Browser, 9/6: Aronofsky's Golden Lion!; Roger Ebert's Favorite Movie; What Richard Linklater, Orson Welles, and Zac Efron Have in Common?
ARONOFSKY'S WRESTLING PIC IS A VENICE FILM FEST CHAMP
Darren Aronosfky, director of The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream, has just been given the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for his new film The Wrestler, which stars Mickey Rourke. 
Hopefully we'll hear more from some of my pals who are at the Toronto fest. The movie will screen there on Monday. 
I spoke with Aronofsky, who is married to actress Rachel Weisz, by telephone, and then again in person, when The Fountain arrived in theaters. Here's a link to that interview.
UPDATE: More on the awards. Wim Wenders was head of the jury!
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WHAT'S ROGER EBERT'S FAVORITE MOVIE
On his wonderful new blog, Roger Ebert tackles the question "What's your favorite movie?"
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ZAC EFRON STARS IN... A RICHARD LINKLATER FILM?
Anne Thompson on Richard Linklater's latest: Me and Orson Welles.
Image Artist of the Month: Wim Wenders
This month, Image Journal's Artist of the Month isfilmmaker Wim Wenders.
As one who was formerly selected, I can promise Mr. Wenders that his fame will now skyrocket, and he'll never have to worry about paying bills again!
All kidding aside... Wenders is one of my heroes. He's been on Image's advisory board for years, and is a good friend to publisher Greg Wolfe. He directed my all-time favorite film, Wings of Desire, and has recently been collaborating with writer/director Scott Derrickson (Land of Plenty), whose new film The Day the Earth Stood Still opens soon. You never know what you'll find in a Wenders film. He's an explorer, so you never know if his new movie will be a transcendant wonder or a curious meandering through uncharted territory... or both. I'll bet many were surprised, watching The End of Violence, when the camera drifted from an alley through a window into a room where Sam Phillips was performing the song "Animals on Wheels" for an audience. Moments of spontanaeity and revelation are common in Wenders work.
I had the pleasure of interviewing him about that film. (That interview is included in my book Through a Screen Darkly, and I devoted almost a whole chapter to his "prodigal father" film Don't Come Knocking, which I enjoyed very much, but which inspired some outlandish condemnation from a popular Christian media personality.) I also wrote a profile of Wenders for Christianity Today Movies.
You can now read Wenders' answer to Image's question "Why do you believe in God?" here.
It's good to see him in the spotlight again, and I can't wait to see his next projects. (He's working on a horror movie!)
Speaking of Image... I'm going to begin writing about movies twice a month for their site, and my first installment will be published tomorrow here! The focus? One of my favorite films of the decade so far.
Oh, one more thing. If you go to Image's site, you'll see an ad for The Glen Workshop over on the right side of the frame. You'll see a picture there of a woman in a red shirt. That's my wife Anne, working on a poem with mentor Scott Cairns!
Mercy! I'm in The Washington Times today!
Wow. I make what may be my first-ever online comment about Bill Maher, and I end up in The Washington Times!
These World Wide Webs... they're just full of surprises.
Over the Rhine's 20th Anniversary Brouhaha
I'm planning my first trip to Ohio.
Are you?
From the latest Over the Rhine newsletter:
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF HEARTACHE:
A Special 20th Anniversary Holiday Celebration of the Music of Over the Rhine:
December 19, The Taft Theatre, Cincinnati, OH: An evening with Over the Rhine. featuring music from decade one.
December 20, The Taft Theatre, Cincinnati, OH: An evening with Over the Rhine, featuring music from decade two.
Here's the skinny folks. The first night, we are going to delve deeply into the early recordings which include Till We Have Faces, Patience, Eve, Good Dog Bad Dog, and our first Christmas record, The Darkest Night of the Year. We will enlist the help of various musicians and guests for this first evening, but are very excited to announce that Ric Hordinski and Brian Kelley will be joining us to revisit many of the early songs which launched our career.
The second night will focus on songs from the last ten years, drawn from the recordings Films For Radio, OHIO, Drunkard's Prayer, The Trumpet Child, and our most recent Christmas record, Snow Angels. Again, look for various guests and key contributors to Over the Rhine's recordings as the night unfolds.
Sound like a party? Yes it does. (Discounted tix for those attending both nights are available at OvertheRhine.com.)
