There’s never a shortage of discussion on this blog about same-sex marriage, but what about the problems facing men and women united in holy matrimony? These struggles are real and growing more problematic every day, affecting believers and nonbelievers alike. Fireproof, a film by the makers of the surprise hit Facing the Giants, takes on the societal issues of infidelity, addiction to porn, and divorce while offering a message of hope and redemption.
Blogger Tim Challies attended a screening the other night, and despite being stood up by the movie’s star, Kirk Cameron (Cameron’s flight was late), he offered this positive assessment:
“I enjoyed Fireproof and am excited to know that, come September 26, a film with such a good message will be debuting on hundreds or thousands of screens across America. It is a refreshing film with a refreshing message that speaks boldly to a culture infatuated with immorality and convinced that divorce is freedom. I am grateful for this film and pray for its success.”
Tim adds, “While the movie deals with difficult and serious themes, it does not take itself so seriously that it cannot pause for a few laughs now and again.” You can read the rest of his review here.
The 1967 Warren Beatty film Bonnie and Clyde was a turning point in American cinema. It celebrated violence, it thrashed virtue, and it asked the audience to love murderers and criminals.
Most critics found Bonnie and Clyde empty and trashy. The crusty old New York Times guy, Bosley Crowther, then one of the most influential American critics, decided that Bonnie and Clyde failed to meet his narrow, simple-minded, painfully respectable standards. It was too violent, and he thought the love story of its doomed, hare-brained title characters was “sentimental claptrap.”
This claptrap is commonplace now, and it’s not just in “violent” films. It’s also a part of the brainless fodder films we love and adore. Read this short essay about Pauline Kael, one of the first critics to champion Bonnie and Clyde, ushering in the triumph of low-quality movies over good ones, and see how her high criticism created a world where Will Smith is as good as it gets:
Not long before she died, Pauline Kael remarked to a friend, “When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.”
It’s summertime and time once again for the creative people of Pixar to present us with yet another great animated film. Opening in theaters today is WALL•E, the story of the last robot on an abandoned Earth. WORLD’s Megan Basham interviewed the film’s screenwriter and director, Andrew Stanton, asking him how WALL•E represents his singular vision as director, something Pixar has tried to accomplish in each of its films:
“Well, what really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that’s not always our priority. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was trying to say—that irrational love defeats the world’s programming. You’ve got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.
“With the human characters I wanted to show that our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we’re not really making connections to the people next to us. We’re not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.”
It’s interesting to note that many reviewers think WALL•E is a movie about environmental issues. “People made this connection that I never saw coming with the environmental movement, and that’s not what I was trying to do,” Stanton told WORLD. “I was just using the circumstances of people abandoning the Earth because it’s filled with garbage as a way to tell my story.”
Read the entire interview and Megan’s review here.
Sure, summer is the season of huge Hollywood box-office blockbusters, but it’s also a good time to gather the family at home, pop some popcorn, and watch an old favorite or a flick you might have missed in the theaters. In the latest WORLD, Megan Basham suggests a handful of movies for home viewing that will please both children and adults, from the two National Treasure films to Steven Spielberg’s 23-year-old The Goonies. As for the latter, Megan writes, “It’s like being able to share the fun of Indiana Jones with your kids without all the monkey brains and eyeball soup.”
King Lear dies of a broken heart. Willy Loman commits suicide in his car. Antigone hangs herself prison. Macbeth is beheaded by his righteous enemies. These are mostly noble deaths, given the circumstances of the stories in which they happen. But history and literature is filled with its share of ironic and ignoble deaths, too. People don’t always die in the way we want them to, and here’s a list of ten recent film characters who suffer that kind of fate. Thank the The mostly tasteless and sometimes thoughtful Zeitgeist rag called New York Magazine. The list includes Vincent Vega of Pulp Fiction and Donny of The Big Lebowski, as well as someone who’s not quite fictional. Be aware that New York Magazine can be graphic.
The Times asked its readers, “After a poor box-office showing for war-related movies, how could a Hollywood studio possibly entice audiences into seeing the next one?” The question is, unfortunately, a false dilemma, assuming that these movies are worth watching and assuming that people don’t watch them because they’re marketed poorly. My answer: Stop making agitation-propaganda films and start making good films that don’t get distracted with unveiled dialogue about American foriegn policy. Or at least unveiled dialogue that contradicts what most people think. Read the Times’ readers comments here. They are mostly sensible.
This is a post about movies and music. The movie is The Singing Revolution, a documentary about how the people of Estonia won their independence by, well, singing. A press release about the film says it “tells the extraordinary story of the non-violent path Estonia took to free itself from Soviet occupation.” Watch a trailer for The Singing Revolutionhere. Read a review here.
Songs are a tremendous and integral piece of just about every political movement, from Plato’s time (he spoke once about how the man who controls the music is the man who controls the people) to the French Revolution (”The Marseillaise”) to the Civil Rights Movement (”We Shall Overcome”) to the Two-Headed Clinton Monster (”Don’t Stop”).
All this got me to thinking about how powerful and visceral and deep and persuasive music can be, which got me to thinking about worship, and how just about no church in the world can strike a healthy balance between emotional power and theological power. A church always seems to slide, quite far, one way or the other. Is there a solution? Discuss.
On May 22, Indiana Jones returns to where he belongs: the movies. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull took nearly 20 years to make, but only 79 days to film.
The story is set in 1957, and this time Dr. Jones goes up against cold-blooded, Cold War Russkies […] instead of the Nazis he squashed like bugs in previous installments.
This long Vanity Fair piece has some nice pics by Annie Liebovitz and is just about long enough to keep you reading until May 22. Enjoy. The question: Films with such high expectations are often deflating. What might Lucas and Spielberg do to ruin this fourth installment?
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