At the end of their 1979 ode-to-nihilism, The Wall, Pink Floyd, after dismissing most of the things we turn to for comfort—school, work, love, sex, politics—as “just another brick in the wall,” gave themselves an out in the album’s last cut, “Outside the Wall”:
“All alone, or in twos, the ones who really love you walk up and down outside the wall. Some hand in hand and some gathered together in bands, the bleeding hearts and artists make their stand. And when they've given you their all, some stagger and fall. After all it's not easy banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.”
Yes, I’m afraid even mainstream nihilists cannot be trusted. Bless them, they need something to live for as much as the rest of us do, and what better refuge from the pointlessness of it all than humanity itself? Whatever else may happen to disappoint you, there will always be someone to love you, someone you can trust, someone to rely on.
Or will there be?
In perhaps the best-made of last year’s films, The Social Network turns the cynical eye of reason on the last refuge of the meaningless: human relationships.
"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them". William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene V
In January of 1936 King George V of England died, leaving the throne to his son David, who reigned as Edward VIII for 325 days before abdicating in order to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. His brother, Albert, then became King George VI and reigned until his death in 1952.
Tom Hooper’s splendidly entertaining film The King’s Speech is the story of Albert’s unlikely ascension to the throne and of help he received along the way from an equally unlikely source.
Most people don't take funny movies seriously. If you want to reflect and be challenged, go see the latest foreign import or dramatic biopic. If you want to escape and be entertained, go see “Due Date” (actually, if you want to escape and be entertained don’t see “Due Date,” but you get the point). In the over 80 year history of the Academy Awards only two genuine straight up comedies have ever won best picture – “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “Annie Hall” (1977). If a comedian wins an acting award, it’s almost always for a “serious” role (see Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg or Mo’Nique).
But more pervasive (and insidious) than any Oscar bias is the outlook of the average theatergoer who might dismiss the emotional power of funny or even shy from comedies that deal with “difficult” subjects. As Christians, striving to pursue Christ in all things, reverence will often seem more Godly than its opposite. But are we missing opportunities to experience truths about Christ and our human condition (all while laughing so hard we nearly pee our pants)?
Continue reading "The Importance of a Good Jihadist Comedy " »
I love good stories. Sitting in a rocking chair on my grandmother’s front porch on a hot Alabama summer night, listening to my father and his brothers laugh about boyhood egg-stealing; cold November evenings in northern Minnesota while the Block kids recall the bringing-the-horse-in-the-house tale; Edith Schaeffer, dropping names and recounting miracles high in the Swiss Alps: it doesn’t get any better than this.
In my opinion Get Low tells a very good story. My delight in it is, no doubt, due in part to the fact that Chris Provenzano’s screenplay is as essentially southern a tale as the ones I used to hear on my grandmother’s front porch. The personalities, events, music, the look and feel of it are as familiar to me as my Dad’s stories of his childhood. I know these people. Indeed I wonder how many of them I may be related to. For me, watching Get Low felt like a visit home.
“Pardon him, Theodotus:
he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the
laws of nature.” George Bernard
Shaw in Caesar and Cleopatra
Shaw has had lots of fans in recent years. “Constructivists”, as some are called, think that knowledge has much more to do with social interactions than reality. The upside to this is obvious: freedom - freedom from taking the tension of our differences too seriously and freedom to go with what one feels is right. It’s a freedom Hollywood has long celebrated in films like Dead Poets Society (1989) and Pleasantville (1998).
Christopher Nolan isn't an old fashioned barbarian, but at the very least he sees a downside to not knowing. For example, consider his latest film, Inception.
Continue reading "Reality Revisited: a review of Inception" »
I know all the good reasons not to.
Yes, the story’s been told before—and better—in "Dances with Wolves." Lonely American serviceman meets beautiful native girl who opens his eyes to a new way of looking at the world and in so doing brings him into conflict with his own people. One of the strengths of Costner’s film is character development; in Cameron’s film everyone screams “caricature” from the male and female leads down to the militaristic bad guy. Not since the old westerns of my youth have I seen a film in which it was so clear who you should cheer for and who you should boo as soon as he/she walks on screen as in "Avatar."
And yes, I’ve heard the reports – and been appalled by them! — of parents naming their children Neytiri (Avatar’s warrior-princess heroine), Pandora (the planet), even Toruk, after the giant winged-steeds of the blue-skinned Na’Vi. It’s like naming your kid Artoodeetoo or Ceethreepio.
And yes, watching "Avatar" does feel like eating too much junk food: it tastes good going down, but isn’t very satisfying. There’s a reason for this.
