The Great or Not-so-great Gatsby?

May 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Words and images are two different media, so a novel and a movie are two different kinds of art forms.  Sometimes a good written story can be told visually, but if what makes the novel good is its language, that may not translate at all into motion pictures.  I don’t know if the movie version of The Great Gatsby (in 3-D, no less!) is worthy of Fitzgerald’s novel or if it might possibly be a good movie in its own right.  I haven’t seen it, so you tell me.

But I was struck with this example of a genre in its own right, the movie review, by a master of the form, Rex Reed, who eviscerates the Gatsby movie with razor-sharp words: [Read more...]

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Tweaking movies for China

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Hollywood talks a lot about artistic freedom, but the prospect of reaching the vast market that is China trumps concerns like that.  To get past the still-Communist censors, movie-makers make all kinds of changes. [Read more...]

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The moralistic approach to filmmaking

April 23, 2013 By 19 Comments
Movies that are explicitly Christian are often moralistic and preachy, with characters that are stereotyped and idealized.  As such, they often don’t display the gritty conflict between sin and grace that Christianity is all about.  Christian movies aren’t the only films with these kinds of faults, as  Jackson Cuidon shows in his review of 42, about Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball.

[Read more...]

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Lent and Vocation

March 14, 2013 By 54 Comments

Daniel Siedell, in the course of discussing the Russian film The Passion of Andrei Rublev (1966), about an icon maker who returns to his craft when he helps a child, makes some important connections between Lent and Vocation.  (Notice too how Luther’s doctrine of vocation–with his focus on loving and serving the neighbor–is different from that of other theologies.)

Lent is an observance that reveals our weakness and failure in remarkable ways. Each year we vow to “keep” it better, each year we fail, often in unexpected ways—either in the mounting sense of pride we experience in our self-sufficiency, dedication, and discipline or in the despair that our failures somehow reveal God’s true assessment of us.

And so it is appropriate to consider vocation during this most sensitive time of the year, a time in which are reminded that we are unable to set aside those things that so easily ensnare us, like food, drink, Twitter, and sin. Lent reminds us that the Christian, as Martin Luther says, “lives not in himself, but in Christ and neighbor,” in Christ through faith and in the neighbor through love. Lent reminds us just how much we live in ourselves. And our work is one of the most explicit ways in which we do so. [Read more...]

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Evangelicals among biggest moviegoers

February 22, 2013 By 34 Comments

A new Barna survey has found that evangelicals go to more movies than just about anybody. [Read more...]

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The Academy Awards

February 22, 2013 By 9 Comments

In light of the above post, we should take the opportunity to discuss the Academy Awards that will be given out Sunday night.  As someone who goes to the movies far more than the 3 times per year that is considered a large number, I actually think that this year has a stronger field than usual.  Who do you think will win, and (what is not at all the same question) who do you think should win?  (I list the major nominations after the break.) [Read more...]

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Getting bin Laden: The Movie

January 14, 2013 By 6 Comments

I saw Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Earlier, the word was that it would be released just before the election, which had conservatives up in arms, fearing that a cinematic treatment of President Obama’s victory was Hollywood’s plot to get him re-elected. But there is nothing triumphalistic about this movie. Opponents of the war on terrorism will find lots of material in scenes of torture and brutality (as in killing terrorists in front of their children as they cry). And yet supporters of the war on terrorism will also find lots of material in the opening recording of phone calls from World Trade Center victims right before their deaths (talk about 911 calls), the continuing acts of terrorism throughout the movie, and in the heroism of both the troops and the CIA operatives who brought Osama bin Laden to justice. I think Zero Dark Thirty is what an objective treatment of a controversial issue by a work of art looks like. [Read more...]

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A movie about Pontius Pilate

January 10, 2013 By 7 Comments

This sounds like it has the potential to be a terrific movie.  Mike Fleming has seen the script:

Brad Pitt is circling the title role in Warner Bros‘ Pontius Pilate, the drama about one of history’s most vilified figures. The studio acquired a script by Woman On Top scribe Vera Blasi with Mark Johnson producing through his Gran Via banner. Pitt is not committed, but it could well move that way quickly.

I revealed this project last summer, when the studio acquired Blasi’s script. I got hold of a draft and it’s very strong stuff and has the makings of a compelling period big budget film. This script follows the evolution of Lucius Pontius Pilate from the sensitive son of a Roman Knight into a ferocious soldier whose warrior exploits make him a general and puts him on a political track under the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Promised a military governorship in Egypt, Pilate is instead assigned by Tiberius to become the prefect of Judea, at a time when Jerusalem was a cauldron of religious tensions between various factions of the Jewish faith. Pilate veers from the political fast track into the express lane to hell and historical infamy. Rather than a straight ahead Biblical film, Blasi’s script reads almost like a Biblical era Twilight Zone episode in which a proud, capable Roman soldier gets in way over his head. His arrogance and inability to grasp the devoutness of the citizenry and its hatred for the Roman occupiers and their pagan gods leads him to make catastrophic decisions. All of this puts him in a desperate situation and in need of public approval when he is asked to decide the fate of a 33-year old rabbi accused by religious elders of claiming he is King of the Jews. [Read more...]

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The conversion of Steve McQueen

January 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Southern Gospel Yankee has an interesting account of how the late actor Steve McQueen(a.k.a. “the King of Cool”) became a Christian.  (The narrative is the familiar one of a flagrant sinner getting witnessed to, “accepting Christ,” and becoming a changed person.  The details, though, are intriguing.)

via Greater Grace: A Story of God, Redemption, and Steve McQueen | Southern Gospel Yankee.

 

HT:  Nicholas

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Hollywood’s explicitly Christian movie

January 7, 2013 By 44 Comments

We saw Les Miserables, which has to be the most explicitly Christian film that I have seen come out of contemporary Hollywood.  There are more meaningful unembarrassed references–in dialogue, songs, and plot elements–to God, Jesus, salvation, grace, prayer, and Heaven than in most of the overtly Christian productions that I have seen lately.

The ex-convict Jean Valjean has received the forgiveness of Jesus, thanks to a priest who shows him an inexplicable grace.  In response to that forgiveness, Valjean lives a life of sacrificial service to others.  His good works are a direct fruit of the Gospel.

Inspector Javert speaks of God also, but, as he says of himself, “I am of the Law.”  He is all about personal righteousness, justice, and salvation by works.  He does not believe that sinners can or should be forgiven.

This all gets caught up in the wretched state of French society and with a revolutionary movement, led by idealistic students.  (This is not to be confused with the French Revolution of 1789.  France had several successful and unsuccessful revolutions in the 19th century.)  But pay special attention to the words of that final song.

The movie is intense and very moving.  It’s a musical, not just in the sense of  big musical numbers (though there are those) but in the sense of an opera, with virtually all of the dialog being sung.  The film is realistically shot–the battle at the barricade is tremendous–but that doesn’t necessarily go with the stylized singing.  I think it works better on the stage.  So see the movie, see the play, and, above all, read Victor Hugo’s novel, one of the greatest in literary history.

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