Archive for category Media, Movies and TV
The Man from Earth (2007 Film)
Posted by Erik in Ancient History, History, Media, Movies and TV on January 11, 2012
It was late, and I couldn’t sleep. So as I often do, I was leafing through Netflix. I happened upon a film that intrigued me – Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth.
I had never head of Jerome Bixby, but apparently he was a major writer of episodic and short story science fiction in years past. He wrote some of the seminal episodes of the original Star Trek series: “Mirror, Mirror”, “Requiem for Methuselah.” Apparently, he is pretty influential. (So much to learn.)
In 1989, Bixby lay dying, and he dictated a screenplay from an idea he had in the 1960′s. This is how Netflix summarizes it:
…This provocative film about a professor who reveals to his colleagues that he’s actually a centuries old caveman.
It took nearly twenty years to turn the screenplay into a film, but it was finally released in 2007.
I don’t want to get into the details of the story, but essentially it revolves around a man named John Oldman. At his goodbye party with his colleagues, he reveals that he is a 14,000 year old Cro-Magnon man. The ensuing conversation plumbs the depths of anthropology, biology and even religion.
The entire film takes place within the limits of Oldman’s cabin in some non-descript mountainous region. His companions are all experts in their respective fields, which allows the dialogue to explore all kinds of different implications to Oldman’s tremendous age.
There were a couple of major blunders in the film, like Oldman talking about Columbus and mentioning, “I had a suspicion the world was round, but I still thought he might fall of the edge.” Since the entire “Columbus sailed to prove the world was round” idea dates only to Washington Irving’s biography of Columbus, it is anachronistic.
At one point, the Christian of the group around John is asked which version of the Bible she prefers. She says, “The King James of course. It is a thoroughly modern.” This was actually one of two references to the King James Bible for some reason, and one of many incorrect statements about the Scriptures. The same character says in one scene that she takes every word of the Scriptures literally, and then in another scene says she does not accept the virgin birth or pretty much any of Luke’s narrative of Christ’s birth. There are a number of statements that demonstrate the characters poor understanding of the Bible – all standard academic shlock.
(My impression was that Bixby was more than willing to dismiss the Scriptures and Christians as representative of all religious people. He seems to have an affinity for Buddhism.)
There were a few poorly researched things like that.
What was the point of the story? That was a question that kept coming up in the movie itself, and I felt it never addressed the question properly. In most ways, the film just confirmed the standard, mainstream lines about most fields, including religion and philosophy. It reminded me a lot of “No Way Out” by Jean-Paul Sartre in its setting and its accompanying resolution that life is ultimately fleeting – although the tone was quite different from Sartre’s masterpiece.
But I digress.
I return to my question. What was the point? I think that Bixby’s thesis was two-fold:
1. Human experience advances but we do not improve. Over and over, John reminds his listeners that he encountered war and death everywhere he went. People have always rejected and feared his unaging face.
2. Ultimately, joy is found in our lives. I can’t really expound this point without giving away the ending; but true joy and true pain are still experienced, even in the heart of a 14,000 year old man who should have experienced everything. John is not jaded to the human experience.
There were a lot of unexplored themes that Bixby rushed through – or the director did, I’m not sure. All in all, this movie had a great premise that could have used some revision. Most of the time, the dialogue was actually quite good – if too intellectual for most audiences – but there were also some very slopply expositional moments.
Church Pixar’s Way
Posted by Erik in Church, Media, Movies and TV on December 26, 2011
I am currently reading Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground in my spare time.
Pixar has always fascinated me because it is a company that really should not have succeeded. Even the people who worked at the company doubted their ability to become the powerhouse studio they have become. They literally broke all the corporate rules and did things completely wrong. By all known business principles (in 1986), they should have failed miserably.
Instead, they are an enormously popular animation studio, now part of the Disney corporations, which is responsible for some of the most memorable films of all times. They have created iconic characters, produced brilliant stories, broken technological barriers, and entertained an entire generation of children (and their parents).
What makes Pixar great? They play. The artists and employees of Pixar are the Peter Pans of the animation business – not focused on profits and bottom lines or limitations to their ideas. They play, and in the process they create beautiful things.
