“A new study by The Nielsen Co. found that the PG-rated movies with the least profanity made the most money at the U.S. box office,” reports the AP. The study shows that parents carefully screen for language in the movies they bring their kids to see. Also web chatter helps most movies, but apparently it doesn’t help horror movies.
Sure, Pick the Book of Judges
Andree Seu blogs on how easy it would be to adapt Biblical stories for the screen.
“Okay, so what does a Christian film look like?” one of you asks over lattes at Starbucks, your pens poised above blank sheets of paper.
“It tells it how it is,” replies Johnny. “The Christian is nothing if not a prophet of truth.”
I wish I could remember the title of a book one of my college English professors said was the best story from Jesus’ time period he had read. It something like Ben Hur, a story about a man or boy who lived around 30 A.D. and meets Jesus at one point in the story. It was juvenile fiction, but I don’t remember any more than that.
The Glorious and Humble King
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14 ESV)
We celebrate the Lord’s coming with His kingdom this Easter, and isn’t it remarkable how his triumphful entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was nothing like the description above. While on earth, Jesus was more humble than we tend to be, but in the spiritual background, he was the one would be praised by all creation, even the rocks. “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38 ESV).
His kingdom is here now (Luke 17:20-21), like a pitch of leaven worked throughout the dough, and it will not pass away. So what earthly agenda should we put aside in humility? What preceive right should we forfeit in deference to the Lord’s authority? How could we have the mind of Christ knowing His kingdom is near?
Man in himself had ever lack’d the means
Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop
Obeying, in humility so low,
As high, he, disobeying, thought to soar:
And, for this reason, he had vainly tried,
Out of his own sufficiency to pay
The rigid satisfaction. Then behoved
That God should by His own ways lead him back
Unto the life, from whence he fell, restored;
By both His ways, I mean, or one alone.
But since the deed is ever prized the more,
The more the doer’s good intent appears;
Goodness celestial, whose broad signature
Is on the universe, of all its ways
To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none.
Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,
Either for Him who gave or who received,
Between the last night and the primal day,
Was or can be. For God more bounty show’d,
Giving Himself to make man capable
Of his return to life, than had the terms
Been mere and unconditional release.
And for His justice, every method else
Were all too scant, had not the Son of God
Humbled Himself to put on mortal flesh. (from Dante’s Paradise)
Hearing Anne
Here’s an account of listening to Anne Lamott read her writing to a crowd of 500-600 in St. Louis, Missouri. Craig, the blogger, says he’s a fan of her, but has his disagreements.
No Recommended Reading Here
Some British literature professors say literature has no value, according to a new book by Rónán McDonald, The Death of the Critic. It’s “a polemic in favour of the critic as a ‘knowledgeable arbiter.’ In McDonald’s account, it is a reason for sharp regret that no one cares any more about ‘the critic.'”
In a section on blogs, online reviews, and the prominence of reader groups, McDonald “argues that the demise of critical expertise brings not a liberating democracy of taste, but conservatism and repetition. ‘The death of the critic’ leads not to the sometimes vaunted ’empowerment’ of the reader, but to ‘a dearth of choice.'” Not that critics just have better taste than everyone else, that their judgments are purely subject to their whims. Critics should have the knowledge to help us see the value of some books over others. “McDonald proposes that cultural value judgements, while not objective, are shared, communal, consensual and therefore open to agreement as well as dispute. But the critics who could help us to reach shared evaluations have opted out.”
Blogging Will Continue Once Morale Improves
I’ll try to put something substantive on the blog later today, but let me counter Lars’ sickness posts with a declaration that I have arrived. My life is indeed complete now. My people inform me that I have donated one gallon of blood (O negative) through my local non-profit org. Blood Assurance. There’s no need to thank me.
Liveblogging my flu, Day 2
I felt considerably better last evening, and thought maybe it would all be done by this morning. But I woke up to find myself weak and coughing. Haven’t even had the energy to read much today.
On the upside, I’ve completely lost my appetite.
Posting sick
Sorry, this is all you get from me today. I have the flu. It appears to be the famous “24 hour bug,” because I started feeling lousy last night about this time, and I’m coming back now. But not enough to produce a decent post. I’ll be back tomorrow, I trust.
If I’m too tired to spring forward, can I just crawl?
Not a bad weekend, in spite of the fact that it was the debut of a new, absurdly early date for the start of Daylight Saving Time, which, according to the link in this earlier post of mine, doesn’t necessarily save any energy at all. Back when I was a lad, (in the time of Henry VI, Part 1), you had some consolation for losing an hour of sleep in the knowledge that spring was coming soon, and it was getting warmer). Now we’re making the change in the dead of winter (though today got up to about freezing, and the rest of the week looks good. But spring it ain’t).
I got together will my old buddy Chip on Saturday, and we went out to lunch at a marvelous place called The Fifties Grill. I’d heard about it but had never tried it. As you’d expect, the ambience is Ron Howard/Henry Winkler, and the waitresses wear poodle skirts. But the hamburger I enjoyed was better than anything I remember getting in a grill during the Eisenhower administration. If you live in the Twin Cities, you can find the place in Brooklyn Park, hard by Brookdale Mall. (Of course if you live in the Twin Cities, you probably knew it long before I got the hint.)
Then we went to a bargain theater to see “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.”
My evaluation: Fun, but dumb. But you knew that.
It’s nice to see a movie where they actually manage to talk about America without irony. But I’m too obsessive to just take the thing at face value. I had a couple problems with it.
One is, I just don’t like Nicholas Cage. From the first time I saw clips from “Raising Arizona” (which I’ve never watched), I haven’t liked his flat, dull eyes. I would not buy a used car from this man. He’s probably a great guy for all I know, but when you’re an actor, your eyes are a big deal.
Secondly, I’m too much of a writer to entirely enjoy a movie that plays that fast and loose with logic. I’ve talked about “movie logic” before. Movie logic is when somebody leaps a car over a river in a film. It all happens so fast—vroom, they’re gone—that you don’t have time to stop and think, “Would a vehicle with a heavy front end and a light back end actually stay horizontal through a jump like that, or would the front end dip?” Movie logic is when something explodes in a building, and the hero runs out and beats the fireball to the exit. It doesn’t make sense in the real world, but you just saw it happen right there on the screen, so you buy it.
In the National Treasure movies, they come up with these obscure clues (traveling all over the U.S. and Europe to follow them up), and once they’ve read them, Nicholas Cage says, “This has to mean X.” So they run off to check out X, and of course he’s right.
In real life, a clue that esoteric could probably mean a hundred things. But the process of actual and trial and error would slow down the movie, and the task of producing clues that actually make sense would tax the creativity of the writers. So they fall back on movie logic.
And it works, in terms of entertainment.
But it’s lazy, and I don’t like it.
I also finished reading The Face by Dean Koontz. I’ve done enough Koontz reviews in this space, but I just want to say that, although it doesn’t bear close examination theologically, this is an intensely, though subtly, Christian book. The payoff was very elegantly done, and I wish I’d written it.
Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films
Arts and Faith Forum has a list of 100 “Spiritually Significant Films” and you are invited to make nominations. Look at the list and maybe you’ll want to register with the forum to make a nomination for another one. I don’t know if ranking is up for revision. Most of these appear to be foreign films, so you may not have seen many of them. I have seen “Babette’s Feast,” which was slow, quiet, and a pretty good story. “The Mission” was similar that way with beautiful music to boot. Have you seen any of these films? Do you think there’s another one to add to the list?