Category: Film and TV

Steven Greydanus’s review of Brokeback Mountain IS UP.

As you might guess, he gives it significant marks for artistic merit (three and a half stars) but gives it a -4 moral/spirital rating (which is as bad as it can get on his scale), resulting in it having no appropriate audience and an overall recommendability of F.

He thus was able to separate the artistic craftsmanship of the film from its moral content, which is a very important distinction to make. Something can appear beautiful and even moving and still be gravely immorally.

"And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14).

That’s the thing about sin: If it wasn’t in some way attractive to people, they wouldn’t do it.

Steve also bring out a point that I had been thinking about: When a morally offensive movie has artistic merit, that makes it MORE dangerous, not less, because it is better able to draw the viewer into the immoral worldview of the film than a ham-fisted, low-quality film.

Steve also points out that there are NO sympathetic heterosexual male characters in the film. Homosexual males can get sympathy, and so can heterosexual females, but not heterosexual males. He writes:

The film allows its sexually omnivorous protagonists to be morally ambiguous, and its straight women can be likable or sympathetic. Yet essentially every straight male character in the film is not only unsympathetic, but unsympathetic precisely in his embodiment of masculinity.

In the end, in its easygoing, nonpolemical way, Brokeback Mountain is nothing less than a critique not just of heterosexism but of masculinity itself, and thereby of human nature as male and female. It’s a jaundiced portrait of maleness in crisis — a crisis extending not only to the sexual identities of the two central characters, but also to the validity of manhood as exemplified by every other male character in the film. It may be the most profoundly anti-western western ever made, not only post-modern and post-heroic, but post-Christian and post-human.

GET THE REVIEW.

I wanted to touch back on something that I meant to mention regarding the non-retraction retraction issued by Catholic News Service regarding its erroneous ranking of Brokeback Mountain as an "L" film ("limited audiences") rather than an "O" film ("morally offensive").

Here is the text of what they wrote:

Editor’s Note: "Brokeback Mountain," originally rated L (limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling), has been reclassified O — morally offensive. This has been done because the serious weight of the L rating — which restricts films in that category to those who can assess, from a Catholic perspective, the moral issues raised by a movie — is, unfortunately, misunderstood by many. Because there are some in this instance who are using the L rating to make it appear the church’s — or the USCCB’s — position on homosexuality is ambiguous, the classification has been revised specifically to address its moral content.

The part in red is how the L rating is normally explained, and it’s fine. That’s what the L rating means.

But the part in blue is a misinterpretation of the L rating that reveals something interesting.

Note that in blue the editor says that L restricts films "to those who can assess, from a Catholic perspective, the moral issues raised by a movie."

If that’s what L means then y’know what? EVERY movie should be rated L.

NOBODY should be watching a movie if he is unable to correctly assess the moral issues raised by it. If you’re going to get suckered into thinking something immoral in a movie is really moral then you SHOULDN’T be watching that film.

I don’t care whether it’s The Incredibles or Silence of the Lambs. If you can’t accurately handle the moral issues a film raises–whatever those may be–then that film is not for you.

This reinterpretation of the L rating completely steamrollers the need for all other ratings–including O. I mean, if you’re a moral theologian and can correctly "assess, form a Catholic perspective, the moral issues raised by a movie" and that’s a sufficient reason NOT to give it an O then guess what: No films need to be given an O since SOMEBODY (at least the film critic who would have otherwise given them an O, and if not him then the pope) will be able to assess the moral issues they raise.

So ALL films really should have an L.

Clearly this is not what is meant by the ratings system or there would be no other ratings. No A-I, A-II, A-III, or O.

The conventional (in red) description of what L means is correct: These are films that have a limited audience because they contain material that many adults would find troubling.

"Many adults would find troubling" is a different criterion than "morally offensive according to the teaching of the Church." There are a lot of things that many adults would find troubling that aren’t in themselves morally offensive. Showing gruesome murders, for example, is troubling to many, but the mere showing of them isn’t morally offensive as long as the film contains a moral structure that doesn’t ENDORSE the gruesome murders.

Same goes for showing immoral heterosexual and homosexual relationships. That can be troubling for many adults, but it isn’t morally offensive if the film doesn’t ENDORSE these relationships.

So if a film shows evil but does not endorse it, that’s reason to go L.

But if it shows evil AND endorses it then that’s reason to go O.

One of the things presupposed by the distinction between the L and the O rating is that L films are NOT morally offensive. If they were then they should get an O.

