Over the Rhine in New York Press
I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be for all the music lovers:
The New York Press has an article about the new Over the Rhine Christmas album!Read more
Why Is "The New World" on 2005 Best-Lists If Malick Finished It in 2006?
The final cut of Terrence Malick's The New World was not finished until January 2006.
It was not shown to critics in Seattle until January 18, 2006.
The cut that was shown to Oscar voters in a rather rushed attempt to get an Oscar nomination was not the finished film.
And yet, critics everywhere are counting The New World as a 2005 picture.Read more
Questions for Alfonso Cuarón?
I'll be meeting Alfonso Cuarón on Monday, and I've got all kinds of questions for him.Read more
So It Begins: National Board of Review's Top Ten of 2006
The National Board of Review, a secretive and suspicious society of film reviewers, have come up with their Top Ten of 2006.
Their best picture pick? Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood's follow-up to Flags of Our Fathers.Read more
"What?! You Mentioned Mormonism?"
A few days back, Christianity Today Movies published an interview with film director Richard Dutcher, who has a Mormon background.
And this provoked a classic reactionary response.Read more
Another Cry of Dismay about "Apocalypto"
From an insightful friend who just saw Apocalypto:
I found Apocalypto truly repulsive. There really is no point to this disgusting movie. Unfortunately, it appears to justify everything negative we've heard about Mel's predelictions. I still haven't seen The Passion, but now when I do, I'll be unable to view it without a lot of baggage -- the result of watching Apocalypto. ... Something's wrong with Gibson. It's pretty sick. ... I cannot fathom how anyone could bring themselves to recommend it, but I suppose I'm in for a surprise come opening day. The Variety review and Rolling Stone review are head-spinners.
The Perilous Road of Engaging Our Culture
On Friday, I spoke to a class of English literature students at Seattle Pacific University. I told them about my life at the movies, about the varoius warnings I've heard from Christians over the years about the dangers of movies like... oh... The Empire Strikes Back, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, and The Story of the Weeping Camel.
My primary goal in sharing my experiences with them was to encourage them to bravely venture forth into the art of popular culture, as a way of learning the way that our neighbors see the world, but also to venture into the art of other cultures, as a way of learning to understand and love people who see the world very differently than us.
But many of us, growing up in Christian communities, are taught something very different. We are taught to fear our own culture, and foreign cultures are portrayed as especially dangerous. We are often given the impression that contact with, and exposure to, people with different values and belief will contaminate us in some way. Thus, we end up cultivating a culture that is insulated, defensive, naive, and and fearful.Read more
Twins! Congratulations to Geoffrey and Melody.
This was a scene at Geoff and Melody's house just a few weeks ago. You can only see four people on that couch... but there were, in fact, six people on that couch. Two of them weren't quite ready to be born.
But now, they're here. The twins have been born!
I've been through a lot with these two since we first met during freshman orientation at Seattle Pacific University in 1989. The adventures they've had, the courage they've shown, the love they lavish upon each other and their children... they are one of the great testimonies of God's faithfulness in my life. I am so grateful for them. And this is just the beginning of even greater adventures.
Congratulations, my friends. May God bless this time, and all of the exciting years ahead of you.
Reactions to "Apocalypto"
UPDATED: Some friends of mine over at ArtsandFaith.com have just seen Apocalypto, yet another film I couldn't see due to ice and snow this week.
Here are a few things they've said:
Wow. This is the most violent movie I've ever seen. People die in some extremely graphic, horrific, unimaginably nasty ways. If you thought The Passion was brutal, well, some of the killings here are even more explicit than the scourging at the pillar sequence. ... Visually, it's admirably detailed and there are some truly powerful scenes. ... FWIW, I'm a big fan of both Braveheart and The Passion; I have a high tolerance for violent content, and I appreciated both those movies immensely despite their brutality. This one, though, was extreme even for me.
And then...
It's not that I think the carnage is unnecessary to the story. But I'm wondering if this story is worth the carnage.
And then...
WOW!
...
You know that great American film we've been waiting for for the last 5...10 yrs! This could be it.
...
I strongly suggest trying to set aside everything you know about Mel Gibson before seeing this film.
...
This is possibly THE Most violent film ever made, it certainly takes violence to a whole new disturbing level. Its often times very crude and disturbing in a nearly unwatchable way....But with that being said. Its messages are extremely subtle and magnificiently powerful.
UPDATE:
More responses:
The violence in Apocaylpto felt like a cheap and manipulative device to up the tension.With the almost constant bloodletting, I was tense and tight throughout the whole movie.
And:
It's not that I think the carnage is unnecessary to the story. But I'm wondering if this story is worth the carnage.
And then, Peter T. Chattaway:
It's good to see what Mel's done with the profits from all those sold-out church-sponsored screenings of The Passion, isn't it?
Huh.
Mel Gibson has a thing -- a big thing -- about brutality. William Wallace's climactic disembowling in Braveheart, the dozens upon dozens of terrible blows inflicted upon Jim Caviezel's Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, and now, in the obviously well made and extremely visceral Apocaylpto, all kinds of gougings, clubbings, belly-guttings, stabbings, disembowelings, animal attacks, ritualistic beheadings and tapir testicle- chewing are served up start to finish. And it's gotten to be a bit much. Really.
...
The more I watched Apocalypto the more this opinion sank in, and I just got sick of it after a while. It's like Gibson and his co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia sat down and focused on creating a story that would heap on every ghastly form of torture, subjugation, mutilation and death known to or imagined by the most malignant Mayan psychopaths of all time. And because it's mainly a mind-of-Mel film, I didn't believe in the story or the characters or anything else. I just wanted it to be over. It enabled me, in fact, to see fresh virtues in the movies of Nancy Meyers.
Apocalypto is not schlock. It shows again that Gibson is nothing if not a totally go-for-broke, whole-hog, get-it-right filmmaker. He's done an admirable job at recreating a rich, exotic, predatory world. The casting, costumes, set design, cinematography, cutting -- all of it is of a very high order. But to what end?
Perhaps my favorite line, from Ed Gonzalez at Slant:
Mel Gibson is sick, but his new film profits from his weakness.
"The Nativity Story": Your Reviews
Since snow and ice have kept me from the Seattle press screenings of The Nativity Story, chances are you will see the movie before I do. (I'm going to try to catch a Saturday or Sunday matinee.)
If you see it, tell us what you think of it. The reviews in the mainstream press are wide-ranging, from ridicule to raves. I know at least one Seattle church has rented out a whole theater for an early screening tonight. Is your church planning anything?
Post your review in the Comments below. I'm looking forward to your impressions.Read more