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Post by angra on Mar 17, 2013 12:07:15 GMT 10
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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Mar 17, 2013 12:54:45 GMT 10
"BTW - are they tax-exempt in Australia?"
Yes. And according to a thing I read once (I think it was tom frame's "losing my religion"), it was that very case that codified what counts as a "religion" in australia ... at least for tax purposes.
I'm of two minds about these guys. I also think they're a scam, but in the australian context they're a very very small one - I think their numbers run into a few hundred or a couple of thousand at most.
And by all means, prosecute the guts out of anything that the church administrators do to their followers. And if we were america, I'd like to think we'd be going after their "therapeutic" businesses with teeth bared. I'd like to think they'd find it nigh-impossible to operate here anyway.
But the general anti-scientologist drum-beat does make me rather uncomfortable. I imagine that very few scientologists are the uber-nutty tom cruise types, or the malevolent miscavige ring-leaders. Most of them are probably just people looking to religion for the same things that others look to religion for. I think they're being duped, but I can't hate them for that.
And tom cruise doens't have to act. I think he's a bit like pacino or (to a lesser extent) deniro. A movie part is written around their established on-screen persona, and they're cast in it. They just play themselves in everything they ever do. Heck - I think that probably applies to travolta, cage, connery, buscemi, willis ... pretty much every big-budget american action star. Which is why it's still a shock to see somebody like blanchet or (geoffrey) rush in action ... you actually get to see somebody ACT. And it's a surprise.
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Post by angra on Mar 17, 2013 16:11:09 GMT 10
MoC - it's the poor gullible schmucks off the street that get taken in by the Scientos. I was one in my student days many years ago. I had an interview and was told they could help me, as I had bad shadows on my soul. I even had an Emeter reading which confirmed the worst, and they asked me to sign up for some therapy. Only a few hundred pounds.
Luckily I was a skeptic even then and didn't go back. But I had friends who did and lost thousands.
Oh, and on actors - one reason that people like Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Cromwell, Johnny Depp, Billy Ray Thornton, Chris Plummer and even Robert Downey Jr. (plus a few others), makes them great is that they can actually act differing roles with aplomb.
And Tommy Lee isn't always typecast - see The Valley of Elah, and The Coal Miners' Daughter. And he even wore shorts and long socks in MIB2.
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