Have you ever longed for a movie to be made by a Christian that depicted life in a much more realistic way? Where people who began a relationship with Christ didn’t suddenly have it all together, score the winning touchdown, get the girl, have their parents relationship suddenly get better and then find themselves tiptoeing through the tulips in a pain free life? If this describes you then the movie “To Save a Life” is just what you have been looking for.

I had the opportunity to go to a special screening of this movie for youth workers and I must say that I went into it very skeptical. I expected it to be just like almost every other movie that has been made by Christians. As the first swear word that was uttered I had a feeling that this could possibly be that type of a movie I have been waiting for.

The movie starts off in a cemetery where a young man, Roger, is being buried and you see another young man named, Jake, is standing a little ways off. Roger’s mom approaches Jake and asks him if he knew this was going to happen and when was the last time that Jake had talked to Roger. Jake freezes and we see flashbacks in his head of when he and Roger were younger. Then just as the mom walks off he utters, “Not since our freshman year”.

From there we learn more about Jake’s life and how he is the star athlete, has the girl and will soon be graduating from high school and heading off to play basketball at a major university. However, as we see there is something that just isn’t right with his life and we see the turmoil throughout that he seems oblivious to.

One day, he finds himself on a curbside with no one to turn to or call except for this youth pastor, Chris, he bumped into earlier that handed him his business card. Chris comes and picks up Jake from this party and starts a relationship with him that will eventually change both of their lives.

Chris never has all the answers for Jake but what he does have is time and love, so he gives as much of it as he can to him. Jake eventually starts becoming a regular member of Chris’ youth group and helps revolutionize the group from one that is going to church, to one that is becoming the church. You even see Acts 2 being acted out in one particular scene on the school grounds during lunch.

I would recommend this movie for every youth worker out there to take their group to, because it depicts not only the life of teens in a very real way; but because it will hopefully help your group to see their greater role on this planet and it will hopefully also helped you reach some teens who are not Christ-followers yet. And, yes, there is some swearing, drinking and a “sex scene” (where nothing is shown but you know what happened) in this movie so be warned. However, nothing is gratuitous even though it did get a PG-13 rating.

I also recommend this movie if you are looking for a good movie to go to that is well written, acted and produced. I was very impressed with the quality of this film. But don’t go see it if you would rather not be stirred to action and change your world.

HT to Len.

If you haven’t seen this video then you are missing out, because it is funny.

Besides everyone knows that most reviewers are not very good at picking movies in the first place. After all, they are the one’s who said Home Alone was a bad movie and then changed their reviews a few weeks later after movie-goers made it a big movie.

Our family loved the movie. We all laughed and thought it was a very good movie. Adam Sandler may have done some fairly risque movies in the past, but he did a great job of making a very clean and family friendly movie with this one. It had good elements of comedy, romance and drama. There was even a good moral to the whole story.

I know I might be slightly juvenile, but I laughed every time that Bugsy the guinea pig came on screen. So all in all I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone with kids or anyone who wants to see a movie and get a good laugh.

Like Zelda….

And Pacman

I don’t know about you, but I am excited to see these movies. Of course, if you believe that they are real I am some property to sell you.

