Joel Miller, author of Lifted by Angels: The Presence and Power of Our Heavenly Guides and Guardians
Hollywood doesn’t understand frighteningly awesome angels because they don’t believe in a frighteningly awesome God. They see God mostly like Odin from Marvel’s Thor, wouldn’t you say? But as Joel says, the industry based in Los Angeles needs to overcome their biases at least once.
Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
While the movie successfully explores themes of forgiveness, authenticity, and the question of God’s existence as it follows one man’s journey to find God, it struggles to offer a clear explanation of the gospel.
I’m sure Blue Like Jazz is funny, and it’s probably uncomfortable. Hopefully, it’s also rewarding. Here’s the trailer.
Donald Miller talks about the themes of the movie and the criticism he’ll probably get on his blog. He says, “I get it. Criticism is hard. And not only this, churches get criticized for stuff that happened hundreds of years ago. I’d venture to say most criticism is unfounded and ill-informed. It can also be spiteful and hateful. So, I don’t want to be lumped in with the haters.”
Thomas McKenzie does One Minutes Reviews (which usually aren’t one minute, but hey!) and he talks lightly about the movie. This puts a positive spin on it for me.
“The aggregate product coming out of Hollywood is something that can be deeply offensive to people like myself, and I think Christians have sat back. … Now we’re realizing instead we need to engage, and we need to make quality work,” says Jon Erwin, director of October Baby, currently in theaters.
There was an awards show the other day, wasn’t there? I must have been making another mediocre omelet again. I tell you, ever since I watched videos of Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin making omelettes, I have tried to make my omelettes better than ever. I’ve succeeded in part, but I usually make only a decent one, sometimes a flavorless one. My egg and cheese bagel this morning was pretty good, despite the smoky scent all over the bagel. I know. You hate it for me.
Anyway, lists like this on worst gadgets ever used in movies strangely appeal to me. Here’s their take on the main character of The Terminator movies, the robot itself: “Now we know what you’re thinking. That the Terminator is actually an incredibly cool ‘gadget.’ But look: he shouldn’t even be in his own films. Kyle Reese clearly says that ‘things with moving parts’ cannot be sent back through time, in order to explain why he doesn’t have a ray gun, and why the robots don’t just send a big bomb back through time to kill John Connor. So how did the Terminator get back to the present day? ‘He’s covered in human skin.’ So why not just cover a ray gun in human skin? Do these people/cyborgs take us for fools?”
I think it’s generally agreed that I’m the conservative blogsphere’s go-to guy for all matters Norse, so I felt a sort of civic duty to see the movie Thor this weekend, and to let you know what I thought of it.
Briefly put, it’s pretty good. Considered on its own terms, as a fantasy/comic book/special effects actioner, it succeeds extremely well. It doesn’t scale the heights of Batman Begins or The Dark Knight, but I’d rank it somewhere near the top. Kenneth Branagh’s direction elevates the script (not a bad one at all), and the cast is uniformly excellent. Chris Hemsworth, in the title role, will doubtless break many female hearts, and he ought to become a big star if there’s any justice in Midgard.
Thor is the son and heir of Odin (Anthony Hopkins), the high god of Asgard. Asgard, in this version (more or less based on the Marvel comic books) is explained in S.M.D. (Standard Movie Doubletalk) as one of nine dimensions, or alternate universes, or something. The “gods” are able to travel to the other “worlds” by means of the bridge of Bifrost, explained as a sort of organized wormhole (Bifrost, the rainbow in Norse mythology, is pronounced “Bye-frost” in the movie, although the proper pronunciation is “beef-roast”). Long ago the gods prevented their great enemies, the Jotuns or Frost Giants (who in the movie do not resemble in any way the big, bearded oafs of the myths), from conquering Midgard (Earth). Because of their memories of this war, humans came to regard them as divine beings.
As the story begins, Thor is about to be officially named Odin’s heir in a great ceremony in Asgard. In the midst of this, Jotun spies make an incursion into Asgard. Thor, enraged, leads a punitive expedition into Jotunheim, killing a number of the frost giants. Odin, who loves peace, appears to rescue Thor and his friends when they’re about to be overwhelmed by numbers. He berates Thor for his impetuousness and banishes him to earth (he lands in New Mexico), also sending his mighty weapon, the hammer Mjolnir, down with him. Continue reading Movie review: Thor
What do you do when you’re recovering at home from a medical test, still under the influence of a mild sedative, and have stupidly left your Kindle at the office?
If you’re me (which is admittedly doubtful) you go to Netflix and stream a Norwegian movie you’ve heard interesting things about. That movie was A Somewhat Gentle Man, directed by Hans Petter Moland and starring Swedish actor Stellan Starsgård (in a marvelously underacted performance).
Titled En Ganske Snill Mann in Norwegian (I’d have translated it A Rather Nice Man myself, but this translation is good), A Somewhat Gentle Man was marketed as a “hilarious” comedy according to the DVD box. I think it’s more of a quirky, updated Noir, including large doses of black humor. Instead of the angular shadows of classic Noir, this is a Film Gris. The whole world of Ulrik, the film’s antihero, is gray, from the gray Norwegian winter sky, to the gray concrete buildings of Oslo’s seedier side, to the gray basement room he rents (almost indistinguishable from the prison cell from which he’s just been released) to his gray clothing and gray hair. Occasional flashes of color, especially red, compel the eye and signal moments of hope in his life.
