More Trailers

The more I see of this film, the more I can hardly wait for it! My original discussion of it, including a political comparison to Spielberg's upcoming Lincoln, is here at Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter: Oddity Explained. A Separation, an Iranian film winning tons of international awards, about a married couple facing difficulties about whether to move and better their life or stay and take care of a father with Alzheimer's, is up for the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture and has an awfully good chance of winning (I hope to see this within the next month):

Cleanskin is an intelligence codeword for someone who doesn't have a record of criminal activity and is now being pursued; Sean Bean stars as an intelligence officer trying to trace down a suicide bomber in London, it's scheduled to open in March in Ireland:

I've been talking a lot about the expansion of the visual vocabulary to bridge the communication gaps between audiences and film makers, gaps that will help to cut down on cinematic formulas because everyone will have more options for saying what they want to say, and that's why a film dedicated to choreographer Pina Bausch, being shown throughout select theaters in the world, looks pretty amazing. Just as dance is a means of "saying something" in The Artist, so Pina is exploring all the different languages of the language of dance:

From dance, we go to the gothic.
Official synopsis of the newest Johnny Depp film Dark Shadows, based on a British cult TV-series. "In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet-or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better." There are no trailers for the film as of yet, but with a release date scheduled for May, they are bound to be out soon and I will post them asap.

Johnny Depp as Barnabas and Michelle Pfeiffer.

And now for something completely different.
The Raid: Redemption, set for release this year in the Netherlands,  is about a group of cops going into a 30-story building to take out a drug lord:

 Headhunters has all ready been released in Norway, but just looks too interesting to pass up for lovers of art (PLEASE NOTE: THERE IS SOME NUDITY IN THIS TRAILER):

And now, unless you are truly not connected to the world of social media at all, you must have heard of the bickering between Sacha Baron Cohen, who will be portraying a Mid-Eastern dictator in the upcoming film, The Dictator, and the Academy Awards. The actor wanted to walk the red carpet in the character of the dictator, and supposedly, the Academy revoked his tickets for that; all has been smoothed out, with Cohen getting his way and participating in some way in the awards ceremony. Yet before "concessions" were heeded, he issued this video warning, rather like other Middle East personages:

This is the point: the more serious the conflict humor wishes to address, the more absurd the joke will be because it has a greater width to span between the joke's recipient's intellect and fear. Cohen is actually performing a service by making these videos because his absurdity allows us to release anxiety about Jihadists and suicide bombers, about rumors of nuclear reactors and violence against the United States and our allies. I, or others, could say more, but this is the point: we can't. Cohen can, in disguise and as a joke, but the "joke" is only hiding the reality and seriousness of the feared confrontation. No, these are not publicity stunts (for example, as pointed out above, the Iranian film A Separation is up for an Oscar, a fact Cohen intentionally ignores just like, in the trailer for The Dictator, he says, "America, the birthplace of AIDS," when it has been scientifically proven that it is not), only attempts to draw attention to this terrible fear of attack that is having to be suppressed and Baron is able to address it.

The supreme ruler of the Republic of Wadiya, has released this statement concerning his invite to this Sunday’s Oscars ceremony: “STATEMENT FROM ADMIRAL GENERAL ALADEEN:  ”VICTORY IS OURS! Today the Mighty Nation of Wadiya triumphed over the Zionist snakes of Hollywood. Evil and all those who made Satan their protector were vanquished and driven into the Pacific Sea. What I am trying to say here is that the Academy have surrendered and sent over two tickets and a parking pass! TODAY OSCAR, TOMORROW OBAMA!”

Evil Against Evil: Ghost Rider 2 Spirit Of Vengeance

In 1981, a film called Dragonslayer taught us what the phrase "Fighting fire with fire" means: it takes the fires of purgation to put out the fires of damnation. Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance does a really great job of presenting second-class theology so that we can re-explore the ins and outs of first-class theology and re-examine our own soul's progress towards salvation.

Ghost Rider on his iconic motorcycle. In the film, Johnny says that basically any vehicle he gets on becomes engulfed in flames. Why? The flaming motorcycle combines two important symbols of the Holy Spirit: fire and vehicles. Fire is of the Holy Spirit because of the Fire which came down upon the Apostles and Mary at Pentecost, instilling in them the Gifts they required to spread the Gospel, but fire is also the symbol used in the perfection of the soul for trials we endure to remove from our soul impurities and imperfections (as gold is tried by fire). In terms of Ghost Rider and how it relates to hell, fire is a punishment because the soul that is damned refused to be perfected by the Fire of the Holy Spirit, so that which could have become the means of salvation, but was refused by the damned soul, is now the eternal punishment for mis-using their free will to choose the easy road of life, instead of the narrow path to heaven. Vehicles (cars, boats, airplanes, horses, chariots, motorcycles) can all be likened to the guidance of the soul by the Holy Spirit, the "vehicle" of redemption and salvation is our destiny, the specific journey God has created for our soul to gain eternal life. The motorcycle, for Johnny, becomes the vehicle of his damnation, rather than salvation.

There are some things the film does really well, such as expand the visual vocabulary of Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) so by a comic book aesthetic, we have a better understanding of his understanding of what is happening to him and why he has made the decisions he has made: he looks at the world like a comic book. That communicates to the audience, when, for example, we have a flashback in the comic book style, of Johnny doing his stunts on the motorcycle, bearing his rear-end for all to see, and the whole while, it's in large, "blocky" drawing (little detail), primary colors (no real shading) and the action is like one frame of a comic strip to the next frame (dislocated, discontinuous, things are left out; the style invokes pop artist Roy Lichtenstein) we are seeing Johnny as he sees himself: comical.

