“Bad artists copy…Great artists steal,” Picasso is alleged to have said. It’s a fun exercise to look for the story roots of many films in order to see where the theft occurred.
The Lion King, the popular Disney animated film and Broadway musical, is obviously not a wholly original story. The basic tale of a prince who contemplates revenge for his father’s death at the hand of his uncle is not a story that originated in the Magic Kingdom. It was told long ago under the name of “Hamlet”.
Clueless may have seemed like a dozen other teen comedies but it was actually a rather faithful adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma”.
Joel and Ethan Coen, the Academy Award winning film making team, love to play games with the sources of their film. Fargo opens with a grim title card stating that the story you are about to see is true, with only the names changed to protect the innocent, in the great tradition of “Dragnet”. Which is all hogwash: the tale of kidnapping and murder was completely fictional, as the brothers cheerfully admitted in later interviews.
The Coens convinced the Motion Picture Academy that the screenplay for their comedy O Brother Where Art Thou? should be nominated in the Adapted rather than the Original screenplay category. They claimed it was a retelling of Homer’s “Odyssey”. But the similarities between the two works are amusingly meager.
The Coen’s latest film, A Serious Man, makes no claim to be from any particular source in the credits. But it seems to be quite obviously based on the Biblical book of Job.
The film tells the story of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhbarg), a college physics teacher living in 1967 Minnesota. He soon finds himself engulfed in a series of mini-catastrophes. Admittedly, the trials he faces are nothing compared to those faced by Job. Job suffered the loss of his property, his servants, his livestock and most horrendous of all, his seven sons and three daughters.
Larry’s sufferings are a little more pedestrian. He suffers harassment from a student who tries to bribe him and then threatens a law suit. His children steal from him and treat him with little respect. His wife wants a divorce and forces him to move into a seedy motel down the road. And Larry is assaulted by the unending phone calls of the bureaucracy of the Columbia Record Company insisting he pay for albums he never requested.
Job was called, even by God, a righteous man. Larry is at best, the serious man of the title, striving to live up to the responsibilities and obligations of a husband, father and teacher.
Like Job, Larry believes that God is ultimately responsible for any trials he faces in life. Job had three friends who ministered to him (or plagued him, depending on how you look at it) and tried to explain God’s ways to Job. Larry seeks help from his synagogue’s three rabbis. Their help is rather comparable to the help Job receives from his friends.
On one of these visits to a rabbi, Larry asks, “Why does He allow us to wonder about the whys of life if He never intends to answer?” The rabbi has no answer.
I think we all share in Larry’s frustration. We somehow think that the minor and major sufferings in life would somehow be more bearable if someone would just explain to us why these things happen. If there was a reason, laid out clearly to us and perhaps allowing for a little of our input, then we could happily deal with everything life throws our way.
But it just won’t happen. It didn’t happen for Job and it won’t happen for us.
We do have something that Larry doesn’t appear to have. We have something that Job didn’t fully understand. Job longed for a mediator between God and man.
We know that Jesus came to be a mediator and that He experienced life as we experience it. Therefore, we may still not understand suffering in life, but we know we have a God that experienced it as we do, and He understands it. It may not be all we want. But it’s enough.
A Serious Man is rated R for strong language, sexual situations and nudity.
The Lion King is rated G, but has some strong themes and images that might disturb the very young
Clueless is rated PG-13 for language and sexual suggestion
Fargo is rated R for violence, language and sexual situations
O Brother Where Art Thou? is rated PG-13 for language and comic violence
Monday, November 16, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
500 Days of Summer
“She’s better than my dream girl. She’s real.”
That is my favorite line from a film filled with a lot of clever dialogue, (500) Days of Summer. It’s spoken by Paul (Matthew Gray Gubler) to an unseen interviewer when asked about his long time relationship with his girl friend. He first goes into a long list of the ideal qualities of his Perfect Woman. But then acknowledges he prefers reality.
It’s a key point in this film, which, as its tag line says, “is not a love story. This is a story about love.” Or as the other tag line says, “Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t.” The film chronicles the 500 days of a young man named Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in his pursuit of a girl named Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Those days are not presented in chronological order, which is one of many stylized features of this clever comedy.
Tom believes in true love, and Summer scoffs at the idea. He believes there is one perfect girl that he will find and then all of life will fit together. Summer is just looking for a good time. Tom becomes convinced that Summer is his perfect girl and that they are meant for each other. Throughout the film, Tom tries to convince Summer he is right.
