De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

- “The Revenant” = gripping, enthralling, beautifully shot, Di Caprio totally convincing, but… should it really get all the big Oscars?? Shout outs to the young Brit Will (“Son Of Rambow”) Poulter who is fast becoming a bit of a star and Domhnall Gleeson (“About Time”, “Frank”, “Ex Machina”, “SW:TFA”…) as the dignified, morally upstanding Captain Henry. SPOILER ALERT….. The key fight, a woozy, almost slow motion combat between Di Caprio and Tom Hardy, is a brutal, unflinching showdown between two wounded stags, each already on the point of exhaustion and death. I love this comment from Robbie Colin in “The Guardian” - “The whole project is a bizarre blend of arthouse and frat-house: an episode of Jackass as envisioned by Terrence Malick.” - “Room” = tough, tough subject matter but dealt with incredibly sensitively, brilliantly acted + written, a beautifully moving, at times overwhelming film, though totally unmanipulative and without a hint of mawkishness. Final scene = just a perfect,...

I marked Holocaust Memorial Week at the end of Jan. by circulating two video links to our form teachers in school. It had already been chosen as the the theme for the week in assemblies and form periods. The first is a “Making Of’’ documentary for the film “Freedom Writers” (which some of my more recent former pupils out there - both Film Studies + RE should remember). The film deals with themes relating to tolerance, racially motivated violence, etc… The teacher in the film uses the Holocaust as a way of getting her students to take stock of their own situations and understand their own behaviour, seeing it in the wider context of historical cases of racially-motivated violence. The second clip (which I uploaded to YouTube myself for use in school) is from the “Freedom Writers” film itself and shows the teacher taking her students to visit to the Museum of Tolerance (Simon Wiesenthal Center), Los Angeles and then having a meal with 3 Holocaust survivors. The real Holocaust survivors a...