Johnny Blaze discovers towards the end of the film that he is really an angel, God's Angel of Justice (I think it was) who was tricked by the devil and ended up in hell although he loves God and wants to do good... that's utterly absurd, that's as ridiculous as Kevin Smith's Dogma. Angels are a higher being than humans, and do not have the same lower passions that we do which causes us to make mistakes and sin; angels have perfect intelligence for their duties and nature, so the idea of an angel being tricked is another non-existent scenario the film delivers, a way of trying to bring out the good in evil that just doesn't exist.

The employment of the comic book aesthetic to represent Johnny Blaze lets the audience know that this is how Johnny sees the world and that which is above the world, the supernatural and his soul. His simplistic understanding of the battle against evil is naught more than a child's and caught up in a earthly, fading priority: style. Ultimately, Ghost Rider 2 is about a "cool" scenario where a human gets to beat the devil at the devil's own game; should we be concerned about this? Absolutely.

When Johnny Blaze transforms into the Ghost Rider, an identity he got from a bad deal with the devil, he turns into a flaming walking skeleton who wears a riding suit with melting tar all over it. Why? Pitch is often associated with hell, not only because of the awful, toxic smell, but because of the black color (symbolizing death). In our day, tar is used to pave roads, so the outfit becomes a theological statement about Johnny's soul: he's chosen the "road to hell."

The film situates itself within an impossible scenario.
First, when Johnny supposedly sold his soul to the devil (in the first film), Johnny accidentally got a paper cut which dropped blood on the deed that he didn't intentionally sign but inadvertently signed. This situation undermines the theology of free will: the devil can possess a soul only if the soul invites the devil in (please see, for example, The Exorcist: Absent Fathers). Secondly, Ghost Rider falls prey to a definite ill-conceived notion about the devil's power: the devil can create life. Like Rosemary's Baby of 1968, or Constantine of 2005, there is the idea that the devil can procreate which is impossible, and basically comes from a (pro-abortion) view that not all life is an absolute good because God is not the Author of Life but life is merely a biological occurrence which has no connections to a metaphysical universe (a Darwinistic view of life rather than a Divine Plan of Life).

At the Catholic graduate philosophy program  where I did some of my studies, a favorite intellectual puzzle was, if you knew that a baby was going to be the anti-Christ, would you kill it or let it live (as in the film The Omen).  In the picture above, a group of "monks" (though it is questionable as to what religion they practice) are going to kill Danny to save the world. The large rocks and circular formation in this area suggests the Druids more than anything, but it's very simple that we cannot achieve any good by committing a sin, and murder--even if one thinks it is in a good cause--is still a sin (just as in abortion) because it is taking on God's role of being the Author of Life and Death, instead of permitting the Omnipotent One the power to decide.

Why is this an important point?
The purpose of the film is that Ghost Rider has to find Danny (Fergus Riordan) because Danny's mother Nadya (Violante Placido) made a deal with the devil similar to Johnny Blaze: when she was about to die, the devil Roarke (Ciaran Hinds) approached her and said he would save her if she would father his child and she agreed, now, according to the story, Roarke wants his son Danny to pass on his power to him. Again, this is an impossible scenario, the devil cannot create life because all human life is endowed with an immortal soul in the image of God and with the gift of free will that Ghost Rider is denying.

This is one of the things the film does well: chains. As in Immortals, chains are a great weapon because it shows how the sin that chains and binds us, lets us be controlled by it. When people generally think of things that are considered sinful (sex outside of marriage, drugs and alcohol, getting an abortion, foul language, "putting people in their place," etc.) they think those are things which give them freedom and the Church and Christ are trying to take those freedoms away; by having Ghost Rider use chains to trap people, it demonstrates how sin enslaves us, sin doesn't free us, and we can be controlled by our addictions and sins, rather than control them.

This two-fold denial, the soul in the image of God and our free will, is precisely the reason why only good can overcome evil. Originally, Johnny Blaze's "conversion" to free his soul from the devil's contract, was written with a bit more orthodoxy (note that I said only a bit): " Tony Isabella wrote a Ghost Rider story arc where Johnny Blaze became a Christian and thereby freed himself of the curse. Isabella said that 'Johnny Blaze accepts Jesus Christ into his life. This gives him the strength to overcome Satan, though with more pyrotechnics than most of us can muster. He retains the Ghost Rider powers he had been given by Satan, but they are his to use as his new faith directs him.' However, the story was apparently rewritten at the last moment (Marvel Spotlight, 1979)."

Ghost Rider using his second power, The Penance Stare. Whenever he looks into someone's eyes, he has the ability to make them experience all the pain that person has ever inflicted on others, resulting in the "burning of their soul" that is worse than death because it's a taste of damnation. The eyes are the window of the soul, when Ghost Rider, as a skeleton without eyes, looks into the eyes of a person who still has life in them, who still has their soul and can still make the choice to do good instead evil, sees a being without a soul, it's also the pain of being without their soul (you don't appreciate it until it's gone).