1. Citizen Kane, 1941.
2. The Godfather, 1972.
3. Casablanca, 1942.
4. Raging Bull, 1980.
5. Singin’ in the Rain, 1952.
6. Gone With the Wind, 1939.
7. Lawrence of Arabia, 1962.
8. Schindler’s List, 1993.
9. Vertigo, 1958.
10. The Wizard of Oz, 1939.
11. City Lights, 1931.
12. The Searchers, 1956.
13. Star Wars, 1977.
14. Psycho, 1960.
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968.
16. Sunset Blvd., 1950.
17. The Graduate, 1967.
18. The General, 1927.
19. On the Waterfront, 1954.
20. It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946.
21. Chinatown, 1974.
22. Some Like It Hot, 1959.
23. The Grapes of Wrath, 1940.
24. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982.
25. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962.
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939.
27. High Noon, 1952.
28. All About Eve, 1950.
29. Double Indemnity, 1944.
30. Apocalypse Now, 1979.
31. The Maltese Falcon, 1941.
32. The Godfather Part II, 1974.
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975.
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937.
35. Annie Hall, 1977.
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957.
37. The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946.
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948.
39. Dr. Strangelove, 1964.
40. The Sound of Music, 1965.
41. King Kong, 1933.
42. Bonnie and Clyde, 1967.
43. Midnight Cowboy, 1969.
44. The Philadelphia Story, 1940.
45. Shane, 1953.
46. It Happened One Night, 1934.
47. A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951.
48. Rear Window, 1954.
49. Intolerance, 1916.
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001.
51. West Side Story, 1961.
52. Taxi Driver, 1976.
53. The Deer Hunter, 1978.
54. M-A-S-H, 1970.
55. North by Northwest, 1959.
56. Jaws, 1975.
57. Rocky, 1976.
58. The Gold Rush, 1925.
59. Nashville, 1975.
60. Duck Soup, 1933.
61. Sullivan’s Travels, 1941.
62. American Graffiti, 1973.
63. Cabaret, 1972.
64. Network, 1976.
65. The African Queen, 1951.
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981.
67. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966.
68. Unforgiven, 1992.
69. Tootsie, 1982.
70. A Clockwork Orange, 1971.
71. Saving Private Ryan, 1998.
72. The Shawshank Redemption, 1994.
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969.
74. The Silence of the Lambs, 1991.
75. In the Heat of the Night, 1967.
76. Forrest Gump, 1994.
77. All the President’s Men, 1976.
78. Modern Times, 1936.
79. The Wild Bunch, 1969.
80. The Apartment, 1960.
81. Spartacus, 1960.
82. Sunrise, 1927.
83. Titanic, 1997.
84. Easy Rider, 1969.
85. A Night at the Opera, 1935.
86. Platoon, 1986.
87. 12 Angry Men, 1957.
88. Bringing Up Baby, 1938.
89. The Sixth Sense, 1999.
90. Swing Time, 1936.
91. Sophie’s Choice, 1982.
92. Goodfellas, 1990.
93. The French Connection, 1971.
94. Pulp Fiction, 1994.
95. The Last Picture Show, 1971.
96. Do the Right Thing, 1989.
97. Blade Runner, 1982.
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942.
99. Toy Story, 1995.
100. Ben-Hur, 1959

HT to Matthew.

Big kudos to Patti and her son for putting this together.

I should warn you that if you want to see the movies and have not read the books, that there are spoilers below.

I had heard that Pullman was a self-avowed atheist and that the series of books, of which “The Golden Compass” is the first, were basically his call for “killing God”. Which when you think about it, to kill God there has to have been a God in the first place and atheist don’t believe in God. But I digress….

The theater I saw the movie in was the first all digital theater in my area and this being my first time in it, I was immediately drawn into how visually stunning it was because the image was so precise. I thought that this would be a great asset to a film in the fantasy genre, so Pullman’s movie had an advantage at this point in my mind. And I was indeed correct, because it was really good and immediately drew you in.

It all started off telling the premise that there were many universes and how in each universe life was different for everyone. And in this universe that we were about to enter, everyone had their own personal daemon that walked around with them and represented their soul. There was also this alethiometer (golden compass) that would point to the truth, but only to the person who could read it and there was only one girl who could. The scene then cut to a girl name Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) and her friends playing together in a field.

But from there the story seemed to just kind of jump right into the middle of the action. I felt that there was no real opportunity to get to know the characters. They were introduced but it seemed that it was so quick and short that you felt that you didn’t know them enough to actually care what was about to happen with them. They never really even explained fully what the daemon was so you spent time half wondering exactly what these animals were that followed everyone around.