And we will bring the year to a close once again at St. Elizabeth's in Norwood, Ohio, with our Sunday Soiree, on December 21st at 3pm. God willing, we'll bask in the afterglow of a two night stand, another amazing year, share some wine and refreshments, and conjure up some acoustic music in this ragged, sacred old cathedral. More info and tickets will be made available soon at OvertheRhine.com.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)
This review was originally published at Christianity Today.
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Young women are disappearing in rural West Virginia. Something shocking is buried in the snow. A man is bleeding from the eyes and suffering horrible visions.<
Who ya gonna call?
Mulder and Scully, of course! It's a dirty job, but the truth is still "out there." It's time for The X-Files' dynamic duo to come out of hiding and pursue it.
In The X-Files: I Want to Believe, a big-screen sequel of sorts to the television series that ran from 1993-2002, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) still follows his hunches about paranormal activity, and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) wields her scientific skepticism, proving to audiences that they still have the chemistry that made the franchise so popular. And yes, they still refer to each other by their last names.
But a few things have changed: Mulder and Scully don't go around whipping out their FBI badges anymore. Mulder keeps a low profile, as all of his meddling with mysteries has made him unpopular with the government. Scully's become a medical doctor, putting her scientific brain to good use and leaving her ordeals with extra-terrestrials behind. And their relationship? Well, no spoilers here!
But when FBI agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) summons Mulder to help her track the bad guys through the West Virginia snow, tantalizing clues quickly break down his resistance.
Why Mulder? Because he's an expert in the paranormal, and Whitney's strongest clues come from the psychic visions of Father Joseph Crissman (the marvelously grizzled Billy Connolly), visions that cause blood to run from his eyes. Joe's revelations may lead detectives to the bad guys, but then again they may be part of a sick and twisted game. He is, of course, a convicted pedophile. (Do American filmmakers really believe that all priests are sexual deviants? Is Hollywood so infected with prejudice that they've come to believe the rare exceptions are the rule? It's getting old. Seriously.)
As they try to decide whether to believe, doubt, or detest Father Joe, Mulder and Scully are right back in their element. Mulder chases mysteries, and Scully, the skeptical yin to her partner's speculative yang, casts doubt on every theory he poses. They're a match made in a heaven—at least, that's what we want to believe. And the paranormal muddle that almost destroys them is just as creepy (and ludicrous) as so many of the half-baked horrors they uncovered on TV.
Psychics, zombies, ghosts, little green men—they were the stuff that made the show's nine seasons so much fun. We entertained those B-movie plot twists because mastermind Chris Carter served them up with such enthusiasm, like a kid building his own haunted house in the Twilight Zone and populating it with the stuff of science-fiction nightmares. Along the way, Mulder and Scully's dialogue grew from a clash of faith and science into an endearing romance. It was fun, so long as we could tolerate the increasingly labyrinthine mythos and the convoluted conspiracy theories.
Eventually, viewers became impatient with the proliferation of government cover-ups, alien invaders, chain-smoking mystery men, and deadly viruses. As the elaborate web of conspiracy theories started spoiling the fun, Carter delivered a feature film, 1998's The X-Files, that tried to offer some answers. It was an entertaining attempt, but the film's lengthy scenes of exposition left even the show's die-hard fans arguing about what it all meant. Most newcomers walked away bewildered. Not even Martin Landau, who played the hunted whistleblower on the government's alien-invasion conspiracy, could make the film as compelling as the famous flicks it plundered and pillaged (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, The Thing).
Thank goodness this new film doesn't bother with extra-terrestrials at all. Instead, it follows the formula of those standalone episodes about psychopaths and sickos. As Mulder and Scully join forces with Agent Whitney and her partner (played by rapper Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner), they're confronted with new questions: Is Father Joe leading them into a trap? Or can he lead them to the killer? That bloody clue they uncover in the snow—where did it come from? Why do they find traces of animal tranquilizer at every turn? What does any of this have to do with Scully's attempt to save the life of a brain-diseased boy with the use of an experimental stem-cell treatment?
All of these questions are answered by the time the credits roll. Carter and longtime collaborator Frank Spotnitz should be applauded for designing a simpler, more accessible movie. It's the most conservative summer action movie in decades—lacking explosions and digital effects, it looks like a film that could have been made twenty years ago.