Why would they take out the part about Johnny Blaze becoming a Christian?
Jesus Christ isn't cool by secular standards.
Far more people believe in hell than they do in heaven, and everyone can agree that the devil is evil, but not everyone would agree that Jesus Christ is good, so instead of Ghost Rider saving Danny from becoming the anti-Christ, Ghost Rider himself, Johnny Blaze, becomes the anti-Christ because he does not rely upon God, but upon the devil for his soul's power (even after his "conversion" and regaining his soul from the devil's contract, Johnny enters into another contract with Danny to overcome his father, the devil). This denial of Christ presents a self-reliant salvation rather than salvation as a gift from God, and re-enforces people's belief that they do not need God to overcome the devil, the devil can be tricked.

One of the monks that is going to kill Danny to save the world. They have writing all over their faces, which is a typical film technique to indicate a zealot or religious fanatic (think of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or The Mummy). The writing invokes "the Word" and it being on their face means that they identify with The Word of God, but we can know this isn't the Word of God because the Word of God doesn't exist anywhere in this film. For example, to free Johnny Blaze from the devil's contract, Moreau (Idris Elba) tells him that he needs to confess that which he doesn't want to talk about, and this is good, Johnny Blaze makes a good, humble confession when he says that he didn't make the contract with the devil to save his dad but because he wasn't ready to let go of his dad, he did it for himself, not his father. But Moreau isn't a priest who can absolve Johnny of this sin on behalf of God, and the bread that Moreau gives to Johnny, saying, "The Lamb of God," isn't the body of Christ, it's bread, and mistakes like these throughout the film are revealing, because the "theology" Ghost Rider presents is just as misleading as claiming a loaf of bread from the Wal-Mart bakery is the Body of Christ.

To be fair to the film, we can say, and this is a traditional aspect of the soul's progress, that we have to go through all the evil within us before we can get to God; a perfect example is Dante and The Divine Comedy: Dante can't go straight to Heaven, he can't even go straight to Purgatory, he has to go through Hell first, then through Purgatory. How is this different than Ghost Rider? Dante can only make this journey by the Grace of God, and his trip into hell is an illustration of spiritual poverty: as the soul is purified, it becomes clean and gains power as a result of being freed from sin and impurity; however, to keep us humble and on the path to salvation, the Lord keeps us poor--we don't have that power that comes with freedom--we rely, instead, on His Grace to continue the trip through spiritual perfection, as we get closer and closer to Heaven. The more freedom from sin we gain, the more powerful we become, but this side of heaven, we never feel that way because we would then be tempted to pride and leaving God.

This is a good example of how we can give only what we have first received. Since Johnny Blaze has not received grace from God, he can't give grace, he can't give anything that is good because he hasn't received anything that is good, hence, why he spits out hell fire in the picture above, that is all that he has received.

The place where the devil is supposed to pass on his powers to his son Danny is in Turkey, and it's an interesting choice because Turkey has long been rumored to the be place where Noah's Ark is. Just as the Ark saved men from sin in Noah's day, so Danny is supposed to be the Flood of Evil that damns all men. This isn't the real point that the film makes, however, because it's too busy trying to take the most complicated and intricate wisdom there is, that of the soul and its relationship to its maker, God, and turn it into something for cheap entertainment that's easily digested and non-offensive.

Am I asking too much, that only a good character can overcome evil? No, and that's why I reviewed Safe House before Ghost Rider, because that same thesis exists in the story of a thoroughly bad rogue CIA agent who is unable to bring others to justice because he is outside the bounds of justice himself (please see Safe House & Death In Art). When Johnny Blaze tells Danny, "The power that we have comes from a dark place, but it's not who we are, we can use it for good," he reveals that he doesn't know himself and therefore, he doesn't know the difference between good and evil, and not knowing God, not knowing Jesus Christ and His Teachings, condemns him to ignorance and damnation.

Safe House & Death In Art

Safe House, starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds is a cross between The Bourne Identity and Training Day: Reynolds (Matt Weston) gives a great performance, with lots of emotional highs and lows, but never too much, emotional, but balanced, while Mr. Washington (Tobin Frost) is in top form, as usual. What is rewarding about the film are all the golden nuggets hidden, hither and thither, which rewards the viewer with a greater understanding of the stakes for both characters and the psychological conversions.

For example, when Matt is in a high-speed chase, and Tobin breaks out into the back seat from the trunk of the car, Tobin uses his handcuffs to try and strangle Matt; well, that's common sense, you might say, of course he's going to do that, but given Tobin's understanding of psychology holding Matt's neck with the handcuffs symbolizes how Matt is "yoked" to the CIA and whatever they tell him to believe.

Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston, a low-level CIA employee wanting to get "into the filed" and out of the safe house he operates. When Tobin Frost, the highly prized asset the CIA has been trying to track for years, is suddenly on his way to Matt's safe house, it's the most action he's ever seen. The safe house is attacked, everyone killed, and Matt has to get Tobin out of there, knowing that someone on the inside, in the CIA, betrayed them and told the attackers where they could get Tobin.

"You crushed my windpipe," Matt tells Tobin, and symbolically, we could look at that as a favor: breathing symbolizes what it is that we take in, and Tobin, crushing it, isn't allowing Matt to "take in" the lies his superiors are feeding him. When Tobin has escaped Matt, and threatens to kill him with a bullet to the head, firing instead at the brick wall, it explodes Matt's ear drum; why? Because this whole time Tobin, just like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, has been telling Matt what's going to happen and why, so it blocks out, symbolically, everything else the heads at the CIA tell Matt so all he hears is, "You've done a fine job, we'll take it from here," because the audience has had their ear drum exploded as well and that's all we hear. When we hear those words, just like Matt, we hear nothing else, because Tobin has programmed us to listen for those words as a clue of who not to trust and verification of Tobin's own psychological powers.

