Academy Award Nominations 2008

The Academy Award nominees for 2008-09 were announced this morning.

I'm neither an industry insider nor one with insider access, so I don't have any inside scoop. A preliminary look at the nominees suggests to me that the one trend I see is the tendency of the awards to be used to acknowlege career milestones rather than judge best performances or films of a year. The other is that, judging from what I read in entertainment reporting, popularity within the industry continues to have some affect on the process. (I believe the largest chunk of the voters are the actors, and so think of it as athletes voting for the all-star team or hall[s]-of-fame.)

Certainly the elevation of Benjamin Button feels a bit like an elevation of David Fincher to canonical status, and the nomination of Frost/Nixon confirms that Ron Howard is sort of a young Clint Eastwood (apparently has vast resources of good will within the community).

There is a lot of awards creep fatigue these days, and the emphasis on Benjamin Button in the awards may also be the Academy's way of saying they aren't going to be pushed into a corner by the momentum of Slumdog Millionaire or a way to make it look like there is more drama or uncertainty about the results than there really is.

Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet appear to be heavy favorites for acting awards, and for the latter one senses that she is at the point in her career where people believe she ought to have an Oscar and start looking for something to give her one for. Not that I necessarily disagree with that estimation of her talent or body of work--but such motivations are the seeds of "what were they thinking?" comments years later. Of the former, I can't really complain about his nomination, but one does feel bad for Richard Jenkins, who I think really deserves it.

It feels, similarly, that Heath Ledger has already been given the award, doesn't it?

I don't have a lot invested in the Oscars, so its hard for me to manufacture serious umbrage or disappointment at any of the categories. I bummed that At The Death Hosue Door did not receive a nod in the Best Documentary category, but the inclusion of Man on Wire and Encounters at the Edge of the World points to a reminder that in many of these categories marketing and distribution plays a heavier role than critical judgments about the films themselves. I mean, you can't like it if you can't see it.

All in all, not the worst year of screw ups as far as nominations go, but nothing that I'm really excited enough about to actually watch. Predictions are as follows. (W)=Will win; (S)=Should win (by which I mean, of course, of these nominees, not necessarily that it is the best of the year).
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Best Motion Picture of the Year

Nominees:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): Ceán Chaffin, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall

Frost/Nixon (2008): Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Eric Fellner

Milk (2008): Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks

The Reader (2008): Nominees to be determined

(W)(S) Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Christian Colson

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Nominees:

(S) Richard Jenkins for The Visitor (2007/I)

Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon (2008)

(W) Sean Penn for Milk (2008)

Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Nominees:

Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Angelina Jolie for Changeling (2008)

Melissa Leo for Frozen River (2008)

Meryl Streep for Doubt (2008/I)

(W)(S) Kate Winslet for The Reader (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

Josh Brolin for Milk (2008)

(S) Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder (2008)

Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt (2008/I)

(W) Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)

Michael Shannon for Revolutionary Road (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

Amy Adams for Doubt (2008/I)

(W)(S) Penélope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Viola Davis for Doubt (2008/I)

Taraji P. Henson for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler (2008)

I confess in this category, I don't really feel a strong sense that any "should" win, so I give the (S) to Cruz as a sort of career achievement tiebreak.

Best Achievement in Directing

Nominees:

(W) Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Stephen Daldry for The Reader (2008)

David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon (2008)

Gus Van Sant for Milk (2008)

(I don't really have much of a feeling between these five who "should" win. I suppose if I have a vote I'd choose Van Sant, both for getting the damn film made, selecting material, and as a career nod, with bonus points for doing Paranoid Park in the same year.)

Entertainment Weekly Rant

Our friends over at Entertainment Weekly love to make lists. They are fun to make and (sometimes) fun to read, but they do have the drawback of often making those who create them look like, well, idiots.

Case in point. I learned that a lack of a nomination in the category of Best Actress for Renee Falconetti's portrayal of the eponymous heroine in Carl Thedor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc constituted the 69th worst Oscar snub in history.

There are, I suppose, a variety of ways one can evaluate Falconetti's performance and not look like a fool. One might reasonably argue that some of the credit goes to Dreyer for the recognition of talent and for coercing the role out of her. (One of my current objections to so many critics awards is that absent some witnessing of the process, it is very difficult from the final product alone to discern the contributions of, say, actor from director from screenwriter.)

One could just as easily, without looking like a fool, insist that Falconetti's turn as Joan is one of the most iconic film performances of all time, belonging on a plane above awards, entering into the cultural and artistic collective memory as a sort of touchstone moment around which histories are written.

Here's what one can't do without looking like an idiot. One can't look at The Passion of Joan of Arc and say, "You know, in the annals of great performances, I gotta say Falconnetti's Joan ranks six ahead of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and four behind Alan Rickman's turn as Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard movie."

