Category: Film and TV

A reader writes:

I have a massive quandry…  I am having a problem rooting for the colonials in Battlestar Galactica due to the fact they are polytheists.  The cylons are Monotheists.

What did you think of [last week’s episode] Downloaded??!!!  <SPOILER DELETED> is great.

Okay, second question first. I thought that "Downloaded" totally rocked. Having an episode from the cylons’ viewpoint was totally great, and I can’t way to see how they play out the implications of this episode in the two-part season finale that starts this week.

I also thought that <SPOILER DELETED> was really, REALLY great. (For those who have seen the episode, <SPOILER DELETED> is the revelation that Caprica 6 has as soon as she wakes up in the rebirth tank–the one that "could cause a problem" for her with the other cylons. DO NOT spoil this in the combox for those who haven’t seen the episode. Just refer to it as "<SPOILER DELETED>".)

It was also nice to have numbers assigned to some of the other cylon models–to know that Sharon/Boomer is an 8, that the Lucy Lawless character is a 3, and that that TV-reporter-male-cylon guy is a 5.

Now to the main question: the monotheism/polytheism question.

In principle, I don’t have a problem watching a drama in which the good guys are polytheists and the bad guys are monotheist, because in reality some polytheists are good and some monotheists are bad.

For example: Suppose Battlestar Galactica got re-envisioned as an earth-based drama occuring in Kashmir.

Instead of the twelve colonies, we’ve got twelve Hindu villages–which are then wiped out by an invading hord of Taliban that have been skulking around Pakistan after their defeat several years ago in Afghanistan. The surviving Kashmiri villagers then are forced to flee for their lives to the lost, thirteenth village–called Earthstan–while constantly being persecuted by the Taliban hordes.

In watching such a series, I wouldn’t have any problem at all rooting for the villagers over the Taliban. It doesn’t matter that the villagers are Hindu and thus polytheists, while the Taliban are Muslim and thus monotheist.

Being a monotheist is not enough to get you on the side of right in my book. If you’re a monotheist who persecutes innocent polytheists, you’re a bad guy in my book, and I’ll root for the polytheists against you.

Now let’s apply this to the complexities we actually see in the series.

Yes, it’s true: The human culture presented in the series is largely polytheistic. But it’s not entirely polytheistic. There are atheists in the population (like Baltar) and agnostics (like Adama).

And there even seem to be human monotheists. If you watch the original mini-series, you’ll notice that the cylon they find at Ragnar Anchorage is walking around with Adama and talking about God (singular) and what he wants and Adama talks back to him about God (singular) and the conversation plays naturally. The fact that the guy is a monotheist isn’t a dead giveaway that he’s a cylon (something else gives him away, but not that), so there seem to be human monotheists out there somewhere.

So human culture isn’t monolithically polytheistic. (I guess it’s polylithically theistic.)

The cylons, by contrast, do seem to be solidly monotheistic, except for lone individuals who have "gone human," like the original Galactica Boomer (who is now on Caprica).

So what are we to make of this? Are we to approve or disapprove of polytheism?

I don’t think that the series means for us to do either. The polytheism of the main humans in the series is something of a relic of the original Galactica, with its Mormon-Egyptian-Greco-Roman themes. (They even visited the tomb of one of their gods of Kobol in the original series.) What’s new is that they’ve made the cylons monotheists.

Since our native sympathies are with the humans rather than the cylons, this could be read as an endorsement of polytheism over monotheism, but that doesn’t seem to be what the producers are doing.

Watching the show carefully, it seems that they’re trying to explore the viewpoints of both sides and not establish either side’s religion as right or wrong. It’s certainly true that the cylons were wrong to wipe out human civilization, but that doesn’t make their monotheism wrong in the eyes of the show.

Thus there are episodes in season 1 in which Galactica 6 stresses to Baltar that one of God’s main commands is procreation (true) and in which she tells him God loves him (true) and wants to redeem him from his sins (true) and that he needs to open himself to the will of God (true) and that he can thereby become an instrument of God (true)–which he then does BY HELPING THE HUMANS BLOW UP A CYLON BASE.

6 also tells Baltar that God doesn’t take sides in this conflict–that he transcends our conflicts and is not to be viewed as a tribal deity who always endorses the wars of one side over the other. Instead, God wants the love of all. This is certainly a rather enlightened view of God that doesn’t square with a monotheism=evil interpretation.