This is a great shot because, of course, the one in the driver's seat is the one driving, the one "steering" the relationship, and the one in the back seat is out of control. There is also the element of the rear view mirror (there are great uses made of reflections and glass throughout the film for all the characters): Tobin talking to Matt is also Tobin remembering himself as he was when he first started, so when Tobin tells Matt that "I only kill professionals," meaning that Matt isn't a professional so that's why Tobin isn't going to kill him, it also means (as I will elaborate upon below) that Matt isn't what Tobin is: a rogue murderer guilty of espionage and maybe a lot of other rotten stuff.

As I mentioned, there is a lot of violence in the film, but it's in a way that it materializes the inner-struggles of the characters, which in turn symbolizes the inner struggles of all these countries who are dealing with corruption in their intelligence offices. Towards the end, when Matt has successfully gotten Tobin to a safe house to await extraction, he has a brutal fight with the safe house keeper, Keller who is a killer. Keller stabs Matt with a large shard of glass in his stomach, symbolizing how "reflecting" upon the events, and "digesting" what has happened, has wounded Matt's ability to trust.

What is it that sets off the whole chain of events? Tobin obtains a file of all the crooked intelligence officers in the world, and one of them, pictured above, is not happy about being on Tobin's laundry list and will do anything to kill Tobin and delete the list, which is exactly the kind of behavior which landed them on the list to begin with.

 This wound has an interesting effect, the kind of effect that can only happen in art: he becomes stronger because of it. The last person in the world that should be set up to kill Matt is Keller, but that's exactly who tries to do Matt in. Although it looks like Matt could die from this wound--I certainly didn't expect to see him alive in the next scene--it's only after this wound that Matt is trusted by Tobin with what is in the file that Tobin is carrying. It's not so much that Matt can take this kind of injury that makes him worthy of Tobin's trust, it's that this wound heals previous wounds that was keeping Matt from applying his wisdom and own insight into human nature so he can finish this assignment.

David Barlow has a "low" "bar." Played by Brendan Gleeson, Barlow is Matt's mentor in the CIA and trying to get him a better posting and is even keeping the rest of the CIA from taking action against Matt for "going rogue" with Tobin because Matt's not following orders. When they meet last, Matt knows Barlow's name is on the list and Matt has become world-wise enough to know that Tobin is right about him.

But let's talk about Tobin.
When Tobin ditches Matt and gets to a hotel room, before he goes to get the forged papers, he shaves, cuts his hair and removes the file he injected into his stomach. This tells us that, besides just changing his identity so he won't be so easy to recognize, he's also changing his attitude: shaving of hair means a shedding of the animal instincts and passions, so Tobin is "reflecting more" (he's looking in the mirror while shaving) and going to try to behave differently so he doesn't become like the men on the laundry list he's been caring inside of him (like Matt being stabbed with the shard of glass and digesting everything that has happened to him).

It's rather ironic that the person who will give Tobin a false identity is also the only person who knows the real Tobin. Previously, in the soccer stadium, Tobin wore a security outfit, and that's pretty accurate, because Tobin is only dressing up to be in the security business, he's too corrupt to be able to administer justice fairly.

When Tobin first gets shot, he's in a green room, and the green wall is a sign of decay, because it's while Tobin is going down the stairs (a digression) that he gets shot: this is the moment we know that Tobin isn't going to make it through the rest of the film, because he is no better than the guys he's bringing to justice. But we see this again when Tobin actually dies. Earlier in the film, Carlos the document forger, calls Tobin "The black Dorian Gray," and, Dorian Gray, of course, is from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a young man who sells his soul to commit all kinds of sin, but a portrait takes on the weight of the sin leaving Dorian to continue looking young, until he meets his portrait. 

Just before he's fatally shot.

This is what the film does really well: when David Barlow comes out, his face half-blown off by a car explosion (which lets us know that his "mask of innocence" has been blown) this is the moment when "the black Dorian Gray" meets his portrait, because Barlow's shot is fatal. When Tobin slumps down against the wall, he tells Matt, "Be better than me," blood dribbles out of his mouth and he dies, we know that blood coming out of his mouth is the price for all the lies that he has told because he keeps telling Matt that you learn to lie automatically as if the lies were really the truth, and that's why Tobin dies: he's too bad to enforce justice, he's not strong enough to withstand the shot. There is a ray of hope, though, because the walls are yellow where he dies, suggesting that Matt was a good influence and Tobin had an interior repentance. 

Regrettably, Matt doesn't take Tobin's advice.
While Matt successfully exposes the corrupt heads of intelligence organizations around the world, he lies to the CIA chief Harlan Whitford that Tobin never mentioned a file to him, so Matt's telling lies exactly as Tobin predicted he would. The meaning of Safe House, then is that we are all the house, and the truth has to be safe within us or the truth doesn't actually exist anywhere. If we, like the CIA, "aren't interested in the truth anymore," than we ourselves are not safe houses and can't expect that of anyone else. When Matt goes to Paris to meet up with his girlfriend, Ana, the last shot of Matt suggest Mission Impossible, and the barriers of lies and mistrust that would always come between them will make Matt nothing more than a shadow because he has all ready started to tell the lies.