As I’ve pointed out before, if the central theme of a movie is morally offensive (e.g., an endorsed-by-the-film homosexual relationship that is what the film is all about–or an endorsed-by-the-film extramarital heterosexual one that is what the film is all about) then the film is morally offensive. (And if the central theme of a movie being morally offensive doesn’t qualify it as a morally offensive picture then I’d like to know what on earth COULD.)

It doesn’t matter whatever aristic merits the film may have in presenting its central theme. If the central theme is morally offensive then those artistic merits simply serve to help the film in delivering an immoral payload to the audience. They’re sugar for the poison pill, and there is all the more reason to slap an O on it so that the faithful can be warned.

Note, incidentally, the elitist attitude of the non-retraction retraction: We who are the cognoscenti and are able to "assess" the moral issues raised by Brokeback Mountain are able to "handle it" and so it is only an L, but because of complaints from the masses, who are too ill-informed to "assess" the moral issues it raises, we’ve got to slap an O on it even though that’s not what it really deserves.

So the non-retraction retraction is not just resentful (blaming the audience) and disingenuous (appearing to classify something as morally offensive but indicating that it really isn’t) and hypocritical (giving something a  rating that one doesn’t believe it deserves), it’s also elitist (viewing the audience as too stupid to handle the truth).

A reader writes:

Jimmy-

For the first time in a long time I checked the USCCB film suitability rating for "Lion …" and was really disappointed to see that it received an "A-II — adults and adolescents" rating." The review is at http://www.usccb.org/movies/c/thechroniclesofnarnialionwitchwardrobe.shtml .

The two germane paragraphs are:

The climactic battle may be too intense for young children, as may be scenes involving a pack of vicious wolves serving as Jadis’ henchmen. Hardest of all to watch is Aslan’s atoning sacrifice, surrounded by hellish legions seemingly conjured from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. His apparent "defeat" is trumpeted by Jadis’ victory cry, "So much for love." Some parents may feel it inappropriately upsetting for a "family film," but Lewis himself argued that it was proper not to shield children from knowledge that they are "born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil."

and

The film contains some battlefield violence, intense scenes of child peril and menace, and several frightening sequences. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested.

I contrast that with Steve Greydanus’ rating of "Kids & up – discernment required" at http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/2641 .

At any rate, I don’t know whether to be glad or not that few people apparently read and heeded the warning (as evidenced by the strong opening weekend box office, http://today.reuters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx?type=media&storyID=nN11596039).

I was wondering

   1. if you you know anything about the film review office / effort of the USCCB?

Yes, I do.

   2. who actually does the reviews?

It changes over time, but generally by laypeople who have been hired to work for the office. Currently duties are divided between a pair of gentlemen named Harry Forbes and David DiCerto, who wrote the Narnia review, which can be seen HERE along with his byline. (When the reviews appear on CNS you generally get the byline of the person doing it. The OFB site, though, does’t use bylines.)

3. how strong is the authority of the Bishop’s office behind these guidance efforts?

The film reviews do not engage the Church’s Magisterium, nor are they legislative acts, so they do not have doctrinal or judicial "authority."

They are opinions written at the bishops’ behest by laypeople who have been hired to bring a Catholic sensibility to film criticism and who have done well enough that they have been able to continue in their positions–which is to say, the bishops would like to provide these as a helpful service, but they’re not going to invest any kind of "authority" in them.

No Catholic is obligated to agree with these reviews, nor the ratings assigned to the movies, and the bishops don’t intend that. They’re just a service in hopes of being helpful.

For my own part, I have been impressed with how well the ratings were done a number of years ago when I was doing film criticism, though more recently I think they’ve had a significant number of incorrect ratings (or that was my impression the last time I paid attention to the ratings; I haven’t really hung out on their site of late and things may have improved.)

One thing to note about the lower end of the OFB scale is that it has a design flaw separating the A-I (general patronage) and A-II (adults and adolescents) ratings. Because there is no middle rating or qualifier here, if the movie would be disturbing to a significant number of kids then that makes it hard for them to give it an A-I rating and there is pressure for them to put it in the A-II category. The way the rating system is set up, there is no way for them to say "This would be okay for some pre-adolescents but not for others."

That’s an especial problem because there is just a world of difference between a five year old movie goer and an eleven of twelve year old movie goer. Also, children of the same age can be very different in their readiness to see particular movies due to maters of temprament and movie viewing experience.

The same thing happens at the jump from A-II (adults and adolescents) to A-III (adults). There’s no way to say "This is okay for some adolescents but not others."

Sometimes the reviews will assign a rating but clarify it in the review itself (e.g., we’re ranking it this way but it would also be okay for mature members of the next age group down) to try to get around the design flaw.

