I really will try to tone down the Twilight obsession, but this one is important!  There have been rumors going around for a while now that the new director for the Twilight series, Chris Weitz, would replace Taylor Lautner with another actor for the role of Jacob Black in New Moon.  I have always thought this would be a terrible mistake. 

One reason that this consideration was being tossed around is because Lautner is 16, and the charatcer of Jacob Black has a huge growth spurt in the course of New Moon…going from age appearance 16 to about 25, and increasing dramatically in height, to almost 7 feet, and muscle mass.  The conventional wisdom was that Lautner was too young-looking and not physically big enough for the role.  That’s a fairly stupid thought, since there are no actors who can pass for Native American and who are approaching 7 feet.  They’ll have to use special effects for any actor they choose.  And he doesn’t start the film that big; his growth is part of the plot. 

I’ve seen and read interviews with Lautner in which he discusses the expanded role of Jacob in the next books.  He really seems to have it down; he spends more time talking about the rivalry with Edward than anything else.  THAT’s the most important thing, and the thing most Twilight readers want to see played out on screen.

Here’s an article from yesterday giving some of the details.

Christianity Today featured an article about two young up-and coming film makers, Ryan Smith and Mark Cowart.  They have a new production company, Seabourne Pictures, based in Franklin, Tennessee, of which Ryan’s father, Christian musician Michael W. Smith is also a founding member.

So far, Seabourne is producing short films, which is great–like short stories, short films can also pack a real punch.  The only problem is that it’s really hard to access these films; I mean, do you know any theaters showing shorts?  Unless they show them on their website or post them on YouTube, the rest of us won’t have much chance to see them.  Still, the Internet is a wonderful thing… even if the screens are really tiny.

Smith and Cowart have two main goals in the establishment of this film company:

• To make films that assume a Christian worldview…not necessarily “Christian films,” but films that assume a certain set of values.  Hollywood, of course, already makes films that reflect a secular, often nihilist worldview, so it will be good to have a clear and competent voice coming from a different perspective.
• To help film viewers watch films critically.  They have the idea that most film/entertainment consumers (meaning most of us) watch their entertainment passively, absorbing and accepting the values and worldview embedded in that entertainment without really thinking about it or without really meaning to. 

I think they’re exactly right about that second point, and all it takes is a little thought to make that better.  You can enjoy and appreciate a film without accepting the messages or assumptions implicit in it, but most people don’t take it that second step.  And if we accept the post-modernist dictum that everyone has a bias–cultural, ethnic, religious, historical, etc–it makes more sense to choose our biases, to say unapoligetically that we are going to embrace a certain worldview, than to just passively fall into a worldview or set of biases chosen for us by someone else.

So, more power to Smith, Cowart, and Seabourne Pictures.  Keep your eyes on these guys, because if there’s one thing that recent cultural experiences have taught us, it’s that not only do Christians want entertainment that embraces their values, but they’re willing to pay for it.  Seabourne Pictures might become a powerful presence in a huge market.

Summit Studios has announced that they are going ahead with filming New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, using the same cast (as though fans would let them change now!).  I read this today on Stephenie Meyers’ website.

This is awesome for many reasons, but at the moment, the best one I can think of is…MORE JACOB!!  New Moon is really the story of Bella and Jacob, and the start of the rivalry/friendship between Edward and Jacob (though we did get a tantalizing glimpse of this in the first movie).  Taylor Lautner needs more screen time, and he’ll get it in New Moon. 

This article doesn’t give a release date, but I read elsewhere that they are looking at December of 2009.  That is a good birthday present for me!

We started our holiday viewing season last week.  This is a fun tradition we have in our family where we try to watch films based on whatever holiday is approaching.  The best ones by far are Halloween and Christmas, since we have a lot of good scary movies (especially those awesome 30’s films from Universal) and most of the Christmas classics.   We have to start those viewing seasons kind of early because we have so many of those movies.  So last week we went to start the holiday viewing season, and we thought that we should watch one that had Thanksgiving in it.  We settled on Holiday Inn, which is a good catch-all for just about any holiday, since it includes so many, and there is a Thanksgiving scene in it. 

But really, there aren’t very many Thanksgiving movies, are there?  You’d think that with all the family drama and potential for bad weather, there would be a lot of movies, but I don’t know of very many at all.  The World Film page on About.com has a Top 8 Thanksgiving Movies list, but I think it’s pretty bad; I mean, any list that has The Ice Storm as a top anything is automatically discredited in my book.  Timothy Sexton has an article that features Thanksgiving films, and while this one also includes The Ice Storm, it balances that out with The Facts of Life Reunion Movie.

