Movies

I receive a newletter which reviews recently released movies from a Christian perspective called Christianity Today Movies. It offers a good and contrasting perspective from most other critics and allows readers to decide if watching a particular movie is a) worth their time, b) worth their money, c) morally decent and a good movie to take your kids to.

They recently reviewed the movie Sex in the City and, predictably, received much enmity as a result for daring to review such a movie. Here is the gist of the responses and the editor’s response:

"How can any Christian who takes the Bible seriously want to watch (or review) Sex and the City?"

"Anyone who could actually find something redeeming in [Sex and the City] is too awfully familiar with the world."

"Sex and the City is a pornographic film. You should either abandon your stated Christian aims and mission statement, or stop condoning pornography."

"Is this really Christianity Today??? Are you guys really serious about Jesus, the Bible, holiness, and biblical truth?"

And so went some of the letters we received in response to last week's review of Sex and the City. (There were a bunch of positive letters too, so please check them out as well.)

We totally understand why many people would have no desire to see Sex and the City, choosing to avoid it because of its portrayals of pre- and extra-marital sex and rampant materialism. I myself have no desire to see it, mostly for those reasons.

But to slam us for reviewing the film makes no sense. Our mission statement is to help readers make discerning choices about movies—not to make the choices for people. Our review clearly warned readers of the sinful behavior in the movie, while also noting some of its redeeming factors—like the universal longing for love and companionship, what it means to be a true friend, and more.

But some folks believe that when it comes to a movie like Sex and the City, there should be no choice—they've decided that no one should see it, period ... at least no one who calls themselves a Christian. They think we should essentially have a three-word review: "Don't watch it!" But that's not what we're about. We trust our readers to make their own decisions; we won't make those decisions for anyone.

But here's another reason for reviewing SATC and other uncomfortable films: It's good to sometimes enter into the minds and worldviews of others, even of those we completely disagree with. Occasionally, it can even be helpful to see what the world looks like through the eyes of the depraved.

Do those words make you uncomfortable? Or angry? Don't blame me, then. Blame C.S. Lewis, because they're essentially his words.

In his book, An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis writes, "We therefore delight to enter into other men's beliefs ... even though we think them untrue. And into their passions, though we think them depraved ... And also into their imaginations, though they lack all realism of content."

Lewis is writing mostly in the context of reading books and poetry, but his thoughts on criticism apply just as well to film—or any art form, for that matter. He continues: "This must not be understood as if I were making the literature of power once more into a department which existed to gratify our rational curiosity about other people's psychology. It is not a question of knowing (in that sense) at all. It is connaître not savoir; it is erleben; we become these other selves. Not only nor chiefly in order to see what they are like but in order to see what they see, to occupy, for a while, their seat in the great theatre, to use their spectacles and be made free of whatever insights, joys, terrors, wonders, or merriment those spectacles reveal ...

"This, so far as I can see, is the specific value or good of literature considered as Logos; it admits us to experiences other than our own. ... Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors." (Or, I might add, movie directors.) "We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less of a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. ... In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

That, dear readers, is why we review "objectionable" movies. Because our eyes "are not enough for me." We will "see through the eyes of others" and yet "remain" ourselves. It's our own "experiment in criticism." If that kind of thinking is good enough for C.S. Lewis, it's certainly good enough for us.

I find the Editor, Mark Moring, makes a good point- backed up with Lewis’ words, a great point.

Thus said, I am aware we need to be aware of what we feed our eyes. The visual has become almost all powerful- it can overpower our reason and beliefs with out us noticing. Lewis is writing about a different medium, which has lost a lot of power in popular culture in the last fifty years, but is still significant.

book list

Reading list of 2008 as of today.

1. The Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
2. Collected stories by Katherine Mansfield
3. Empire of the sun by J G Ballard
4. Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
5. Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
6. Waking the dead by John Elderedge
7. Beasts by Carol Joyce Oats
8. War fever by J G Ballard
9. The Orchid Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol
11. The New Weird edited by Jeff Vandermeer
12. All the pretty horses by Cormac McCarthy
13. The Club of Queer Trades by G K Chesterton
14. Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb
15. The Nigger and the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad
16. The book of the New Sun: Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
17. Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks
18. Excession by Iain M Banks
19. Screwtape proposes a toast by C S Lewis
20. Sons of Heaven by Lawrence Chen
21. Atonement by Iain McEwan
22. A House for Mr. Biswas by V S Naipaul

~22 books in aprox 6 months.....pretty good ones as well, most of them anyway. Some, like Beasts by Oats, Excession by Banks, were possibly not worth the time, but otherwise, all the books are quite recommended.

Oh, wow, I've had 100 posts on this blog as of today. I never thought I would keep this up for so long, but it has become a pool for thoughts and things I thought people might appreciate me sharing. Just a note for Kathleen, to get to my few pages of posts while in Africa, here is the link:
here

Here's A picture I found amusing, seeming some friends of mine in Tanzania said they once saw a pet Hyena as a guard for a snake zoo, of all places.... Crazy Africa.

Anyway, I'm completely bogged down with a few big assignments, but one of them which is an illustration project I will be uploading onto this blog- in about a week most likely, as I have not time to do any scanning until then.

