Category: Books and Film

Sitting here in the hospital room with my son, I have to endure endless hours of kid-TV. There are two cardinal values underlying all of these shows: (1) things work out when we all work together; and (2) you can achieve your dreams if you only believe. These values in moderate doses and in relation to other values have some merit. However, as presented in these shows, they’re treacly-sweet. What I’d like to see is a reality-based kids show. Such a show would teach things like (1) not everyone is worthy of your trust; some people are downright rotten and should be avoided; and (2) you won’t achieve all your dreams; you have limits; get over it and learn to make the most of what you have. Maybe then we’d have less disillusioned teenagers.

I’m a huge fan of the TV show Lost. Tonight I was vigilant enough to catch a blunder. Locke is trapped under a heavy fire door in the hatch. Back on the beach, Sawyer and Jack are playing poker, while a bunch of folks from the island watch — including, in one cutaway scene, Locke! A review and freeze on the DVR confirmed it was Locke, who in the next scene is still trapped under the fire door. I guess the producers need to pay a little more attention to those edits!

Today the family went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’m a huge Narnia fan, so my standards for this film were high. The film didn’t let me down. It is a fabulous, mostly faithful portrayal of the book. The acting and graphics are top-notch, and the characterizations are generally spot-on.

The one place where I felt just a bit — just a bit — let down is in the characterization of Aslan. In the books, Aslan clearly is a picture of Jesus, probably one of the most amazing and deep pictures of Jesus outside the gospels. For the most part, the film captured Aslan’s mix of kingly power and sacrificial love. There is one critical scene, however, where Aslan explains to the children that the White Witch does not know the “deeper magic” of Narnia. In the book, it’s clear that the “deeper magic” isn’t somehow “higher” than Aslan. In that one scene in the film, Aslan almost slips into some kind of panentheism — the “deeper magic” is kind of like “The Force” and Aslan is beholden to it. Later in the film, though, Aslan roars that he was “there when it [the deeper magic] was created,” bringing things more into line with a Christology drawn from John 1.

But that’s just a quibble. Go watch the film, it’s fabulous. And, if you haven’t done so, read the books. They are life changing.

Here’s another new demo of a partially finished song, called “Turn This Around.” I need a third verse, and some other stuff. Parts are a bit rough but I think it’s getting there. I really need a few afternoons to myself to finish all the music I’ve got in my head and partly in the computer. Lyrics:

If I could curse the ground
Of this God-forsaken town
The bottoms of my shoes in the dust
When the wheels are rolling round
You can almost hear the sound
Of oxygen and metal making rust

[bridge]These walls have heard it coming,
Heard the rumors, seen the wars
And they bend against the howling of the wind

[Verse 2]If the weather weren’t so cold
Maybe I wouldn’t feel so old
Cracking like the ice under my feet
And if I can’t bear the load
Of the weight of my own soul
Would that be called a win or a defeat

[Bridge]

[Chorus]Turn this around
Turn this around
Turn this around
It’s going down, going down, going down.

More gems from Augustine’s City of God:

“…each man, like a letter in a word, is an integral part of a city or of a kingdom, however extensive.”

“In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized brigandage?”

From Book IV, Chapters 3 and 4.

Last night my wife and I actually got to see a first-run movie! Hee-hah! We decided to see the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. I love musician biopics. They give musicians like me hope that someone might remember our music, even if us wannabes don’t have the talent to create anything that will really last.

If you aren’t familiar with Cash’s genious for songwriting, Walk the Line will provide a taste of why he is such an icon. You can’t beat lyrics like this, from Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”:

When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, “Son,
Always be a good boy,
Don’t ever play with guns,”
But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die,
When I hear that whistle blowin’,
I hang my head and cry.

Add Cash’s rumbling bass voice and some slapback Telecaster guitar to the mix, and you have a song that that speaks to people’s souls. “Walk the Line” brilliantly shows how Cash the songwriter and performer, along with his eventual wife June Carter, bottled this sort of magic.

