Girls Camp

Today's gag comes from faithful reader Melissa W.For eight out of the last nine years, I found myself at girls camp (usually because I was following my wife). This year, I won't be there and this makes me very sad. I'll miss the quality of activities and the camping toughness of the girls plus the food's much better than what you get with the boy scouts. Ultimately, though, what I'll miss most about girls camp is the treasure trove of ideas girls camp has produced over the years.

(Fellow Mormon cartoonist, Kevin Beckstrom just completed a series on girls camp that's worth your time.)

My Soul Hungered

How about a courtesy laugh, everyone.

The Elders Quorum Moving Crew

Having recently survived a move myself, I can't begin to tell you how invaluable the Elders Quorum is for something like this. And they come cheap, too! (Only 10 percent of your increase.)

What Ever Happened to Mormon Cinema

I vividly remember the first time I saw a trailer for the movie God's Army. I watched the whole thing with my mouth wide open with surprise. Here was a movie about Mormons that looked respectful of the Church, with good production values, and it was actually coming to a theater near you (well, only if you lived in Utah, I suppose). I also remember telling my friends at BYU about the trailer and having them express disbelief at my story. You might not remember now, but at the time, God's Army was a big deal.

Today's comic strip was drawn just a few years after God's Army premiered. At that time, I assumed God's Army would continue to hold cultural significance as the movie that started the Mormon Cinema genre. But now, just over ten years later, that genre is pretty much dead.* Ultimately, I think, it was hard to justify paying the same ticket price to go see a locally produced movie with production values just higher than your stake's roadshow as a big, Hollywood blockbuster like The Lord of the Rings. In the end, like the law of consecration, we just weren't ready for Mormon Cinema.

Oh, and by the way, I think Elder Van Dyke's review of God's Army is right on.

*I acknowledge that there are still Mormon movies being made. For example, the film 17 Miracles is in theaters now (and has received pretty good reviews), but you definitely don't see the numbers of movies being made now that you did a few years ago.

Getting Away from It All

Today's comic is featured in the June issue of the New Era.

The Field is White

Maybe missionaries would get into more doors if they carried around sickles...

Raiders of the Lost Ark: An Instant Classic

Monday, faithful reader Jon Freestone asked, "Does turning 30 now make Indian Jones a classic movie or does it have to wait another 20 years? At what age does a movie turn into a classic?" I've given it some thought and decided that Raiders of the Lost Ark was a classic the moment it premiered on June 12, 1981 for several reasons including the following three.

Score
Anytime John Williams is involved in a movie, that movie has a better chance of being considered a classic. And if you don't think the movie's score doesn't have anything to do the timelessness of a movie consider how dated Star Wars would be if Luke Skywalker was racing through the bowels of the Death Star to the sounds of the Bee Gee's Staying Alive! Truly, as the Mormon a cappella group Moose Butter observed, John Williams is the man!

Characters
Indiana Jones is one of film's greatest creations. He's someone the audience immediately relates to. Contrast him to the protagonist of Avatar--a character so bland I can't even remember his name and so boring I don't even want to bother searching online to find out--and it's clear why Raiders will always be a classic and why Avatar will never be one.

Setting
Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place in the 1930s and not the 1980s, making it timeless right from the start. Movies that take place in contemporary time can be classics too (see, Groundhog Day and Better off Dead), but it's a much greater degree of difficulty for them to become so as they have to overcome the numerous visual clues that set the movie at a certain point in time. Raiders was so expertly made that, other than the climax where the Nazis' faces melt off, it looks like it could have been filmed today.

These reasons, and others, helped to make Raiders of the Lost Ark a classic from the beginning and one of my favorite movies of all time.

It's Indiana Jones Week!

Following the success of last year's Star Wars Week and Back to the Future Week, I'm honoring Raiders of the Lost Ark this week on its 30th anniversary.

Raiders is possibly my favorite movie of all time and today I'm celebrating it with one of my favorite missionary strips of all time (long time readers of the blog might recognize this one from several months ago). Enjoy!

The Perils of Speaking Last

Today's gag comes from faithful reader Eric V. It's another worthy addition to the "Things Not to Say Over the Pulpit" series.