Because there was no emotional attachment to the characters you felt that you were just sitting there watching a movie that had some pretty cool special effects and computer generated images (CGI). Some of the deamons were really good CGI and some of them seemed like they threw them together at the last minute. The ice bears (polar bears) looked really cool and the hair on them in some of the close-ups was really well done. And Lyra’s daemon that would shift shapes, children’s daemons will change form until the child becomes an adult, looked really good as well even as it morphed into different shapes. But the monkey for Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) I thought looked really CG and not very real, in my opinion.

The scenery was visually stunning and when they went up north to the Arctic the mountains and everything just took your breath away. There was even one scene where Lyra was riding one of the ice bears named Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen) that was really cool. You could almost believe at times that Lyra was riding a real polar bear. Although at one time I leaned over to one my friends I went with and I asked where the coke bottle was. It wasn’t that the scene was cheesy or anything, just that it really reminded you of that.

There were only two scenes were I really felt emotionally drawn into and the first one was when the ice bear, Iorek Byrnison, fought the king of the ice bears, Ragnar Sturlusson. We had been previously told that Iorek had left his ice bear pack, because he was defeated in a one on one combat and lost, so he left in shame. Lyra learned this when she found him in a village where he was hired to fix things and paid in whiskey. You then later on learn that Iorek was supposed to be the rightful heir to the throne and that Ragnar was the one who defeated him and became king. However, Rangar also killed Iorek’s father by poisoning him. So you began to feel sorry for Iorek and felt this emotional attachment. Well, Lyra ends up arranging for there to be another combat between the two of them and in the end Iorek wins. And you felt yourself well up with excitement over this.

The other scene that I felt an emotional attachment to was in Bolvangar which is the place the Magisterium, who are the people that want to control everyone and a representation of the Church in Pullman’s mind, have taken the children they kidnapped. Their plan is to separate the children from their daemons, because the daemons are the things that cause the children be influenced by “dust”. Dust, though it is not really explained in the movies very well, is basically a representation of sin. In one of the scenes there we find the lead character, Lyra, who has gone there to rescue her friends is caught and they put her into the machine that will separate her from her daemon. You find yourself getting sad at the thought of this, because by this point you have seen her and her daemon together enough to sense the emotional attachment they have. But then Mrs. Coulter steps in an rescues her even though she is the person who has led the group kidnapping these children as well as doing this experiment on the children. We also learn that she is Lyra’s mom and that Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) is her father, even though he was introduced to us as her uncle.

From a movie standpoint I do not think that this movie was that good and I would have to agree with most of the movie reviews that I read. And judging by the “crowd” at the theater I would have to say that people have gotten that message. There was only about 10-12 people in the theater for the show. So I doubt this will be getting any big box office numbers.

As a Christ-follower, I was not disturbed by the content of the film. But from what I understand the first book really does not delve that much into Pullman’s atheistic views. I would even say that you wouldn’t even guess that the author was an atheist. You would imagine that he is speaking out against oppressive governments or something like that, the Magisterium could easily be representative of that. So Pullman’s intentions are not even clear at this point.

But going into the movie knowing that in Pullman’s mind the Magisterium is really the Church, I would have to somewhat agree with some of his viewpoints in regard to how the church can be oppressive. It is in this knowledge that you really begin to see Pullman’s real motive and agenda. His fight and beef is clearly with the Church and the way that the Church treats people then it is with God. It is in the fact that Pullman believes that the Church has chosen to insulate people from being able to question and think for themselves that he finds fault. And in someways he is correct. Many people in the Church have come to the conclusion that we would be better of controlling people and teaching them how to think, rather then allow free thought or really even free will.

Let me explain why I think that. The first way that we see this is in how many Christians feel that when movies such as this one come out, that we should boycott them instead of allowing them to be shown. Honestly, what are we afraid of? Doesn’t the Bible say that, “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world”? What do we as Christ-followers have to be worried about?

