• T. Thorn Coyle and Solar Cross reiterate their support for Pagan chaplain Patrick McCollum in the wake of his official statement regarding the recent Ninth Circuit Court ruling.
• The seemingly annual article about Salem trying to branch out from its Witchy image has been posted. Unsurprisingly, tourism is the city’s largest money-maker, bringing in an estimated $99 million per year.
• The Austrian highway Druids return! This time they are peeved that the budget that was paying them to use their “mystical divining rods” to discover “negative rays” has been eliminated. This, they say, is a “fatal mistake.”
• I present to you “Slapping Medicine Man” from the Native American sketch comedy troupe 1491s.
• Defenders of the Law of Attraction (aka “The Secret”) tell us why James Arthur Ray‘s situation doesn’t undermine the belief/practice. I catch a slight whiff of “no true Scotsman” in this defense.
• Over at Patheos.com Drew Jacob goes into greater depth as to why he decided to shut down the Temple of the River.
• The perils of following “psychic” tip-offs.
• Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir writes about the coexistence of pagan and Christian belief systems in Iceland.
• Patch covers this past weekend’s St. Louis Pagan Picnic, billed as the largest free Pagan festival in America.
• Is Arizona’s drive to eliminate ethnic studies courses the “final reduccion?”
• Local Christians in Idaho are in an uproar over a Ganesha statue made by a local artist, displayed as part of a local art-on-loan program.
• I09 spotlights “Americus,” a web series and soon-to-be-published book that takes a fictionalized look at the Harry Potter controversy, and how some Christians mobilized against the books for promoting “witchcraft.”
• Looks like Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” will be coming to HBO.
• A big welcome to Kari Tauring, who has joined the PNC-Minnesota staff.

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.

Swords, Sandals, and Sex: I know I’ve been talking about Starz new series “Camelot” quite a bit lately, so today I’d like to highlight an excellent essay concerning its stylistic predecessor at the cable network: “Spartacus.” Academic and Patheos.com columnist P. Sufenas Virius Lupus has recently watched both seasons of “Spartacus,” and files this examination of how the show treats sex, history, and religion at his personal blog.

“However, my main critique of the newer Spartacus isn’t its history, nor its sexuality (although more will be said on the latter in a moment), it is precisely the matter that Rome got right (even though some bits weren’t quite right in terms of timing, e.g. the taurobolium in the first episode)–the religious aspects of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and its successors is very off. In the 1960 Spartacus, the character of Crassus (a member of the First Triumvirate) says to the very young Julius Caesar at one point that he’d like to obtain a pigeon for a sacrifice, to which Caesar replies that he thought Crassus did not believe in the gods; Crassus replies, “Privately, I believe in none of them; publicly, I believe in them all!” And this is precisely the matter that the newer incarnation of Spartacus goes wrong on–it makes the matter of the gods too much about “belief,” when that is not what pre-creedal religion’s spirituality was based upon.”

The entire essay is fascinating reading, and I’m glad P. Sufenas Virius Lupus took the time share his analysis. Popular entertainment does influence how we engage with history, and the spate of films and television set in the ancient world that depict the protagonists as modern-style atheist/agnostics (“Agora,” “Troy,” “Clash of the Titans”) do a disservice to  the adherents to pre-Christian faiths.

American Gods Coming to HBO: While fan expectation is ramping up for the epic fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” there’s another project in development for HBO that may interest modern Pagans quite a bit. It seems there’s been serious movement on bringing Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” to the cable network.

“As HBO prepares to unveil its epic-sized series adaptation of George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones this Sunday, the payweb has begun talks to acquire the Neil Gaiman novel American Gods to be developed into another fantasy series. The project was brought to HBO by Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and it was brought to them by Robert Richardson. The plan is for Richardson and Gaiman to write the pilot together.”

Robert Richardson, for those who don’t recognize the name, is a famous cinematographer who has worked with directors like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Since the show features an assortment of Pagan gods and goddesses in a variety of contexts, it will no doubt draw quite a bit of comment and interest from modern worshipers/followers/devotees of said gods. The book has been matter of conversation within our communities since it was first published in 2001, mostly centered on the treatment and depiction of various deities. I expect those conversations will heat up once again when production gets underway.

James Arthur Ray Mistrial Request Denied: For those who’ve been following the trial of James Arthur Ray, accused of negligent homicide when a sweat lodge ceremony went horribly wrong and killed three people, this past week has been particularly event-filled. Ray’s lawyers filed for a mistrial after it was revealed that a preliminary report by environmental investigator Richard Haddow was not sent to them. However, prosecutors claim that the situation was inadvertent, and that the report’s finding were repeated in other material sent to the defense team.

