[Our Sunday Visitor, December 7, 2003]
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The opposite of “chick flick” is “guy flick,” the kind of film that's expected to appeal to “real men.” It has predictable elements: big explosions, naked girls, and high-speed chases. “Master and Commander” is a different kind of guy flick, because it's more thoroughly about “real men,” who have normal-size, realistic powers rather than superhuman ones.
[Our Sunday Visitor, December 14, 2003]
Elf
Step up and shake hands with the movie that is going to be playing in the next room every Christmas for the rest of your life. “Elf” appears to have been planned with that small-screen destiny in mind: uncomplicated camerawork usually features one big image in the middle of the screen, an image you can identify without squinting even as far away as the refrigerator.
[Today's Christian, November-December 2003]
Q. I'm a new Christian, but I still have some sins in my life that I am having a hard time getting away from. I keep trying but I feel like a failure to God and to myself every time I stumble. How do others in my situation handle this' How does God look upon people who love him and know better, but still trip along the way' --
[Our Sunday Visitor, October 26, 2003]
When a movie is set in South Carolina and involves a racial theme, I get my dukes up. I grew up in Charleston, and I'm well aware of sad history, but I've seen too many stories in which every character with a Southern accent is turned into a cloven-hoofed monster, for the sake of dramatic tension.
My dukes got mighty tired during the course of 'Radio,' as almost every character with a Southern accent treated Cuba Gooding's character with respect, affection, even big bear hugs.
[Today's Christian, September-October 2003]
Q. May Christians participate in state or private lotteries? Will such an act bring dishonor to Jesus Christ? --M.J.K., Republic of Seychelles
A. Lotteries raise a host of related questions. Should Christians ever get involved in something decided by chance? Do you buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win the Daily Million' What about tossing a coin to see if you should take that job in Chicago? Is it OK to play bingo, if it's sponsored by a church?
[Essay included in “The Church in the Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives,”Leonard Sweet, editor (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003)]
This book contains five essays on the question of the Church’s engagement with culture, and to what extent we should change, or preserve, its message and its method. This essay was my contribution.
*****Why is this essay written in question and answer format?
It is intended to reference the penultimate section of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” This section, called “Ithaca,” concerns a late-night conversation between Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. It is cast in the form of a series of objective, impersonal questions and answers, for example, “What seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?”
[Our Sunday Visitor, October 26, 2003]
School of Rock
Take a good look at those rolling eyebrows'you're going to be seeing them for a long time. In 'School of Rock' Jack Black inhabits his character, Dewey Finn, with such appealing manic energy that there's no question a comic star is born.
What makes Black such a winner' Probably his startling lack of self-consciousness.
[Beliefnet, September 24, 2003]
Most of us have yet to see Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion,’ but we’ve gained one sure impression: it’s bloody. ‘I wanted to bring you there,’ Gibson told Peter J. Boyer in September 15’s New Yorker magazine. ‘I wanted to be true to the Gospels. That has never been done before.’
This goal means showing us what real scourging and crucifixion would look like.
[Books & Culture, September-October 2003]
Does being a Christian mean always having to say you're sorry? When outsiders look at the Roman Catholic rite of confession (now more often termed “reconciliation”), they suspect it is driven by feelings of masochistic self-hatred, and sustained by claims of sacerdotal magic. Why should we have to spend this life groveling over sins, if Jesus already paid for them on the Cross? Why should we speak sins out loud to another person, when it could remain between us and the bedpost? And why should we believe that a priest stands between us and God, forgiving or retaining our debts as he chooses?
Two new books from Roman Catholic authors
[Our Sunday Visitor, September 14, 2003]The Magdalene SistersYou know how, when you're changing channels and land on an old movie, you can guess when it was made? Cinematic “looks” change with fashion, and it's easy to tell opulent, color-drenched early-60's style from the sparer 70's or smoky 40's. In “The Magdalene Sisters,” a film about the “Magdalene asylums” operated by the Irish Catholic church, director Peter Mullan displays his genius for capturing the look that today's moviegoers crave-one that proclaims authenticity.
