Category: Film and TV

The other day I was watching an interview program on TV, and the discussion went something like this:

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel ashamed of what your political party did the other day?

GUEST: I think that what they were really trying to do was signal their concern about this urgent problem.

INTERVIEWER: You didn’t answer my question: Do you feel ashamed of what your party did?

GUEST: I’ll tell you who should feel ashamed of what they’ve done. It’s the other party!

INTERVIEWER: Again, you didn’t answer my question: Do you feel ashamed of what your party did?

GUEST: I’m telling you that the other party need to be thoroughly ashamed of its actions!

At this point, the interviewer gave up and moved on to a new question. I must admit that what he had done thus far was pretty gutsy. He was asking a very pointed, “hardball” question of the guest, and stuck it to him three times. But ultimately, he folded and let the guest have his way in dodging the question.

So I want to give the interviewer credit for that. But by the third non-answer I was so frustrated with the guest that what I wanted the interviewer to say was: “Okay, you’re out of here. Persistent refusal to answer the question.”

That’s at the core of a TV show I would like to see on the air. I know, Bill O’Reilly has his “No Spin Zone,” in which he will reject answers that aren’t directed to the questions he’s asked, but he doesn’t eject guests who persistently refuse to cough up some kind of answer.

That’s what I’d like to see.

I’m so sick of watching political hacks (from *both* parties, though one seems to be worse than the other these days) dodge questions and refuse to give serious answers. This is something I feel particularly strongly about as someone who is called upon to give serious answers to people’s questions every week. Even when the answer is uncomfortable to give, I want to give it as a matter of principle.

But the political hacks who appear on TV these days don’t. In fact, for them doding questions is a studied art form. The better at it they are, the more they are admired in hack circles. But as Scripture says, what is praiseworthy in the eyes of men is abominable in the eyes of God. What they ware doing is a form of dehumanizing manipulation that treats the viewer as an animal to be tricked rather than a person to be persuaded. It does not elevate the discussion and deserves thoroughgoing condemnation.

Thus the idea for my show: People come on. The interviewer asks them a question, and they get three chances to give a straight answer. If they do give a straight answer (and, “I don’t know” is a straight answer) then they get a new question, up to the length of the interview segment. But if they don’t give one then the interviewer declares “You’re out of here. Persistent refusal to answer the question,” and the host brings in a new guest.

Of course, you’d need items lined up to fill the rest of the show in case of guest ejection, but I suspect there would need to be fewer filler-interviews (including pre-taped segements kept in reserve and rotated through so they stay fresh) than you might expect. If the rules are consistently enforced then guests will not make the mistake of refusing to answer. Those guests who are not prepaired to give straight answers will not come on the show, meaning that the show will have almost all quality guests who will raise rather than lower the standard of discussion and will treat the audience like people to be reasoned with instead of animals to be herded.

What do y’all think?

I’m not holding my breath on this one.

GET THE STORY.

Okay, you know the episode (whatever it’s called) where Capt. Kirk fights the Gorn?

Thought so.

Well, in this episode they are fighting each other around some very prominent rocks that kind of jut up and to the right.

These rocks appear in *LOTS* of Star Trek episodes. Can’t tell you how many alien worlds these exact same rocks are on.

They also appear in *LOTS* of things besides Star Trek.

Last night I was talking to a friend about how I’m having a problem being distracted by continually recognizing the East and West Mitten Buttes from Monument Valley, Utah when I’m watching old John Ford westerns, and I thought about the ubiquitous “Star Trek rocks.”

So I Googled “star trek” and “rocks.”

FOUND THEM!

Turns out that they’re called the Vasquez Rocks (named after an outlaw who hid there), and (according to maps.yahoo.com), they’re only two and a half hours from my house.

I SMELL ROAD TRIP!

I hate to say bad things about a movie without seeing it, but the data I have on the movie Vera Drake suggests that it is a pro-abort propaganda piece.

It’s also just won a prize at an Italian film festival.

Excerpts from the story:

“Vera Drake,” Mike Leigh’s tough tale of a working-class mother who is caught performing illegal abortions in 1950s England, scooped up the prizes at the Venice Film Festival Saturday, including the coveted Golden Lion.

The film raises difficult questions about abortion in a world where the wealthy have access to discreet and legal abortions and the poor throw themselves on the mercy of practitioners like Drake.

“The audience must walk away with a debate and struggle with it. These things are not black and white,” Leigh said.

