While I’m waiting until March 3 so I can have my little U2 album-unwrapping ritual, I’d love to hear from you.
Now that there’s a way to hear the album early legally and with the band’s blessing, what do you think of it?
(You did see this news about today’s MySpace release, didn’t you?)
Here’s David Fricke’s 5-star review in Rolling Stone, for whatever that’s worth.
Here are a few of my Oscar predictions, just for the fun of it.
Note: These guesses are almost completely divorced from what I think *should* win this year. I won’t bother with a full line of predictions because, frankly, I really don’t care. The Academy blew it so badly this year, I don’t want to guarantee a couple of hours of disgruntled snarling on Sunday night.
So we’re having some folks over to watch WALL-E and Shotgun Stories.
In fact, if you want to see a handful of films that I think you’ll find more satisfying than the Oscar nominees, here you go: “Oscar Do-Overs” – a piece I turned in at SPU today.
But okay, here are my handful of predictions. And yet, in almost every case, I’m going to recommend something that the predicted winner did earlier in their career that was much better than what’s getting all the attention this year.
This time, it’s legitimate.
MySpace has made the new U2 album available, in its entirety, for U2 fans worldwide.
And because this isn’t an accident, or an illegal leak, those U2 fans who care about the band’s plans and wishes can listen with a clear conscience.
Me, I’m old-fashioned. I miss the old Release Day tradition, when fans lined up at the store, held the packaging in their hands, opened it up like a Christmas present, and listened TOGETHER, instead of in the isolation of their headphones.
So I’m going to wait until March 3, or whenever the album actually arrives in my hands. But the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear.
Oh well. It’s out there. It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.
In a display of uncharacteristically poor judgment, The Wall Street Journal has published the “Report to the Industry” by Movieguide’s Ted Baehr and Tom Snyder.
Did the editors there actually read the flimsy claims being made?
Film enthusiasts and critics everywhere, Christian and otherwise, went… huh?!
Mark Moring at Christianity Today has posted a response today,
but not before these had appeared: Dan Savage, Jim Emerson, and Glenn Kenny.
Granted, some of those mainstream critics are just going to use this as another excuse to bash Christians. But if Christians keep putting nonsense like this out as our response to culture, I say we deserve the ridicule. If we want to participate meaningfully in the arena of art and culture, we’ve got to speak more truthfully, more accurately, more thoughtfully, than many of those voices that have been representing “a Christian perspective on movies” to the rest of the culture.
NOTE: If you are glad CTMovies decided to address the Baehr/Snyder article, please let them know by posting a comment on that blog post or writing a letter to the editor. That might help them cope with the lashing they’re sure to take for daring to question Movieguide.
It’s a challenge to respond to such incompetence with the necessary reproval and yet to show grace. We must speak the truth, and sometimes that calls for strong language. But we are also called to speak the truth in love. We need to hold each other to high standards, and not stoop to the level of cheap shots that the rest of pop culture tends to take. (That’s why I posted this, after seeing the widespread celebrity mockery spreading onto Christian pop-culture websites without any pause to question its propriety.)
(Earlier: Testimonies from folks who used to work at Movieguide were included in one of my reader-response posts a few months back.)
What bothers me most about the focus of Baehr and Snyder is they are trying to encourage cleaner, more family-friendly fare by baiting Hollywood with money, by focusing on the box office, as if the box office has ever had anything to do with excellence.
Since when does “What Audiences Want” point to what is good, excellent, honorable, and worthy of praise?
If I based my diet on what food sells best, I’d be dead in a week.
UPDATE: Screenwriter/playwright/former-Movieguide-employee Sean Gaffney responds to the article by Ted Baehr and Tom Snyder that run in The Wall Street Journal.
Ebert turns in a thoughtful remembrance of Gene Siskel.
Once we were invited to speak to the Harvard Law School Film Society. We walked into their Mock Trial courtroom armed with all sorts of notes, but somehow got started on a funny note, and the whole appearance became stand-up comedy. Separately or together, we were never funnier. Even the audience questions were funny. Roars of laughter for 90 minutes. I’m not making this up. I don’t know what happened. Afterwards Gene said, “We could do this in Vegas. No, I’m serious.” He was always serious about things like that.
That night we had dinner together in a hotel in Cambridge, and had our longest and deepest philosophical discussion. We talked about life and death, the cosmos, our place in the grand scheme of things, the meaning of it all. There was a reason Gene studied philosophy: He was a natural.
He spoke about his Judaism, which he took very seriously. His parents had started the first synagogue on the North Shore after World War II. “I had a lot of long talks with my father about our religion,” Gene told me. “He said it wasn’t necessary to think too much about an afterlife. What was important was this life, how we live it, what we contribute, our families, and the memories we leave.” Gene said, “The importance of Judaism isn’t simply theological, or, in the minds of some Jews, necessarily theological at all. It is that we have stayed together and respected these things for thousands of years, and so it is important that we continue.” In a few words, this was one of the most touching descriptions of Judaism I had ever heard.
This isn’t the time for anyone to slam Siskel’s perspective on Judaism. He was a man who cared about excellence and truth-telling, and I miss him too.
But I will say that I do suspect there was more to it than that… that perhaps he didn’t even realize it. He must have been drawn to something more than mere tradition. I don’t think Ebert would find it “touching” if someone said, “The importance of [Nazism] isn’t simply theological, or, in the minds of some [Nazis], necessarily theological at all. It is that we have stayed together and respected these things for thousands of years, and so it is important that we continue.” And I don’t think Siskel would either.
No, I suspect that Siskel stayed with Judaism for more than just tradition. I suspect there was something beautiful, something true about it that kept him from wanting to stray too far from it.
Maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Whatever the case, Siskel also clearly respected the tradition of great filmmaking, and I’m grateful to him for the part he played in teaching me to care about excellence as I grew up staring at the television and imagining all of those movies that he and Ebert discussed, most of which I still have yet to see.
First it was Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Then it was M. Night Shyamalan.
Now, Variety reports, Ang Lee is considering Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.
Have you read it? Which director would you pick? It’ll take someone with a poetic sensibility and a flair for fantasy. I’d certainly get in line for a Lee version.