And yes, there are two–count ‘em, two–Waltons’ Thanksgiving Reunion movies.

Here’s one more list, from Pajiba.com, which also includes The Ice Storm, but makes fun of it, so that’s okay.  The consensus seems to be that Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of the best and funniest of Thanksgiving films, so that might be the one to see if you want a film to help your family celebrate Thanksgiving.  The rest seem to be fairly lame.  I think anyone’s best bet is the television specials, which are very easy to find on the Internet Movie Data Base. 

And of course, you can’t go wrong by sticking the the most classic Thanksgiving special of them all, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Twilight

Rated PG-13

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

2008

Many of us who are fans of Stephenie Meyers’ first book were prepared to be a little bit disappointed in the movie.  After all, we’ve been here before.  Of the five Harry Potter movies so far, none of them was what we felt they could have been. 

But Twilight lends itself to film so much better than other books do.  For one thing, the narrative in Twilight is chronological; there’s very little information that the screenwriter and director had to bend over backward trying to fit in.  It’s emotionally dense, but the information is presented straightforwardly, not in an endless weaving together of past and present, as in the Harry Potter books.  Twilight is dialogue-based and concerned more with the development of a relationship than with action sequences, therefore the film was almost exclusively concerned with developing the relationship between its two protagonists, Bella and Edward. 

This was an excellent choice on the part of director Catherine Hardwicke, although it wasn’t without cost.  The relationship between Bella and Edward comes together with such intensity and overwhelming emotion that even the most avid fans of the book are thrillingly satisfied. Not that every detail was perfect, but the movie was overwhelmingly well-made, affective, and gratifying.

I can imagine it was difficult to cast a film whose characters were supposed to be inhumanly beautiful, but despite the pressure she was under to get it right, Hardwicke did an excellent job not just with the principals, but with the supporting cast as well. Billy Burke played Bella’s father, Charlie, with a restraint and seriousness that befit the stoic, I-love-my-daughter-but-I’m-not-quite-sure-what-to-do-with-her-now-that-she’s-here affection that fits their relationship.  He even has a few humorous moments, such as when Edward asks to meet him “officially,” as Bella’s boyfriend, while Charlie is cleaning his gun.  His exasperating protectiveness is touching and all the more affecting because of how low-key Burke plays it. 

Gil Birmingham and Taylor Lautner as father and son Billy and Jacob Black fulfill the roles they need to play in the story and in Bella’s life.  Billy relates to Charlie with good humor, but sends vicarious warnings to Bella through Jacob, which also allows Jacob to stay involved in Bella’s life.  Lautner, especially, claims every scene he is in, and if there weren’t sequels ready-made for him to step up to, Meyer would have to write one.  This young actor will not be in the background for long.

The casting choices for the Cullens were also perfect.  I have to concede the point to a friend who thought that a blonded-up Jackson Rathbone as Jasper looked too girly, but he came into his own during the baseball game, where he could relax and smile and be more himself.  As for everybody else, they were exactly as readers might have imagined them.  The sweet good looks of Esme, the clan’s mother, were realized in the pretty face of Elizabeth Reaser, and Nikki Reed was ideal as the bitchy but beautiful, loyal-to-family-but-you’re-not-family Rosalie.  Kellan Lutz is exactly right for the brawny gentle giant Emmett, whose muscles and infectious grin are equally ready for use at any time. 

The stand-outs among the Cullens, however, are found in the characters Alice and Carlisle.  I had my doubts that they’d find the right person for dainty, elfin precognitive Alice, but they did find her in Ashley Greene.  Greene’s own fey quality was played up for this role, and she fully conveys Alice, whose generous, giving heart is only counterbalanced by her bloodlust and innate violence.  Both are captivating.  Peter Facinelli gave us the beautiful young Carlisle Cullen, whose deep love for humanity has him working as a doctor, facing blood and overcoming his own hungers day by day to try to give back to humanity more than his kind takes.  Though he is young, Carlisle is a true father to his clan, leading them and guiding them with humor, affection, firmness and an edge of danger that most fathers don’t convey.  He is the cornerstone of the strange family he has gathered around him, and that centrality is conveyed in every scene in which Facinelli appears, whether with his whole clan or just with Edward.  Edward’s respect for him is strong and living, and in some cases is the only thing that keeps him from crossing lines he has vowed not to cross.

Of course, the key to the whole film lies in the casting of Edward and Bella, and it’s because of this that the film worked so well.  Robert Pattinson plays Edward with such intensity and focus that I thought of a young Brando or Newman.  The brief glimpses we get of Edward’s rage and violence are clear and powerful (and thrilling).  Bella, too, is more…well, human…but she conveys her growing enthrallment with Edward and her growing confusion about his secret with transparency and depth.  These two actors were well-chosen from outside of the box-office mainstream.  Their chemistry is palpable and the intensity of their struggles and devotion to each other left my stomach in knots…in a good way.  The film rested on this single relationship, and these two carried it with skill, emotion, and strength.