Until then, here's something I've been thinking about:

If life is simple, why is life simple?
If life is complicated, why is life complicated?

Online comic trial

Larger trialSmaller trial

Dogs and Zombies

I love Dogs.
When I came back from Africa Max was so happy to see me. He bounded around the yard, his long cocker spaniel ears flapping, ecstatic. He's getting on in his years, is old max, and is almost eleven now, which is quite old for cocker's, but he showed a huge amount of physical enthusiasm, including sleeping outside my door instead of in his bead, for a week. One thing I have to say is that he is a very very faithful friend, and unchanging in his attitude towards me. His eyesight is fading, and sometimes I wake him up as I come in from town. Typically he won't recognize me, and bark, but when he hears my voice he will look very very embarrassed, his eyes and ears will drop, and he'll slink back to his bed in shame. It is a great fallacy for a Dog to turn on his friend/boss.
I watched a movie called I am legend the other night.
I was really expecting to be bored by a typical, if well done, zombie movie, but had been recommended the film by a few friends, so watched. I found it, unlike some people I've talked to, quite deeply moving. Now I won't give away any plot details (as I am notorious for doing), but the story began very simply about a man alone as the only human in Manhattan, and New York for that matter, who hadn't been infected by a terrible virus. Alone that is except for his faithful dog. The two spend their time together, and he, of course, is trying to crack the virus in a lab under his house. It is basically about a man who gives up his family, his friends, all his life to find s cure, and his absolute humanness- he almost gives up many times, but in the end stays true to his cause. There is a surprising number of acknowledgments of God or as Will Smith (the main character) says 'The God', about how God could ever let a thing like that terrible virus exist which virtually wiped out the human race. He ends up saying, rather powerfully I think, 'God didn't do this, We did this.'
Anyway, the relationship between Will Smith and his Dog is the most moving aspect of the movie for me. She is a German Shepard, and obviously a very intelligent dog. I spent quite a bit of time with German Shepard's in Tanzania, some puppies and some guard dogs, and they are now my favorite dog. After max of course.

My 21st Birthday was awesome to all those who came, thanks!

Thin Red Line

Have you watched The Thin Red Line directed by Terrance Malick?
I really like it, its my favourite movie in fact, and a major reason for this is the narrator's philosophical exploration of war with a monologue which runs throughout the whole movie, and sometimes merges into other men's voices.

There is something very deep and searching in the few seconds of this video clip, and propels me to want to know more of God, who he is, how he continues to overwhelm me in wonder. As a Christian, will there ever be a time when I don't feel like there is so much more to him that I have barely begun to know who he is, although I've named myself his follower for most of my life.

Square

I'm currently reading a book called Sons of heaven by Terrence Chang, which is about Tienanmen square, and the massacre there in 1989.

These videos speak for themselves.

William Faulkner's nobel speach

In the middle of the 20th century William Faulkner recieved the Nobel Prize for literature. In his speach upon recieving the reward he said the following:

It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his own puny inexhaustible voice. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he along among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilage to help man endure by lifting up his heart, by reminding him of the courage and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I think Faulkner, here, is saying something significant which is in constant jeopardy in our time . I very much agree with him that there are elements of our Humanness which are significant and lasting, somethings that cannot die. The history of our courage against the odds, for example, is something unique to humankind. Yet will we prevail, merely out of the power of this soul, this spirit within us? I acknowledge that we each contain this immortal thing, this power of life, this soul and spirit, but will it prevail? I think not.

And if it is there, where did it come from? Is it another habit of chance, a game of randomness? Who will account for it's presence in us? Why do we have it? There must be answers to these questions. In the airport in Bangkok a few thoughts came to me. Why haven't ants developed their system of Monarchy into democracy? Why don't monkey's build cities? Why don't dogs launch organized attacks against the kingdom of cats?

Faulkner is right. There is something powerful in us, something everlasting. But will it last? The dichotomy of good and evil is definitive, so if we are to account for our actions, what will become of our souls? Will all our good deeds (courage and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice) make up for our bad deeds (violence, hatred, lust, impurity)? I think not.

In Faulkner's reference to a writer's & poet's responsibility, I agree that there is something that needs to be held up, to be remembered in this age. How long is it since I heard someone use the word courage in a casual conversation, or the word purity, chastity, honour, compassion. I believe when we as a society forget these ideals, we are in danger of forgetting/loosing our souls. And the soul is dangerously forgotten.

Online Sketchbooks

This is a long overdue post which links you (whomever that may be) to my online sketchbooks. The first, older one I started quite a while ago, while the new one I've only just started a week ago.

The main-course sketchbook (new SB)

The entree sketchbook (older SB- now no longer being updated)

please enjoy and keep an eye on the new one if you wish, as I will be updating it regularly this year.

My latest project for my degree

This is a little 9sec video about me. It is a combination of flash animation and hand-drawn stop animation. The content should be self-explanitary after a few watches, but it's basically about creativity. It was a long process and I had to say a lot in 9 seconds, which is hard work let me tell you. But great, great fun, in the end.