{"id":2808,"date":"2005-05-18T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-18T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/05\/trailer-time\/"},"modified":"2005-05-18T11:45:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-18T11:45:00","slug":"trailer-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/05\/trailer-time.html","title":{"rendered":"Trailer time!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

1.<\/a> I know it\u2019s been out for a while now, but I finally caught up with the latest Batman Begins<\/a><\/i> trailer. I\u2019m excited. It brings back fond memories of Frank Miller\u2019s Batman: Year One<\/a><\/i>, but it also looks like it will be very much its own thing. And, as one who was disappointed by all<\/i> of the big-screen Batman movies<\/a> \u2014 except for the animated Mask of the Phantasm<\/a><\/i> (1993) \u2014 I sincerely hope that Christopher Nolan, whose earlier films Memento<\/a><\/i> (2000; my mainstream review<\/a>; my Christian review<\/a>; my article on memory movies<\/a>) and Insomnia<\/a><\/i> (2002) were pretty darn good, will be the one who can finally produce a film worthy of the character.<\/span><\/p>\n

2.<\/a> Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit<\/a><\/i>. This is just too cool. Discovering Nick Park\u2019s The Wrong Trousers<\/a><\/i> (1992) during one of Mike & Spike\u2019s animation festivals 12 or 13 years ago was one of the happiest moments of my moviegoing life. Also way up there was the moment when I returned to the festival with my friend Byrun (and perhaps others), just to introduce him to the film, and watched him laugh oh-so-heartily. I don\u2019t expect this new film to surpass that one \u2014 I didn\u2019t think A Close Shave<\/i> (1995) surpassed it either \u2014 but I do love these characters.<\/p>\n

3.<\/a> It doesn\u2019t open for another year, but apparently they\u2019ve already released a teaser for Ron Howard\u2019s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code<\/a><\/i>, which pompously claims that the film is about \u201ca secret that could change the course of mankind forever.\u201d Yeah, whatever.<\/p>\n

I happened to read Dan Brown\u2019s book last summer on a three-day Greyhound trip back from the Cornerstone festival, and I posted some thoughts on it here<\/a>. Several of the book\u2019s assertions I recognized to be patently false \u2014 such as the claim that there are gospels in the Dead Sea Scrolls \u2014 and since I know next to nothing about art history and not much more about medievalism, I suspect there were many other falsehoods that I missed, too.<\/p>\n

But never mind all that fine-tuned nit-picking. The entire novel is flawed to the core because it rests on two contradictory premises. First, it presumes that Jesus was merely human, not divine; second, it presumes that, if Mary Magdalene had been married to Jesus, this would somehow make her a receptacle of the \u201csacred feminine\u201d. But if, as the book asserts, there is nothing particularly sacred about Jesus, then why would there be anything particularly sacred about the woman who was allegedly married to him? Or, to put this differently, why does everyone in the story make such a big deal about the bones of Mary Magdalene but show no interest in what happened to the body of her husband?<\/p>\n

Ah, but that raises yet another fundamental flaw in the novel. The novel proposes that, if the bones of Mary Magdalene were ever discovered, then centuries of Catholic dogma and tradition would be undone. (The novel is not interested in Orthodoxy at all.) The obvious problem here is that, as far as the Catholic and Orthodox churches are concerned, they already have the relics of Mary Magdalene<\/i>. Indeed, my priest \u2014 who named one of his daughters Magdalene \u2014 tells me he has a piece of this saint in his home. (And here I thought having a first American printing of T.E. Lawrence\u2019s Revolt in the Desert<\/a><\/i>, dated 1927, was pretty cool.) So the idea that ancient relics would undermine traditional faith doesn\u2019t wash.<\/p>\n

Now, you can certainly be skeptical, as I am sometimes inclined to be, that the relics currently held by the churches are the genuine article. But it boggles the mind that anyone who would be skeptical about that<\/i> claim would treat the claims of The Da Vinci Code<\/i> with any credulity, simply because they come packaged in a page-turning mystery novel or a film starring Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. I know it\u2019s been out for a while now, but I finally caught up with the latest Batman Begins trailer. I\u2019m excited. It brings back fond memories of Frank Miller\u2019s Batman: Year One, but it also looks like it will be very much its own thing. And, as one who was disappointed by all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTrailer time!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"1. I know it's been out for a while now, but I finally caught up with the latest Batman Begins trailer. I'm excited. 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