5 Links: The Shameless Plug Edition

We’ve had a few fun things over the past few weeks here at FG, and we want to thank everyone for checking us out! We’ve got a lot more coming up soon, including a review of a contemporary-yet-obscure vampire movie that’s a perfect alternative to the recent crop of undead lore.

But for now, here’s a few things you may have missed while signing up to win a signed set of the Auralia Thread Series books. (Yes, there’s still time!)

- We’re into the season of Lent, which started on Ash Wednesday last week. Jared Wilson at the Gospel-Driven Church has a good reflection on the season, as well as the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” that many Christians heard on that day:

When you return to dust, even if your body should be burnt to ashes and scattered over the four winds, he who is the Lord over the earth will be able to collect you, reconstitute you, and resurrect you into a body fit for eternity.

It’s a perfect reminder as we head into the season in which we remember Christ’s death and resurrection.

- People have been talking about making fuel out of common household garbage for decades, and now it may be closer than ever:

University of Central Florida professor Henry Daniell has developed a groundbreaking way to produce ethanol from waste products such as orange peels and newspapers. His approach is greener and less expensive than the current methods available to run vehicles on cleaner fuel – and his goal is to relegate gasoline to a secondary fuel.

That’s right, we may finally be on our way to catching up with technology in time for 2015.

- Another Toy Story 3 trailer has been released, and while you don’t learn a whole lot from just a basic viewing of it, there are a ton of details to discover if you watch closely. Pixar is known for inserting many hidden gags and references into their movies, and /film has a growing list of examples. As usual, there are a lot of references to other Pixar works, fuel for the Apple cult, and even a Totoro sighting (at about :49 into the trailer).

- Christianity Today has put out its lists of Best Movies of the Year, as well as the Most Redeeming Films of 2009. The first is their critics’ choice, while they describe the second:

We mean movies that include stories of redemption—sometimes blatantly, sometimes less so. Several of our films have characters who are redeemers themselves; all of them have characters who experience redemption to some degree—some quite clearly, some more subtly. Some are “feel-good” movies that leave a smile on your face; some are a bit more uncomfortable to watch. But the redemptive element is there in all of these films.

Both are good lists, as Christianity Today has made a point of focusing on quality over swear-counting or cheering on Christian Industry films just for the sake of cheering.

- Finally, via Filmwell, here’s a slideshow of subtitles that didn’t quite work out. You can tell when movies are dubbed into another language and then re-translated back. It’s kind of like playing with Google Translate. For example: