A comment on our Academy Awards post below asked our opinion about the controversies regarding this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford’s annual forum for what Hollywood types see as quirky and interesting films and what usually turns out to be a collection of rubbishy postmodern cliches. It’s a good question. First, some background, from a Chicago Tribune article on the festival: Child endangerment is nothing new to the movies; it’s just that audiences are more accustomed to shameless emotional peril and physical but non-sexual scenarios. But the kids are definitely not all right at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Prior to its world premiere screening Monday, "Hounddog," starring 12-year-old Dakota Fanning as an incest and rape survivor in 1950s Bayou country, drew intense if uninformed criticism, mostly from pundits who hadn’t yet seen the film. . . . Objections to "Hounddog" have focused on the drama’s theme of dangerously sexualized pre-teens; a rape scene, in which Fanning’s Elvis-loving Lewellen (shown only from the shoulders up) is assaulted by the local milkman, and the question of whether Fanning should have been allowed to participate at all. "Hounddog" is one film among many in this year’s festival roster dealing with child
Posts Tagged ‘ Movies ’
Deja Vu and Time Travel Fiction
Two time travel movies are premiering today, and a none of those astounding mysteries of the universe that Hollywood creates every couple of months. Tony Scott’s Deja Vu (directed with his usual great skill and creativity) is the bigger-budgeted and promoted film, and will probably do well at the box office. Darren Arnofsky’s The Fountain promises to be a bit quirkier and probably won’t make as much money but might obtain more critical accolades. Time travel fictions are certainly interesting and have been around for a long time. Peter Suderman suggests, in National Review Online, that their appeal is based on a natural human obsession with mortality, which time travel naturally brings to the fore. I can’t say I agree that human mortality is a special interest in time travel fictions, given that pretty much any narrative has a good deal to do with human mortality. I think that the real appeal of time travel is in the possibility of changing things—time travel is the ultimate power trip. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t, and failed to do things we wish we had. (Cf. the Lutheran rite of confession and absolution.) And we’ve all experienced things that
A Bad Sign for Christian Cinema
Screenwriter and script analyst Barbara Nicolosi is extremely disappointed by the Christian-produced film Facing the Giants. I have not yet gotten around to seeing the film, but I suspect that Ms. Nicolosi is quite right. She points out that Facing the Giants is the cinematic equivalent of Contemporary Christian Music, bland nonsense meant to make Christians feel good and thereby bring in a steady stream of money from a highly defined market segment, what is known in the entertainment business as a cash cow. In addition, Nicolosi argues, Facing the Giants is animated by a devotion to what is known as the Prosperity Gospel, a decidedly perverse notion prevalent among some Evangelicals, which holds that God wants believers to be happy and prosperous in this world (which is surely true to some extent), and that he will give believers such earthly success to the degree that they believe in Him and accept his promises. That is an absurd, unbiblical doctrine that is derived from Puritanism but puts an optimistic, positive spin on it. It is an idea, as Nicolosi notes, that utterly denies numerous direct statements in Scripture, especially the words of Jesus Christ himself. In sum, the Prosperity Gospel
Recent Comments