But the filmmakers' admirable restraint is not enough to recommend it. There's just not much to enjoy here. Sure, it's a pleasure to see Mulder and Scully together again and to hear Mark Snow's spooky theme music. But the film's occasional sweetness is soured by the mystery's ugliness and the movie's grotesque (and anticlimactic) finale. Since The X-Files began, moviegoers have seen countless serial-killer thrillers, psychotic killers of every size and shape, and more grisly crime scenes than any homicide detective sees in a lifetime. I Want to Believewants to sit on the shelf alongside thoughtful thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and even Dirty Pretty Things. But where it should be scary, it's only shocking; where it should be inventive, it's all too familiar. When we finally see the truth of these horrific crimes, well—keep Kleenex handy, because your eyes might start bleeding too.
If anything, this production should have been televised. There's nothing here that deserves the big screen. Wait, I take that back. The radiant Gillian Anderson brings such subtlety, nuance, and intelligence to the material that it's like she's in a different movie altogether. She's the beating heart of the film, full of warmth and emotion and compelling conflict. But Scully is surrounded by flat, undeveloped characters who never really earn our affection or respect.
To their credit, Carter and Spotnitz take Father Joe seriously enough to consider the possibility of God's forgiveness for his heinous crimes. And as Scully's spiritual journey progresses through questions about forgiveness, faith, and reason, only this repentant priest offers meaningful counsel: "Don't give up."
But Joe's character deserved more detail and attention. We don't learn much about him. And as both he and the other religious figure in the film, the unpleasant Father Ybarra (Adam Godley) who works with Scully at the hospital, are both suspicious characters, moviegoers are likely to walk away with the impression that Catholics are creepy. The film's general disapproval of faithful Christians becomes even more obvious during the film's closing moments. As Scully tries to decide between active hope and a fearful surrender, Father Ybarra and other Christians stand by scowling, making it clear they'd rather she gave up.
Nevertheless, X-Files fans should leave the theater with Father Joe's counsel in mind—"Don't give up." Mulder and Scully are alive to continue exploring that mysterious territory between truths we can prove, and spiritual Truth that's still "out there." Perhaps they needn't "fight the future" after all. They look ready to take on grand new adventures, and if Carter and Co. can cook up some good stories, the franchise might be worth revisiting. Is it possible?
You knew I was going to say this: I want to believe!
Sam Phillips - Don't Do Anything
[This is an expanded version of a review that was originally published at Christianity Today.]
When Sam Phillips last toured, she sang a memorable refrain about heartbreak: “When you’re down / You find out what’s down there.”
Phillips new “short-playing” album, Don’t Do Anything (Nonesuch Records), is like a travel journal from a painful journeys. She sings about betrayal, the breakdown of a marriage, regrets, and what it’s like to live on the west side of Los Angeles surrounded by people with broken dreams. But throughout these passionate songs, she points us toward hope — a river of love that’s flowing “under the night.”
It begins with “No Explanations,” an account of a breakup, strung tight as razor wire, in which drummer Jay Bellerose’s kick-drum pounds like the righteous anger pulsing in the singer’s temples. And it concludes with “Watching Out of This World,” a declaration of faith and an affirmation of “The splendor / The holiness of life / That reveals itself / turning blind fate / into destiny.”
Between those songs, we’re taken on a bumpy ride from the depths of heartbreak and confusion to the heights of insight and hope. But she's surrounded by sympathetic collaborators. While it’s her most intimate album since The Turning, it is enhanced by the chemistry of violinist Eric Gorfain, the Section Quartet, bassists Paul Bryan and Jennifer Condos, and pump organist Patrick Warren contribute exquisite dissonance and flourishes of harmonic beauty. Bellerose's drums rumble, shake, rattle, and roll more prominently than ever before.
“Can’t Come Down” was inspired by a 1930s pastor in L.A. whose church became both a refuge for lost souls and a tourist attraction. “I found heat where the hands can’t reach and the eyes can’t see,” Phillips sings. It’s a shuffling, foot-stomping good time about the hard work of healing broken dreamers.