Continue reading "Laughing with the Devil: a review of "A Serious Man"" »
My name is Russell Newman and last week I learned that I am a Bob Dylan Hobbyist. In honor of the release of Dylan’s thirty-third studio album, Together Through Life, Paste.com dedicated the day of its release (4/28/09) to the man himself. I confidently began their Super-Impossible Brain-Busting Bob Dylan Trivia Quiz. Surely an easy task for a heavyweight fan such as myself – or so I thought. My score: Hobbyist. Barely above the Novice level. Serious Fan was way out of my league.
What’s a man like me to do? Press on, of course. In Dylan’s universe, the only rule is that there are no rules. And with that in mind, let this simple Hobbyist take your hand and show you something strange and wonderful as I tell the tale of my love affair with a movie that celebrates all things Dylan.
The film is I’m Not There by Oregon-based filmmaker Todd Haynes. Since early adolescence I’ve been devoted to Bob Dylan’s music. So naturally, I was salivating when I first learned about a film that would portray his life story. Yet, how on earth could anyone pull this off? The task itself seemed insurmountable.
Every spring thousands of people from all over the world descend on our city. The streets are jammed. Live music pours from any conceivable location. Odd movies appear at the theatres. Strange people wander the streets. For nearly two weeks, South by Southwest takes control of Austin. Is there a place for the casual onlooker in all this madness? Is it possible to participate in SXSW without losing all of your mind, your money, or your sleep?
The answer is: maybe.
But, let’s take it slow. Here’s a short quiz** to get you started:
1. What is this thing they call South by Southwest?
2. Who are these thousands of 22-year-olds in skinny jeans wandering around my city?
It would be easy to say that Revolutionary Road, both the novel by Richard Yates and the recent film from Sam Mendes, is a story about the American Dream, and how it is nothing more than a dream. I’m sure many intelligent movie reviewers have said so. But April Wheeler, played by Kate Winslet, would argue otherwise. The story, from her point of view, is about the tragedy of fulfilling the American dream - about what happens when individuals meet its standards of production and material consumption. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April settle in the suburbs of New York in the post-WWII economic boom and discover that life is hollow, uncomplicated, and uninteresting. Through a series of troubling and violent fights, revealing visits from a madman (naturally the wisest of all the characters), and a tragic act rarely rivaled in contemporary literature or film, April and Frank show us the deadly cost of idolatry. Their lives are spent consuming their careers, their companions, and their culture until the only things left to consume are their own selves.
Continue reading "Read the Book. See the Movie. Read the Book." »
How do you feel about people who are certain? Do you find them attractive, admirable, encouraging? Or do you tend to suspect their character, their motives? How you answer the question may depend more on who you know than what you believe. Often the attractive-ness of certainty depends on who embodies it.
In the opening scenes of his play-turned-film, Doubt writer/director John Patrick Shanley shows us two very different faces of certainty. Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) is the very model of a fifties era conservative. “Every easy choice today will have its consequence tomorrow, mark my words,” she tells us and we almost believe her. Doubt takes place in 1964, shortly after John Kennedy declared “all encompassing, explosive change” to be “the motif of our time.” One imagines Sister Aloysius voted for Nixon. Ironically she is also a strong woman in an era in which strong women simply weren’t welcome. As the principal of The St. Nicholas Church School, she is lord of the fief, quick to make sure her underlings know it.
Continue reading "Suspecting Certainty: a review of Doubt " »
After nearly a year of playing at international film festivals, THE AVIATRIX is finally available for viewing online through The YouTube Screening Room, a unique platform that programs short films from around the world. Enjoy viewing the film HERE --
It's the story of a girl, a galaxy, and the most surprising battle with cancer you've ever seen. THE AVIATRIX is a short film that uses comedy and drama to explore the trials of brain tumors, lawn maintenance, and the far reaching borders of the human spirit.
We hope to drum up as many views as possible in the next SIX WEEKS! Please enjoy the film online and share it with friends!
Additionally, DVDs are now available for purchase at theaviatrix.com.
Have you ever heard the story about Lana Turner? Legend goes that the Hollywood actress (famous throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s) was originally discovered as a teenager by a talent scout at a drugstore in Los Angeles. I like this story. It makes me think that all my dreams could come true just by someone spotting me buying a pack of gum. But God usually doesn’t work quite that way. Success doesn’t come in an instant (Lana’s legend is just that, a legend) and we probably won’t be plucked from oblivion and placed at the center of our dreams. In reality, the meandering road that does eventually lead us to our heart’s desire is more challenging and painful, but also stranger, more exciting, and ultimately more fulfilling than instant success would ever be.