More Trailers

I really try to keep things organized, however, I have found even more trailers than what I posted Ash Wednesday and, instead of just tacking onto that post, decided to make a separate one. If you are looking forward to The Avengers, you may enjoy watching the road to making The Avengers and behind the scenes clips.

I am not going to say a whole lot about these clips because I have just seen Chronicle and Safe House, so in addition to getting up the posts for Ghost Rider 2 and This Means War, I have a lot on my plate that I am wanting to dish out to you. Also, in getting my research ready for The Raven, I am trying to figure out what to read before hand; I have seen, in the trailer, the cover for Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Raven; I am expecting the film to reference The Cask of Amontillado although I have not seen a clear indication of it in the trailer. I have, however, not the slightest idea which of his stories is about a person being shoved up the chimney; if anyone knows other works the film is going to invoke, please leave a comment or drop me an email, it would really cut down on my research time. I will be going over all these works so that, going in, we will be the informed viewers.
Yet another end of the world film, 4:44 Last Day On Earth is being released in Argentina on June 14:

The Woman In the Fifth was released in France last November, and I don't know if it has a US/UK release date or not, but it at least might make a good movie night at home if not:

Dark Tide does not have a release date at this point, but the synopsis is interesting: "A professional diver tutor Brady returns to deep waters after nine years following an almost fatal encounter with a great white shark, bringing a happy couple Kate and Jeff. However, before they know it they discover that the nightmare from the deep is still lurking in the deep, more carnivorous and hungry than ever." Because of the symbolism of sharks, this could easily translate to the economy and the American dream, but, as always, we won't know until we watch it:

Position Among the Stars is the final edition of a trilogy documentaries about the poor in the Philippines and follows a poor, elderly Christian woman; just watch this:

I have gathered some information that libraries are showing all three, so if you are unable to get it, check your local branch. On a somewhat similar vein, Hadewijch, about a young girl who is not allowed to become a nun, joins a Muslim group; the film explores the difference between faith and fanatics (I don't think this is something I would normally watch myself, so if you have seen it, let us know what you think):

And after all that serious stuff, here's a trailer that pretty much describes one of my typical days, Ice Age 4 Continental Drift set for a June release:

In the Cold Light of Day is set for an April 6 release; what we always need to remember about artistic depictions of father-son relationships, is that it's usually the "founding father" that is being represented, and the son is the younger generation, either validating the older generation or overthrowing it:

Guy Pearce's newest film, Lockout, loosely based on the 1981 Kurt Russell thriller Escape From New York City, and also set for an April release date, gives us some similar threads that we are going to find in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, with the escaped convicts, and like Man on a Ledge, gives us a wrongly convicted man:

I am not saying that this will be a good film, but it may highlight some of the messages that we are seeing in other films. Finally, besides the Oscars being this Sunday, out on DVD this week is Martha Marcy May Marlene, J. Edgar, Tower Heist and London Boulevard, all of which I have reviewed on this blog with the exception of London Boulevard, which I will now have to watch because it features the star of the new 300 sequel, Battle of Artemisia. I am going to be getting posts up continually this weekend to get caught up on all that I have seen this week, so keep checking back!

Christian Economics & The Secret World of Arrietty

The Secret World of Arrietty, while based on familiar childhood tales and fantasies, is very much an adult film, as is often the case. While I predicted films of 2012 would be about class-warfare, I didn't imagine that such a simple but wholesome view of a capitalist society would present itself with so much dignity and grace, yet The Secret World of Arrietty does just that.

What are the factors leading to an economic interpretation of this film? Primarily it's the presence of "little people" throughout films this year which allows an economic status to be associated with them, e.g., Mirror, Mirror shows Snow White commanding an army of "little warriors," and Jack the Giant Killer shows Jack being the "little person" in the land of giants, and amongst the giant cyclops, Perseus is a little person in Wrath of the Titans; there is also the dwarfs who form Snow White's army in Snow White and the Huntsman and, of course, the Hobbits in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The "little people," then, can be understood as the smallest in society, those who are not the economic giants ruling a capitalist society.
So, in 2012, size matters.

This is a doll's house made for the little people, the Borrowers. It was specifically made for them, the furniture hand-crafted by an English furniture maker and everything works perfectly. When Arrietty's father takes her on her first borrowing, and through this house, he tells her that it's not for them, it's a doll's house, and Borrowers are not toys. Shawn decides to take the custom made kitchen and give it as a gift to the Borrowers; by this time, however, they have decided that they need to move and will not take any of the items Shawn has given them. Why? This plays an important role in understanding the "exchange" that takes place in economics and, specifically, Christianity. At this point, Shawn doesn't understand what a "borrower" is because he hasn't been re-paid for what they have borrowed from him, so to Shawn, he is freely giving them something but he doesn't understand the "exchange rate" that will prompt Arrietty to give him her gift.

But what does a Christian economics mean?
Many may instantly think of G.K. Chesterton's Distributionism, which defends private ownership of property but is against really big corporations keeping the means of production all to itself (it's known as a "third way" between socialism and capitalism). But that's not what I am talking about, and I don't think it's even the conversation needed right now, especially as we are about to get snow-balled with class-warfare films. Rather, The Secret World of Arrietty provides us with a reminder of what it is that the poorest of the poor contribute to our society and not just what it costs to maintain them. This is a clip explaining what "borrowers" are:

I'm sure you're saying, that's nice, but what does this have to do with a Christian economics?
In every work of art, there's an element I call the "God factor," and it's whether or not the universe the artwork creates includes God or not; The Secret World of Arrietty provides two important clues that, in a world where there are people the size of leaves, so, too, there is God. First, the mother prays to God and asks that He protect Arrietty and her father when they go on their borrowing; secondly, the mother's name is Homily, which is what a sermon is called that provides instruction. Arrietty itself is a German form of the name Harriet and means "home ruler," so we have The Secret World of Arrietty existing within the same world that God as we know Him also exists.

