast is the always-nobel Bruce Greenwood as Pike and Eric Bana as the Romulan threat called Nero.

However, the real credit to the success of this film should go to the Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. This duo combined with Abrams on MI:III (which is one of the best executed action screenplays I've seen) and, with Star Trek, uses a simple, yet effective plot device to shatter any preconceived ties back to the original series and subsequent movies, allowing the franchise to truly start over.

Absolutely brilliant.

For Trek fans, there are enough subtle inside homages to please them while the stories focus on friendship, family and sacrifice makes it truly universal and easily palatible for new visitors to the Star Trek universe.

When the film ended I simply wanted the next film in the series to begin. It's a smart, funny and enjoyable jaunt at the movies.

Bring the popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show!

Little League Season Ends

Well, Gabe's final Majors Little League spring season has finally come to a close. Gabe did exceptionally well this year and I could not have been more proud of him. As a hitter he had the highest batting average in the league and as a pitcher he threw more strikeouts than anyone else. Now, we'll have to see if he continues on with All-Stars in a month.

I really enjoyed the team this year. We ended the regular season 10-6. We were the only team to reach the semi-finals in the mid-season tournament and we went 2-2 in the end of season tournament. The team was full of fine young men who learned a lot about teamwork, taking responsibility for ones actions, leading, working hard, setting new goals and never giving up.

The parents were great as well, always there to assist, to shag balls, to man the concession stand... a great group of people.

I was especially fortunate to have had two great coaches to help out. Each brought their own skills and we, collectively, used a variety of ways to inspire and push the kids forward. Our styles and temperaments complimented each other very well. I was a lucky manager this year.

This will be a season I'll remember for a very long time. I could not have been more proud of these young men. I have never been involved with a team that improved as much as they did.

Thanks to everyone involved!

Go Padres!

Club God - Screening at the Faith Film Festival

We’re very happy to announce that Club God will be airing in New York and online as part of the Faith Film Festival, sponsored by the NET television station in Brooklyn.

Club God will air June 11th at 8:30 PM. The judged will pick the top 10 films and the fans will pick the top film of the festival.

You’ll be able to get more information on the Faith Film Festival website (which is currently under construction) at the following location: http://netny.net/faithfilmfestival

Keep checking back at our Sonlight Pictures Blog for updates.

100 Days, 100 Ooops

Our Illustrious Socialist has been President for 100 days now. I came across this list of 100 Mistakes, Misstatements and Missteps in his First 100 Days.

Some don't bother me... most do. It's not pretty...

************

Undermining Our Values

1. Calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act on the White House website.
2. Calling on the White House website for the expansion of federal hate crimes to include homosexual behavior.
3. Calling on the White House website for policies like the “Fairness Doctrine” that could silence conservative and Christian talk radio.
4. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
5. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of abortions overseas.
6. Pledging $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund, which supports China’s draconian one-child policy.
7. Proposing new rules to gut conscience clause protections for pro-life doctors and other medical personnel who don’t want to be forced to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their values.
8. Proposing increased funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
9. Calling on the White House website for “a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year,” (mandatory volunteerism).
10. Inviting homosexual families to the White House Easter Egg Roll.
11. Allowing his attorney general to call for the reinstatement of Clinton-era restrictions on the Second Amendment.
12. Breaking his promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration. He hired 17 in his first two weeks.
13. Breaking his promise to sign legislation only after a five-day period of public comments.
14. Asking that the monogram for Jesus Christ be covered up during a televised speech at a Catholic university in which Obama quotes the Sermon on the Mount.

