New Zoo Reviews: U2's "No Line on the Horizon"
Even the haters would have to admit: This is a pretty cool story.
Yeah, the hype for U2's upcoming album has come to a boil.
But is this just "hype"? Check out these reviews...
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Need a Date Movie for Valentine's Day?
Today I was a guest on the radio program "Along the Way." We discussed Christianity Today Movies' "Most Redeeming Films of 2008."
But I was also asked to recommend some romantic movies for Valentine's Day. We didn't have time to discuss more than a few, but here's the list I hurriedly threw together for their website:
How Will You Respond to Joaquin Phoenix?
Everybody and their cousin is posting the video of Joaquin Phoenix's appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, in which the actor behaved very strangely, and the whole world suddenly erupted in expressions of sadness and concern for the actor.
Sigh. Here we go again. Weren't we just talking about this issue?
Blogs are lining up to post the video so that all the world can see a celebrity's meltdown. Just as we did with Christian Bale's cuss-a-thon, we're joining the rest of the world, feasting our eyes on someone else's misfortune. Because, you know, that's the honorable thing to do when someone publicly humiliates himself: Post the video so everyone can enjoy it.
If you embarrassed yourself in public, would you want the video shared with the rest of the world? Or should we refuse to join the circus?
If you decide to share the video and join the mob that gossips about it, watch your step. This time, you may be walking into a trap.
In posting the video and joining the "Can you believe it?" craze, bloggers are playing right into the hands of filmmaker Casey Affleck, who's is reportedly making a documentary, which stars Phoenix, in which the actor appears to be acting strangely, starting a hip-hop career, and going through a meltdown of some kind. It looks like they're focusing on the media's mob mentality (if it can even be called "mentality", since no one appears to be thinking).
And that would make sense. Casey Affleck last appeared in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and the last act of that movie is all about the cult of celebrity, and how you can become famous by behaving badly in public, by making a sensation out of yourself. It certainly looks to me like Affleck is playing that out now in the real world, following a friend with video cameras in a way that exposes the lunacy of our celebrity-obsessed culture.
Will you end up in the movie as one of the screeching birds that circled the scene?
In this age of Borat and Bill Maher's Religulous, you'd think that folks would start showing some savvy about the joke.
Folks, if you're *really* interested in the well-being of Mr. Phoenix. If you're worried about him, PRAY for him... don't spread the documentation of his embarrassment.
And if you want to avoid embarrassment yourself, a simple Google search will show you that Affleck has been preparing this stage for for weeks. Many sharp-eyed, media savvy critics quickly suspected that these exhibitions are part of a stunt, a hoax, an attempt to show how stupid the media and its audience can be. The latest article demonstrating that this is not as simple as it seems can be found here, at Newsweek.
Personally, I think this kind of thing was funny when Andy Kaufman did it. Maybe the media frenzies have run on unchecked for so long that it's time for us all to get fooled again.
But please, can we move on? Do we have to join the ogling, gossiping mob on this one? Or can we prove their premise wrong, ignore, the video, and move on to things that actually matter?
Is This Appealing?
WARNING: This trailer pertains to a Quentin Tarantino film. That is to say, it's not for the squeamish.
It is a marketer's job to make a product appealing, to cultivate an appetite for what they're selling.
This leads me to some questions...Read more
Michelle Pfeiffer has Kevin Kline Syndrome
And now for a long and rambling note about something relatively unimportant and open to debate...
Reading this review of Cheri, an upcoming Stephen Frears film that stars Michelle Pfeiffer, I felt a momentary surge of hope. But I've learned not to keep that hope in check...
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Help Andy Whitman, the world's best music reviewer/columnist!
If you can find anybody who writes about music with more eloquence, passion, and historical knowledge than Andy Whitman, please let me know. He's my favorite. Nobody can send me running to spend money on music I haven't heard before like Andy can.
Alas, Andy had bad news today. Like so many are hearing bad news this month.
If you have any encouragement for him, or tips, I'm sure he'd appreciate it. Prayers are good too.
The Reviews of Steven D. Greydanus
Movie critics (and this includes me) are too easily tempted into being snarky, sarcastic, and arrogant. We rush to be the first to call things "the best" this, and "the most" that, and the ___________ of the year, and the __________ to beat in 2009, and a _____________ like no other.
I'm wearying more and more of critics who merely shout about what they don't like, or who pretend the authority to make claims about a film's place in history before it has even opened in theaters, even as I catch myself making such claims.
I'm most fond of those critics who focus on substance instead of superlatives, thoughtfulness instead of soundbites.
And I'm most fond of reviews by Steven D. Greydanus. He seems to approach each review as a challenge to write creatively and thoughtfully. He offers sufficient information, sufficient historical perspective, and just enough plot synopsis. But going above and beyond the call of duty, he gives you a sense of himself, his heart, and his passion. And he interprets films with a razor-sharp intellect and a keen sense of insight.
Today's review of Coraline is a prime example. Here is how it starts:
Here is what I sometimes tell my younger children when they occasionally wake up in the middle of the night terrified after a nightmare — especially if they wonder why God, or their guardian angel, allowed it to happen to them.
I know it seems like bad dreams are something bad that just happens to you. But I think most dreams, good or bad, are like stories that we tell ourselves — stories that a part of your brain tells to another part of your brain. Sometimes good stories, sometimes scary stories… but stories we make up ourselves, with a different part of our brain. And I think that part of us usually knows what it’s doing — and God knows that. Maybe being scared in a dream helps you to be braver and less scared in the real world. But now that the dream is over, you don’t have to worry about having it again. You won’t, I promise. You’ll see in the morning.
Somehow this feels like the right place to begin with Coraline, a dark fantasy with surreal elements that feel like a story that a little girl tells herself, initially for comfort and amusement, until the disquieting elements take over and the dream becomes a nightmare. Even then, though, there are subtle signs that the little girl is still ultimately in control, still telling the story herself.
Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman says his 2002 novella Coraline was in fact built around themes from stories that his daughter Holly improvised when she was four or five years old — stories about a girl named Holly whose mother gets kidnapped by a witch that resembles the mother. Why would a little girl invent such a theme? Where does that come from? A part of the brain that knows what it’s doing, I suspect.
I encourage you to bookmark Decent Films and check it regularly.
Lighthouse Academy on "Cyndere's Midnight"
Lighthouse Academy has discovered Cyndere's Midnight. And I'm grateful for the kind words she's posted.
Michael Leary on "Redeeming Films"
Michael Leary of film-think links to CT Movies' 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2008. And then he responds:
As a matter of fact, I also consider "redemption" to be a controlling critical factor in what I think of as "good" or "bad" cinema. But I would want to expand it, even redeem the term "redemptive" from the way it is so easily tossed about in evangelical cultural criticism. By now it is subject to Walker Percy's condemnation of how generic Christian vocabulary has become: "The old words of grace are worn smooth as poker chips and a certain devaluation has occurred, like a poker chip after it is cashed in."
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If we want to use "redeeming" with all of its Christological force as a certain way of looking at films, then we will have to go far off the beaten track, see things we don't want to see, and spend time and money on things that studios and publicists are telling us are worthless.
I'm curious: If I asked you to turn in your list of "the best films you saw in 2008" and "the most redeeming films you saw in 2008," would your lists differ?