Another "Facing the Giants" controversy
Facing the Giants, the film that has stirred up some chatter because it was rated PG for its open references to Christianity, is stirring up even more trouble for cultural commentator and writer Dick Staub.
Staub dared to suggest that, even though Christians had been involved in making and supporting the film, it was still mediocre and unsatisfying. In fact, his words were even stronger... he called it"another artistic embarrassment in the name of Jesus."
Staub is learning an important lesson: If Christians made it, we cannot publically admit that it is anything less than glorious. He also needs to learn that if a movie moves people, that qualifies it as being of surpassing excellence, and wobetide the man who dares say anything critical about it.Read more
Rosenbaum on "World Trade Center"
At The Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum weighs in on World Trade Center:
“THE HOLOCAUST IS ABOUT six million people who get killed,” Stanley Kubrick reportedly said to screenwriter Frederic Raphael in the late 90s. “Schindler’s List was about 600 people who don’t.” Assuming the quote is right, Kubrick’s speaking about the Holocaust in the present tense and about a movie made half a century later in the past tense suggests something about his priorities.
They probably aren’t the priorities of Oliver Stone, whose ruthlessly circumscribed World Trade Center isn’t about the 2,749 citizens of 87 countries who got killed in the 9/11 assault on the Twin Towers and who are mentioned only in a title when the movie’s over. It’s about two citizens of one of those countries who survived, John McLoughlin and William Jimeno, both real-life Port Authority policemen. The story of what they experienced is gripping and inspiring, but however true it is to their lives—it’s hard to imagine any two men on the planet could be as conventional as the filmmakers make these heroes—the way it’s told restricts what the movie can say about the larger tragedy. ... "
Orsay!
It was just an ordinary mid-summer day in movieland, with a bunch of chatter about the box office and the Oliver Stone film's underwhelming opening weekend, when what should appear at Cinematical, but the sort of news that makes serious movie buffs sit up and pay close attention:
China's Hou Hsiao-hsien, director of The Flowers of Shanghai, Cafe Lumiere and Three Times (one of this year's best films), is back at work. And this time, he's filming in Paris... with Juliette Binoche.Read more
Talladega gripes!
Watch this clip from MSNBC and tell me which participant in this converation makes you laugh the most... unless they make you cry.
To start with: How many times does the reporter call it Talladega Fights?
It feels like watching a preview for a film called: Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest.
Remember this: They look for the people who are most outrageous to face off with each other. They're not interested in including anyone with an intelligent point of view.
Steven Greydanus joins CT Movies!
CT Movies is...
Captain Mark Moring
Peter T. Chattaway
Carolyn Arends
Lisa Ann Cockrel
Camerin Courtney
Todd Hertz
Josh Hurst
Ron Reed
and now...
What a team!Read more
Visitor!
So, I'm sitting here preparing for my interview, jotting down some notes, and look what crawls out from under the couch!
I love New Mexico!
Today's Interview: Eugene Peterson
Today, I'll be sitting down for a conversation with Eugene Peterson, who provided us with a wonderful, personal paraphrase of the Bible called The Message.
In preparing for the interview, I've been deeply moved by this interview conducted by Mark Galli at Christianity Today last year. Reading it has been one of the highlights of my week. I encourage you to take the time to read the whole thing... especially the stuff about churches. It's convicting, bold, disruptive stuff. And I love it.
By the way, if you have any questions for Rev. Peterson, and if you can post them here in the next couple of hours, I may include them in my interview.
Glory at the Glen Workshop
I am sitting in the sun on the back porch of an apartment at St. John's College in Santa Fe, watching the fog lift from the hills, a parade of thunderclouds undecidedly meandering among the peaks, hummingbirds buzzing and zigzagging through the branches of the pear tree next to me, towhees scuttling through the shrubs, bees ecstatic among purple flowers, and my yellow legal pad full of first-draft fiction--the opening chapters to the sequel for Auralia's Colors--on a blue, hand-painted bench beside me.Read more