All posts from "December 2010"
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December 16, 2010Schulz Wanted Bible in Charlie Brown Christmas
Peanuts creator Charles Schulz said of holiday special, 'If we don't do it, who will?'
Lee Mendelson, producer of the beloved holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," says the late Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comics strip, insisted that the program had to be about the true meaning of Christmas. Otherwise, Schulz said, "Why bother doing it?"
That's part of the story behind the TV special in a recent Washington Post article. When asked if he was sure he wanted to include biblical text in the special, Schulz responded, "If we don't do it, who will?"
Coca-Cola, which had signed on as corporate sponsor, never balked at the idea of including New Testament passages, which Linus reads aloud (from the book of Luke) in what Mendelson calls "the most magical two minutes in all of TV animation." Read the whole fascinating story here, and check out Linus's famous soliloquy below.
Wishing a Merry Christmas and App-y New Songs
North Point Community Church has a very cool iPhone and iPad holiday medley
Using nothing but applications on iPhones and iPads, North Point Community Church's "iBand" recently released a video of an extremely cool Christmas medley. Enjoy! (How'd they do it? Click here to learn more.)
North Point's iBand from North Point Web on Vimeo.
C. S. Lewis: Animal Advocate
He had 'a passion for the advocacy for the ethical and moral treatment of animals'
The Humane Society of the United States presents an original academic work by C. S. Lewis scholar Gerald Root, “C.S. Lewis as Advocate for Animals,” which touches on the many literary genres Lewis uses to make a case for human responsibility for the animals.
The release of Root’s 26-page piece follows the opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third in the Walden Media film series based on Lewis’ Narnia series.
Root, a Wheaton College professor, concludes after thorough examination of Lewis’ literary work that “the matter of the mystery of animals, the matter of sharing life with them on this planet, the matter of animal pain, and the matter of human responsibility for the animals are all topics that call for serious attention, at least Lewis thought so.”
Where's the Dawn in 'The Dawn Treader'?
New Narnia film overlooks one of the book's main themes, falls short on others
CT film critic Steven D. Greydanus, writing for The National Catholic Register, clearly articulates a number of the problems with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which opened to a weak $24.5 million over the weekend -- a much weaker opening than for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe ($65.6 million) and for Prince Caspian ($55 million).
Analysts and studio heads will come up with all sorts of theories for the weak opening, but certainly one of the reasons is that the film got all sorts of things wrong, when compared to the book. Greydanus does a nice job in describing the challenges of converting a beloved book to the big screen, that it rarely can be a perfect adaptation, and that some changes are inevitable. That's well enough, but some of the changes are head-scratchers -- starting with the title itself.
The Dawn Treader is supposed to be sailing always east, toward the world's edge, the eternal dawn, toward Aslan's country. But the film completely overlooks that. Greydanus asked two key people about the that -- Walden Media president Micheal Flaherty and co-producer Douglas Gresham. Flaherty understood and acknowledged the validity of Greydanus's point; Gresham blew it off.
"Narnia has an interesting geography: The world is flat," Flaherty said. "And there is something beckoning about the utter east. That would have been a good shot. … That’s an interesting point.” But Gresham, C. S. Lewis's stepson who calls himself the "Narnia police" to make sure the films get the main things right, said, “I don’t think that’s the least bit important, to be honest. That they sail eastward, in Narnia? A flat world, theoretically? I don’t think it is, no.”
Read the rest of Steven's insights here. He voices all of my own concerns about the film, but much more articulately than I ever could.
Swoope-ing in to Sudan for Orphans' Sake
Profits from rapper's single will help build an orphanage in war-torn country
According to the Collision site, a ministry called His Voice Global, founded by Vernon Burger, has helped to build three orphanages in Sudan and are hoping to build a fourth. In September, a team of believers from from Reach Records, The Village Church, Red Revolution, Collision Records and His Voice Global went to Sudan on a short-term missions trip. Moved by what they saw, Tedashii, Lecrae, Swoope, and Jai teamed up to record a single to raise awareness and funds for a fourth orphanage. All profits from the single will go to building the facility.
Hobbit Auditions: Dark-Skinned Need Not Apply
Debates abuzz after 'Hobbit' casting agent turns away a dark-skinned woman
A couple of weeks ago, a casting agent for Peter Jackson's upcoming Hobbit was fired for telling a woman she was too dark to play one a hobbit.