The film doesn’t shy away from Cash’s struggles with drug addiction or his infedility to his first wife, nor does it glamorize them. It’s refreshing to see a film acknowledge that drug and alcohol abuse, and sexual infidelity, have life-destroying consquences.

In real life, Cash never fully overcame these demons, but he did find redemption through his faith in Christ (see this CT article for more on Cash’s faith). And this is where the film is most disappointing. In typical Hollywood fashion, the Cash we see on screen finds redemption through “believing in himself” and through romantic love.

For example, the film portrays Cash’s audition for Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, which Cash began by singing gospel tunes. Phillips wasn’t interested in the gospel tunes, which were derivative and commercially unappealing, but Cash persisted, pulled out “Folsom Prison Blues,” and Phillips perceived the spark of genious. This is a true story, but in the film it’s embellished with a contemporary pop psychology platitude uttered by Phillips: “it’s not about believing in God,” he tells Cash, after rejecting the gospel tunes, “it’s about believing in yourself.” I doubt the real Johnny Cash would agree. I think the real Johnny Cash would be the first to say that his ability to accept himself, and to truly love, followed the redemption he found in Christ.

The film’s other great cliche is that romantic love conquers all, and justifies everything. Cash was married with four children when he fell for June Carter, and Carter was married with children as well. To the film’s credit, it shows Carter resisting Cash’s advances early on their relationship. It seems that, in real life, Cash and Carter eventually developed a solid marriage. Yet, the film seems a bit too dismissive of Cash’s first wife, as though the love Cash and Carter eventually come to share washes away the sins of infidelity and divorce. Again, I think the real Johnny Cash would be the first to say that his earlier conduct was not made acceptable by the love he eventually found with Carter.

“Walk the Line,” then, is fascinating for its moments of stark honesty, its window on an important time in contemporary music history, and its grafting of our cultural worldview’s mixture of self-reliance and romantic love onto a story of true redemption.

Consistent with my “I’m-a-parent-and-I-don’t-get-out-much” stage of life, I just recently saw Star Wars III, Revenge of the Sith for the first time. Here are a few thoughts and some questions about the movie. (Warning: if you haven’t seen the film yet, the following discussion contains spoilers.)

Christianity Today’s email movie newsletter includes optimistic comments regarding the upcoming Narnia movie. Says CT’s movie reviewer, Mark Moring,

the clincher for me was seeing an exclusive 10-minute montage, prepared specifically for these [sneak peek] events. I started frantically taking notes about everything I was seeing—the opening scenes with England at war, the children entering the wardrobe, meeting Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, Lucy having tea with Mr. Tumnus, and, among many other things, Aslan, speaking to the children. But a few minutes into the clip, I stopped taking notes and just sat there, mouth wide open, tears flowing. They got it right. I could feel it in my bones.

I have to admit, I’ve felt some ambivalence about the prospect of a Disney-financed Narnia. Will we see little stuffed Aslans in the happy meals at McDonald’s? A “Dawn Treader” ride at Disneyworld? But Moring’s comments are very encouraging. If he’s right, these films could bring to life some of the most beautiful allegories of Christ ever written. I can’t wait.

An aside — if you like movies, check out the Christianity Today Movies.com site, which contains excellent reviews from a Christian perspective, without the silly swear-word-counters and such found on some Christian movie sites. And, if anyone knows how to get a job like Mark Moring’s reviewing movies for a publication like CT, please let me know.

We recently rented the movies Sahara and The Muppets Wizard of Oz. Both of them stank like a wet dog on an August afternoon.

“Sahara” is an adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel. I’ve never read any Cussler, but my neighbor loves him. Cussler is a swashbuckling treasure hunter who writes about swashbuckling treasure hunters. This story has something to do with a lost Civil War ironclad ship that is burried in the Sahara desert, an evil African strongman, a swashbuckling treasure hunter and his goofy sidekick, a babealicious World Health Organization epidemiologist, and a multinational corporation that generates energy or something in a high-tech solar-powered desert facility and burries toxic waste in the underground river that supplies water to the noble nomadic freedom fighters and humble townsfolk that live nearby.