The thing I loved about this film is that it skewers many of our society’s false ideas about love and romance.
Tom believes in a love at first sight, that one can trust one’s feelings to know one’s life partner. While it is true that initial attraction can lead to something more, immediate attraction (the pull of hormones) isn’t necessarily trustworthy. God’s wisdom leads us to rely not just on our feelings, but also our minds and His Spirit for direction in such important decisions in our lives.
Summer believes there is no such thing as love. She observed the loveless marriage and subsequent divorce of her parents, and doesn’t believe that people really can care for more than their own needs and desires. Sadly, many in our society have come to believe that narcissism is the only real option for life. Summer learns from her relationship with Tom that there may be something more.
The couple enters into a sexual relationship quite early in their relationship. Our culture claims that this is no big deal, but the film shows that a sexual relationship without commitment has serious consequences. Inevitably, one person will believe such a step means more than the other. Seeing the pain this causes Tom reminds us that God did not call us to wait until marriage for sex because He is a killjoy. Sex was made for the context of safety found in a committed, exclusive relationship.
Sorry about being a little slow here. (500) Days of Summer came out in the summer but I just got to it a couple of weeks ago. But the movie has hung on in the theaters for months, having gathered a bit a cult following. It’s listed, as I write this, at #197 of the top 250 films of all time at IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base… remember though, this list is voted on chiefly by young computer geeks). Its following comes from solid performances, a smart script by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber and innovative direction from Marc Webb.
But I appreciated it most for showing what love is not. We, fortunately, can go to God and His Word to find out what it is.
(500) Days of Summer is rated PG-13 for language and sexual situations. It is scheduled for a Blu-Ray DVD release December 22.
That is my favorite line from a film filled with a lot of clever dialogue, (500) Days of Summer. It’s spoken by Paul (Matthew Gray Gubler) to an unseen interviewer when asked about his long time relationship with his girl friend. He first goes into a long list of the ideal qualities of his Perfect Woman. But then acknowledges he prefers reality.
It’s a key point in this film, which, as its tag line says, “is not a love story. This is a story about love.” Or as the other tag line says, “Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t.” The film chronicles the 500 days of a young man named Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in his pursuit of a girl named Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Those days are not presented in chronological order, which is one of many stylized features of this clever comedy.
Tom believes in true love, and Summer scoffs at the idea. He believes there is one perfect girl that he will find and then all of life will fit together. Summer is just looking for a good time. Tom becomes convinced that Summer is his perfect girl and that they are meant for each other. Throughout the film, Tom tries to convince Summer he is right.
The thing I loved about this film is that it skewers many of our society’s false ideas about love and romance.
Tom believes in a love at first sight, that one can trust one’s feelings to know one’s life partner. While it is true that initial attraction can lead to something more, immediate attraction (the pull of hormones) isn’t necessarily trustworthy. God’s wisdom leads us to rely not just on our feelings, but also our minds and His Spirit for direction in such important decisions in our lives.
Summer believes there is no such thing as love. She observed the loveless marriage and subsequent divorce of her parents, and doesn’t believe that people really can care for more than their own needs and desires. Sadly, many in our society have come to believe that narcissism is the only real option for life. Summer learns from her relationship with Tom that there may be something more.
The couple enters into a sexual relationship quite early in their relationship. Our culture claims that this is no big deal, but the film shows that a sexual relationship without commitment has serious consequences. Inevitably, one person will believe such a step means more than the other. Seeing the pain this causes Tom reminds us that God did not call us to wait until marriage for sex because He is a killjoy. Sex was made for the context of safety found in a committed, exclusive relationship.
Sorry about being a little slow here. (500) Days of Summer came out in the summer but I just got to it a couple of weeks ago. But the movie has hung on in the theaters for months, having gathered a bit a cult following. It’s listed, as I write this, at #197 of the top 250 films of all time at IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base… remember though, this list is voted on chiefly by young computer geeks). Its following comes from solid performances, a smart script by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber and innovative direction from Marc Webb.
But I appreciated it most for showing what love is not. We, fortunately, can go to God and His Word to find out what it is.