It's caused quite a stir, with people weighing in on both sides of the issue. Some say the agent deserved to be fired for her "racist" attitude, but others contend that the hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, rooted in Anglo-Saxon, Northern European lore, should be Caucasian.
Atlantic Wire has a nice summary of the discussion. Check it out, and let us know what you think in the comments section.
Bah! Humbug to Christmas Movies?
LA Times story claims that 'Hollywood scraps its Christmas spirit'
Noting that there are no Christmas movies releasing this year -- except for the critically panned Nutcracker in 3D -- and none planned for 2011, an article in the LA Times business section begins by saying that Hollywood is now playing the Grinch.
"The release of new Christmas movies long has been as much a tradition of the season as the annual late-night TV showing of It's a Wonderful Life and shoppers stampeding stores on Black Friday," the article notes. "But this year, there's hardly a holiday movie in sight."
The Times says the trend "reflects a change in traditional Hollywood thinking. Family films are as popular as ever . . . but the film world thinks Yuletide themes are getting a bit long in the whiskers."
The story quotes producer Joe Roth (Home Alone, The Santa Clause), a former chairman of Disney Studios: "The way to do a big-budget film these days is to take stories that everyone in the world knows and take them in a new direction. But no one's come up with a fresh way to do a holiday movie, so we're all doing it with other kinds of stories."
In a separate piece, Times columnist Steven Zeitchik flat-out asks, "Is Hollywood mounting a war on Christmas?" He concludes his op-ed with these words: "Hollywood executives' assumption is that Americans would rather come to theaters to see stories about pretty much anything other than Christmas. Are they right?"
Meanwhile, AWR Hawkins at Big Hollywood says the Times is playing loose with statistics, and that the Christmas movie is alive and well.
What do you think?
And Another Silly Quote from Narnia Land
Neeson not alone in denying Christ as obvious source of story; now a producer joins in
Seriously??
Presumably in the name of political correctness -- and trying to avoid having the film pigeonholed as a "Christian movie" -- one of the chief producers says he doesn't know if C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia are "Christian"? Yowzers. That's astonishing.
Johnson's full quote includes a reference to Aslan's clearly Christ-like death-and-resurrection scene in the first book and movie, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe: "Resurrection exists in so many different religions in one form or another, so it's hardly exclusively Christian. We don't want to favor one group over another ... whether these books are Christian, I don't know."
Even more astonishing is that Johnson's words come just a couple of days after Liam Neeson, the actor who voices Aslan, denied that his character solely represents Christ. Neeson said that Aslan "also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries."
Narnia fans around the world have been voicing their dismay at the comment ever since. Many of them are weighing in on Johnson's and Neeson's comments at Big Hollywood. "They are absolutely killing this movie for me," wrote one commenter. "C'mon, can't they even read the Cliff Notes . . . before talking about the movie?" Another: "How exactly do people in charge of making a movie not actually know what the movie is about?" And yet others are undeterred by the remarks: "I'm still going to see it. Nothing will deter me from this movie. NOTHING!"
Meanwhile, the film is clearly being marketed to Christian churches and leaders at NarniaFaith.com, a joint effort between Fox, Walden Media, and Grace Hill Media. In the section on sermon illustrations, evangelist Luis Palau calls Dawn Treader "a powerful story" about "discovering the risks, surprises, and revelations of life with Jesus Christ." Palau goes on to refer to Aslan as "Lewis' depiction of Jesus Christ."
Another pastor, Ken Foreman, refers to the story and film as "a wonderful analogy about our spiritual growth as Christians" and that Aslan's name "in our world is Jesus."
Palau and Foreman are absolutely right, of course. Even C. S. Lewis said as much: "The whole Narnian story is about Christ," he wrote. Lewis pictured Jesus as a lion partly because he's called "The Lion of Judah" in Scripture.
So, on the one hand, those behind the film are clearly unashamed to associate their product with Jesus and Christianity, as evidenced at NarniaFaith.com. But on the other, with the recent comments from Neeson and Johnson, it's quite a different story.
I'm not saying that Neeson and Johnson are obliged to shout from the housetops that Narnia is a Christian allegory. But to say things that essentially deny that fact seems like a foolish strategy at the other extreme. It miffs the core audience -- Christians who've loved these books for decades -- and confuses everyone else.