Staunton anchors the movie as a working mother who risks her close-knit family’s love after a girl on whom she performs an abortion falls seriously ill and she is jailed.

Somehow, I suspect that the film is more black-and-white than advertised. Given the plot as described, it would be easy for filmmakers to send the clear message that, as regrettable as injuries like this were, they were caused by the era’s “repressive abortion laws,” to which good riddance.

I could be wrong about that, but the odds of a British company spinning the plot in a pro-life direction (i.e., portraying the lead character as a babykiller who injures mothers, too) or even in neutral manner seem to me to be remarkably low.

A reader writes down yonder:

I don’t personally criticize Disney’s moves to diversify its business – ESPN, for example, is a valuable addition to the business. In addition, while perhaps Walt’s version of Disney was family-friendly, it’s a stretch of the imagination to claim that it was predominantly Christian (occultic elements run through many of Disney’s early films).

The early Disney problems weren’t limited to occult elements (though these were pretty tame by today’s standards; Mickey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice even taught a valuable moral lesson). There was also a streak of secular humanism that runs through mid-century Disney material. Still, the company cultivated a fundamentally family-friendly image and jettisoned this as part of the Eisner Era. The company may not have been Christian, but at least it wasn’t trying to subvert family values in the way it came to in recent years.

I only hope that when the history of the Eisner Era is written a couple of years from now, it will recognize that the disaffection of family-oriented patrons contributed substantially to the decline in Disney boxoffice receipts and that, by the time Disney started to produce more family-friendly films again (like the ones Steve mentions), its family base had been so alienated that it wouldn’t come out to the theater for Disney films.

The alienation went far beyond those who formally boycotted Disney. Many who didn’t commit to the boycott still were so turned off by Disney that they would only show up for the most exciting movies (e.g., the Pixar features), passing by less exciting movies they would have turned out to see if not for a general distaste for the company (and they would have seen even more if they had a general like for the company rather than a feeling of betrayal). I know this was the case with me in numerous instances, and I’m sure that it was the case with many, many others.

The level of dissatisfaction with the company reached such levels that even many Christians who weren’t specifically boycotting would feel ashamed to admit to friends that they had been to a Disney movie, and it just wasn’t worth the effort to go.

If the scope of family alienation is recognized then the departure of Eisner will be a chance for the company to make a clean break with recent history and families may again start going to Disney films in the numbers needed to make them profitable. Disney needs to reach out to its alienated family base when Eisner goes. DRAMATICALLY SO. It needs to send a clear signal that Disney intends to serve its family-oriented customers again in a way that it hasn’t in years.

But if the role of family alienation is not recognized then the company may turn in an even more anti-family direction, having concluded that the family-oriented market is either too small to make a profit or too alienated to come back. In that case, look for its profits to continue to decline as the alienation grows worse, with family-oriented customers concluding that Disney passed by its last, best hope for redemption (i.e., the departure of Eisner).

NOTE: If any Disney employees happen to see this, please print it up and share it around.

EISNER’S OUT AT DISNEY.

Or going out, anyway.

I guess we’ll see if their anti-family manner of doing business starts to modify in any degree.

I’m stunned! I can’t believe it!! It’s HORRIBLE!!!

Actress Bitty Shramm, who plays the long-suffering, tough-as-nails psychiactric nurse Sharona, is leaving Monk!

For those who haven’t yet caught Monk fever, the program stars Tony Shalhoub and is an absolutely hilarious, intelligent, and life-affirming program about a detective who suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It airs on USA Network and is WELL worth your time.

But now Bitty Shramm–the ideal sidekick and sparring partner for Tony Shalhoub–is leaving the show!

It’ll be like Holmes without Watson!–only Holmes didn’t need Watson to give him handy-wipes to control his germophobia!

GET THE SAD, SAD, SAD STORY.

Whatever is Monk going to do without Sharona???

I just know I’m going to obsess about this.

UPDATE: Welcome Google visitors! More information has been revealed about the Sharona situation since the time this post was written. Basically, Sharona and her son, Benjy, moved back to the East Coast to reunite with her former husband. (This was not shown on screen but was talked about.) Subsequently, Monk hired a new assistant, a former bartender named Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), who has a daughter. Thus far, Natalie seems to be doing as good a job at standing up to Monk as Sharona did, but we’ll always have a special place in our hearts for Sharona. Hopefully she’ll guest star in the future.

Go out and buy a copy!