(500) Days of Summer is rated PG-13 for language and sexual situations. It is scheduled for a Blu-Ray DVD release December 22.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Another Blog
If you've stumbled across this for what I write about movies, you might be interested in another blog of mine: www.ruamoviegenius.blogspot.com
Monday, October 5, 2009
New Oncourse Article on Kayne West
http://oncourse.ag.org/oc/features.cfm?targetBay=06d52a80-8681-49b2-871b-a4e5dc1c7708&ModID=2&Process=DisplayArticle&RSS_RSSContentID=12671&RSS_OriginatingChannelID=1202&RSS_OriginatingRSSFeedID=3459&RSS_Source=
Monday, September 28, 2009
A Different Take On 'I Read the Book'
Have you ever been talking to friends about the blockbuster hitting the screens the coming weekend or discussing a recent Netflix pick and have someone say, “Well, I read the book” or “The book was so much better.” Fair or not, I often detect a snobbish air to the phrase, as if the person really said, “You may think you know the story, but I immersed myself in the tale page after page, and you really haven’t experienced it.
Well, I don’t care if you consider me an intellectual snob, but there is a movie based on a book coming out. By the time you read this, it’s been released, but as I’m writing, it hasn’t been yet. And yes, I’ve read the book.
It’s called “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett). I used to read it to my kids all the time. You may have read it yourself. It’s the story of the town called Chewandswallow where the weather was quite unusual. When the sky opened in a storm, water didn’t come down in different forms, food came down in different forms.
The people of the town were never without their knives and forks because their food would come out of the skies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The morning might start with a drizzle of orange juice and bagels followed by sandwiches with apple slices, and the evening might bring, yes, the meatballs of the title along with spaghetti noodles.
Children love the book, as do the adults who read it to them. It’s a wonderful fantasy to think of food being so accessible and plentiful. Who but the most weight- conscious among as wouldn’t like a marshmallow snowstorm?
Why doesn’t God work the world this way?
An amazing thing is, He has done things very much like this at times.
If you read Exodus 16 about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, you’ll see that God provided food in an amazing way. When the dew dried in the morning, the people found manna, a kind of bread, on the ground. And in the evening, quail would gather for easy capture and cooking.
So why doesn’t God do this all the time? The story of the Israelites gives a clue: they soon begin to complain about their free lunch (or breakfast & dinner more properly). We often don’t appreciate what is given to us.
Before work was placed under a curse in Genesis 3, Adam was to work in the garden and care for the plants and gather his fruit.
In First Thessalonians we are told to make it our ambition to lead a quiet life and work with our hands (4:11) and respect those who work hard (5:12). Yes, the Lord’s prayer encourages us to pray for our daily bread, but that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands and wait for God to bake it.
As it turns out, even in the city of Chewandswallow, the storms of food get to be too much, and the people must build boats of stale bread to sail to a new land where people work for their food.
Yes, we begin life without working too much for our food, just sucking the milk in. And you may well have someone cooking for you now. But God always intended for the labor to be part of the joy in eating.
We partner with God to make His blessing come to earth. Working with Him shouldn’t make us less thankful, but more so.
(The movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” is rated PG for language that was not in the book, and it didn’t have the nutty scientist or monkey I saw in the trailer. But I’m never one to complain about adding monkeys.)
Well, I don’t care if you consider me an intellectual snob, but there is a movie based on a book coming out. By the time you read this, it’s been released, but as I’m writing, it hasn’t been yet. And yes, I’ve read the book.
It’s called “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett). I used to read it to my kids all the time. You may have read it yourself. It’s the story of the town called Chewandswallow where the weather was quite unusual. When the sky opened in a storm, water didn’t come down in different forms, food came down in different forms.
The people of the town were never without their knives and forks because their food would come out of the skies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The morning might start with a drizzle of orange juice and bagels followed by sandwiches with apple slices, and the evening might bring, yes, the meatballs of the title along with spaghetti noodles.
Children love the book, as do the adults who read it to them. It’s a wonderful fantasy to think of food being so accessible and plentiful. Who but the most weight- conscious among as wouldn’t like a marshmallow snowstorm?
Why doesn’t God work the world this way?
An amazing thing is, He has done things very much like this at times.
If you read Exodus 16 about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, you’ll see that God provided food in an amazing way. When the dew dried in the morning, the people found manna, a kind of bread, on the ground. And in the evening, quail would gather for easy capture and cooking.
So why doesn’t God do this all the time? The story of the Israelites gives a clue: they soon begin to complain about their free lunch (or breakfast & dinner more properly). We often don’t appreciate what is given to us.
Before work was placed under a curse in Genesis 3, Adam was to work in the garden and care for the plants and gather his fruit.
In First Thessalonians we are told to make it our ambition to lead a quiet life and work with our hands (4:11) and respect those who work hard (5:12). Yes, the Lord’s prayer encourages us to pray for our daily bread, but that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands and wait for God to bake it.