There are many ways to “do” church, but most of them are built around structures and systems. We tend to think that a church of a certain name must behave a certain way, must have a certain polity, must employ a certain type of minister. The tried and true methodologies rule. Church becomes an institution. It is solid and reliable, even if that makes it predictable and boring.
True innovators – truly creative people who are willing to play and celebrate and engage on a child-like level – are not considered acceptable leaders for the church. We do not tolerate whimsy and dreaming. There can be no joyful imagination because we already know how to be successful. We already know what works, and if you try new things, they might NOT work; and that would be a great sin.
That is the state of the church world, and to be frank, it is dead wrong. Churches are dying – churches of all denominations and worship styles – because they are failing to engage people on a level buried deep beneath the “adult” surface. They substitute programs, methodology and organizations schemes for true creativity.
Recently, I watched a video of an artist doing a painting at a megachurch. He worked with the canvas, splashing paint and making massive strokes with the brush. Then assistants came and flipped it over, and it was an image of Jesus on the cross. The crowd applauded.
Then I turned on Daystar (a Christian network I swear I will never watch every time I watch it), and I saw another megachurch doing the same thing in their service. I checked Youtube and sure enough, there were dozens of these “wildly innovative” megachurches doing the exact same presentation and getting the exact same responses from the crowds.
That is not innovation. That is not creativity. It is following the fad, doing the “thing that works” because it worked somewhere else. It is doing the same thing in a different place.
True creativity is rare because it is hard to find people who have not had their child-like creativity and imagination beaten out of them. Even among artists, their creativity tends to be formed more by their adulthood than by their childhood.
The church tends to gravitate toward adult and mature forms of art. The popularity of people like Thomas Kinkade (who seems to have painted the same scene about sixty billion times, in my opinion) is evidence enough for that. And if that isn’t enough, turn on a Christian radio station and listen to it for about an hour. All the speakers engage the same way. All the musicians play the same three or four styles.
We don’t do daring things. We do things that are expected of us, that are reliable and safe. We worship at the alter of adulthood.
But to build a congregation like Pixar? Where those with childlike wonder are driving the decisions? Where the power of the moment occurs deep in your being? Where the narrative of the Scriptures enlivens something buried deep inside of us?
In a supplemental audio interview at the end of the audio version of his book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, author Bill Bryson bemoaned the loss of our childhood as an “intensely experienced part of our lives” that we are told to discard entirely in adulthood.
Pixar taps into that intensely experienced part of our lives, those formative years when our minds are free to fly and our dreams transcend reality.
At its core, isn’t spirituality supposed to be about transcending reality? Isn’t there a necessity for imagination and true creativity in the church of Jesus Christ? Doesn’t the imagine allow us to transcend the mundane and expected to see beyond this plane?Shouldn’t there be a flexibility of our rigid rules of adulthood to allow for the work of the one who told us to come unto him as children?
God Save Me from Christian Branding
Posted by Erik in Media, Movies and TV on December 8, 2011
I have seen this so often that I d0n’t even have the words for how annoying it is.
Someone starts out well, with some exceptional resources or great preaching and they get a following. Then, that following prompts them to write a book or create a video or something of that nature. Enough people then buy the book or video to justify a follow-up.
The publishing company then launches a massive marketing campaign for said follow-up, and it gets plastered everywhere. Suddenly, the author’s tweets become marketing-speak to sell the new resource. If the author is a blogger, everything seems to require a reference to said resource. The name of the resource (or marketing tagline) becomes a noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Every word of their mouth or keyboard is promotion for said item.
Then I tell Facebook and hide their posts and I click the unfollow button on Twitter.
Because you’ve become one dimensional and shallow, no matter how deep and powerful you once were. The only thing that matters is hocking the product, and that means that no matter how much you might protest of your commitment to people and such, the almighty dollar has just taken over.
Sorry. You might be awesome. Your new resource might be awesome. But I will probably never know because the marketing blitz and overblown, shameless self-promotion has forced me to completely tune you out.
Guy on a Buffalo
Posted by Erik in Classics, Media, Movies and TV, Social Media, television, Videos on November 12, 2011
Recently, I happened upon one of the greatest series of YouTube videos and I just had to share. They are drawn from a 1978 film called “Buffalo Rider” but the bluegrass band Possum Posse has mashed up clips to original tunes. The result is “Guy with a Buffalo” and it is worth fifteen minutes of your time.