We also have the cylons distinctly calling into question the deity of the colonists gods, suggesting that they were mortal beings (like Athena, who lept to her death on Kobol) and calling them "idols"–which we from time to time see the colonists actually using. The monotheist perspective is thus allowed to critique the polytheist one in a way that does not happen in reverse. The polytheists on the show never attack the monotheistic view. They may attack the cylon’s beliefs about what God is like, but they don’t mock the notion that there might be a single, supreme God.

Except for occasional expletives like "gods d*mn it!" or "oh my gods!" or an occasional prayer for the soul of a dead person, the polytheism of the humans really doesn’t come into the plot that much. (The tomb of Athena story on Kobol was an exception.)

For the most part, there is much more exploration of monotheism and the monotheist viewpoint. Monotheism is where the action is on the show.

And it’s not clear that God is pleased with either society we see in the series. The cylons, for example, can’t reproduce on their own and are thus unable to fulfill what they acknowlege to be one of God’s commands. This is apparently because they lack love (which also allowed them to destroy human civilization). Those cylons who have learned to love from humans (Caprica 6 and the two Boomers) immediately start questioning whether it was right for their people to wipe out ours. In the most recent episode, two of these characters are forced to conclude that the cylon invasion was just wrong and that they must work to atone for it.

Similarly, the humans (particularly Adama) have been driven to recognize the sins of humanity and to question–at least in the abstract–whether human civilization deserved to survive, what with having enslaved the cylons and (one might add) having permitted abortion. This isn’t to say that the cylons were right to invade, but it points to significant sins for which humanity deserved a comeuppance.

Of course, when the series first premiered, I was quite nervous about the polytheism/monotheism thing and where the series creators were going to take it, but as the show has unfolded, it’s become clear that they aren’t making a statement about whether polytheism or monotheism or atheism is true. They’re simply exploring the dramatic tensions that are latent in these worldviews.

That’s okay. In fact, that’s something I’d do if I were writing the series. Drama is all about tension and unease, and if you can make the viewer tense and uneasy then you’re creating drama–you’re hooking into the emotions that will bring him back for more.

If someone handed me a series about a bunch of polytheistic humans pitted against a bunch of robots and asked me to re-envision it (essentially what Sci-Fi did for exec producer Ron Moore), I might very well make the robots monotheists. That’s a good move dramatically, because it forces the viewers to not view this as a simple good vs. evil battle.

Nobody in a drama should ever be purely good or purely evil, because nobody in real life is purely good or purely evil (except for Jesus and Mary being purely good, but it is so hard to write dialogue for them).

Purely good and purely evil characters are what you may find in fairy tales, but in works written for adults they make the drama flat and uninteresting. If the creators of Battlestar Galactica flipped the religions of the two groups, making the humans
monotheists and the cylons polytheists (or atheists) then the series
would be a lot less interesting than it is.

The viewer’s native emotions will be on the side of the persecuted humans (because, well, they’re humans), but if you want the villains to be anything other than the Evil Walking Toasters that they were in the first series, you need to give them some good points–and a religion that the viewers sympathize with is a good way to do that.

The viewer thus feels tense–uneasy. He’s torn between sympathizing with the humans because they’re humans and sympathizing with the cylons because they’re monotheists. We know, ultimately, that the cylons were wrong to wipe out human civilization, but as long as you can keep that tension going–as long as you don’t resolve it by endorsing one religious view over another–you’re doing drama, which is what you’re here to do.

Over at the InsightScoop, Carl Olson has just outed himself regarding the fact that he watches TV, including which particular shows he watches.

He did so because Mark Brumley dared him.

Then Mark e-mailed me and dared (well, suggested) me to do the same.

Now they have a blogstorm going of bloggers and other Catholic notables outing themselves as TV watchers and naming their favorite shows.

GET THE SHOCKING TV CONFESSIONS OF CARL OLSON, MARK BRUMLEY, DOM BETTINELLI, JULIE D, SANDRA MIESEL–AND OTHERS!