"G" is for Great

One of the stereotypes of critics is that repeated or more frequent connoisseurship makes them more jaded, harsher. I noted once that in the first five years I wrote movie reviews, I used the word "masterpiece" exactly once.

But I'm not a music critic, nor do I listen to music as often as some of my friends. So, by the stereotypical logic, I ought to be a bit less critical in my judgments--willing to give a nod to songs of a quality that I might poke holes in were they films.

The flip side of such an argument, though, is that it seems in music, even more than film, people want to get there first, be the discoverer, lead the backlash against that which is popular.

In my alphabetical trek through my I-tunes, then, I decided to take the 50 songs beginning with the letter "G" and apply to them one, (it turns out not quite so) simple judgment: which, if any, would I unreservedly call "great"?

A quick scan gave me one definite "yes" and an additional two "probably"s, as well as a hand full of "maybe"s.

A more considered response, then, yielded the following results, in order not necessarily of my liking them, but in the strength of my belief that they are great songs:

1) "Gimme Shelter" -- The Rolling Stones
Here's the thing, I'm not now nor have I ever been anything more than a lukewarm Stones fan. By any reasonable standard that I can think of, however, "Gimme Shelter" qualifies as great. Longevity, popularity, acclaim, replayability (i.e. standing up to repeated listenings without making you sick of it). There may be some who imitate Jack Black and try to lead a backlash against it for its association with movie soundtracks, but really, so what? That it fits so well in a movie soundtrack is in part due to its iconic quality, its capability of expressing a mood and evoking a time. The lyrics, while not complex, are meaningful, and I do like the shift from "war" to "love" in the final chorus.

2) "Girlfriend is Better" (Live) -- The Talking Heads
Okay, as far as lyrics go, I have no idea what this song means--and I have tried to decipher it many times. I keep thinking of a line from Claude Chabrol describing Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux: "It's hard to put into words, but extremely easy to feel." The gamut of emotions that the song evokes in me--from excitement ("its always showtime, here at the edge of the stage"), to constraint ("down in the basement, we hear the sound of machines"), to hope ("nothing is lost, everything's free / I don't care how impossible it seems")--is greater than just about any that I can think of. I usually feel better after listening to the song, and the energy with which the band has in the live performance is positively infectious.

3) "God Give Me Strength" -- Elvis Costello
From The Grace of My Heart soundtrack, this song combines some beautiful poetry that is made more complex through vocal performance rather than merely just disseminated by it. The transition from "I want him to hurt" to "I want him..." perfectly encapsulates the mix of hurt and desire that is true of the character who sings the song in the film but is also universal. There is some weirdness created by the gender pronouns of the lyrics (a female sings it in the film), so make of it what you will.

4) "Go Insane" -- Lindsay Buckingham
"Two kinds of trouble in this world: Living. Dying." The main reason I'm on the fence with this one is because it always feels a little short to me.

So, that's four out of fifty, or just under ten percent. The following songs get honorable mention...meaning I had to consider whether I would call them great, even if I couldn't quite give the nod:

"Greatest Discovery" (Live) -- Elton John. Really builds to a transcended final verse, but I wonder how much is created by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and how much by the song. On odd numbered days, I'd probably put this song in the "great" category. I wrote this on an even numbered day.
"Goodbye Stranger" -- Supertramp. You know, I think Supertramp is a bit underrated. They are like the perpetual B+ student or 10-6 football team. A lot of "good" but missing some element that separates the elite.
"Grease" -- Frankie Valli. A bit short. But man, it's fun.
"Grace by Which I Stand" -- Keith Green. I think there is some CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) that I think is great, and maybe even a few songs by Green that I would put in that category. This one ultimately feels more like a patter sermon than a song.
"Greenback Dollar" -- The Kingston Trio. Folk, like CCM, is a category unto itself, and I understand some won't like any of it. So I try to compare it to others of its category rather than simply measure crossover appeal. Not quite "Tom Dooley," though, is it? Just a tiny bit too much repetition in the chorus for me to put it in the "great" column.

Left Behind as Evangelical Pornography

This paper that I wrote has been floating around the Internet for awhile, and it was recently deleted and then reposted at The Matthews House Project (due to a site redesign), so I decided I better put a direct link here and give a bit of provenance history.

I originally wrote the core of this paper for a session on Children's Literature at an academic conference (I think it saw SAMLA) in the mid 1990s. I got good responses to it, but life intervened, and I eventually submitted it to an academic journal (the title of which I recall but won't mention) focused on cultural studies. They asked me to revise the paper (which is usually a precursor to publication), and it was in response to their request that I added the sections with a bit more history of the terms "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" as well as the stuff on Sedgwick and "paranoid readings." Unfortunately, at the last moment, the paper was dropped from the special issue, and it went back in the drawer until a year or so later. At that time, I made an off hand reference to having written the paper at a discussion board for faith and the arts (in a thread about Little House on the Prairie, my contributions to which [the thread, not the show] have since been deleted). Another reader of that web site, Mike Leary, asked if he could read the paper, and he eventually passed it on to Zach Kincaid at The Matthews House Project. A number of people read it there and linked to it, but those links became inactive when MHP redesigned its website, and Zach is gradually reposting some of the cataloged content, including this essay.