Of course, if a director is going to choose to make almost the entire film rest on the dramatic tension of one relationship, any other pieces of the story will suffer, and that was the case with Twilight.  All the dramatic tension was between Bella and Edward, so there wasn’t much left over for the ever-nearer stalking of the hunters James, Victoria, and Laurent.  Those scenes were perfunctorily planted, the tension wasn’t built over the course of the film, and the plot climax where Bella is being stalked by James in order to get to Edward, his real prey, was far too short and direct to play as it should have. We should have been on the edge of our seats.  It should have been a crisis not only of Bella’s life, but of Edward and Bella’s relationship.  Even after the resolution of the fight (go Alice!), Edward’s attempts to break up with Bella in the hospital are hard to believe.  It’s not because of the actors; they do the best they can with what they’re given.  Rather, it’s because director Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg didn’t seem to know what to do with pieces that required as skillful a handling of action elements as relationship elements. 

One more small disappointment in the film had to do with the “sparkle.”  It wasn’t very…sparkly.  It looked Edward was wearing body glitter, not like he turned into a creature of diamond and sunlight. 

Still, these are minor disappointments in a movie that was overall as good and gratifying as I hoped it would be.  The relationship is always the most important thing to me, and Pattinson, Stewart, and Hardwicke kept the focus where it belonged—on Edward and Bella and their undying love. 

I saw Twilight last night, and I’m going to post my review of it here in a little bit.  But I want to take a moment to talk about other reviewers.  Now some liked it, and some didn’t–that’s fine, I don’t have a problem with that.  I myself liked it more than I expected to, but it wasn’t perfect, and there were some things for a critic to latch on to. 

My problem is with critics–a vast majority of them, as far as I could tell from the reviews I read–who gave this movie either positive or negative reviews based on what they perceived as its target audience–teenage girls.  And it’s true that there were a lot of teenaged girls at the opening last night.  But there were a lot of other people, too…and what in the world does that have to do with the quality of the movie?  Nothing.  But these so-called critics seem to stop their analyses with “teenage girls like it so it must be shallow and dumb.”

No movie can be evaluated by its target audience–and no film maker would ever deliberately make an inferior movie just because she knows there are going to be a lot of teens in the audience.  A film needs to be evaluated on its merits.  For example, The Incredibles is a far superior film in its own right to, say, Norbert.  The fact that one is geared toward children and the other toward adults is irrelevant.  Films geared toward adult audiences are not necessarily any deeper or better made than films that assume the presence of younger members in the audience.  In fact, the latter are often far superior, just on average, because they can’t rely on the cheap tricks of gratuitous sex and violence; therefore they have to depend on things like tight narratives and excellent acting.

It’s fine to have some criticisms of Twilight, but saying that it wasn’t great because there were a lot of teenaged girls who wanted to see it is ridiculous.  You don’t have to think the Cullens are hot to appreciate this movie.  Any critic worth his or her title should know enough to judge the film on its own merits, for what is actually there, good and bad alike.

This is Empire’s take on the 39 films we should be sure not to miss this winter.  Now there’s no way in heck I’m going to be able to get to 38 more movies, but some of these do look pretty good: 

It hardly seems fair for one person to be good and successful at so many things, but Jamie Lee Curtis manages it.  She’s the child of two very successful (and beautiful) actors, is a successful actor herself, and now is a successful writer of children’s books.  Some of her children’s titles include Tell Me Again About the NIght I Was Born, It’s Hard to be Five, Is There Really a Human Race?, Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day, and When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old’s Memoir of Her Youth.

One of the great things about Curtis’ writing for children is her ability to see things from the kids’ point of view.  For example, in It’s Hard to be Five, the little boy who narrates the story thinks he’s being good, and sees himself as behaving the way he should, and it’s only through the illustrations that we see that maybe “sitting still” means something different to him than it does to the grown-ups around him.  Curtis has a strong sense of what frustrates and delights kids at these young ages. 

Curtis has formed a very effective partnership with her illustrator, Laura Collins.  Collins’ illustrations are colorful, quirky, and full of emotional energy.  They’re just complex enough to give kids new things to see each time they read the book, but simple enough that they can focus on and understand what they’re seeing.  Together, Curtis and Collins really give kids a way to focus their own feelings about family, growing up, and being good, as well as giving them a way to laugh about those things, too.  Parents and kids will enjoy reading these warm, delightful books.  And since kids never want to read a book just once, parents can be grateful that there’s always something new to experience in every reading.