Now, per Mark’s daresuggestion, here is my own:

Since I never use my blog to talk about anything other than apologetics, it may come as a shock to readers that I, too, watch television.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I’m a bit out of the loop when it comes to some of the shows that they’re talking about over at InsightScoop. I mean, I’ve heard of them, but I can’t actually tune in to them due to the fact that I’m out square dancing much of the time–at least when the shows are on.

As a result, there is really only one current show that I’m guaranteed to tune in for every week, other shows that I’ll watch if I’m still awake, and other shows that I plan to watch when they’re released on DVD (allowing me to skip the annoying and offensive commercials, as well as the annoying and offensive waits until next week’s show).

So here’s my list, divided by subcategory:

WHAT I ACTUALLY TUNE IN FOR

• Battlestar Galactica (I get home just in time from square dancing to watch this one)

WHAT I’LL WATCH IF I’M STILL AWAKE

• The repeat of Stargate SG-1 immediately after Battlestar Galactica
• The repeat of Stargate Atlantis immediately after the repeat of Stargate SG-1

SHOWS I’LL WATCH ON DVD ASAP AFTER THEY’RE RELEASED

• Monk (I’d watch it live, but it’s on at the same time as Battlestar Galactica)
• Stargate SG-1
• Stargate Atlantis

SHOWS I’LL GET AROUND TO WATCHING ON DVD

• Lost
• 24
• The Simpsons
• The 4400

SHOWS I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY SEEN BUT MAY WATCH ON DVD

• Deadwood
• Sleeper Cell
• CSI

SHOWS I WON’T WATCH ON TV OR ON DVD

• The latest lame Sci-Fi channel original movie (unless it has Bruce Campbell in it)

So how about you? What’s your list?

Battlestar Galactica has recently addressed the issue of abortion–twice–and they’ve done it well both times.

The first time it happened was when the question of aborting Boomer’s human-cylon baby came up.

For those who don’t know, the cylons are artificial entities (who seem more biological than not) that wiped out human civilization in a distant star system. (The survivors are now fleeing the cylons and trying to find the lost colony called Earth.)

Boomer (left) is a cylon who was able to mate successfully with a human, and now she’s pregnant. In view of what her people did to ours, though, there are a lot of folks who want her and her hybrid baby dead, and the question of forcing an abortion upon her was floated on the show.

Ultimately, there was no abortion. This was good not only from a moral perspective (violence was done neither to the baby nor the mother) but also from a dramatic perspective. (Killing Boomer’s child would deprive the show of a huge amount of dramatic possibilities as well as completely turn off the audience.)

They also had the saving of the child result (via a kind of stem cell-like thing) in curing the terminal cancer of President Laura Roslin (below), who was the chief one wanting the baby dead. So even before the child was born, it saved a life.

Abortion then came up a few weeks later, when a girl from a pro-life colony tried get an abortion from the doctor aboard the Galactica.

This episode established that abortion had been legal before the cylon attack, and so it was still legal. Further, President Roslin was very much a pro-abort. Yet she was also regarded as a religious figure by the pro-life colony, and she needs their political support to stay in office and keep the ragtag fleet of survivors safe.

As we know from the opening credits of the show every week, there are only 40-something thousand humans who survived the cylon attack, and more are getting picked off each week.

As Roslin herself said in the immediate wake of the attack, human civilization is doomed if they don’t get away from their home solar system " . . . And. Start. Having. Babies."

So the episode pits her pro-abortion ideology against the fact that humanity is facing extinction, and in this episode she’s told that unless demographic trends change (the trends including new cylon attacks on a regular basis) that the human race will be dead in less than 18 years.

Dramatically, this is very good. We’ve got internal conflict in the character. Laura Roslin is in the process of being mugged by reality.

And so in the end she issues an executive order that criminalizes abortion and makes anyone who would interfere with the birth of a child–whether mother or doctor (fathers don’t get mentioned explicitly for some reason)–subject to criminal penalties.

Two points for BSG!

But only two, because the writers throw a bone to the pro-aborts in the audience by letting the girl from the pro-life colony have the abortion before the executive order is issued–possibly costing President Roslin the support of the pro-life colonials in the upcoming election.

This also may not be the last time the subject comes up, because Roslin–who is now a "personally-in-favor-of-abortion-BUT" candidate (how’s that for a switch!) is pitted against a true pro-abort.

Interesting stuff.