The title track is one of Phillips's finest anthems—a declaration of persevering love for the overachiever, even when that soul is broken, helpless, useless, and still. “It’s a pretty radical statement,” she says. “Everything is so performance-oriented in our society that it’s easy to lose sight of grace and love. I was not only thinking about the men in my life and the pressures on them, but also about my little girl and how much I love her, and about loving myself for who I am. Having done my time in the west side of Los Angeles, a very affluent part of the world, watching people in Hollywood be so hard on themselves… this song is my reaction to all I’ve seen around me.”
The explosive, reckless halfway point—“My Career in Chemistry”—plays like a reassessment of her experimental career so far. (Is “the chemical that never did wear off” a sly reference to Mr. Burnett’s creative influence, perhaps?) “Another Song” captures a moment on the edge of despair: “The soul can’t float with holes / but before you go down you write another song….” Critics frequently note John Lennon’s influence on Phillips’ style, and “Flowers Up” makes clear reference to “Imagine” while offering vivid, bittersweet images of L.A. (“Diamond dice, sweat and silk / Midnight pools / Date palms and wind machines / Waves of heat from pretty fools.”)
While some lines are so direct that they sting (“Did you ever love me?”), Phillips is not interested in reducing this record to a bitter autobiography. She’s a poet and a storyteller. There are moments of humbling revelation, as in “Little Plastic Life” when she observes, “I detected fire / in myself before the flame / that burned it all to the ground.”
The album’s high point is the tribute to the early gospel rocker Sister Rosetta Tharpe. “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” is so good that it’s already been covered by Allison Krauss and Robert Plant on their excellent collaboration Raising Sand. Their version was ethereal and graceful, but Phillips’ take captures the good Sister’s punchy, rowdy, zealous spirit. But it's also personal. Phillips sings about Tharpe’s glorious gospel music, which helps her navigate through the dark:
I hear Rosetta singing in the night
Echoes of light that shine like stars after they’re gone
Tonight she’s my guide as I go on alone
With the music up above.
In fact, the second half of the album takes us through the shadows of doubt in pursuit of a distant glimmer of hope.
And she has seen a great deal. Phillips’ career is one of the most compelling, unpredictable careers in modern rock. Beginning as Christian rocker Leslie Phillips, she made a memorable exit from the Christian music industry in 1987 with an album called The Turning, switched to her childhood nickname Sam, and found new freedom to sing more than just praise songs. In six more albums, she did a lot of soul-searching, singing about questions, doubt, struggles, in voices both satirical and sincere. She won critical acclaim, roles in feature films, and work composing music for television (Gilmore Girls).
Don’t Do Anything marks the most significant turning in her career since, well… The Turning. In addition to singing and playing piano and guitar (electric and acoustic), Phillips stepped up to act as producer, taking over for T-Bone Burnett who produced her work for almost twenty years. In fact, these songs grew during the painful disintegration of Phillips’ two-decade marriage to Burnett. While the anguish is evident throughout, these songs glow with hope, signs of healing, and a faith that persists despite disappointment and regret.
“I determined early on I was going to stubbornly love T-Bone for the rest of my life,” Phillips tells Christianity Today. “Some things were my fault, some things were his fault. I didn’t take my marriage lightly, and I was sad that it ended. It was such a loss.”
While some fans from her early Christian-music days stick with her, many are unlikely to recognize her at this point in her evolution. And she's careful not to be labeled or categorized as merely as "Christian musician."
"Most people, when they call themselves Christians, are saying they’re right-wing Republicans. Republican and Christian… those aren’t the same things. Christians aren’t right-wing by definition, but most of the world thinks that. If you are going to talk about making art as a Christian, people are going to start thinking you have a political agenda. We have a problem here. I don’t think that’s good. ... The definition of what a Christian is has become very narrow, and nobody but Christians can do anything about that."
While she’s unlikely to be recognized as Leslie Phillips, she's even more unlikely to be confused with that other famous Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis and Johnny Cash. Still, she can be proud of what she’s stirred up. Don't Do Anything is a playful pop cocktail, poured over ice, with salt on the glass and more than just a twist of lemon. To borrow a line from Over the Rhine, “What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.”
This Doesn't Happen Every Day...
I had a remarkable encounter at my neighborhood's best coffee shop: Hotwire Online Coffeehouse.
Hotwire sells copies of Auralia's Colors (God bless them!) And this morning, a woman who had purchased a copy asked me to sign her book for her as-yet-unborn daughter.
Wow.