In the just-over-a-decade from 1934 to 1946, Frank Capra hit his stride.  The movies in that era were It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  Not all of these films were immediately successful (the stories of It’s a Wonderful Life’s initial failure are now Hollywood legends), but each of them had at its heart an idealism, a basic kindness and spirit of joy.  When Capra’s worldview is combined with some of the best actors of the era (Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and James Stewart to name a few), the movies have staying power and endurance beyond many others of their time or ours.

Among the movies listed above, Arsenic and Old Lace stands out as a bit of an odd duck.  Like You Can’t Take It With You, it was adapted from a stage play, and in fact it presents itself very much like a filmed play.  Capra doesn’t choose to take the cinematic liberty of filming at multiple locations just because he can; instead he focuses most of the action within a genteel old Brooklyn house, and in the relationships between the characters.  This is why a story about a family who has collectively murdered two dozen innocent people is actually a comedy.

Cary Grant stars as Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic and confirmed bachelor who falls for the minister’s daughter who lives next door to his aunts in Brooklyn.  They get married in the first scene by a justice of the peace, then stop by Brooklyn so that he can tell his elderly aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) about the marriage, and so that she can pack for their honeymoon to Niagara Falls. 

Once they reach Brooklyn, a few things become obvious to the viewer.  One is that Mortimer dearly loves his aunts, who apparently raised him and his two brothers, Jonathan and Teddy.  The other is that Teddy is delusional, and thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, but he’s harmless and in fact is a great help and comfort to his aunts.  There is some plot point talk about having Teddy committed to an asylum, but nobody sees any rush about it.  There’s also some remembering about what a horrible child Jonathan was, and how he’s been gone for twenty years.

One of the best scenes in the film is the one where Mortimer discovers, quite by accident, that there is a dead body in the window seat.  He reveals this shocking fact to his aunts, who serenely say that the dead man is one of their gentlemen, the twelfth such poor soul they have ministered to by taking him out of this life by means of poisoned elderberry wine.  Cary Grant’s facial expressions and physical reactions are priceless and some of the best in his career.  For some reason the plot never quite explains, Mortimer decides that the best way to deal with his aunts’ pastime of murdering lonely gentlemen and burying them in the cellar is to have his brother Teddy committed to the asylum immediately. 

In the midst of this family crisis, the long-lost Jonathan returns home, accompanied by sidekick Dr. Herman Einstein, played with a sort of tortured humor by Peter Lorre.  Jonathan has lived up to the promise he showed as a child and has become a psychopathic criminal with no qualms about murdering anyone who gets in his way, including his brother and aunts.  And Jonathan also brings a dead body with him, so that for a while, there is a shuffling of bodies between the window seat and the graves dug in the basement, causing the aunts to be terribly indignant that they are expected to read services over a complete stranger.

Through a series of unlikely slapstick coincidences, the bad guys are caught, the aunts decide to commit themselves voluntarily, and Mortimer returns to his bride secure in the knowledge that he is adopted and therefore not likely to inherit the insanity that “practically gallops” through his family. 

The emotional linchpin of the film is the affection that Mortimer feels for his aunts, and Capra makes this clear at every point: Grant’s frustration at their inability to understand that killing people is wrong wars with his desire to protect them from themselves and the consequences of their actions.  The film isn’t without some serious problems—the ending is too easy and belies the seriousness of the situation, Mortimer’s attempts to get Teddy committed when it’s the aunts who are murdering people don’t make sense and are never explained, and the scenes in the middle with Jonathan and Dr. Einstein are too dark and pull the mood of the movie down so far it never quite recovers, so that Grant’s slapstick approach becomes almost clownish in the second half.  It’s not that Capra never confronts darkness, but it’s usually the inner darkness of crushed idealism or apparent futility that his characters have to face, not murderous relatives.

Still, none of that matters very much while you’re watching it.  Cary Grant is extraordinary both as a comedian and as an actor, Hull and Adair are perfectly charming and believable as the aunts whose only motivation is kindness and compassion.  Most importantly, Frank Capra knows where the heart of the film is, and keeps it there.  It’s best to watch it knowing full well that the scenario is unlikely, the plot is full of holes, but it’s fun to watch and laugh with anyway.

Rated R

I was in a unique position for the original release of The Passion of the Christ.  I was teaching in a liberal Christian college, which was nestled in a very conservative Christian culture.  From my liberal colleagues—most of whom refused to see the film—I heard strongly worded condemnations of the supposed anti-Semitism of the film, and critical, even horrified, assessments of the “unnecessary” violence of the film.  From my more conservative church members, I heard the elevation of the film to the level of Scripture–also often before they had seen it.