Part of what I find interesting is that the writers of the show seem to be quite liberal (as you learn if you listen to the podcast commentary), but they’re telling a story that regularly forces them into having to take conservative positions on the show, because the conservative positions are the ones that are required for the survival of mankind.

"Liberalism is a luxury we can’t afford" is the message that keeps coming out.

Watching the characters from a pampered civilization get mugged by reality and have to shed their former illusions may not be one of the reasons that TV Guide called this "The best show on television," but it could have been.

A reader writes:

You’ve helped answer a question or two in the past about Stargate physics, but now, it’s personnel. Life has really acted up for me – in a good way – where I can’t plant myself down on Sci-Fi on Monday’s to catch several episodes of SG, so I haven’t seen this. But, how did they "transfer" Jonah when Daniel came back the first time from being dead/evolved. Is there a synapsis site I can go to?

First the answer to the specific question; then more general info on how to catch up on what you missed in an episodic TV show.

Daniel was expelled from the commuity of the Ascended and returned to our plane of existence when he broke the Ancients’ non-interference directive in an attempt to defeat Anubis. This happened at the end of season 6.

At the beginning of season 7 Daniel was found back in physical form and suffering from amnesia. His memory started to return over the next couple of episodes, when he fought alongside Jonah and the rest of SG-1 as they continue the struggle against Anubis, who was threatening Jonah’s homeworld of Kelowna.

By the end of the second episode, Daniel is functional enough to resume his place on the team, and Jonah returned to his own people on Kelowna.

If you want a mini-synopsis of each episode of the series, check out THIS ONE AT GATEWORLD.

Also, TV.COM has epsiode guides for an amazing number of shows.

In fact. TV.com is usually the first place I look when seeking an episode guide for a show.

WIKIPEDIA also usually has info on individual characters in shows, as well as the shows themselves.

And if all else fails you can GOOGLE the name of the show together with "episode guide" (in quotes) and turn up something.

This works not just for SG-1, but Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica, and even shows you dimly remember from your childhood.

Andreas Katsulas, best known for his depiction of the character G’Kar on Babylon 5, has died.

He was 59.

The cause of death was lung cancer.

MORE HERE.

May he rest in peace, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

(Katsulas is the second member of the Babylon 5 family to die. The first was Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Franklin and who died unexpectedly from a tear in his aorta.)

I must say that my views on Katsulas changed over the course of time. Originally, I didn’t like him. I first became aware of him when he was playing the Romulan character Tomalak on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I thought he played the part in an unpleasing, cartoon-of-a-villain way.

When B5 started, this view was confirmed, because originally G’Kar was an even more over-the-top cartoon of a villain than Tomalak ever dreamed of being.

But this was a fakeout on JMS’s part, and he always meant G’Kar to evolve from villain to spiritual leader, and Andreas Katsulas has the range as an actor to be able to make that amazing transformation.

I know that Joe must have told him to play G’Kar in the pilot and much of the first season as a swaggering stereotype, and knowledge of his true range leads me to think that maybe as Tomalak he just got bad direction. Star Trek has always had a lot of wooden, cartoonish acting, and maybe that just what the directors told him to give them.

I’m glad I got a chance to see what he was really capable of.

Katsulas also was one of the few actors in Hollywood to regularly work under massive amounts of prosthetic make-up. (And one of the few willing to do so.) Though he did have parts in which he didn’t have latex glued all over his face, most fans know him only through his sci-fi appearances, and his true visage is not often seen.

So in honor of his passing, let’s look at the man without the make-up.

I always thought The Addams Family was more creative and less stereotypical, but it is with great sadness that I report that Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis has died.

He was 95.

Maybe.

Actually, his age was unclear, which is as it should be with a member of the undead.

GET THE STORY.

BIO FROM WIKIPEDIA.

Rest in peace.

Until we see you again.

Which may be sooner rather than later given the whole undead thing.

In other vampire news,

FEMINIST AUTHOR BETTY FRIEDAN HAS DIED, TOO.

May she also rest in peace.

And may eternal light shine upon them.

I like Steve Martin, I really do. I was in high school when he broke big on the scene in the mid-seventies. I bought the albums, saw The Jerk in the theater, owned two copies of King Tut. I intentionally bumped into my friends in the hallway, just so I could say "Excu–u-u-u-u-use Me-e-e-e-e-e!!!".