Hair symbolizes our thoughts, so for Arrietty pulling her hair back in her clip means that she is disciplining how she thinks, specifically, about humans; that's why it is such a precious gift she gives to Shawn when she leaves, it's not the clip itself, rather, that she no longer "constrains" her thoughts on how humans are, but her thoughts have been freed by the friendship they have shared.

In both the Book of Job and the Gospels, we are provided with an understanding of why there are poor people amongst us: the poor, and those who are in need, bring out the best in us. When, like Job, we see someone in need, and we use the blessings that God has given us to alleviate their sufferings and wants, we are fulfilling Christ's command to "Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect" because then we are loving perfectly, as God loves us. All of us, at some point in time, are in need of something, including love, grace, salvation, forgiveness for our sins, a friend, food, money, clothes, shelter; they are called "borrowers" because they take what they need, and then they return it. Similarly, God gives us blessings on the understanding that we will give Him glory for it in some way: we borrow grace, for example, to pray for someone who will not pray for themselves; we borrow the financial blessings God gives us to pass onto the Church and those in need because He first gave to us in our need. Not returning these things means that we are not borrowers, but thieves.

Shawn is the main character, apart from Arrietty who has come to this house to rest before an important heart operation that he is certain will fail and result in his death. His parents, due to their divorce and the demands of their careers, cannot be there to take care of him so his Aunt Jessica is looking after him. Shawn's parents' neglect of him dehumanizes Shawn whereas Arrietty's parents' care and concern for her validates and verifies Arrietty's humanity; by caring for and protecting Arrietty and her family, Shawn reclaims his humanity because when we recognize the humanity in others, our own humanity comes out, and when we treat others like animals or sub-humans, we lose our humanity. When we do unto others as we would want done unto us, we are the ones who benefit the most.

What is it that the Borrowers return?
It's Arrietty who gives Shawn something more valuable than anything in the world: the will to fight his illness and get better. Before meeting Arrietty, Shawn seemed resigned to death that would result from the failure of his heart surgery either immediately or soon after wards. Arrietty, by her example, gives Shawn hope, and there is no price that can be put on that. But The Secret World of Arrietty gives us a choice: we can look at them as borrowers, that they do serve a useful role in society, or we can look at them as thieves, as Hara the maid does in this clip:

My relatives are found of quoting the Bible verse that "Those who do not work shall not eat," and using that as a basis for their economic and tax programs; we know from the the Desert Fathers that it was the "work of salvation," and the work of the soul that would bring the food of spiritual consolation and wisdom, it had nothing to do with the way society was supposed to create it's social programs. 

The cat Nina and Arrietty as she is leaving to find her new home. The reason the mother always thinks the cat ate her husband is because she thinks the cat doesn't realize their humanity (the cat, in this instance, is a symbol of the fat cats, the wealthy) and they will swallow up everything they can get. As the film progresses, and Arrietty increasingly shows fearlessness, it's because she's more confident in her being, her importance, her place in the universe.

It's not just that Jesus Christ chose to be poor Himself, but the way great people have chose to respond to the poor and validate their dignity and needs: what would the world be like without Mother Theresa? Without St. Francis of Assisi? St. Vincent de Paul? St. Thomas Aquinas is my patron saint, and when I converted, one of the first prayers I learned was when St. Thomas asked God to give him the grace to share with others what God had given to him, and the humility to ask others to share with him what he needed, and I try to remember that everyday.

Spiller, another borrower the family meets. We can say that there is an economic basis to borrowing because just as the family has borrowed, so now they are wanting to share with Spiller to have him for tea and dinner. One might say, how is sugar and cookies essential for survival? Because we all need a bit of the "sweet life" in order to survive and remember that we are humans, not beasts of burden. In a very innocent way, The Secret World of Arrietty is very much a romance between Shawn and Arrietty that reflects their different "class standing," her being from a "lower class" and he being from the upper class. When Arrietty's family leaves, Arrietty's affections seem to move to Spiller next, who--being something of a wild man of the forest--would be on a "lower" economic status than herself, but he still shares with her the berries and his knowledge to get them to safety. We all have something to give, and we all have something we need.

In conclusion, The Secret World Of Arrietty provides us with a unique understanding of what it means to live with others, but also challenges us as to who will "rule our home": either we will be dominated by the thought that the poor are thieves or that they are borrowers who play a special, though mysterious, role in society. When Shawn first sees Arrietty, she drops the sugar cube that her mother requested they bring back; why? When we see someone who is homeless or obviously in need, and our eyes meet their eyes, our souls meets their soul, and either we acknowledge them or we dismiss them, and being used to being dismissed and dehumanized, the borrowers have lost that sweetness from life, their dignity that we all need to survive. Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts," and when it comes to our fellow humans, we must remember that there is not a single person who does not count.
(Below is the closing song and video you might enjoy):

A Blessed Ash Wednesday & Film News

Ash Wednesday, 1881, Falat Julian Popielec.