Undermining Our National Security

15. Apologizing for America in Europe and Latin America.
16. Bowing before the Muslim king of Saudi Arabia.
17. Pledging to base America’s foreign policy toward Iran on “mutual respect” in a video to the Iranian people and Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator.
18. Returning the bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush after 9/11 by our British allies.
19. Giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of America’s most loyal ally, a box of DVDs that don’t work in British DVD players.
20. Ordering Guantanamo Bay closed without any idea of where to send the terrorist suspects held there.
21. Suggesting that some of those terrorists now at GITMO may kill again, but may also be released onto U.S. soil and set up with welfare benefits.
22. Caving to communist Cuba by relaxing travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban Americans before any Cuban political prisoners have been released.
23. Shaking hands with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
24. Sitting silently though a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by Nicaragua’s communist president, Daniel Ortega.
25. Releasing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected of masterminding the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
26. Releasing classified CIA memos outlining our interrogation techniques.
27. Telling our CIA agents not to be discouraged when he acknowledges their “mistakes.”
28. Declaring a new openness to “truth commissions” and prosecuting intelligence officials involved in enhanced interrogations of terrorists.
29. Proposing to send a $900 million foreign aid package to Palestinians in Gaza.
30. Asking Congress to relax the law so that some of that money could go to the terrorist organization Hamas.
31. Calling for the U.S. to eliminate its nuclear weapons.
32. Telling Russian President Demitri Medvedev that America’s commitment to missile defense is negotiable.
33. Dropping the term “enemy combatants” for GITMO detainees.
34. Dropping the term “terrorism” for “man-made disaster.”
35. Dropping the term “Global War on Terror” for “overseas contingency operations.”
36. Giving his first interview as president to the Arab language network Al-Arabiya.
37. Telling the Muslim world that his “job” was to communicate “that the Americans are not your enemy,” when it’s Muslim extremists who have declared war on us.
38. Proposing that military veterans use private insurance for the cost of a service-related injury before they would be eligible for coverage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Undermining Free Enterprise

39. Signing the trillion-dollar plus so-called “stimulus” bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said would actually hurt long-term economic growth.
40. Saying Caterpillar wouldn’t lay off workers if his trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed Congress. Obama signed the bill on Feb. 17th. On March 17th, Caterpillar laid off nearly 2,500 workers.
41. Hosting a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” one week after signing the trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill.
42. Railing against “outrageous recklessness and greed” of AIG bonuses that were legally protected in the so-called “stimulus” bill he signed four days after it passed, not five as he promised.
43. Breaking his promise on earmark reform by signing the $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill with billions in earmarks.
44. Proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten years.
45. Proposing a “carbon cap and trade” scheme that will raise energy taxes by hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars.
46. Burning more than 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa for Earth Day to promote “wind power.”
47. Proposing $634 billion in higher taxes for socialized health care.
48. Proposing to raise taxes on small business owners.
49. Saying the White House is open to the idea of taxing employer-sponsored health care benefits as income.
50. Signing a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, calling it “a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American.”
51. Establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research to give bureaucrats the power to ration health care and tell your doctors what care you can and cannot have.
52. Signing the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which the Sierra Club praised specifically because it “will safeguard millions of acres … from oil and gas leasing.”
53. Suggesting he has found $1.5 trillion in bogus “savings” by not spending money in Iraq that we were not planning to spend years from now.
54. Ordering his Cabinet to “cut” $100 million in spending in 90 days, after proposing nearly $5 trillion in spending in his first 90 days.
55. Proposing to limit tax deductions for home mortgage interest.
56. Proposing to limit tax deductions for charitable donations.
57. Refusing to allow banks to repay TARP money.
58. Bailing out AMTRAK with a 10% increase in its taxpayer subsidies.
59. Bailing out the United Auto Workers Union with billions of taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler.
60. Bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving it a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. Yes, the union will own the company.
61. Bailing out Big Labor by issuing an executive order mandating that infrastructure projects paid for with “stimulus” funds must use union labor, guaranteeing higher costs for the taxpayer.
62. Bailing out Big Labor again by repealing regulations requiring the disclosure of how union dues are spent. So much for “transparency.”
63. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then vowing that the government will back auto warranties.
64. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then firing the CEO of General Motors.
65. Allowing states to set their own fuel efficiency and emissions standards, making it harder for struggling auto makers to compete.