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is still one of my favorite guilty pleasures when I just feel like wasting some time and giggling. Steve Martin may be one of the few people on the planet who could make the act of brewing coffee genuinely roll-on-the-floor-with-tears-in-your-eyes funny.

Kevin Kline is also a great comic talent. Who can forget his deranged, Nietzche-quoting, Ugly American criminal mastermind wannabe in A Fish Called Wanda? Funny stuff!

And now, they are doing a movie together!

So, why do I have this feeling of dull foreboding? Why do I find even short trailers for the new Pink Panther movie sort of painful to watch? It’s like this movie is radiating it’s badness right through my television.

I haven’t seen the film, so I admit I could be 180 degrees wrong.

I hope I am.

But how often do you need to re-make a classic film? Anyone seen the remake of Gone With The Wind? How about Citizen Kane or A Day at the Races? Good grief… remember The Wiz?

Steve Martin has had enough moments of celluloid brilliance to warrant great respect, but what made him think of taking on Peter Sellers in his most memorable role? Martin is great, but if you look up the phrase "comic genius" in a dictionary, you’ll see a picture of Peter Sellers. He is Clousseau, and Clousseau is Peter Sellers.

I just don’t know if I can bear to watch this new Pink Panther.

This is a job for the Decent Films Guide!

Surely Steven Greydanus will post and tell me that I really am not being fair to the film (not having seen it yet), and that it really can’t be that bad.

Say it ain’t so, Steve!

Everyone whispers these days. On TV, there’s The Ghost Whisperer (love that show!); in the bookstore, there’s The Baby Whisperer (for getting your infant to sleep) and even The House Whisperer (for organizing your home). Now enter "The Dog Whisperer":

"Meet Princess Cujo, an cute Maltese owned by high-ranking Los Angeles Lakers executive Jeanie Buss and given to fits of ankle-biting, eye-rolling fury.

"Exasperated, Buss — the daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss — has turned to ‘dog whisperer’ Cesar Millan, who offers cryptic wisdom as the cameras roll for his TV show.

"’A dog is a window to see the person from the inside out,’ says Millan, who has become canine psychologist to the stars and a celebrity himself. The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan began its second season on the National Geographic Network this month.

"Millan, who grew up surrounded by animals on a farm in Mexico, tells his human clients it’s essential to project a calm and assertive energy while setting rules and boundaries for their wayward dogs. As he puts it: ‘I rehabilitate dogs; I train people.’"

GET THE STORY.

Just the other night I happened to be talking with a couple of dog-owner friends who have heard some of Millan’s advice and think that he may have some worthwhile wisdom to share for handling dogs. So, if you have a problem pooch, it might be worth checking out his show. But frankly I’ll be glad when the fad of titling experts as Whisperers fades.

Michelle here.

Since getting my DVD player operational last month, I have been starting to collect TV shows that I have loved. Most of my new acquisitions are shows for grownups, naturally enough, but one is my favorite cartoon show as a kid: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Looking back on the show from the perspective of an adult, I can now see why my parents dismissed it as a thirty-minute toy commercial. It was. It was also extremely corny. I often can’t stop giggling when He-Man yells, "I HAVE THE POOOW-ERRR!" The animation is somewhat crude by today’s standards and it is fascinating how often the animators relied on stock images, especially during the transformation scenes.

But what makes the show interesting to me as an adult is how grounded the stories are in morality. Now, He-Man was famous for tacking on a little morality speech at the end of each episode, but that isn’t what interests me. The episodes themselves had stories that made important moral points, some of them often startlingly Christian in nature.

In one episode, the female protagonist Teela is bemused when He-Man risks his life to save the evil Mer-Man. Why did he do it? she asks. He-Man responds that all life is precious, even an evil one. In another episode, archvillain Skeletor and his henchmen cast a spell to summon an evil creature from another dimension so that they can use the creature to conquer Eternia. Much to their dismay they find that they cannot control the creature they have summoned and must turn to the good guys for help in getting rid of it.

Powerful stuff, with a message kids today would do well to hear.

For more information on the DVDs that are currently available, check out the following fan site, apparently maintained by a practicing Christian:

CastleGrayskull.org

Okay, I don’t get it.