As it turns out, even in the city of Chewandswallow, the storms of food get to be too much, and the people must build boats of stale bread to sail to a new land where people work for their food.
Yes, we begin life without working too much for our food, just sucking the milk in. And you may well have someone cooking for you now. But God always intended for the labor to be part of the joy in eating.
We partner with God to make His blessing come to earth. Working with Him shouldn’t make us less thankful, but more so.
(The movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” is rated PG for language that was not in the book, and it didn’t have the nutty scientist or monkey I saw in the trailer. But I’m never one to complain about adding monkeys.)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Beckett
I was going to write a full review of "Becket" with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole but it just didn't flow. But I must say, it is worth seeing. If just for the scene where Burton as Becket gives away all his material goods to the poor and says it's like a holiday. He wishes he had something that he could give away that would feel like a sacrifice, but it's all joy.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
In Honor of 9 opening on 9/9/9
The feature film '9' opens today which is nominated on an Oscar nominated animated short subject. I reviewed it, along with the other nominated shorts that year back in 2006.
Hidden Art
By Dean Anderson
The day before the Academy Awards this year, I decided to see all the movies nominated for Best Picture in one day.
Admittedly, it probably would have been a bit more of a challenge if I’d tried to see all the films nominated for best feature film… I saw the films nominated for Best Animated Short Picture, and the challenge, was not so much. The Rialto Theater had them all playing together on one program with a bonus short.
Now let me make it clear that Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry (former Oscar winners) were nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was a warning that these films were for mature audiences only. In retrospect, I found the warning odd, since there was not any extremely offensive material. But many still think of animation as being just for kids, and the theater’s management must have wanted to avoid filling the theater with kids who would be in danger of being bored and perplexed. (Though Jasper Morello did have some violent images and The Moon and the Son has, what they call, language.)
The first short, The Fan and the Flower, was not nominated for an Oscar, but was animated by Bill Plympton, a big name in modern animation (What? You’ve never heard of him?). It tells the story of the love between a potted plant and a ceiling fan. Now that might sound bizarre, but… No, it’s bizarre. But also quite touching. And a wonderful tale of sacrifice.
The Mysterious Geographic Exploration of Jasper Morello, animated by Anthony Lucas, is an adventure story that uses Jules Verne imagery of flying ships in a world of the clouds and morphs into a horror story that rips off Alien. It went on too long, and just kind of ends, but its look is unique and rather beautiful.
I can’t fairly judge the short, Badgered, (by Sharon Colman) because I don’t think the theater had a good print. Many times it was hard to see the picture on the screen. It features a badger (no surprise) that just wants to nap, but is disturbed first by two crows and eventually a nuclear missile silo. It was cute, but no great shakes.
9 is a very strange apocalyptic tale of a burlap rag doll that battles a mutated cat skeleton. Yes, I know you’re saying I’ve seen that story a million times, but it is well done. And the rights to this work by Shane Acker have been purchased by Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Edward Scissorhands) to make it into a feature film.
Many of you will soon see the nominee, One Man Band, because it was created by Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews of Pixar, and because it will be featured this summer with the Pixar/Disney releases Cars. It was certainly had the best production values of any of the shorts -- it looked fantastic, with detailed backgrounds and winning characterization. It is the story of two competing one man bands that try to win the heart (and coin) of the one little girl that comprised their audience. It is very funny and has a nice message about pride and greed.
But I didn’t think it was the best film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences favored the same short I did, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern. If you think of animation solely in the terms of Disney fairy tales and cats chasing mice, this is far from that. Canemaker uses not only animation, but also home movies and photos to have an imagined conversation with his now dead father. The son uses the film to have a conversation with departed father that is equal parts reconciliation and revenge.
The film wrestles with the issue of the desire for parental approval, even after we come to see the faults of our parents. It is a painful story; the father was abusive and even had mob ties. But the father also had some redeeming qualities that the son learns about belatedly. It maybe a better film than any of the films nominated for best feature film.
And yet most people won’t see it. But after receiving its Oscar, more people will see The Moon and the Son: an Imagined Conversation than The Fan and the Flower -- a very nice little film. It makes me think of all the little films that didn’t make the cut for Academy Award nominees, so even fewer people will see them. Let alone pay to see them.
Which made me think of all the stories written in notebooks -- paintings in attics--songs only whistled -- that will be known only by their creators. Come to think of it, how many people get to see the wood work of Bill Bean? (Not enough, I tell you.)