Or ORDER IT HERE

(I’m hoping that it has a “Subtitles OFF” feature so that I can focus on the Latin and Aramaic without being distracted by the English subtitles. Can’t wait to see if it does. 🙂

Go out and buy a copy!

Or ORDER IT HERE

(I’m hoping that it has a “Subtitles OFF” feature so that I can focus on the Latin and Aramaic without being distracted by the English subtitles. Can’t wait to see if it does. 🙂

SDG here. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings tour de force turned out so brilliantly that one could almost forget how different it could have been. It’s entirely possible that a significant part of the reason the films are as true to the books as they are is due to enormous fan pressure online and elsewhere. (Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the issues and controversy before the release of the first film.)

Now that Walden Media is at work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Narnia fans are understandably wary. For one thing, as well-loved as these books are both inside and outside the church, they don’t have nearly the huge following of the Lord of the Rings books. For another, the Christian themes in Lewis’s books are so much more blatant than those of Tolkien’s books that the risk of Hollywood subversion and the stakes in the event of such subversion are higher.

By the way, recent news from the set of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe includes the recent casting of the four Pevensie children. So, if I need an excuse to be musing about this subject just now, here from the set (courtesy of the New Zealand Herald) are pictures of:

Nine-year-old Georgie Henley, from Yorkshire, as Lucy:

17-year-old William Moseley, from Gloucestershire, as Peter:

15-year-old Anna Popplewell and 12-year-old Skandar Keynes, both of London, as Susan and Edmund:

The big question, of course, is: Do the people in charge of this thing have any idea what they’re doing?

And the answer, so far, is: Hard to say.

On the encouraging side, the people at Walden Media are apparently Christians, and Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham, who is co-producing, seems committed to preserving Lewis’s vision. Plus, Walden Media produced Holes, a wonderful — and wonderfully faithful — adaptation of a delightful children’s book. (Of course they also produced the Jackie Chan parody of Around the World in 80 Days, but I choose to believe that doesn’t count as an adaptation at all.)

On the down side, director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Shrek 2) at the very least hasn’t yet learned like Peter Jackson to talk the talk. Following massive interest by the Christian press and moviegoing public during the phenomenon of the first film, Jackson became trippingly familiar with variations on this theme:

“Of course Professor Tolkien was a very religious man, and his religious ideas did play a part in his novels, and while we have not set out to make a religious film, from the outset we were determined to honor Tolkien’s vision and not to put any of our own baggage into this film. So while we brought no religious intentions to this project, Tolkien’s beliefs did shape the story he told and some of that is evident in our films.”

This respectful and nuanced speech, which I read and heard in various versions from Jackson on a number of occasions, was reassuring to Tolkien’s Christian fans while at the same time not alarming non-Christian Tolkien lovers with worries that they were in for a ten-hour serial sermon.

When it comes to The Chronicles of Narnia, of course, Lewis’s Christian beliefs are even more emphatically important. Unfortunately, published remarks from Adamson so far don’t evince the same kind of respect for the integrity of Lewis’s vision or the same level of awareness of its religious dimension. Instead, Adamson has made such remarks as these:

“I don’t want to make the book as much as my memory of the book.”

and

“So I’ve really tried to make the story about a family which is disenfranchised and disempowered in World War II, that on entering Narnia, through their unity as a family become empowered at the end of the story. It’s really bringing the humanity of the characters into what is effectively a symbolic story.”

Other signs have also been mixed. Early reports indicated that the creature effects for Aslan, Tumnus, and others would be handled by the two companies who did the effects for The Lord of the Rings, Weta (which was responsible for most of the film effects) and RGB XYZ (which did the very best digital creature work in the final film, and was responsible for the oliphants looking so much better in The Return of the King than they did in The Two Towers).

But later reports indicated that in fact creature effects would be handled by a company called Rhythm & Hues, best known for the (hardly awe-inspiring) digital work on Daredevil, Scooby-Doo, The Cat in the Hat, and Garfield. Not encouraging.

Now, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless but who works in the industry and is a Christian, assures me that the project is in good hands. Regarding Adamson’s off-putting comments, he cites PR concerns and the desire to avoid appearing as if they’re making a religious picture.

That’s fine, I guess. But somehow Peter Jackson managed to let religious fans know that their beloved author’s themes would be respected without coming across like Mel Gibson making The Passion of the Christ. From a PR perspective, there’s no reason why Adamson can’t learn to do the same — assuming he does know what he’s doing and does want to respect Lewis’s themes and intentions.

Walden Media, don’t let us down!