I like to think my friend Jeff Guerrero had a journey to stardom that beats anything Lana could dish out. Back in 2004, Jeff was working firmly behind the scenes on Chalk, a low-budget (and ultimately very successful) Austin-based independent film. The director needed more bodies in the shot, so Jeff was pulled in front of the camera.
Experiences, generally speaking, are more fun when shared. Fundamentally, the reason seems obvious: we're all created in the image a triune God who exists in a constant state of relationship. So, no duh, of course we like to be with people. We're all made to share life.
On a practical level, it's nice to go to the movies with a friend. It's fun having someone to turn to afterwards and say, "Wow, that was amazing," or, "Yikes, that blew, wanna grab some beers?" And, not to discount the latter (which can be great), but the former exchange is generally more fulfilling. Because if the movie's good, if it's really good, then it doesn't just stop with a shared joy. It extends to praise and to sharing that praise with friends and family. I frequently get so excited about some movie, that I want a friend to share in the experience just so we can sit down together and talk about how great the movie is. Case in point: I recently learned that two of my friends had never seen one of my favorite movies ("Sullivan's Travels," a Preston Sturges comedy from 1941 ). I found myself looking at my friends with pleading eyes and saying, "Will you please watch it? For me?"
We just finished watching about thirty minutes of home-edited footage featuring cartoon, Asian, and “Splat”-”Pow” Batmen (and we even saw a clip of Christian Bale from Newsies), and the movie was getting ready to start. My wife, Julianna, and I had decided to get our money’s worth out of the new Batman movie, and watch it at the Alamo Draft House - my preferred venue for all movies. We had ordered our food - a grilled chicken club and an Asian Chicken Salad, were ready for our beer, and were patiently awaiting the start of the movie. As time went on, the pre-previews ended, the previews passed, and the movie began - our food had not yet come, and all around us, people were enjoying their pizzas, cheesy fries, and buckets of beer. Where was our food? It just didn’t seem fair. We wanted justice. We wanted order. We wanted the yearning in our bellies to be satiated. We wanted our food.
Watching The Dark Knight was a lot like waiting on our food for over an hour. We couldn’t keep our minds off the pain, the hurt, the hunger, the injustice. With each new pang of disorder that materialized in the plot, we were sucked in further - waiting for justice, waiting for order, waiting for retribution. Isn’t that why we love the Batman stories? This one was no different in plot than any of the others, but it’s portrayal, acting, and even shot selection lended itself toward a much deeper depiction of evil and thus a higher longing for justice than any of the Batman movies before it.
Continue reading ""The Dark Knight" - A Longing for Justice and Order" »
If a tree falls in the forest and no one understands it, does it only make a noise?
In 1957 Flannery O'Connor discussed the problems of communicating her message to an audience that didn't share her worldview in her essay The Fiction Writer and His World:
"The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock–to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."
O'Connor practiced what she preached; her novels and short-stories are exquisitely-crafted examples of the art of communicating an unwelcome message to the hard-of-hearing.
Writer Cormac McCarthy is a contemporary practitioner of the same art. In ten novels over forty years, he's told violent stories peopled with large, startling characters. In all it's evident that there are distortions in modern life which are most repugnant to him. What's not quite so evident is what his concerns are. Is he, like O'Connor, a Christian voice, crying in the wilderness? Or is he a frustrated nihilist, shouting about nothing?
In The Death of Satan: How Americans have lost the sense of evil Andrew Delbanco puts a new spin on an
old problem:
"A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources for coping with it… The repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our responses been so weak. We have no language for connecting our inner lives with the horrors that pass before our eyes in the outer world."
The old problem? The problem of evil, traditionally seen as philosophical in nature, was defined something like this: God is good and all-powerful, but evil exists. How can the reality of the latter be reconciled with the truth of the former? Despite the efforts of philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (see his God, Freedom, and Evil) fans of the problem of evil insist that its only acceptable solution is for God to disappear, this despite the irony that apart from God the concept of evil itself fades, too.
Continue reading "Redefining an old problem: A review of Atonement by R. Greg Grooms " »
Timothy Keller: King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus
Andy Crouch: Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
Timothy Keller: The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Albert M. Wolters: Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview
Jerry Sittser: A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss
Sally Lloyd-Jones: The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
William H. Willimon: Remember Who You Are: Baptism and the Christian Life
Frederick Dale Bruner: Matthew: A Commentary, the Christbook, Matthew 1-12 (Matthew a Commentary)