There’s some justification for considering the film to be faithful to the spirit of Scripture, even if it’s not exactly revelation.  With an emphasis on John’s gospel, borrowing from other gospels and certain mystical works, it’s hardly a mistake to consider the film a reliable resource for historical, even theological, information.  In that context, the charge of anti-Semitism needs to be addressed.  This is a more complex line of thought than it might seem.  The canonical evangelists, all but one of whom were Jews themselves, tended to be very hard on their own people.  Their frustration with the Jews was born from the exasperated love for beloved family members who refuse to act in their own best interest.  “He came to his own, and his own knew him not.”

But the fact is, the Jews had no power to execute anyone.  They were an oppressed and occupied nation.  Only the legal authorities of the Roman state, represented by Pontius Pilate and his military support, had any power over rebels, traitors, or insurgents.  Both history and Scripture make it clear: the Romans, not the Jews, are responsible for Jesus’ death and punishment.  The film does not equivocate in this matter.  Pilate was conflicted and compromised, Roman troops ranged individually from compassionate to sadistic, and in that context, Jesus suffered standard Roman punishments. 

Though director Mel Gibson doesn’t leave the burden of blame on the shoulders of the Jews, he certainly does fail in exploring the untenable position the Jews were in in relation to Jesus of Nazareth.  Gibson plays the Jewish contingent at the surface level, giving his actors very little complexity to attach themselves to.  It’s faithful to the letter of Scripture, but misses an opportunity to flesh out the conflict, especially on the Jewish side.

The objection to the violence of the films is another matter, and it’s hard for me to be patient with that line of thinking.  I’m reminded of the anecdote about the British lady who objected to the film, because “it makes our Lord’s crucifixion seem so unpleasant.”   Whatever one thinks of Jesus, he was both flogged and crucified.  This is no sanitized-needle lethal injection in which the criminal just falls asleep.  It’s not even a bloody but quick beheading.  It’s one of the most tortuous and violent means of death ever perpetrated by men upon other men.  If you’re going to make, or watch, a film focusing on the suffering (and “passion” means suffering) of a historical figure, you’re going to have to deal with that suffering.  If you can’t stand it, then don’t watch it, but don’t criticize the filmmakers for being honest to the historical events.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a point of honor; I can’t keep him from suffering, but since he did it for me, the least I can do is watch without turning away.

It’s that devotional impulse—the “he did it for me”—that appeals to the devoted Christian audience.  These are folks for whom the same Jesus portrayed by Jim Caveizel is a living, active presence in their lives.  To be exposed to the real suffering of the One they love most, to have it taken out of stained glass and Italian sculpture, is an incredibly powerful experience.  In that power is the reason for the film’s success.  For the faithful viewer, it’s all about the conviction that while Jesus was suffering, he was thinking of me.

Nevertheless, Gibson understands that even those of us who were “washed in the blood,” can’t maintain an emotional investment in non-stop, unbroken violence.  Gibson tempers the harshness of Jesus’ suffering, especially as he is more and more disfigured, with flashbacks of Jesus teaching and healing.  In these flashbacks, we see Jesus as active, intentional, and above all, strong.  This is a masculine, assertive Jesus, with both compassion and joy—and a bit of a temper.  Thank God for that.  Heaven knows that between numerous “Jesus films” and the efforts of countless preachers, we’ve had enough portrayals of Jesus that reduce him to a weak, asexual, effeminate being, the “declawed Lion of Judah” we so often get in church—“fit only as a pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”  In addition, Caviezel is beautiful—physically beautiful—in this role.  The more bloodied and objectified Jesus gets, the more desperate we are to see the agent Jesus—acting on others, not being acted upon, and full of glowing health and vitality.  By the time Jesus dies in ugly horror, we need the Resurrection.  It’s a privilege and a profound relief to see our Jesus restored to his intensity and masculine beauty.  

Gibson’s film is not above criticism, and it would be a mistake to transfer our love for Jesus to Mel Gibson. Jesus’ suffering seems abstract at points, leaving the viewer to wonder just how much Gibson counted on his viewers to fill in motivation and conflict.  The figure of Judas is creepy and pathetic, but we are given little insight into why he betrayed Jesus.  The androgynous Satan figure actually works surprisingly well as a symbol of the insidiousness of temptation, though I spent too much time trying to discern whether that was actually the actor’s own voice the figure used.  But in the end, the film was made with love for its subject matter, and believers, at least, benefit in the making-real of something that has too often been kept at a distance.