Young Director Shows Promise with 'The Trial'
Gary Wheeler's second movie, now on DVD, a positive step in Christian filmmaking
It's been several weeks since a review copy of The Trial landed on my desk, and I haven't been able to find the time to watch it till just this evening. It was a Christian film by a young director, so I admit I wasn't trying terribly hard to make the time, either. I feared it might be another one of those heavy-on-agenda-but-weak-on-story flicks for the flock.
I was wrong.
Wheeler and a strong cast have come up with a good-but-not-great film about a 40-something attorney (Matthew Modine, Full Metal Jacket) who is considering suicide after surviving a car accident that killed his wife and kids. But just before he pulls the trigger (literally!), the phone rings . . . and he ends up taking on one last case, defending a young man accused of murder.
It's a decent courtroom drama, based on a book of the same title by Robert Whitlow. (Wheeler's directorial debut, The List, was also based on a Whitlow novel.) The film's title obviously refers to the story in the courtroom, but also in the heart and soul of the main character's life as he struggles to find a reason to live and a purpose for pressing on. It unfolds in a way that feels mostly natural, never hitting the viewer over the head with a sermonizing agenda. Faith and biblical principles are part of the story, but organically, never forced.
Wheeler's directorial restraint is to be commended in a genre (inexpensively made indie Christian films) that often lacks such restraint. Ironically, that leads to my main complaint about the movie: Methinks there's too much restraint, because many of the characters lack, well, character. I only kinda sorta cared about them as people; the story kept my attention more than the people did. And Wheeler had some good talent to work with -- not just Modine, but veteran Bob Gunton as the prosecuting attorney, Robert Forster as an investigator, and TV veterans Clare Carey (as a psychologist) and Randy Wayne (as the defendant), the latter most recently seen in the lead role of To Save a Life.
But that's a mere quibble. Overall, it's a fine effort, and I look forward to more from Wheeler. The film is now available on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment. Watch the trailer here:
'Violent, Tortured and Abysmal Shouts & Groans'
Terrific article in Texas Monthly about Blind Willie Johnson's music and faith
When NASA launched the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977 on a mission to gather information from the planets, and even beyond our solar system, they included some information about Earthlings -- just in case any intelligent life out there intercepted the craft(s).
A recording included some 90 minutes of music from around the world, including a Cavatina from Beethoven as the concluding piece. The next-to-last piece was Blind Willie Johnson's “Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground,” which a marvelous article in TexasMonthly describes like this:
"[It's] a largely wordless hymn built around the yearning cries of Johnson’s slide guitar and the moans and melodies of his voice. The two musical elements track each other, finishing each other’s phrases; Johnson hums fragments of the diffuse melody, then answers with the fluttering sighs of steel or glass moving over the strings. Sometimes the guitar jimmies a low, ascending melody that sounds like a man trying to climb out of a mud hole. Then the guitar goes up high, playing an inquisitive, hopeful line, and the voice goes high too, copying the melody. There’s no meter or rhythm. In fact, 'Dark Was the Night' sounds less like a song than a scene—the Passion of Jesus, his suffering on the cross, the ultimate pairing of despair and belief. The original melody and lyrics (“Dark was the night and cold was the ground, on which the Lord was laid”) may have originated in eighteenth-century England, but Johnson reinvented them. Occasionally his slide clicks against the neck of the guitar, and you remember that this was just a man playing a song in front of a microphone. You can hear the air in the room. You can hear the longing in his voice. This is what it sounds like to be a human being.
"The slide guitarist and producer Ry Cooder, who used 'Dark Was the Night' as the motif for his melancholy sound track to Paris, Texas, once called the song “the most transcendent piece in all American music.” In about 60,000 years, one of the Voyagers just might enter another solar system. Maybe it will be intercepted. Maybe the interceptors will figure out how to play that record. Maybe they’ll hear 'Dark Was the Night.' Maybe they’ll wonder, What kind of creature made that music?"
It's a fascinating profile about a great American musician who was "an utter mystery" because very little has ever been written about him. The Bookman, a New York literary review, once wrote that Johnson was Johnson was “apparently a religious fanatic,” also noting his “violent, tortured and abysmal shouts and groans and his inspired guitar.”
Check out the whole story here, and listen to "Dark Was the Night" below:
Here's One 'Code' Worth Checking Out
New documentary explores the 'imaginative DNA' behind the Chronicles of Narnia
When the book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis released a couple years ago, with its claims of discovery of a “secret layer” of meaning behind The Chronicles of Narnia, I remember thinking, “Seriously??”