“Monday’s motion by Ray’s legal teams cited the omission of environmental investigator Richard Haddow as a means for the state to withhold an alternate cause in the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore and Liz Neuman after a Ray-led sweat lodge at the Angel Valley Retreat Center on Oct. 8, 2009. The state’s response, however, signed by co-counsel Bill Hughes, states that information about the construction of the sweat lodge, with its off-center rock pit and lack of air circulation, had been provided to the defense in other forms. Further, the motion contends that the evidence contained in Haddow’s report is not exculpatory, but rather further proof that Ray is guilty of the three counts of manslaughter raised against him.“

If the evidence truly is damaging rather than exculpatory, it can only mean that Ray’s defense team is grasping at straws trying to derail this trial by any means necessary. A desperation perhaps incited by last week’s damaging decision by Judge Darrow to allow testimony regarding previous sweat lodge ceremonies that Ray has held. In any case, there won’t be a mistrial, and instead defense will be granted extra time to analyze the data and witness.

“While Ray’s attorneys pushed for a mistrial, prosecutors argued an appropriate remedy would be to allow the defense to interview Haddow and gather its own witnesses if it chooses. Darrow didn’t immediately elaborate on his decision to allow the trial to move forward, but said he would issue an expanded ruling later.”

Blogger LaVaughn, who’s been following the trial in-depth, says that “the Haddock email was a red herring to get a mistrial and now they’re stuck with it.” Meanwhile, public opinion and the press have not been on Ray’s side. CNN recently profiled the life of Kirby Brown, one of the three killed in the 2009 sweat lodge incident, describing a horrific death where she “wheezed and gurgled and foamed at the mouth.” Even if Ray somehow manages to escape all this with no legal repercussions, his “brand” will be permanently tainted by these deaths.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

“There are lots of other good things in the movie, but they play more like vaudeville acts than part of a coherent plot. It’s a film you enjoy in pieces, but the jigsaw never gets solved. I liked it, but “The Princess Bride” it’s not.”

There are many good small things in the film. Michelle Pfeiffer is charming as the witch Lamia, and the Greek chorus of dead brothers are entertaining throughout, but the film itself is something of a mess and the romance lays the syrup on so thick diabetics should be warned. Though it has been some time since I read Gaiman’s original work, I don’t believe it was so openly mushy and sentimental. That more than anything else separates this film from the modern classic of swashbuckling fantasies “The Princess Bride” (which it has been compared to several times), a film that wasn’t afraid to add a generous dose of cynicism, sarcasm, and doubt (not to mention a script as tight as a steel drum).

Perhaps the greatest sin of “Stardust” is that it doesn’t trust the audience to make connections for themselves, everything is explained and narrated to a point where the characters don’t have a chance to expand and breathe. We all know that fairy tales involving dashing heroes will (generally) end up with a happy ending, but most of us don’t watch for the pay-off happy ending, we watch to see how well the storyteller convinces us that it might NOT work. In “Princess Bride” we are shown an array of characters with their own fully-formed motivations helping, hindering, or confusing the main quest for true love, in “Stardust” every plot point seems like just another tick on a check-list to “happily ever after”. “Stardust” isn’t a bad film per-say, like I said before there some bright moments that can charm you, but I was hoping for a classic and ended up with a trifle.

On a completely different note, I started watching the second (and last) season of the HBO television drama “Rome”, which recently came out on DVD. I don’t have cable, so it has been quite awhile since I visited these characters, and I must say that I had forgotten how fresh “Rome” is in its ambition and scope. The aftermath of Ceasar’s death (which happened at the end of the first season) is handled very well (though history is always fudged a bit in this show), and as always religion is everywhere in the series.

“If the past is a foreign country, then ancient religion may be its most exotic locale. The HBO series “Rome,” which returns for its second season on Sunday, is hardly “Fodor’s Guide to Paganism,” but by venturing off some well-worn cinematic paths, the show has given the worship of the gods a generous treatment in a genre dominated by stories of gladiators and the advent of Christ. The creators of the serial drama, which focuses on the power struggles during the last days of the Roman Republic in the first century B.C.E., wanted to portray Roman religion not as a doomed prologue to Christianity but as a vibrant and meaningful part of everyday life.”

Religion is taken so seriously that when a character commits a major act of blasphemy in the second episode, you feel truly shocked by the action. It is a shame that “Rome” will not see a third season (due to the staggeringly large budget), but we can at least enjoy the two soap-operatic seasons of the Roman Empire’s rise.
]]> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2007/08/review-stardust-and-rome.html/feed 0 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2007/03/stardust-trailer.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2007/03/stardust-trailer.html#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:40:00 +0000 Jason Pitzl-Waters http://patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2007/03/stardust-trailer.html The trailer for the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel “Stardust” has been released, and can now be found on YouTube.

With the magical themes and adventures within the land of Faerie, not to mention Gaiman’s already enormous popularity among modern Pagans, I’m sure many of my readers will be looking forward to this one. No doubt you’ll hear more about the film on this blog as news and interviews start to surface.
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