I firmly believe in studying the Bible and that it is the main textbook for how we should live our lives, but I also believe that God has placed in the exact time, place and culture that we are born into and that we need to be students of the world around us. They always tell missionaries that when they go to another culture that they should learn the culture they are in so they can best reach the people there. But people in the Church here in America feel that they are exempt from that, we somehow feel that we need to hole ourselves up away from the world to make sure we stay as pure as possible. So we do our best to shelter our kids from the outside and not let them listen to certain kinds of music, read certain kinds of books, or watch certain kinds of movies & T.V. shows. Some even go so far as to shelter them from public schools, so they can’t be influenced by the world around us. If we are supposed to reach out to the world how can we do that from behind our walls? We need to be with the people just like Jesus was. He did not come and avoid the world, instead he spent time with the sinners getting to know them and He loved them. That is exactly what we as the Church are called to do.

Philip Pullman is pointing out to us that we are not and have not done that with this book he has written. But sadly far too many Christians won’t get that message, because they have chosen to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore him rather then trying to get to know him in hopes that they might be able to show him love.

But I want to address a couple of things here that I had mentioned in that post. The first one being in regards to whether or not it will even be a good quality movie. Everything I have read so far from movie reviewers, I have yet to read one positive thing about it. Most people are saying it is not that good anyway. Adam Graham of the Detroit News reviewed it and gave it a D. In conclusion he said….

Quite simply, it’s not good enough to protest.

Which was something I pointed out with some other movies that Christians have boycotted. The boycotts only served to encourage people to go and give them free advertising. So let’s take Adam’s advice and not bother. If it isn’t that good, then it will bomb and no one will end up seeing another, because Hollywood is all about money and less about controversy.

The other thing I would like to point out was that I had mentioned that I felt that Philip Pullman’s beef was more with the image of God portrayed by the Church and less with God Himself. It seems that I may be right about that according to Telegraph. I will quote some of it here….

Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, caused controversy by praising the National Theatre’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials – a work that has been interpreted by some as anti-Christian. The two men met at the theatre on Monday to discuss the meaning of religion in art and literature -and its enduring relevance to the education of our children.

Dr Rowan Williams: I suppose one of the questions I would like to hear more about from Philip is what has happened to Jesus in the church in this world [of His Dark Materials], because one of the interesting things for me in the model of the church in the plays and the books, is it’s a church, as it were, without redemption.

Philip Pullman: Well, to answer the question about Jesus first, no, he doesn’t figure in the teaching of the church, as I described the church in the story. I think he’s mentioned once, in the context of this notion of wisdom that works secretly and quietly, not in the great courts and palaces of the earth, but among ordinary people and so on. And there are some teachers who have embodied this quality, but whose teaching has perhaps been perverted or twisted or turned, and been used in a fashion that they themselves didn’t either desire or expect or could see happening.

So it appears that Philip Pullman believes that the Church has strayed from much of the teachings of Jesus and I would have to agree with him. I have blogged about that before, but I believe that the Church needs a wake up call like this to realize that we are lacking in many things. And some of them are acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. Jesus showed compassion and love to those that are considered lost and reserved His harshest criticisms for the religious leaders. But somehow now we have turned that around and we criticize the world harshly. That is a problem.

Before you go any further, I really want to encourage you take your time and read this. Stop and pray to calm yourself if necessary. I know that as I typed this I did that, because I didn’t want any of it to come out angry or spiteful. Thanks.

There are some things that I obviously do not need to discover for myself that is clearly bad. Like pornography. I know it is bad and I have heard countless testimonies from people who were in the industry and people who were addicted to porn. You can check out some of these testimonies yourself over at xxxchurch.com, they have several because that is their ministry.