The MPAA gets around the children’s age problem by having G, PG, and PG-13, with the first meaning it’s okay for everyone, PG-13 meaning recommended for adults & adolescents, and PG meaning okay for some younger children but needing parental guidance.

Steve Greydanus does something simliar by having kids, kids with discernment (meaning: parents need to exercise discernment about whether a movie is suitable for the kid because it won’t be suitable for all kids), and teens, which are roughly equivalent (in theory) to G, PG, and PG-13 (though Steve might quibble with those rough identifications).

The OFB, though, just has the two rankings A-I and A-II for everybody under 18, and that creates some awkwardness when ranking movies like this.

The reader continues:

Btw, speaking with a friend of mine with younger kids (Paul Masek http://www.stlyouth.org/blogs/paul who started and runs www.reapteam.org, they do nearly 200 retreats a year for middle to high-school kids as part of the St. Louis Archdiocese), our non-scientific sampling after Mass had all of their kids really pumped after seeing the movie, and they talked about their fairly timid  six or seven year old cousin who was not only not frightened, but called this "his favorite movie ever".

Wouldn’t surprise me at all.

You ever get the feeling when watching a television show that the writers might as well have a Greek chorus descend at the end to announce the theme of the episode, just in case they haven’t yet gotten their message across? I had that feeling when watching Cold Case this past Sunday.

The story revolved around a teenage couple who found themselves pregnant. It’s 1988 and by the end of the school year the teenage dad will have been mowed down in a hit-and-run and the teenage mom will have tossed the baby in the trash. In 2005, the child — a healthy white newborn girl born under conditions that would have brought national media coverage and a legion of prospective adoptive parents who somehow was unadoptable and spent the past seventeen years in foster care — will be approached by someone claiming to have been her "real" dad. So the hunt is on for this guy and for whoever ran over the other young man seventeen years earlier.

In the process of solving the story we find that the couple first turned to a school nurse about the possibility of an abortion.  Nurse Virtue turned out to be a pro-life wacko who believes in “punishing” anyone involved with abortion. On the side, she’s a promiscuous hypocrite who has been making time with a married math teacher whose marriage is in trouble because he and his wife cannot conceive children. No matter that a school nurse is statistically more likely to be willing to ferry the girl to Planned Parenthood than to run over those who provide or consider abortion. She’s a source for a few well-placed jabs at “nut job” anti-abortionists. The show will end by showing Nurse Virtue avidly reading a sexy romance novel.

We also find out that the teen mom was molested by the track coach. He pushes the teen dad to seek the abortion — and is even willing to provide the funds for the abortion — so that the kid will be free to pursue a track scholarship, but seventeen years later it is the track coach molester who has been stalking the teen girl he believes is his. Uhm, yeah.

To top it all, the killer turns out to be the math teacher whose hopes to adopt the baby were dashed when the teen dad told him that he could not bear to give up “his girls.” Enraged, the prospective adoptive parent ran down the “heroic” dad who “valiantly” decided to forego adoption for marriage and an instant family with a young woman whom he believed had been sleeping around and whose child might not be his.

So, where was the Greek chorus chanting “Abortion is our friend”? Maybe it wasn’t in the budget.

Immediately after this Very Special Episode of Cold Case was the opening night of CBS’s miniseries Pope John Paul II, which was advertised as papally blessed by Benedict XVI. That night’s episode was so incredibly good that I can’t wait for tonight’s conclusion and I would buy a DVD of the movie in a heartbeat. It certainly deserved a papal blessing.

One of my favorite parts of the movie, so far, was a vignette in that evening’s episode of a young Father Wojtyla counseling his students on the importance of sexual responsibility. The message he gave was completely and totally Catholic and amazing to hear on primetime network TV….

Especially considering the Coincidence of the Cold Case episode that preceded it.

It appears that The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. may FINALLY be coming to DVD!

YEE-HAW!!!

TVShowsOnDVD.Com reports:

After years of rumors and finger-crossing, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. will likely come to DVD in 2006. Warner Bros have given me the go-ahead to post the news that it’s strongly being considered for release next year. They haven’t started on the project yet, so they can’t say with 100% certainty that it’s coming, but things are looking good for our boy. We posted news that this was coming before, but that was secondhand info and obviously wasn’t reliable.

This is a show I’ve fought very hard to get on DVD, so I’m excited by the news that it’ll be coming out. It’s currently the 3rd most popular unreleased show on the site, and Bruce Campbell fans are diehards and throw their support behind the actor; I think the release will be successful. We’re very much "in-the-loop" on this title, so stay tuned for more news when we get it [SOURCE].

