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Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
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With apologies to: Sundance, which begins this month; films (like The Brothers Bloom, Scorsese’s Shutter Island, the Coens’ A Serious Man) which I’m already certain I’ll be seeing; and any number that haven’t started production or can’t afford to promote themselves so as to be on the radar six, even 11 months out.
Ten Most Intriguing, in ascending order (with release month, as of now):
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Oct.) – The Roald Dahl story in stop-motion, via Wes Anderson, whose increasing obsession with detail may just find its muse in animation.
Star Trek (May) – Can J.J. Abrams fashion a rousing contemporary action spectacle from the corpse of a TV-show franchise?
Funny People (July) – Judd Apatow cashes in his blank check from 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up on a Terms of Endearmentish tale of comedians, and enlists Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, and Eric Bana (who began as a stand-up in Australia).
Public Enemies (July) – Dillinger & a nascent FBI get the Michael Mann treatment. Johnny Depp & Christian Bale.
The Lovely Bones (Dec.) – “Hey, it’s me, Peter Jackson. I can make movies for grown-ups, too!”
Tetro (?) – Francis Ford Coppola trains his sites on another Italian family.
Where The Wild Things Are (Oct.) – Can a compelling feature film be made of the spare, precise children’s masterpiece? Spike Jonze thinks so.
Tree of Life (?) – Who’s in it, what’s it about? Doesn’t matter, it’s Terence Malick. (Also stars Brad Pitt.)
Inglorious Basterds (Aug.) – Quentin Tarantino makes good on his promise of a WWII action movie. Also stars Brad Pitt.
Avatar (Dec.) –James Cameron returns from a 12-year vacation. That’s more than enough to mitigate the motion-capture 3D.
and
Reasons I'm Not Looking Forward To
The Watchmen – Just what we've been waiting for, a depressing superhero movie! Brilliant deconstruction of the genre, set in an alternate 1985, arrives about 20 years too late. Fanboys go rabid; everyone else can stay home.
Wolverine – The last X-Men was truly awful. No thank-you to another go-round with this sort.
Angels and Demons – It can’t be worse than DaVinci Code, can it? Let’s not press our luck.
Terminator Salvation – Another sequel sans Cameron. What with the big robots, I’m already confusing it with Transformers 2.
Land of the Lost – Take 70’s kitsch; add Will Ferrell and digital effects. Serve re-heated and lukewarm.
Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 – Cannot possibly improve upon the original.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Alternate title Transformers: We Actually Take Giant Talking Robots Seriously.
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra – Knowing being half the battle and all, all the knowledge I need is this: Stephen Sommers directs.
A Christmas Carol – Dickens gets the Beowolf treatment at the hands of Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey.
2012 – When the Mayan calendar ends, so will we. Thanks to Roland Emmerich, who already attempted to destroy the world in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, and failed.
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Thursday, December 11th, 2008
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I’ve taken Anglican communion and worshipped at an Anglican church for five years now. At first, it was a mystery to me why it engages me better, as an adult, than the kinds of church services I attended as a child.
On the most elementary level, a more orthodox and ancient mode of worship circumvents my critical nature. Sitting in a typical Protestant service (of any denomination or style), I find myself mentally re-writing and editing the music, the announcements, the sermon.
The music is too professional, or it’s not professional enough. The sermon went long, and it ignored the context of the scripture it drew from. Communion was rushed. The baptism distracted from the sermon. On and on. So I sit in my seat and wait for the events of the service to present themselves to me, to meet with my approval. I consume church. It is as if the very nature of Protestantism (whose root is, inescapably, “to protest”) is a cancer in my spiritual character.
( why this isn't important )
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Monday, December 1st, 2008
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"Let Down", Radiohead
"California Stars," Billy Bragg & Wilco
"Transatlanticism", Death Cab For Cutie
"Sing", from Sesame Street (1974 children's-voices version)
"We Need a Little Christmas", Angela Lansbury, et. al. from the cast album of Mame
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Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
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...country-music group, or trailer park?
Sugarland
—
Rascal Flatts
—
Alabama
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Friday, November 14th, 2008
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We continue to pray for healing but still have a hard time accepting that it isn't a reflection on our faith that God isn't answering our prayers the way we'd like. How do we believe that the best is possible, but not make our trust dependent on a particular outcome? Death doesn't discriminate, and it isn't the final victor, but it takes and it takes and it takes and what do we see of the other side? How can we even imagine a world without our parents?
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Friday, October 10th, 2008
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Sam had a rough night. He ran a fever, and wouldn't sleep more than about an hour at a time. This means, of course, that neither his mother nor father got any sleep at all.
The last dropper of medicine was administered, and I rushed out to procure more. I trudged in, found the item and brought it up front.