If I lost you at “babealicious World Health Organization epidemiologist,” I don’t blame you. This film takes every stupid buddy and spy movie cliche, chunks them in a blender, throws in a few idotic plot twists cut between absurd exploding chase scenes, slaps on opening and closing credits, and calls it a day. I was really in the mood for a dumb-but-fun action film — some gadgets, a few explosions, the bad guy buying the farm and the good guy getting the girl — but this was just dumb.

The “Muppets Wizard of Oz,” on the other hand, takes the classic Oz story, strips it of everything fun and magical, and refilms it with Kermit and friends using production values that must have Judy Garland & co. turning over in their graves. It used to be that you could count on the Muppets for kid-friendly movies with some witty adult-friendly wisecracks. In “Oz,” the jokes are simply vulgar.

For example, Kermit the Frog, as the Scarecrow, is found by Dorothy in the corn patch attached to a wooden cross. Kermit cracks, “has anyone around here seen The Passion of the Christ?” Wonderful. Now even Kermit is an anti-Christian bigot. Later, we meet Gonzo as the tin man. Toto — inexplicably presented as a three foot tall prawn (yes, a prawn, like a shrimp) rather than a little dog — manipulates some buttons and knobs to get the tin man working. Eventually, Toto twiddles some protrusions on Gonzo’s chest. “Those,” Gonzo says, “are my nipples,” to which Toto replies “I feel so dirty!” How debased! Have we really sunk so low that we need S&M / nipple references in Muppet films? Do I really need to explain this kind of thing to my kids? I feel dirty too, Toto. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.

I could go on and on about the crude and idiotic stuff in “Muppets Oz,” but I’ll spare myself the unwanted Google hits and just suggest you let this one rot on the video store shelves.

This weekend we rented the movie Crash on DVD. It’s a fascinating, but flawed, take on invidual racism in Los Angeles.

There isn’t a “story” to “Crash,” or at least not a single story. Instead, there are multiple story lines, one for each principle character: an Iranian shopkeeper, two white cops, a black TV director and his wife, a black cop and his latina partner, and a white District Attorney and his wife, and two black carjackers. Each character is both racist and the victim of racial prejudice. Their individual stories intertwine over the course of a day, and we observe how each character’s circumstances and attitudes contribute to the racism they express and experience. In this respect, “Crash” is a postmodern film, with many complex stories rather than one metanarrative, and many questions and perspectives rather than one simple resolution. And on this level, the film works splendidly.

If the refusal to establish a simple, predictable Hollywood plotline is “Crash’s” glory, it’s also where the film stalls. “Crash” offers no hope for redemption. It never hints that any of the characters can reconcile their racial and cultural differences. Instead, it gives us the Iranian shopkeeper’s eventual mystical acceptance of his fate, the black cop’s unrelieved guilt, the white cop’s unrelenting conflict over caring for his ailing father. We can escape into unreality, become cynical, or become hard; there are no other alternatives. I would love to see a film as unflinching and complex as “Crash” that nevertheless provides a glimpse of the forgiveness and reconciliation we can find, even over intractable issues of culture and race, in Christ.

If you’re interested in how a postmodern sensibility might play into a studio film, or if you’re concerned about racial reconciliation, take a look at “Crash.”

(A final word of warning — the characters in “Crash” frequently say exactly what they’re thinking; as a film that explores some dark corners of human nature, the characters are often thinking things that aren’t very nice. There are many bad words, including liberal use of the “F***” word, and one brief scene involving a sexual situation. In my view, just about all of this was appropriate to the context of the film, but at the very least, if you have kids in the house, you’ll want to watch this one after they’re asleep and keep your hands on the “volume” button.)