See You in a Couple Days
As this is being published (I wrote it last week), my wife Nichole is in surgery to have the remainder of her thyroid removed. She has undergone a similar surgery back in 2009 and it is hard to believe we’re here again.
Here are some videos for you to watch while we wait to see how the procedure goes:
Enjoy.
Worship Isn’t About Music
It is about our heart. Sadly, this is how our music can sound to God’s ears when we are more focused on “our thing” instead of His.
Do not fear the ‘tech’
Posted by Erik in computers, Definitions, General, History, Media, Movies and TV, software, television, Things We Shouldn't Discuss on June 27, 2011
Thanks be to God, we have here neither free schools nor printing presses, and I hope we will not have any for a hundred years, for education has sent into the world doubt, heresy and sectarianism, and the printing press has propagated, in addition to all these evils, attacks against governments! -Sir William Berkeley (1605-1677), Governor of Virginia
Technology takes time to get use to. There is a bit of a delay between the implementation of something that has tremendous potential and the realization of that potential. Then, there is another delay between the realization of that potential and the integration of it.
Think of how drastically the moveable type printing press changed the world. The Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment were direct results of the printing press. This change did not happen overnight, and even as the change was happening, there were a lot of people abusing and misusing the new technology.
The same can be said for virtually all technology that changes how we live: the automobile, the jet liner, the telephone, the personal computer, the internet, the mobile device. These technologies are still in their infancy.
When Sir William Berkeley condemned the printing press, it had not yet spurred on the Age of Revolution. It was a century before the American Revolution. Many of the most subversive books of our culture had not yet been written. The printing press had not even begun to open the doors for heresy and sectarianism.
But along with the dangers came the tremendous benefits. The printed book gave millions access to information that had been hidden from them. Knowledge, wisdom, and information flowed freely in a way that we take for granted today, and which is dwarfed by the speed in which we share information now.
People condemned the telephone as dangerous to the family unit. The Internet was immoral and dangerous (parts of it still are!). Translating the Bible into ‘vulgar languages’ was condemned by clergy and monarchs alike. Every invention that has changed the world has been condemned at some point.
Technology itself is not evil. They are tools, and tools are only as good or evil as the hands that wield them. What can be used for evil can also be use for good.
Music that Lets the Heart Lead the Way
This post appeared in a slightly different form in 2008. I am reposting it because I believe it is still true. The content of this post may be offensive to some Christians, and that is definitely not my intent, so if you are offended, please accept my apologies.
I’ve never been a big fan of prom songs for Jesus. I have tried to like a lot of the mainstream Christian contemporary music, and there are a few artists out there who really strike me as incredible – Keith Green, Michael Card, Rich Mullins.
For the most part, however, the Christian music market feels recycled, bland and uncreative. Either the musicians are stealing phrases from their “secular” influences or they’re producing pure vanilla music in the name of creativity. It is an epidemic that has made me something of a cynical old crank when it comes to Christian music.
(And lest you think I am picking on only ‘contemporary’ Christian music, I feel this way about a lot of the hymns in the hymnbook as well. There are plenty of derivative, conventional tunes and predictable, mediocre lyrics in there, so there’s no reason to focus only on contemporary music.)
What Is It?
How many love songs to Jesus do we really need? And how many musicians are actually satisfied playing Gsus, C2, D2, Em7 OVER AND OVER AGAIN?
I understand the rationale behind praise and worship music – they are writing songs in recognizable, easily sung settings. I even understand the desire for contemporary Christian artists to “sound like” secular counterparts, but where is the creativity of the Spirit?
When I listen to something so tremendously creative like Starkindler or Hidden Face of God – in my opinion, two of Michael Card’s finest albums – or the demos of The Jesus Record by Rich Mullins, I come away frustrated by all the wanna-be’s who populate the Christian musical landscape. Card’s work in particular is just light years ahead of most of the stuff that passes for Christian.
If you’ve never listened to Michael’s music, then you might be tempted to class him as just “Christian” music, but he is so much more than that. The lamenting open chords of “The City of Doom”, the Celtic resonance of “The Hidden Face of God” or the Hammond organ and saxophone laying down incredible R&B influences in “Soul Anchor” – all of them are reflections of the message he is trying to convey. More than any other musician in the Christian world, Michael is a creative soul. Creativity transcends labels, and when it is really unleashed, the result is true music, true expression of the soul.