For those who may not be aware, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. was an outstanding saddlepunk series that Fox aired back in 1993. It’s a lot like the old 1960s series Wild, Wild West–only good (or better).

I didn’t wach Brisco when the show was first on because of the way Fox advertised it. (I.e., as a Western done "Fox style"–wink, wink, nudge, nudge–implying a lot more sexual content than the show actually had.) And apparently a lot of other people didn’t, too.

Fox wasn’t really behind the show and debuted it in the 8 p.m. Friday Death Slot, which is guaranteed to kill programs in short order (as happend to Star Trek Enterprise in its last season) due to the fact audiences are unusually low at that time, making it hard to get ratings.

It aired just before The X-Files (and, you’ll note, when the latter started to get popular the network moved it out of Friday night and onto Sunday–a high TV-audience night).

Brisco lasted only a season, but what a season it was!

I discovered the show when TNT was airing it Saturday mornings, and it was good enough to pull me away from watching cartoons (which was an accomplishment).

The show had tremendous potential, and it’s really a shame that the network didn’t give it more of a chance. It seems to have been a couple of years ahead of its time, because the exact same kind of anachronistic in-joking that the show did was later used to great effect on Hercules and Xena, both shows that were extremely popular in their day.

The program tells the story of a bounty hunter named (are you ready?) Brisco County Jr., who is hired by wealthy San Francisco robber barons to hunt down a particular gang of criminals who (coincidentally), killed Brisco’s father, lawman Brisco County Sr.

That much is more of less standard Western fare, but the show injected numerous sci-fi elements, including the mysterous "orbs’ (metallic devices that look like floating ocean mines) that came from the future and had mysterious powers, like endowing people with superstrength, turning bad characters good, and consuming and trapping evil androids.

The show also featured a lot of anachronistic, forward-looking humor, like a character named "Aaron," who was a knockoff of Elvis Presley and who had invented "day-glasses" (glasses with darkened lenses) to protect his eyes from the sun.

Or Brisco’s rival (and later partner) Lord Bowler, an ultra-macho ex-Buffalo Soldier who’s secret dream was to move to the Napa Valley and plant a vineyard (hence: the origin of California’s Napa wine industry).

Or John Astin (formerly Gomez Addams) playing Prof. Wickwire, a crazy inventor who comes up with (are you ready?) crazy inventions–like rocket-propelled trains and things like that.

Brisco County Jr. himself is played by Bruce Campbell (better known as Ash from the Evil Dead trilogy, which is comedy horror rather than comedy sci-fi western).

Anyway, it’s a great show, and I wanted to give a head-up to other Brisco fans out there that the long wait for (legitimate) DVDs may FINALLY be coming to an end!

Will keep you posted!

MORE BRISCO MEMORIES.

Professor and screenwriter Thom Parham has written a great analysis of why heathens make the best Christian films and why Christians themselves often fall down on that job.

"Secular filmmakers tend to observe life more objectively than Christians. They see the world the way it really is, warts and all. Christian filmmakers, on the other hand, tend to see the world the way they want it to be. Ignoring life’s complexities, they paint a simplistic, unrealistic portrait of the world."

I wouldn’t quite say that Christians do not see the warts or ignore the complexities.  Many Christians are also quite objective in their analysis of the world.  Rather, I’d say that many Christians in various artistic disciplines sometimes fear showing the warts or delving too deeply into the complexities, perhaps out of a misplaced scrupulosity that doing so is somehow "un-Christian."

"’If you want to send a message, try Western Union,’ said Frank Capra, a Christian who made hugely popular mainstream films."

This I do think is a huge problem for Christian artists. I can’t tell you how many defenses of The Message I’ve seen by Christian artists, whatever their medium. They tend to think of their art as a ministry and nurture romantic dreams of converting the world through a well-crafted apologetic. While I wouldn’t say that art and apologetics are mutually exclusive, I would say that the artist must be an artist first. The reason The Passion of the Christ worked so well as art and evangelization was because Mel Gibson is a Christian artist who has spent thirty years in the industry working as an artist on secular films. He knows how to make a great film and knows how to incorporate theme without sacrificing art. Until you’re as successful as an artist as is Mel Gibson, don’t try to do what he did.

"The idea that Christians will go see films targeted at them has not been borne out by the marketplace. Christians, it turns out, see the same films as everyone else."

And are as discerning about what constitutes a great movie as secular theater-goers. Christian artists must learn that they are not going to win a Christian audience by pandering to them. And Christian artists also are not going to win a secular audience by preaching to them.

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Relapsed Catholic for the link.)