The college-age kid behind the counter asks, "So you having a good day so far?"
Yeah, dude. I'm in a Walgreen's at 4:30 in the morning, in my houseshoes, buying children's Tylenol. I'm having a great day.
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Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
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In Lars and the Real Girl, one character asks another, "How'd you know that you were a man?" Well, it's not like you're one thing or the other, okay? There's still a kid inside but you grow up when you decide to do right, okay, and not what's right for you, what's right for everybody, even when it hurts...
Like, you know... you don't jerk people around... you don't cheat on your woman, and you take care of your family... and you admit when you're wrong, or you try to, anyways. That's all I can think of... it sounds like it's easy and for some reason it's not. Like the perspective in David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, this is the base-line for responsibility.
Why is it still too much to ask?
If you haven't seen Lars, you really should.
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Monday, September 22nd, 2008
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... 4 unwatched Powell/Pressburger films
... the new TV on the Radio album, Dear Science
... being silly at somebody else's wedding
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Saturday, September 13th, 2008
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David Foster Wallace was found dead by his wife yesterday. He hanged himself.
I shouldn't be devastated by this. People close to me are sick and hurting.
Death is not the exception, though. And for those whom I know have hope, death isn't the last word. Regardless, none of us gets to escape from it; but giving up seems so selfish.
And DFW, man... I don't know him at all. But he had the words, you know? The world can't possibly be a better place without him in it. That it wasn't, for him of all people, enough to keep going?
Even the best of us is less than the sum of our selves.
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Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
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Normally, I'd name a list of movies that I'm looking forward to, and my reasons for each. But looking over the season's slate, I realized that I'm much more certain of what I will not be seeing, and why. So, I give you
The most notable Fall/Winter movies I’m least interested in seeing:
Defiance – It’s World War II, and Daniel Craig and a bunch of refugees take to the woods. Another glossy, rote drama (and sporting that guarantee of boredom, Based on a True Story) from Ed Zwick, who last visited upon moviegoers The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond. Like those, sure to be full of earnest speeches and neat, timely sacrifices. How do these kinds of movies escape from television?
Revolutionary Road – Leo and Kate, together again! Only this time, it’s their marriage that’s sinking. Based on an acclaimed 1961 novel, which I read last year in anticipation of the movie and– despite it being well-written –detested. As a movie, it will serve to trot out tired suppositions of the boomer generation, suppositions now themselves institutionalized and suspect: namely, that widespread access to birth control and the abandoning of marital obligation have resulted in greater freedom and happiness. (It also reveals, shocker!, that you can be good-looking and still unhappy; yep, it’s basically Mad Men: The Movie). Wow, people used to be so repressed! Aren’t we sophisticated now?
W – Oliver Stone mines the headlines, and lots of recognizable actors get to impersonate administration figures. I’ve had more than my fill of these people in real life; why on earth would I want to pay money to see them blown up to larger-than-life?
These are the films which, according to their profiles and the attention they're likely to receive, warrant my strongest objections. My milder ones are too numerous to list.
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Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
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Dune
Ishtar
Howard the Duck
The Shawshank Redemption
Donnie Darko
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
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Hannah was gone (again) this week, so I’ve been day and night dad. It’s not really much more work than it is usually. Work and Sam occupy me, and when I do get a night free it seems everybody else is busy.
I didn’t understand just how solitary a pursuit this would be. I still don’t understand it. My lot’s no heavier, and actually much lighter, than the average parent’s, so I have no right to complain. I don’t treat it like a cloud that’s raining on me, but ignoring it hasn’t worked, either. It’s still there.
It’s like being caught in a vortex— most peaceful at the center (and, in this case, terribly cute and often amusing), but anything else pretty much obliterated or irrelevant.
I don’t think my time would be better spent— or, more accurately, that as industrious I’m not and as undisciplined as I am, that I would be making such great use of it otherwise. Nevertheless, when a friend tells me about the book proposals he’s submitting and revising, I want to cry.
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Friday, August 22nd, 2008
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Hey, a rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t be comfortable with it showing up in the local paper, don’t post it. I don’t care how beautiful or natural it is, or how drunk you were— all it really reveals is how tone-deaf you are to the finer notes of conduct and civility. It’s not becoming; at best, it erodes the respect I had for you, and at worst, it only confirms what I’ve always suspected.
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Thursday, August 21st, 2008
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(As in, stuck in it when I’d much rather be taking a swig from it.)
A few morsels brewing, enough for a small flurry of activity here, should you be so lucky and I that productive. For starters:
Hannah and I were cleaning out our storage, and in going through my files I came across some furtive journal entries from the summer of 1994, from the three weeks I spent in Peru.