But it was released by Oxford University Press, giving it some instant cred. Still, on the heels of The Da Vinci Code movie and The Secret and all sorts of hooey with This Code and That Code coming out, I pretty much ignored the book. In the years since, I’ve heard others say it was a good read, but I still haven't gotten around to reading it.
Well, shame on me.
Leave it to a 60-minute documentary – called The Narnia Code, no less! – to pique my interest. The film, which released to retail outlets just before Thanksgiving (and, conveniently, only a couple weeks before The Voyage of the Dawn Treader hits theaters), is an overview of the ideas that Planet Narnia author Michael Ward put forth in his book.
And they are fascinating ideas. Ward says that Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia include a deeper, never-before-discovered “imaginative DNA” behind the seven books, with each book representing one of the seven planets of medieval astronomy—one of Lewis’s great interests. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, for example, represents the planet Jupiter, while Dawn Treader represents Sol, or the sun. (The sun and moon were considered “planets” in medieval astronomy.)
Think it sounds a bit weird? I would’ve thought so too, till watching this documentary, which builds a compelling case, especially since it includes interviews with many top Lewis scholars, who all give credence to Ward’s discoveries. (And most of them also thought the idea sounded wacky when they first heard it too – till they read the book.) All to say, the film has encouraged me to find a copy of the book and give it a read. Check out the trailer for the documentary below:
Aslan Represents . . . Mohammed and Buddha?
The 'stupid' comment is from Liam Neeson, who voices the Lion in the films
On the next-to-last page of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy wonders how they shall live in their world without meeting Aslan, the Great Lion, again. But Aslan reassures her, saying she will meet him again: "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name."
Any Christian lover of these C. S. Lewis books knows full well what that Aslan's name is here in our "real" world: It's Jesus himself. I mean, there's even a death-and-resurrection scene in one of the books in which Aslan must shed his blood to pay for the sins of another. Aslan as a Christ figure is almost as well-known a fact as, well, Jesus himself was a Christ figure in The Passion of the Christ. It's a no-brainer.
But now there's a low-brainer of a comment from actor Liam Neeson in today's London Daily Mail that already has Narnia and Lewis fans seething. Neeson, who does a fine job providing the voice of Aslan for the Narnia movies -- Dawn Treader releases worldwide later this week -- said in an interview with the Daily Mail that Aslan is also based on other religious leaders like Mohammed and Buddha.
The Daily Mail then cites a couple of Lewis experts who note how "stupid" Neeson's comment was.
‘Aslan is clearly established from the very beginning of the whole cannon as being a Christ figure," said William Oddie, a former editor of The Catholic Herald and a lifelong fan of the Chronicles of Narnia. "I can’t believe that Liam Neeson is so stupid as not to know."
Walter Hooper, Lewis’s former secretary and a trustee of his estate, said the stories have "nothing whatever to do with Islam. Lewis would have simply denied that. He wrote that the 'whole Narnian story is about Christ.' Lewis could not have been clearer."
Lewis himself once wrote of Aslan's character: "He is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?'"
Meanwhile, advance reviews of the film haven't been very kind, either.
TobyMac Releases Christmas Single
Sixpence's Leigh Nash joins him for 'Christmas This Year,' an iTunes exclusive
Available exclusively at iTunes, the song features Sixpence None The Richer’s Leigh Nash. Toby sayz, "Christmas is the most celebrated time of the year for my family. While we were recording the song, we had a week-long Christmas party at my house . . . in JULY! I wanted to write a song that captured that pure delight without missing the spirit of the season... when love came down to let us live.”
Eminem's 'Recovery' vs. LeCrae's 'Rehab'
Potty-mouthed hip-hopper vs. righteous rapper at Grammys. Sorta. And other Christian noms.
But what most Grammy watchers won't notice -- either in the long list of nominees in every conceivable category, or on the Feb. 13 awards show on CBS -- is that another album with a similar title is also up for rap album of the year. Well, Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album, that is, with Lecrae's terrific Rehab While Eminem's last two releases were titled Relapse and Recovery, Lecrae decided he was ready for some spiritual rehab, a theme that plays throughout his album.
Also nominated for Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album are David Crowder Band's Church Music, Fireflight's For Those Who Wait, Gungor's Beautiful Things, and Switchfoot's Hello Hurricane.
Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album noms went to Steven Curtis Chapman's Beauty Will Rise, Israel Houghton's Love God, Love People, Sanctus Real's Pieces of a Real Heart, Ricky Skaggs' Mosaic, and TobyMac's Tonight. (The Skaggs nomination is slightly puzzling, not because it's undeserving, but because it's mostly a country album -- and there is a Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album category, where it more logically belongs.)
Meanwhile, Amy Grant's hit single "Better Than a Hallelujah" (written by Sarah Hart and Chapin Hartford) led the noms for Best Gospel Song. Others were Gungor's "Beautiful Things," Kirk Whalum & Leah Hathaway's "It's What I Do," Chris Tomlin's "Our God," and Ricky Skaggs' "Return to Sender."
Mavis Staples' astonishingly good You Are Not Alone was NOT nominated for Best Traditional Gospel Album, but WAS nominated for Best American Album -- and interestingly, that's a decent fit, though it could've gone into either category. Best Traditional Gospel nods went to Vanessa Bell Armstrong's The Experience, Shirley Caesar's A City Called Heaven, Patty Griffin's Downtown Church, Marvin Sapp's Here I Am, and Karen Clark Sheard's All in One.
NY Daily News writer opined on Perry's behavior: "She then held her hands up in a prayer motion and thanked her peers for the nomination. During the concert, the 25-year-old pop star didn't shy away from impious behavior, engaging in some graphic choreography while performing 'California Gurls.' While singing the line 'so hot/will melt your Popsicle,' she gesticulated wildly towards her groin area. Pulling an about-face after the ceremony, Perry ended her post-Grammy tweet fest with the simple hashtag '#GOD.' Perry's behavior comes as a surprise after she tweeted over the summer that 'using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke.' Perry, who was raised by Christian pastors and first started singing in church, said she took issue with blasphemous behavior regardless of the perpetrator."
(Perry photo: Beck/Getty)
The Dawn Treader Sets Sail . . . for Your Church
'Narnia Night' created for local congregations to learn about the film and Lewis
The ever-expanding Narnia Faith website -- "Narnia-Inspired Resources for People of Faith" -- recently added a "Narnia Night" section to the site, chock full of materials for churches to host their own event while gearing up for next week's release of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third film in the Chronicles of Narnia series.
"Narnia Night" is being billed as "an exclusive event just for churches" that includes a documentary on C. S. Lewis, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of the movie's scenes, “Un-Dragon Your Life” testimony from Jim Burgen of Flatirons Church, and exclusive look inside the new film. It's all available at no cost.
That all can be found in the "Engage" section, which also includes "Operation Narnia," a partnership with Samaritan's Purse and its annual Operation Christmas Child event.
The "Teach" section, introduced by Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw, includes sermon outlines, study guides, and other goodies. And the "Learn" section includes the trailer, a gallery, info on Lewis, and an essay from Douglas Gresham, Lewis's stepson.
Put Yourself in Someone Else's Shoes
That's the premise for Friday's next installment of NBC's Family Movie Night
Last April, in response to research that showed parents wanted more TV programming appropriate for the whole family, Walmart and P&G came to the rescue with "Family Movie Night" on NBC, a series of films that fill that bill.
The third installment, A Walk in My Shoes, airs this Friday at 8/7c on NBC. It's being billed as "an inspirational journey" about how "families can come together in the face of adversity." Check out the trailer below.
There's Something About That Mane
Is it Aslan? Or is it just a bloodthirsty African predator? You make the call . . .
One of these is the top half of the poster for the upcoming movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, opening Dec. 10. The other is the top half for the DisneyNature film African Cats, coming in April. Can you tell which is which? (For the answers, click here and here.)
Have the Coen Bros. Gone Family-Friendly?
Directors of 'True Grit' remake say it's 'tonally' different from previous projects
The brothers told the newspaper they wanted to make the kind of movie that they enjoyed as kids, and they say the holiday release date -- typical of more family-friendly fare -- is appropriate. "We thought that seemed to make sense, because it is a young-adult adventure story," Ethan Coen said.
Their version is darker than the 1969 version, starring John Wayne, but still has a "winking playfulness," according to the newspaper, with much of the film playing as a comedy. "That's something people do associate with our movies," says Joel Coen, "the fact that there is a humorous element." The brothers said they took much of the humorous dialogue straight from the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. "There's a formality to it," Ethan says. "And no one uses contractions."
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