Freshly released after 12 years’ incarceration for murder, Ulrik quickly reunites with his old underworld buddies. But he’s not eager to go along with their plan for him, which primarily involves his killing the man whose testimony got him convicted. Basically he wants a quiet life, to work as a mechanic and avoid confrontations (he’s almost quintessentially Norwegian in this). Most of all he wants to reconnect with his son, who is now living with a pregnant girlfriend who has no wish to have a felon grandfather involved in her coming child’s life.
As is expected in such stories, sex is a complicating issue. Ulrik’s sexual encounters are relatively explicit, and possibly the least titillating you’ll ever see on film. The whole movie has a gritty, realistic look. The women generally aren’t very beautiful, and Ulrik’s participation is as often as not merely dutiful, to avoid giving offense. His old and ugly landlady acts as if she’s doing him a favor. He’s more enthusiastic about coupling with the secretary at the garage, from whom he’s been warned off by the owner (who speaks only in paragraphs, and very fast).
In all these relations Ulrik takes a passive role, until his refusal to murder the “snitch” for his gangster buddies forces him to take personal initiative, which—not surprising in a modern film—brings about what we’re meant to regard as a happy resolution. I share James Bowman of The American Spectator‘s skepticism about the moral congruity of the ending.
Do I recommend the movie? Not generally. Certainly not to younger viewers, or to anyone offended by foul language, nudity and sex scenes (especially unappealing nudity and sex), or violence. Still, if you care for this sort of thing, and are interesting in seeing a quirky take on classic themes, A Somewhat Gentle Man contains much of interest.
I approach another weekend with some anticipation. I suppose I’ve gotten spoiled, but the last three weekends have all held good surprises for me. Three weeks ago I did the radio show with Mitch Berg and James Lileks. Two weekends ago my car broke down, which wasn’t pleasant in itself, but it allowed me to spend a blessed time with my former boss, and to get (on top of the unwelcome work) my car’s four-wheel drive fixed at a very reasonable price, so that I’ll be ready for the next snowstorm (which is surely coming). And last weekend I got ushered into the wonderful world of the Amazon Kindle.
God may well have decided I’ve had enough treats for a while. But there’s no harm in hoping.
Transposing my thoughts to lower case gods, here’s the trailer for the upcoming Thor movie:
Now I’ll admit it looks kind of cool. I may even go to see it.
But I’m an amateur Viking scholar, so I can’t help but be bugged by some things. The particular thing that troubles me most is the image of Odin (Anthony Hopkins) talking seriously about peace.
That’s no Odin I’ve ever met in the sagas. Continue reading Upcoming: The weekend, and a Thor movie
Who’d have imagined that the best knights and armor movie since Braveheart (discounting The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a fantasy) would come out of Sweden, of all places?
Arn: The Knight Templar (available on DVD and Blue Ray) is an adaptation (much truncated, I understand) of a Swedish television miniseries based on a trilogy of novels by Jan Guillou. The hero is Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterkvist), a young man who was raised in a monastery, but trained in arms by a monk who was once a Knight Templar. Returning to his family, he falls in love with a neighbor’s daughter, Cecilia (Sofia Helin). Unfortunately her father’s political obligations make their match impossible. But the two young people manage to get together long enough to conceive a child. The ensuing scandal results in her being confined to a nunnery, and him being sent to join the Knights Templar on crusade in the Holy Land.
The storytelling requirements of fitting all this into the 133 minute run time make for a lot of intercutting and flashbacks (you do have to pay attention), but we follow their separate trials and and struggles for the next twenty years. The focus is on Arn, who becomes a legendary fighter in the Holy Land, one whom the Muslim armies recognize, fear, and respect. He even becomes a friend of Saladin, a circumstance which saves his life (what would fictional crusaders ever do without Saladin to pull their escutcheons out of the fire?). After their time of punishment is complete, Arn and Cecilia are reunited and married, but one final challenge remains for his warrior skills. Continue reading DVD Review: Arn: The Knight Templar
Unkrich: First of all, we don’t make movies for kids, we don’t think of it that way. We try to make good movies, period. We know that kids are going to be part of the audience, and we have a responsibility to make it appropriate for them, but we’re not trying to create quote-unquote kids’ entertainment. Yes, I think a lot of kids’ entertainment has gotten more antiseptic over the years, and parents have gotten more and more protective — and for a lot of good reasons — but I think it has been too much.
When you look back at the origins of children’s literature and entertainment, you have stuff like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which are very dark, and they were about teaching kids about the world, and that there are bad things about the world, and gave examples of kids overcoming those bad things. We’re not trying to teach anybody any lessons in this film, we don’t have a message, but we do put characters in situations where they do behave in a very emotionally truthful way, and I think it’s good for kids to see something like that.
This is a great movie and based on a true account of Scottish POWs in Japan during WWII.