I have heard the cries to boycott Harry Potter, and in the interest of full disclosure I was one of those, but then I decided to do the educated thing and actually read them for myself and see the movies. To my surprise I didn’t find them to be evil or even something that would cause someone to fall into witchcraft, because it supposedly taught it. I can even remember having a discussion with a youth pastor about it who gave all kinds of arguments about how he heard this and that, so I let him know that those things were not true at all. He then added that he heard that in the next book, which was going to be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (this one ended up being my favorite in the series), that Harry was going to have sex. I kind of laughed and said that I would find that extremely hard to believe because it would be a total departure from where the story was going. And I was right.

Now comes the newest thing that Christians are crying for us to boycott. It is the movie and book, The Golden Compass, from the series His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I have never read the books and I was only aware of them in the last few months or so, even though they have been out since 1995. But I am intrigued to read them because I would like to know what it is that the hub-bub is all about and so that I can do my best to intellectually talk with people about them. I do plan on going to see the movie when it comes out and would love to go with a group of people so that we can discuss it afterwards and weigh Pullman’s world view against our world views as Christ-followers. But before I go any further I want to talk about the word boycott.

I looked up the definition on dictionary.com and this was the first entry, which what I believe Christians are meaning when they call for the boycott of this and other movies, books, etc.

…to combine in abstaining from, or preventing dealings with, as a means of intimidation or coercion.

So when people are crying for the boycott of The Golden Compass they are hoping to intimidate or coerce movie studios from producing more movies of this kind. I am not so sure that it actually happens. When Christians made a big stink about movies like The Last Temptation of Christ (yeah, that is going old school) or The Da Vinci Code, to name a couple, have they actually hurt those movies? According to box office reports, no. I would even say that the cries for boycotts gave the movie even more publicity, and free at that, causing more people to go and see it. I read the reviews of these movies after they came out and the critics panned them, but they were box office successes because people wanted to go see them to see why Christians were so mad (and maybe even just to piss off Christians). I believe these movies would have bombed if there wasn’t the public cry for a boycott.

I totally understand people making personal decisions based on their own convictions to not go and see The Golden Compass. I can respect that. Paul even talks about how some people can eat certain foods and other can’t in 1 Corinthians 8. And I think it applies here, because some people can handle the material in these books and movie while others can not.

And I know that someone will comment and say, “But this is reading evil, satanic literature and as Christians we should not do that.” Well, before you do let me also point out that in Acts 17:28, Paul uses one of the Greek poets when he is speaking to the people in Athens. So you see Paul studied their literature so that he could more effectively speak with the people there. I believe that we as Christ-followers should do the same thing.

I only want to read the books and see the movie, because I may encounter someone who has read them and come to the same conclusion as Philip Pullman and so then I can maybe speak to them more effectively.

But besides all of that, I am really getting sick of the Church constantly letting the world know what it is that we are against and I do not hear the Church showing what it is we are for enough. I was just reading today in Colossians and chapter 3, verse 12-15 hit me….

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

We need to really think about if our boycotting movies, books, etc. is doing these things. Not to mention that, but how are we responding with fellow Christ-followers who may or may not want to see these things. The world is watching and everything we do and say sends a message, but the question is what message is it sending?

I do not know anything about Philip Pullman or his books other than things I have read online or heard from friends. But I ran across this blog and was impressed with his take on it and on Philip himself, it is a long read but well written, in my opinion. It led me to wonder if Philip Pullman and his desire to “kill God” is not rooted more in wanting to kill the image he has been given of God courtesy of the Church, rather than God Himself. From what I have read about the books (remember I have not had the opportunity to read them myself yet) it appears that his anger is more towards the Church. And, honestly, I have to agree with him on some points. I think that the Church has failed miserably in showing God’s love to this world and we really need to change that. I think that Philip would find Dan Kimball’s book I Like Jesus but Not the Church: Following Jesus Without Following Organized Religion a very interesting read and he probably would agree with much of it. Maybe I will send Philip Pullman a copy of it.

I decided to do a Google image search for “intimidate” and the picture to the left was the first one to pop up. Is that the image Jesus gave or that we should be giving?

Just some thoughts. That is my $.02. Who wants change?