But if the only reason art was created was to make money and win awards, most art would be a failed enterprise. (After all, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, and Joseph Conrad were all rejected by the Nobel Committee of Literature.)
But if art is made in the reflection of the Creator, well that’s a different matter altogether. After all, many come and applaud His Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. But think of all the tiny wild flowers and spider webs that He is also responsible for that will never be seen be human eyes.
So if God has given you creative gifts, whether in animation or writing or cooking, practice them with joy. God will reward you, and He is always happy to hear your acceptance speech.
Hidden Art
By Dean Anderson
The day before the Academy Awards this year, I decided to see all the movies nominated for Best Picture in one day.
Admittedly, it probably would have been a bit more of a challenge if I’d tried to see all the films nominated for best feature film… I saw the films nominated for Best Animated Short Picture, and the challenge, was not so much. The Rialto Theater had them all playing together on one program with a bonus short.
Now let me make it clear that Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry (former Oscar winners) were nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was a warning that these films were for mature audiences only. In retrospect, I found the warning odd, since there was not any extremely offensive material. But many still think of animation as being just for kids, and the theater’s management must have wanted to avoid filling the theater with kids who would be in danger of being bored and perplexed. (Though Jasper Morello did have some violent images and The Moon and the Son has, what they call, language.)
The first short, The Fan and the Flower, was not nominated for an Oscar, but was animated by Bill Plympton, a big name in modern animation (What? You’ve never heard of him?). It tells the story of the love between a potted plant and a ceiling fan. Now that might sound bizarre, but… No, it’s bizarre. But also quite touching. And a wonderful tale of sacrifice.
The Mysterious Geographic Exploration of Jasper Morello, animated by Anthony Lucas, is an adventure story that uses Jules Verne imagery of flying ships in a world of the clouds and morphs into a horror story that rips off Alien. It went on too long, and just kind of ends, but its look is unique and rather beautiful.
I can’t fairly judge the short, Badgered, (by Sharon Colman) because I don’t think the theater had a good print. Many times it was hard to see the picture on the screen. It features a badger (no surprise) that just wants to nap, but is disturbed first by two crows and eventually a nuclear missile silo. It was cute, but no great shakes.
9 is a very strange apocalyptic tale of a burlap rag doll that battles a mutated cat skeleton. Yes, I know you’re saying I’ve seen that story a million times, but it is well done. And the rights to this work by Shane Acker have been purchased by Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Edward Scissorhands) to make it into a feature film.
Many of you will soon see the nominee, One Man Band, because it was created by Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews of Pixar, and because it will be featured this summer with the Pixar/Disney releases Cars. It was certainly had the best production values of any of the shorts -- it looked fantastic, with detailed backgrounds and winning characterization. It is the story of two competing one man bands that try to win the heart (and coin) of the one little girl that comprised their audience. It is very funny and has a nice message about pride and greed.
But I didn’t think it was the best film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences favored the same short I did, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern. If you think of animation solely in the terms of Disney fairy tales and cats chasing mice, this is far from that. Canemaker uses not only animation, but also home movies and photos to have an imagined conversation with his now dead father. The son uses the film to have a conversation with departed father that is equal parts reconciliation and revenge.
The film wrestles with the issue of the desire for parental approval, even after we come to see the faults of our parents. It is a painful story; the father was abusive and even had mob ties. But the father also had some redeeming qualities that the son learns about belatedly. It maybe a better film than any of the films nominated for best feature film.
And yet most people won’t see it. But after receiving its Oscar, more people will see The Moon and the Son: an Imagined Conversation than The Fan and the Flower -- a very nice little film. It makes me think of all the little films that didn’t make the cut for Academy Award nominees, so even fewer people will see them. Let alone pay to see them.
Which made me think of all the stories written in notebooks -- paintings in attics--songs only whistled -- that will be known only by their creators. Come to think of it, how many people get to see the wood work of Bill Bean? (Not enough, I tell you.)
But if the only reason art was created was to make money and win awards, most art would be a failed enterprise. (After all, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, and Joseph Conrad were all rejected by the Nobel Committee of Literature.)
But if art is made in the reflection of the Creator, well that’s a different matter altogether. After all, many come and applaud His Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. But think of all the tiny wild flowers and spider webs that He is also responsible for that will never be seen be human eyes.
So if God has given you creative gifts, whether in animation or writing or cooking, practice them with joy. God will reward you, and He is always happy to hear your acceptance speech.
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