I had just turned 20, and I thought my Spanish only passable, but on the flight from Miami I was made the translator for our group assigned to a small church in Piura. With our partners from the church, we walked door-to-door, inviting people to respond to our testimonies. Mostly, I stood and smiled.
What I more remember: Being asked to solo, a capella, during a church service. Eating (good) Chinese food almost every night. How every television was tuned to soccer’s World Cup, which that year was held in the U.S. Peeking in on a makeshift cinema, where Schindler’s List showed on a bedsheet. Dining at the home of the church’s wealthiest family, and drinking my first cup of coffee.
( Read more... )
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
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Is it really an Italian restaurant if it doesn't have an autographed photo of a Sopranos cast member hanging on its wall?
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The Serious Layman is of mixed opinion about mega-churches, and, when he is pressed, he admits to being a skeptic about the spiritual viability of such congregations. What seems most clear to him is that Americans love success, and big churches definitely communicate success. He observes that they also make for great one-stop shopping, offering lots of programs and services to pick and choose from. And the cynic in him also suspects that a single congregation of thousands is easier to attend sporadically and remain only tangentially committed to than a more demanding, fledgling body where one's mere presence is conspicuous.
But he knows some very good, God-fearing people who attend and are involved at big churches, and so he is careful not to assume the worst of them, even as he cringes and blanches at some of these churches' actions. He finds that Protestant churches, in their haste to be accommodating, often times run roughshod over the very things that define and sustain the spiritual life, the things that make Christianity distinctive and invigorating.
In those few months at his local stadium-seater, The Serious Layman confesses he was fairly mercenary. He's comfortable navigating churches, and wasn't under any illusions about that one being a place of permanent residence. No, it was a means to an end, a gateway to a better-fitting church home (a function that lots of churches serve, he's come to see). He can't help but be involved, however, and within a month of arriving he had begun attending a small group and joined the planning committee of one of the post-college ministries. But he knew he wouldn't much be missed if he left, and he found it increasingly hard to worship in someplace that was (that had to be, really) focused on the professional and corporate appearance.
As someone raised in the mainstream of the evangelical culture, the mistakes and machinations of corporate, Protestant churches are painfully apparent to The Serious Layman, and he tends toward criticism and deconstruction. These are, of course, fundamentally Protestant characteristics- to always be protesting, looking for something to re-make and improve; useful impulses, he concedes, but ones that, left unchecked, can result in self-destruction.
The Serious Layman suspects that, in actuality, every congregation of formidable size (which he defines as somewhere north of 200) is actually several different functioning churches, the members self-selecting based on their social status (singles, family, retired, etc.) and their level of commitment. He reiterated: it doesn't matter what church it is, one can never assume that everyone is there for the same reason or has a similar level of commitment. (It continues to amaze him, for instance, at how little money churchgoers, regardless of denomination or tradition, actually give.)
After talking with The Serious Layman, this is what most impressed itself on me: Ultimately, church is not so much defined by the individual congregations, their buildings or attendance, programs or modes of worship, as it is by being the body of Christ. He respects that as a very mysterious and profound thing, and it leads him to ask not, "How does this meet my needs?" but, "When are we most serving Jesus?" Congregating and fellowship are of course two of church's most elemental characteristics, but he claims he's coming to understand how they are more a natural, unavoidable (and happy!) byproduct of church than they are the reason for gathering. "Worship, worship, worship is what it's about," he says, "in all of its forms."
(He begged off there, leaving out the whole 'Emergent church' movement, postmodernism, and his scrapes with them. Some other time, perhaps.)
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Thursday, June 26th, 2008
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Entertainment Weekly has selected 100 “new classics” from the past 25 years (can't hyperlink to it: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20207076_20207387_20207063,00.html). (Why 25 years? Well, that’s about as far back as the average EW reader can remember.)
I found list lacking on several levels. Now, I wouldn’t expect such a list, solicited and then culled from the submissions of magazine staffers, to reflect my own personal taste. But that doesn’t excuse some of the more egregious choices— both inclusions and omissions.
( why didn't they ask me? )
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Joanna's visiting, and Marnie's over. Sam's in bed, and we're flipping channels waiting for, oh, So You Think You Can Dance or something. Return of the Jedi is on Spike, and the rebels are on Endor, approaching the generator.
Hannah: Now, are those little people?
Marnie (quickly, as if to correct): No, they're Ewoks.
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The place sold. All that's left is the closing. I hear the new owners find the garden "a detriment" (funny, that's how the teenage-me felt, too). They will certainly raze the house itself. It will, in a short time, bear almost no mark of what it has been. I think I never want to see it again.
Why can't I leave most of my memories well enough alone? These are the things I'd rather think of as they were, not as they are.
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