A most blessed Ash Wednesday to all of you, and, for those not participating in the ceremony of ashes, please pray for us who are entering into a state of penance, prayer and fasting, that we will be faithful to our vows and the Lord will bless us with grace during this time.
There has been a lot of new film news coming out, so I just want to keep you in the know with these tidbits and a few new trailers I have found.

James Bond with beard, first production still released from newest Bond Skyfall set--at this time--for release in October. What does this tell us about Bond? We know that men's facial hair can mean two things: first, a digression into the animal appetites (especially a beard because it draws attention to the mouth which is symbolic of the appetites) because shaving is a sign of the civilized, so not shaving is a sign of the uncivilized (I am speaking in purely artistic terms here, guys). But the other possible meaning is the exact opposite: a sign of growing spirituality and introversion/interiorism. Because the growing of a beard can mean the renunciation of the world, rather than the succumbing to it (think of St. John the Baptist, do you think he shaved?), Bond "letting his hair down," so to speak, may be going deeper into himself. While Skyfall has nothing to do with Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace, this would be a good time for the British super-hero to do some soul-searching.

"It struck me that it is still possible to make a big, glamourous, fabulous, escapist movie and still say something about the world we're living in" says Sam Mendes, newest director of James Bond's Skyfall set for release in October; well, that's what I have been saying all along and I am anxiously awaiting the first trailers to be released! The only other pictures besides the one above released so far thus is Bond sitting on the edge of a swimming pool and M (Judi Dench) in her office with cameramen behind her.

Pablo Picasso (left) and Antonio Banderas (right).

Antonio Banderas is set to play fellow-Spaniard Pablo Picasso in a new film called 33 Days about the emotional turmoil while painting the enormous canvas Guernica. Banderas is also starring in Black Gold about warring Arabs trying to get control over a strip of desert with large oil reserves beneath. Filming for the anticipated Paradise Lost, based on the John Milton poem, and spear-headed by Bradley Cooper, is dead; reasons sited is that the war between heaven and hell would have been too expensive to film... on the other hand, there is a sequel being made to the Spartan film 300 called 300: Battle of Artemisia starring Jamie Blackley (London Boulevard, Snow White and the Huntsman).

Cherlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman

Here are a few trailers I have picked up since the last posting on upcoming films, including Damsels In Distress: "A trio of girls set out to change the male-dominated environment of the Seven Oaks college campus, and to rescue their fellow students from depression, grunge and low standards of every kind." It's set for an April release in New Zealand.

Set for release June 22, Seeking a freind For the End of the World gives us another end-of-the-world scenario based on a meteor. After his wife leaves him in a panic, he goes after an old sweetheart inadvertently aided by a neighbor who messes up his plans:

Another end-of-the-world trailer is for Ridley Scott's Prometheus set for a June release; I just don't trust Ridley Scott, and the limited information from the trailer makes me dis-trust him even more, but he has done a nice job of incorporating noise (as an artistic medium) into the trailer along with the static (something is being said that we are not going to be able to hear or understand).

I am working to get posts up for The Secret World of Arrietty, Ghost Rider 2 and This Means War. Have a blessed day!

The Vow & Obamacare

I had really high hopes for The Vow, but they was quickly dashed: it is, in short, a political platform for President Obama's re-election. It takes place in Chicago, where he is from. After Paige's memory loss (Rachel McAdams) she tells Leo (Channing Tatum) that she doesn't even know who the President is and he tells her that it's Obama; she replies, "The Senator?" and he tells her that she voted for him. When it's obvious that Paige is not falling back in love with Leo after the "crash," which should be understood as the economic crash of 2008, Bill Thornton (Sam Neill), Paige's father, tells Leo that he should get a divorce from her: since they didn't have health care (read: Obamacare) he's now drowning in debt and he can't save their marriage.

Paige symbolizes voters who "wedded" themselves to the Obama Administration but then lost the memory of why they voted for him. The Vow suggests that, just as Paige slowly starts to put her life back together the same way she did before the accident, so she would also vote for Obama again and the country should be like Paige, realizing that just as Paige's family tried to capitalize on her accident to get her back with them, so Republicans are trying to capitalize on Obama's failures as a president to get voters back with them: just as Paige belongs with Leo, so voters belong with Obama. Obama, like Leo, is trying to get that love back that has been lost through, what he might call "accidents" but what Republicans call, "incompetence." Personally, I am in no way a supporter of Obama, but The Vow is reaching out to anyone who might have "accidentally" lost their love for him and he now wants another four years to make them fall back in love with him.

Blight Of Nature: Underworld Awakening

It would really be great if the aesthetic and cool factor of the Underworld franchise could be harnessed for characters who actually care about humans instead of just feeding off them. Alas, the problem with Underworld: Awakening is the same as with all previous editions of the story: we are asked to identify with a hero who hates us.

Selene almost always has weapons and that illusion of power is very appealing to people who do not constantly make an investment of faith and leave their lives up to God. I will not hesitate to confess that I wish I could take an axe and storm Congress like the Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer trailer, but the kind of power and action Selene takes in the Underworld series is not the kind of action that Christians are called to take, so the element of power and control vampires seemingly have undermines the most basic tenants of Christian faith when we are called to pray and have faith in God and leave vengeance to him (and granted, other films do this as well, GI Joe Retaliation will do this, for example, but there is a difference, a very fine line between sitting back and doing nothing and being a willing instrument of God's grace and taking power into your own hands and the later is what Underworld and like films do and why Christians have to be vigilant about them).

