Oscar is coming like a thief in the night.  One nominee shall be taken and the others, left behind.  How shall we prepare our hearts for his coming?

By looking at some of Hollywood's heavenly bling, that's how!

To the left is the mysterious pearl tattoo from The Rapture, a film by Academy Award nominee Michael Tolkin.  Starring Mimi Rogers and a fresh-from-Yale's-English-graduate-program David Duchovny, The Rapture examines the second coming of Christ & how it affects people's lives. 

Sound like an unlikely topic for a Hollywood film?  No doubt it is, and the story behind the tattoo is even more unusual.  We see it when a woman undresses during a menage a quatre!  Mimi Rogers, bored with her dead-end job & the casual hedonism of LA, asks about the image, and we learn that it is taken from a dream that many have begun to experience, a dream that leads them to believe that Jesus is returning soon.

The symbols in the tattoo are key images from Christian scriptures.  The Pearl of Great Price refers to Christ and Kingdom of Heaven, and a hand is extending an invitation for all to believe.  Rays of light come from the celestial city, the last trumpet sounds, and the dead are rising from their graves to be judged.

Bright lights, uncanny music, special garments, people marching duly to judgment--yep, sounds like Oscar night!

EXTRA:  Michael Tolkin also did another movie on spiritual values, called The New Age.  In this film the main characters turn to new age spirituality & open a clothing shop called Hipocracy.  It's another intriguing movie from Tolkin, worth watching not only for its spiritual sophistication but a stellar performance by Adam West (!) as Peter Weller's soulless playboy dad.

Alas, Tolkin's spiritual avant garde did not reap box office gold, but The Rapture did have a successful second life when it was not so subtly remade as the blockbuster Deep Impact, the story of how people react to the coming of a comet that crashes into earth. 

How was that a sequel?

Jesus, a comet--both are Rocks!