BTW, the book from which this essay was taken, Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, And Culture, edited by Spencer Lewerenz and St. Blog parishioner Barbara Nicolosi, sounds great.

GET THE BOOK.

What’s it like to grow up as Harry Potter?

I don’ t know. And in fact nobody knows since Harry Potter is a fictional character.

But one kid has an unusual insight on the matter–Daniel Radcliffe–the kid who plays Harry Potter in the movies.

Time Magazine has a story about him and the other kids playing in the Potter films.

Reading the article makes for an interesting insight into the world of child actors.

The fact that the Harry Potter movies are so successful has kept the kids locked in an unusual sociological bubble for years, with years yet to go (apparently–unless they re-cast the parts).

Personally, I’m disturbed by some of the things child actors go through. I often see scenes in movies and TV shows where I find myself thinking, "I really hope they got the child actor off the set before they filmed what’s going on in this shot"–or realizing that they clearly DIDN’T.

I couldn’t imagine allowing a child of mine to grow up in the entertainment biz, and especially not becoming a central player in a franchise like Harry Potter. I’d want my kids to have much more normal experiences growing up. Even with precautions taken (like only letting the kids film for four hours a day), I’m afraid that the experience would fundamentally warp them as adults. After all, former child stars don’t have a very successful track record as a whole.

GET THE STORY.

HERE’S A REALLY INTERESTING ARTICLE ON THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION.

The author argues that broadcast TV is in for a major shakeup in the wake of broadband technology.

It’s certain that the Internet is going to change the way television operates–that’s been obvious for some time–but what isn’t clear is what the resulting TV landscape will look like.

At some point we’re going to be downloading TV programs. There are already experiments inthat direction: There’s suppose to be a scaled-down tie-in for the program 24 that you’ll be able to download onto your cellphone. Apple is talking about a video iPod. But these are just experiments.

What has to happen is for someone to come up with an economically viable model–or set of models–for how to pay for TV content to be produced in the age of downloads.

That’s where the above-linked articles comes in. The author speculates on how the economics of TV will work in the future.

Among his predictions:

• Broadcast TV will go back to being a live medium covering things like news and sports as non-live television programs (e.g., sitcoms and dramas) shift to downloadable distribution.
• Downloaded TV shows will not have the equivalent of commercials. There will be no interruptions in the show for commercial breaks.
• Instead, the advertising will be embedded in the show itself–like the station-identification "bugs" that currently appear in the corner of your TV screen (or, though he doesn’t mention this, through product placement).
• (If I read him correctly) Shows will move back toward having a single sponsor instead of a host of different advertisers.
• The audience will continue to not pay directly for TV content.

These are interesting ideas, as is the way he fleshes out how it all might work, though I’m dubious about his last prediction. I think that audiences WILL be willing to pay for content. We’re already paying for cable service and for DVDs we buy and for TiVo boxes that cut out the commercials for us.

I suspect that, as the download TV market develops, there will be people who will be willing to pay the producers of the shows in order to get advertising-free versions of the broadcasts, just as is now happening via DVDs. A model may emerge where you can either download the free version of the show, which has embedded advertising, or pay a fee to access an advertising-free version of the show.

I suspect that the latter will at least be experimented with as the market matures.

Now, what role does Battlestar Galactica play in this series of developments? For that you’ll have to

GET THE STORY.

Maybe. . . .

GET THE STORY.

A BIG, Texas-sized CHT to the reader who e-mailed me a link to the just-released DVD of The Call of Cthulhu!

For those who may not know, The Call of Cthulhu is one of the keystone stories of early 20th-century weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.

The story dates from 1926, and now the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has adapted the story to film–done in the style of a 1926 silent film!

This was an outstanding choice.

Though there have been a number of Lovecraft film adaptations, they are generally regarded as unworthy by Lovecraft fans. Too much of Lovecraft’s ability to create mood depends on his narration, and when you have characters speaking to each other in naturalistic dialogue, the same effect just can’t be created. Also, many filmmakers who have adapted his stories have been notoriously unfaithful in doing so, changing elements left and right so that the film bears little resemblance to what Lovecraft wrote.

This film, being done by a historical society, is extremely faithful to the story and, by chucking out naturalistic dialogue in the manner of a silent film, it is able to capture the eerie mood of a Lovecraft story through the power of image and music.

This film is a REALLY good adaptation. Lovecraft (who did go to the movies and even had a job as a ticket salesman at a movie theater for a while) would have LOVED this flim if it had been made in 1926 so that he could have seen it. He would have raved about it in his letters to friends.

Continue reading “The Call Of Cthulhu!”