(Ir)religiosity

Tim Burton is one of my favorite film directors.  He’s got some upcoming projects that look to be pretty good (and one in the not so distant future that has the potential to be stellar).  I watched the trailer for 9 a few weeks ago and it looks to be pretty good, but I’m mostly stoked about his adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.  The first teaser trailer was released yesterday at Comic-Con (for real this time) and it looks delightful.  Interestingly, it looks like the Mad Hatter will be the main character.  I’m okay with that.  I guess I wasn’t paying attention before but it looks like Stephen Fry will be the voice of Cheshire Cat and Crispin Glover the Knave of Hearts.  Nice.

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I know. Provocative title. Disappointing video post. I just had to. I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since I saw the original trailer last summer. And now it opens on Friday. I can’t wait…

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. . .the magic began.

(ht)

In keeping with the precedent I set last year, here are my top ten movies of 2008.

10.) Ironman
9.) The Happening
8.) Tropic Thunder
7.) Righteous Kill
6.) Burn After Reading
5.) Wall-E
4.) W.
3.) Frost/Nixon
2.) Milk
1.) The Dark Knight

Ten Movies I wanted to see but haven’t yet:

Appaloosa
Wanted
The Spirit
Slumdog Millionaire
Pineapple Express
Doubt
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Get Smart
Che
In Bruges

The Two Lamest Movies I Saw All Year:

10,000 BC
The Day the Earth Stood Still

Six Mediocre Movies:

Cloverfield
Hancock
Vantage Point
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Step Brothers

10 Movies I’m Excited to See in 2009:

Watchmen
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Star Trek
Public Enemies
Angels & Demons
Terminator: Salvation
Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian
Where the Wild Things Are
S. Darko
Boondock Saints II:  All Saints Day

What were your favorite/least favorite films of 2008?

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The good folks over at the Ooze sent me a copy of The Ordinary Radicals last week.  I had a chance to watch in full the other day and I really enjoyed it.  I read Jesus for President as soon as it came out and enjoyed it as well.  If you’re like me and weren’t able to attend the tour the past summer, then the film is definitely for you because it chronicles the entire journey, from being censored in Grand Rapids to refueling the bus with used vegetable oil (yep, that’s right, veggie oil) to everything in between.  And I haven’t even watched the special features yet.

Hearing some of the person stories that were spoken of in the book — the guy who left the military, and the Amish tragedy come to mind — was moving.  And of course the music was great too.  I absolutely love The Psalters.

I felt like that whole thing was just a tad long and could’ve been slightly shorter, but other than that it was great.  Good film editing and, from someone who didn’t make it to the real thing, a great inside look on the book tour.  Whether you’ve read the book or not, The Ordinary Radicals is well worth you time.

This is awesome.  A mashup of the unedited Dark Knight audio with video from Toy Story 2.  Brilliant.

[Ht. Marko]

It’s been almost two months since I initially watched The Dark Knight.  Since then a quote toward the end of the film from has been bouncing around in the back of my mind.

“It’s the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and uh, look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”

This comes at a crucial point in the film when Harvey Dent, with the help and prodding of The Joker, begins to assume his alter-ego of Two Face.  But I’m not really interested in that as much as I am the implicit critique of the established Order; not order in a sense of complete lawlessness and immorality, but Order in the sense of coercion and the artificial creation of consent to the violence of power. Read the rest of this entry »

I simply cannot overstate how important and influential both Peter Rollins’ books (here and here) have been in terms of my thought and theology.

That being said, I’ve had this post (I love the subtitle by the way, “The good news of forsaking heaven and embracing worldliness”) from his blog sitting in my Google Reader starred items for a while now.  I finally got around to reading it today.

While I wholeheartedly sympathize and agree with the political and “green” interpretations of the film, I think Rollins’ interpretation deserves attention. Here are a few quotes. Read the rest of this entry »

Click here for a super-awesome high quality version!

[Ht. Jeremy Smith]

Last week I posted my picks for the best movies of 2007. Here are my selections for the worst, most disappointing films of the year. I didn’t add any commentary to my “best of” listing, but for some reason I felt like I needed to qualify these. So, here goes.

1.) TMNT. I went into this movie with really high hopes. In hindsight, that might have been part of my problem, but I’ll comment nonetheless. I was a huge Turtles fan growing up so I was really anticipating the release of this version, almost as much as the retro series of the 90s, but I was sadly disappointed. True, there were moments where I felt like I kid again watching “turtle power” unfold before my eyes, but there were also those moments when I felt like bashing my head against the floor. The storyline was sloppy at best. Too complicated for the average kid and too stupid for the average adult. It never went anywhere. I’ll stick with the Saturday morning version.

2.) Transformers. I had high hopes for this one too. It had the potential to be very, very good, but clearly missed the mark. Visually, it was spectacular, but when tempered with the poor writing and very poor acting, the effects weren’t worth the watch. The story was horrible amounting to nothing more than the typical, predictable, canned sci-fi plot. The dialogue was tolerable at best and painful at its worst. It might be worth seeing in the theater just for the visuals, but anything more would be much too generous.

3.) Spider-Man 3. This first several disappointing franchise finales. I was never a huge Spider-Man fan growing up. Batman could take Spider-Man and Superman any day. Which gets me really, really excited about this. Anyway, this movie is definitely worth seeing. The fight scenes between Spidy, Venom, Sandman, and New Goblin in the end are straight up kick-ass—that’s all there is too it. But that doesn’t make up for the rest of the movie. It moved very, very slow (too slow) up until the last 1/4 of the movie. And the whole emo-Spiderman/Peter Parker thing really threw me. Again, it’s worth seeing, but not comparable to the first two. The third part of a trilogy should be the apex. If that’s true this movie failed.

4.) Shrek the Third. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure what was wrong with this “three-quel.” It just mediocre and very, very forgettable. Same sort of story, same plot, same, recycled jokes. I guess it just didn’t really make an impression on me. Like I said just very, very unmemorable. I had high expectations. This first two Shrek movies were pretty good.

5.) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Ok, so I haven’t actually seen this one yet. But after all the talk I’ve heard from other people and the reviews I’ve read, it will be next to impossible for me to enjoy it when I do watch it. And I have a hunch that it is likely to be one of those movies that has to be viewed on the big screen just to capture the aura. The main complaints I’ve heard have to do with length and character development. Lot’s of people say it’s too long and too much time was spent on minor character development (which I may or may not end up enjoying), almost as if there could have been four movies but the producers decided to jam everything into a third installment. Johnny Depp is one of my favorite actors and I plan on seeing this soon. So, hopefully I’ll have to re-post and revise this list because I really liked that first two and I’d like the franchise to end well. But we’ll see.

~bh ><>