Even more interesting: She'd already decided to name her daughter Aurelia.
But after she finished the book, she changed the spelling of the name to match my character... Auralia.
Good heavens.
I hope little Auralia grows up to like the book! It'll be waiting on the shelf for her for a long, long time.
I wonder if they'll name their next child after anybody in Cyndere's Midnight...
Introducing... The Curator!
Ladies and gentlemen... The Curator, an adventurous foray into examinations of art and culture, courtesy of the International Arts Movement, with my friend Alissa Wilkinson at the helm!
The Curator is a web publication of International Arts Movement (IAM), which announces the signs of a “world that ought to be” as we find it in our midst, and seeks to inspire people to engage deeply with culture that enriches life and broadens experience.
In keeping with IAM’s belief that artistic excellence, as a model of “what ought to be”, paves the way for lasting, enduring humanity, The Curator seeks to encourage, promote, and uncover those artifacts of culture – those things which humans create - that inspire and embody truth, goodness, and beauty.
Browser, 8/24: Ebert on China; Stillman Still Winning Fans; A True Champion; Faith-Bashing on the Big-Screen
ROGER EBERT GIVES CHINA'S OLYMPICS A BIG THUMB'S UP
Yes, there are criticisms to be made. China, like all nations, is far from perfect. Our Bill of Rights would create an upheaval in their society. There are all the stories about the "fakery" of the Olympics opening ceremony. True, but the ceremony was showbiz, which since time immemorial has shown us what cannot be. The amazing aspect is that so many aspects of the "fakery" were so quickly revealed, and no one lost his head because of treason. Even Zhang Yimou complained a little about some of the instructions he was given.
This is the bottom line: Olympics were a triumph for China. I'm not talking about gold medals, and I'm not talking about politics. I'm talking about appreciation for a glorious world event. About the deeper, richer, more complex vision we have of the nation. They did a hell of a job.
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FIRST THINGS ON THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO
Nathaniel Peters celebrates one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies.
Can't wait for the Criterion version! Apparently my DVD of this film has become quite valuable, as it's been out of print for so long.
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IF MICHAEL PHELPS IS "FROM THE FUTURE," THEN WHERE IS ERIC LIDDELL FROM?
I'm sorry, but there's one Olympic champion who impresses me in ways that Michael Phelps hasn't and probably never will.
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BILL MAHER WANTS YOU... TO PAY GOOD MONEY SO HE CAN MOCK YOUR FAITH
Peter T. Chattaway is scanning the early reviews of Bill Maehr's faith-damning documentary Religulous.
One of the comments to Chattaway's post includes this:
I doubt very much that Maher would make a straight-up documentary concerning religious belief itself. He would need to speak with some of religious thought's leading minds, and I doubt he could hold his own long enough to hold anyone's interest. I had more than a handful of seminary professors who would not only win any argument with him, they would argue his own position better than he could.
If Religulous does focus on religious extremists or the more out-there kind of faithful as the one review says, then it will wind likely wind up being a tale of sneer and mockery signifying not much.
If you want to critique, say, the history of Science Fiction, and choose to interview only a bunch of middle-aged Star Wars geeks who spend all their money on action figures, well... the problem should be fairly obvious. You're not actually criticizing science fiction... you're criticizing immaturity and arrested development.
If Maher really wanted to construct a sincere critique of religious belief, you'd think he would seek out the thoughts of serious theologians, devoted Christian missionaries, seminary students, pastors, or some of the Christian writers who inspire the respect of even those readers who don't share their faith. If he wants to highlight his own insecurities, he'll set himself up against straw men and idiots and people ill-equipped to talk about their faith. His assault on religion will be, in fact, an assault on typical failings in human nature, not an evisceration of faith itself. It sounds like this may be Maher's tactic. If it isn't, let me know.
Personally, I got sick of Maher's sneering sanctimony years ago, and I'm certainly not going to give up ten of my dollars for the privilege of being ridiculed. Unless, of course, he's taken a startling turn and become a humble, thoughtful host who treats his interviewees with respect and grace.
R-rated Question of the Day
Today, I was interviewed by Paul Asay of Focus on the Family's Plugged In. We had a delightful conversation about Christian discernment at the movies. I respect Plugged In's focus on helping us be discerning moviegoers and discerning parents.