Harry Forbes has a review up of Woody Allen’s latest movie, Match Point, that displays a level of moral incoherence that rivals what was displayed in his original review of Brokeback Mountain.

First, a couple of disclaimers:

1) I’m not criticizing Match Point because I haven’t seen it. At present, it’s only playing in a few cities.

2) I like Woody Allen films–or at least I’m favorably disposed to them. I own many of them on DVD. They aren’t all equally good (Curse of the Jade Scorpion is nowhere near as funny as Small Time Crooks, for example), but many are very entertaining and insightful.

3) Many of Woody Allen’s films contain morally offensive elements, but this does not of itself make a film morally offensive. It’s the overall worldview of a film that makes it offensive, and I’ve been surprised by how firm Allen can be in giving his films a fundamentally moral worldview.

This is particularly notable in films like Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is a meditation on the idea that the universe has "moral structure" in the terms of the film, and also Alice, which involves Mother Theresa and ends with such a strong pro-Catholic statement that it made me wonder if Woody had secretly converted.

I was disappointed, therefore to read

THIS PIECE ON JEFFREY OVERSTREET’S BLOG.

For those who may not be aware, Jeffrey Overstreet is one of the more perceptive Protestant film critics, who is able to do nuanced, balanced Christian film criticism without veering either into the "Nothing immoral must ever be shown on screen" school of Fundamentalist film criticism nor into the "Everything’s okay as long as it’s done artfully" school.

Overstreet also works for Christianity Today, where he does a film roundup that exposes him to the view of many other critics, including those of the U. S. bishops’ Office of Film and Broadcasting, of which Harry Forbes is the head.

Overstreet previously commented on the problems with Forbes’ tenure as head of the OFB, writing:

Since Harry Forbes took over as head of the film review responsibilities for the USCCB, the reviews have indeed declined in quality, depth, and insight.

Now he points out the moral incoherence of Forbes’ review of Woody Allen’s Match Point. To give you a sample, here are some of the things that Forbes says:

• [L]ike its protagonist, the film delineates a universe governed not by God but by pure chance — a theme that has permeated some of Allen’s other films.
• The film contains several discreetly filmed sexual encounters but no overt nudity, some innuendo, an adultery theme, scattered profanity and crass words, a couple of violent episodes discreetly filmed, an abortion discussion, and a nihilistic worldview.

Okay. So Forbes says that the film has a nihilistic worldview of a universe not governed by God but by chance.

Overstreet is even more explicit (EXCERPTS):

Match Point is the darkest, most amoral film of his career, basically laughing at anyone who values their conscience.

[I]t has been carefully crafted to recommend a lifestyle that runs directly counter to any kind of ethical worldview.

Yes, Match Point is dripping with style. But its “cautionary points” have to do with how to avoid the consequences of your sins… in fact, it seems to disregard the idea of sin completely, showing us how to live deviously, taking risky gambles and reveling in our exploits.

[I]t seems to exist precisely for that purpose — to contradict any story that suggests there is any God, or any reason not to embrace evil as a method for getting what you want.

A friend of mine who saw the film was taken aback when she heard a line in it in which the adulterer hero says something to the effect of "It would be fitting if I were caught and punished. . . . It would be some small indication of real justice." But the film ultimately makes it clear that, as Larry Niven would say, "There Ain’t No Justice."

That’s the "nihilistic worldview" Forbes says the film has.

So it sounds like Allen has lost the "moral structure" that embued his previous films. We’ve got three different individuals–two of them professional movie critics–attesting to the film’s nihilistic, amoral worldview.

As a Woody Allen fan, that’s disappointing to me, but I assume that’s the way this film is (at least until I see it for myself).

How to explain, then, Harry Forbes also saying:

• This outlook does not, however, preclude the story being told with a strong moral perspective.

Huh?

How can a film have a "nihilistic worldview" in which the "a universe governed not by God but by pure chance" and yet the film has "a strong moral perspective"?

This is simply incoherent.

A film cannot have both a strong moral perspective and a nihilistic one that specifically repudiates the foundation of the moral order.

Can’t be done.

I’m thus at a loss to explain the moral incoherence of this review. If it were an isolated case, I could chalk it up to simple mistake or miscommunication, but this is on the heels of the Brokeback Mountain fiasco, in which someone at the OFB (presumably Forbes) demonstrated an inability to understand the structure of its own ratings system and only on the third try kinda got it right.