Personnel Is Policy

66. Nominating Timothy “The Turbo Tax Evader” Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the IRS.
67. Nominating as attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Bill Clinton to pardon tax evader Marc Rich and 8 FALN terrorists.
68. Nominating David Ogden, a prominent attorney for the pornography industry, to be Deputy Attorney General.
69. Nominating Tom Daschle, who owed more than $140,000 in back taxes, as Health and Human Services Secretary.
70. Nominating Kathleen Sebelius, who is ardently pro-abortion and owed $8,000 in back taxes, to be HHS Secretary.
71. Nominating Janet Napolitano, who said, “crossing the border is not a crime per se,” as Homeland Security Secretary.
72. Nominating Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Last September, Chu said, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which at that time were roughly $8.00 a gallon.
73. Nominating Ron Kirk, who owed more than $6,000 in back taxes, as Trade Representative.
74. Nominating Bill Richardson, who was embroiled in an ethics scandal, as Secretary of Commerce.
75. Nominating Nancy Killefer, who also owed back taxes, to be the government’s “Efficiency Czar.”
76. Nominating Rosa Brooks, a leftwing acolyte of George Soros, as an advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
77. Nominating Harold Koh, an ardent supporter of using international law in the interpretation of our Constitution, to be the top legal advisor to the State Department.
78. Nominating Carol Browner, who was a member of the Socialist International, to be “Climate and Energy Czar.”
79. Nominating John Holdren, an environmental extremist and advocate of population control, as the White House Science Advisor.
80. Nominating Dawn Johnsen, who is so pro-abortion she once compared pregnancy to slavery, to to direct the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
81. Nominating Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab apologist, to be head of the National Intelligence Council.
82. Nominating Tony West, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh and exposed the Bush Administration’s terrorist surveillance program, to the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
83. Nominating Annette Nazareth to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, who withdrew after a month-long probe into her taxes.
84. Trying to nominate pro-abortion Catholics to be ambassador to the Vatican, a move even John Kerry opposed.
85. Appointing Ellen Moran of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director.
86. Appointing Melody Barnes, a board member of Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood, as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.
87. Appointing Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual rights lobbying group) to the White House’s Faith Based Advisory Council.
88. Appointing Adolfo Carrion as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, even though he is under investigation for kickbacks in a scandal nearly identical to one that cost GOP Senator Ted Stevens his election.
89. Nominating David Hamilton as his first appointment to a federal appeals court. Judge Hamilton has issued a number of controversial rulings, including prohibiting the Indiana House of Representatives from opening sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus.

Other Obama Outrages

90. Telling congressional Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
91. Coordinating attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer out of the White House.
92. Hosting weekly parties at the White House, serving up $100-a-pound Waygu beef during what Obama called, “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
93. Laughing it up on 60 Minutes as the country is mired in a recession.
94. Allowing Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, creating panic in New York City.
95. Disparaging Special Olympians on the Tonight Show.
96. Allowing his Department of Homeland Security to issue a report accusing pro-life, smaller government conservatives and returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of being “rightwing extremists.”
97. Promising to push for comprehensive immigration reform, i.e., amnesty.
98. Killing the school voucher program in the District of Columbia, while sending his two daughters to an elite private school, rather than D.C.’s public schools.
99. Moving the Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House.
100. Relying too much on his teleprompter.

Swine Flu Map

Wanna see where all of the cases of Swine Flu have been reported around the world? Click on the Google Map below to find out.

Stay healthy!

Gabe Finished Little League Regular Season

The regular season of Gabe's last year in Little League Majors has come to an end. He finished very strong. Here are the numbers...

• Batting Average: .510 (26-51) with 24 RBIs, 3 Ks and 2 HRs.
• Pitching Stats: 25 2/3 innings with 51 Ks and 12 BBs.

I'm very proud of my young man.

Next up, the End of Season tournaments and, if he's lucky, All-Stars.

UK Reporter Asks Why President "Pantywaist" Hates America So Much?

Interesting article, for sure. Asks some very good questions...

You can READ IT HERE...