So, why should we care?
I'm not, by any means, saying, go out and see this film so you can expose yourself to it and feel the eroding in your soul; but Hollywood invested $70 million dollars to make this film, and it hasn't even grossed $60 million worldwide (which is the good news, maybe they will stop making them). That's an enormous amount of money to invest in a venture but, given the success of films such as Twilight and TV shows like Being Human, why wouldn't Hollywood producers think they could make money off this?

This is a great shot because it really provides the information that we need about this heroine with whom we are asked to sympathize with and identify. Please note her hair: hair is symbolic of the thoughts, it visualizes how our thoughts are holding together and taking shape; her hair is separating (the separate strands by her face that have been gelled to hold them together and apart from the rest of her hair), which is exactly how she thinks. Throughout the entire series, Selene makes up the rules as she goes along, she has no guiding principles and nothing is sacred to her, her thoughts are as separate and disparate as her hairstyle.

Why does American society so easily become entranced with vampires?
Because vampires have a threefold ingredient list making them appealing to younger people and people who have no spiritual grounding in their lives: first, their is usually some element of glamor; secondly, they appear to have power and, thirdly, vampires manage to find a dark place in a person's soul and bring that out, making the audience member think that they have vampire tendencies because sometimes they feel like outcasts or lonely (I did some posts on vampires last October and this post will build upon those; please see For the Dead Travel Fast: Dracula, The Undead: Nosferatu, The Children Of the Night: Dracula 1931, False Light: Interview With the Vampire).

Kate Beckinsale is a very beautiful woman, and has been named some men's magazine's most desirable woman in the world before and her beauty contributes to the aesthetic and glamor of the vampire (just as Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas and Brad Pitt contributed their good looks to the aesthetic in Interview With the Vampire). The different elements of Selene's outfit gives us a better understanding of how un-connected her thoughts and beliefs are. She wears a corset, military style boots and a black S & M leather body suit. While the corset is meant to emphasize her femininity, or at least her sex appeal, her boots are meant to show that she has a masculine will (feet symbolize the will) and in Selene's case, we know that she's "a warrior" because that is her reputation and legacy, which usually belongs to a man. Lastly, her body suit, tight and slick, puts her in a sexually dominating position above males. In short, Selene is a Frankenstein monster of a vampire and so is her code of conduct which Thomas (Charles Dance), the leader of a coven of vampires, points out.

We have to remember: a vampire is a vampire is a vampire.
Symbolically, a vampire drinks the blood of humans, because those humans have failed to drink the blood of Christ and find for themselves eternal life in the Light of God. Instead, these films will show the damned souls as living a comfortable life, usually in a large castle or manor house, and with great wealth wearing cool clothes, drinking blood from expensive crystal glasses and they are always beautiful and eternally young. Even when the "vampire self" comes out in Underworld, it retains that semblance of beauty and power and makes the damned life desirable.

Please note her eyes, which, beside a slight elongation of the canine teeth, are the only indications that the vampire self is taking over. Why are vampires always beautiful? We could say it's an extension of the deadly sin of vanity: because they were so beautiful physically, they didn't care how they looked spiritually, and hence they were open to becoming evil because their main priority was to stay looking beautiful, not gain eternal life. What Underworld does differently than say, Van Helsing, is that in Van Helsingthe thin veil of glamor is torn asunder and we see them how they really are: demons from hell.

Vampires appear to be powerful.
I do not deny that evil has power (it most certainly does) something I will discuss at length in my next posting on Ghost Rider, but there is a strong difference between the power--as in the type of power of Good and the Soul that is devoid of evil that we find in Mary and the saints--and earthly that its use not only corrupts but leads to damnation (because you are use to using it to protect yourself and get what you want, so you completely depend on it and do everything you have to to keep it as if it were life itself). In Underworld, Selene can jump, fight, shoot guns, run fast, but what's the point, really? In an isolated context, this seems like cool stuff, but when compared to the soul's loss of grace, it is nothing, but that is never brought out.

The child of Selene and Michael, a hybrid vampire-werewolf, Eve. The fight for her really comes down to a power struggle in the film because Eve is supposed to be the most powerful of them all.

Lastly, vampires exhibit human characteristics which "feed on" the dark places within our souls to forge a bond with them so we start to identify with them and ultimately, want to become like them, they become role models. Vampires are demons, and that is all there is to it hence, they no more exhibit human characteristics than the heavenly angels who watch over us because both sets of angels are pure spirit that have nothing earthly about them. Selene, very much, is an evil Christ figure, the kind of Christ figure that Judas Iscariot wanted: God who would come down and fight, with swords and guns, our political and personal battles and make us rulers over the earthly world. These are people who reject the Good Shepherd, the Crucified One, the Eucharist and when we allow ourselves to be tempted by these visions of power, so do we.

In the closing lines, which are included in the trailer above, Selene prophecies that not only will the vampires survive in the world, but reclaim the world back from humans. Riding like a parasite upon a weak and tragic love story that would be familiar to humans, Underworld and other vampire films package anti-Christian practices and temptations to lure us away from our faith and the difficult path of eternal life. The problem is, all too often it works. If we know the aesthetic and the techniques, we can show others--especially our children--why these films are full of poison that must be rejected by Christians. It's not enough to say, "Don't watch that because I told you," by articulating the strategies of these films, we will teach others to recognize the forbidden fruit, the sugar-coating they put on evil, and why it means only death for us.