It may simply be that Forbes has no background in moral theology and is not capable of correctly analyzing or articulating the fundamental moral perspectives of films. This Catholic News Service piece on Forbes lists his qualifications as follows:

He came to OFB after a successful career at the New York affiliates of NBC, CBS, and PBS, and most extensively, for PBS itself. Besides a lifetime of movie and TV consumption as a viewer, he brings experience as a theater reviewer for NYC public access TV, Time Out New York and Manhattan Spirit, which is the largest circulation weekly in the city.

There’s on indication in that that he has a background–academic or otherwise–in moral theology, and it may be this lack that is responsible for such incoherence when it comes to his reviews of morally problematic films.

Either Match Point has a nihilistic worldview in which there is no justice and the universe is governed by chance or it has one in which the universe has a fundamental moral structure (whether that structure is seen as rooted in God or not).

If it has the former worldview then the film is saying that there is nothing ultimately wrong with the movie’s central theme–an adulterous relationship (coupled with murder and theft)–and that’s morally offensive. Since this is the core theme of the movie (just as an approved homosexual relationship was the core theme of Brokeback Mountain) then the film deserves an O rating.

In fact, in the third iteration of the Brokeback Mountain review, the film’s approval of adultery–not just homosexuality–was cited as equal reason for giving it an O.

On the other hand, if the film’s worldview isn’t nihilistic but has "a strong moral perspective" (like Alice, where adultery is presented and ultimately rejected in favor of moral redemption) then Forbes shouldn’t be telling us things that imply otherwise.

Forbes can’t have it both ways. That’s just incoherent.

Ultimately–as you might expect–Forbes doesn’t give it an O. He doesn’t even give it an L. Instead,

The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III — adults.

He also turns in yet another gushy rave review about a film that seems to endorse a fundamentally immoral central theme, saying:

• After a slew of disappointing efforts, Allen is at the top of his form in a superbly acted psychological drama. . . .
• Working in England for the first time, with a largely English cast, has resulted in Allen’s finest work in years. Meyers, who played Elvis Presley in a 2005 CBS made-for-TV movie, gives a well-delineated portrayal resembling, in many respects, Montgomery Clift’s character in "A Place in the Sun." Mortimer is quite believable as the clueless wife, and Johannson impresses anew in one of her most mature outings to date.
• Other roles are well played by Wilton, Cox, Goode and Margaret Tyzack as Nola’s kindly neighbor, who proves pivotal to the plot.
• Because of some surprising plot developments, the less you know about the story before going in, the better. But suffice it to say, this hypnotically compelling drama is among the very best of the year.

To be honest, my first thought after encountering the last comment was "Is Harry Forbes just hypnotized by evil?" Further thought suggested that no, it’s more likely that he’s hypnotized by art.

Anything that’s done in an artistic manner tends to get a pass from him when it comes to moral issues.

This strongly suggests that Forbes has not assimilated Vatican II’s statement that

[A]ll must hold to the absolute primacy of the objective moral order, that is, this order by itself surpasses and fittingly coordinates all other spheres of human affairs-the arts not excepted-even though they be endowed with notable dignity [Inter mirifica 6].

Not having seen Match Point yet, I don’t know if it ultimately has a nihilistic or a moral worldview.

I do know that the level of incoherence displayed in Forbes’ review is not what people expect when visiting the U. S. bishops’ website for guidance on the moral character of movies.

I especially know that people expect better moral guidance from the U. S. bishops’ web site than giving movies with nihilistic, amoral worldviews gushy recommendations to go see them like saying "this hypnotically compelling drama is among the very best of the year"!

As Jeffrey Overstreet’s remarks illustrate, even those in the non-Catholic community are starting to take note of the problem at the OFB. Playing on JP2’s reported comment upon seeing The Passion of the Christ ("It is as it was"), he writes:

[I]s it now the perspective of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops that a movie’s perspective — whether moral or nihilistic — is something worth noting, but really not all that important? If a film that tells us there is no God, that if we should take a gamble and seize all the pleasure we can grab… should we go around recommending this title to our friends and neighbors?

I have a feeling that if Pope Benedict were to see this film, he would reject its presentation of reality, saying, “It is as it most certainly isn’t.”