There is a famine of true creativity in Christian music today. It is reflected in the weak, unexpressive worship music churned out by the CD full from music mills around the world. You can hear it on any number of Christian CD’s that are feeble attempts to Christianize secular hip hop, alternative rock, nu-metal, swing and any other style you can imagine.
Rather than leading our culture, rather than speaking what is in our hearts, we attempt to get a set of beliefs to conform to particular musical styles. Erwin McManus speaks strongly to this problem of letting culture lead us:
An Alternate Way of Thinking
Rather than being Christian musicians, I think we need to be musicians who are Christian.
If we stop trying to do the “Christian” music and just write and play from our hearts, I think something new will come out of us – music with a spirit, with something distinctly Christian and yet creative. It can be done – Michael Card does it all the time – and it can probably even be done in whatever musical form is appropriate to it. I just don’t think it can be done when we’re focused on an agenda. Music is not about an agenda; it is just about the music. Music is the language of the heart, something more than just musical phrases and lyrical motifs.
That’s just my opinion.
The King’s Speech
Posted by Erik in History, Media, Movies and TV on June 9, 2011
It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for King George VI. He was never intended to be king, but when his elder brother Edward VIII (whom the family called David) chose his marriage to a twice-divorced American woman over the throne, George (whom the family called Bertie) was thrust upon the throne.
He was a man who should not have reigned. He was sickly as a child and had a stammer that made public addresses difficult and even painful to hear. Neither of these things would have affected him in a previous generation. His father’s cousin Wilhelm II had been Kaizer of Germany and a great military man despite his mental illness and paralyzed right arm. But in an age of motion pictures and radio addresses, such a speech impediment might have made Edward an embarrassment. This is immortalized in the moment in the film “The King’s Speech” when Bertie tells his speech therapist, “I will be known as George the Stammerer.”
History, of course, tells a different story. George VI regularly addressed the British people during the dark days of World War II. Although Winston Churchill managed the government, George managed the people.
How did a stammering second son become an iconic ruler of the free world? It was through the assistance of a speech therapist named Lionel Louge. This Australian actor who had helped returning servicemen regain their voices after suffering from shellshock also aided George VI.
Their story is immortalized in the film “The King’s Speech” starring Colin Firth as George VI and Geoffrey Rush as Logue. I was skeptical of the movie, but I have to admit it was excellent.
For some reason, the most powerful moments of the film were the moments when the future Queen Elizabeth, as a child, looks to her father with the practical and almost knowing eyes of a future monarch. She evaluates her father and sees a strength that she wants for herself. As he is constantly reminded in the film, Bertie was the bravest man they knew.
Watch the film. It’s worth it.
(If you’re sensitive to such a thing, you should be warned that there are a couple of moments in the film when Bertie utters strings of obscenities in his quest for learning to speak plainly and clearly.(
Why Don’t We Use the Title ‘Worship Leader’
One of the first things we did in forming Bedford Road Baptist Church was get rid of the title ‘Worship Leader’. We did not make a big deal about it, and only the elders and the music team we told we were no longer using the title. We just dropped it from our vocabulary.
Over the past few months, people have begun asking, “Who is the worship leader?” and my most common response is, “The pastor leads the worship gathering.”
Consider this quote from D. A. Carson:
I would abolish forever the notion of a ‘worship leader’. If you want to have a ‘song leader’ who leads part of the worship, just as the preacher leads part of the worship, that’s fine. But to call the person a ‘worship leader’ takes away the idea that by preaching, teaching, listening to and devouring the word of God, and applying it to our lives, we are somehow not worshipping God.
This is a worthwhile observation. In the postmodern church, it has become far too common to distinguish ‘worship’ as the music of the worship gathering. This simply is not Biblical.
We abandoned this title of ‘worship leader’ and instead have a team who work together to take us on a worship journey – from the band who plays accompaniment for the congregation to the elders who lead in prayer to the preacher, we are all leading worship.
if you would like to read more about this subject, this series of articles from Bob Caughlin of worship matters.com are worth considering.
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