For what it is worth, the phrase "evangelical pornography" was coined (as far as I know), by my wife, Cindy, who used it to describe Left Behind after having read Louise J. Kaplan's Female Perversions. Since that time, it's become chic to add "pornography" or "porn" to any number of genre titles, pretty much stripping it of its distinctive descriptive power, and I've even heard one or two people attribute the origin of this phrase to Os Guinness or Rick Warren. One or both of them may have used the phrase, though I couldn't find any reference to it by Guinness in print. A Google search of the term, will, I think, reinforce the timeline claims I've made here.

Eagle Eye Rant

There are movies I like.
There are movies I dislike.
And then there are movies that just positively bewilder me.

Eagle Eye is one of the latter. I can't even begin to figure out my response to it because I'm honestly baffled by what I am looking at. I haven't been this lost at the movies since I'm Not There.

Granted the Dylan biopic created a different kind of confusion. In Eagle Eye, I could follow the "plot" (such as it was) and identify the characters (such as they were), but I just had no idea what was going on.

I mean, I knew what was going on in the film--some group or person was using the electronic devices that surround us to create Rube Goldbergesque (both in their complexity and silly pointlessness) escapes for our characters.

What I didn't know is what was going on with the film. Was it just stupidly over the top in not caring about plausibility? Or was the ever increasing ridiculousness supposed to be part of the point that signaled to the audience...what? That there was no point? That it was a fable?

Watching this film is a bit like watching White House Press Secretary Dana Perino on The Daily Show. There's no there there. There's no message or point. The point is that she is there and the thing she is there to say is that she is there. You sort of know she doesn't believe half of what she says because...well because she can't possibly believe half of what she says. She's not drooling on herself or otherwise acting mentally retarded. Yet she has the professionally practiced poker-faced earnestness that never actually makes the wink literal. And then when all is said and done, you are still left to wonder what's the point of winking, anyway, as interpreting it as a wink means you have to either be oblivious to or careless about the fact that words and ideas (some of which are defended some of which are advocated) have real meaning and real consequences whether one always leaves oneself a trail of breadcrumbs to the "I was just being ironic" out or not.

Honestly, I don't feel dumber for having seen this movie...I feel...more...

Hopeless.

Because as much as I like a good mindless action flick...when the chases and explosions and threats of child murder are wrapped around a shell of nothing, I start thinking maybe the theater ought to just bypass the exercise altogether and just hand patrons a ball of crack for their twenty dollars.

Gran Torino Rant

Gran Torino is a bad film, yes, but at least it has the decency to be an exquisitely bad film of the type you can enjoy if you can get your head in the right place, see it with a few buddies, and one-up one another in deriding plot holes and predicting developments. (Give your self one point if you correctly predicted Clint would say confession in the second half of the film, two if you correctly predicted it would be in the penultimate scene, and three if at the appropriate time you turned to the person you were sitting next to and said, "This would be a really good place for a montage.")

I said to my friend Peter (a.k.a. Smokey Burner) after the film--and it's imperative that you understand that I am absolutely, positively in earnest--that as bad as the film was, it would have been perfect with two small changes:

a) The addition of a Predator.
b) If the dog could talk (or at the minimum do a voice-over narration).

Before I explain, let me just say that I think it is Eastwood's presence that ultimately causes the film to implode. This is a shame, really, because if the film had starred Steven Seagal, Mark Wahlberg, or Vin Diesel, it could have gone straight to video as a Death Wish reboot without having to add all the Jesus imagery the only point of which seems to be to make you wonder if Gus Van Sant somehow decided to do a shot by shot remake of Unforgiven only to have a sly intern slip in pages of The Karate Kid to see if he would notice:

"What's it like to kill a man?"
"It's horrible; you take everything he ever has or will have. Now show me wax the car..."

(I got all three points for the quiz above, but I had one deducted for incorrectly guessing that when Eastwood gives the car to his Hmong mentee that the keys would be on his dog tags.)

But I digress.

The fixes.

Well, first the Predator, because if you are going to take the position that society has gone to hell and some sort of hunter needs to instinctively know who deserves to live and who deserves to get his face kicked in, he ought to at least have cool infra-red vision. Plus a Predator is relatively quick short hand for a film to just go ahead and announce that it is renouncing any claims to reality and just pandering to most basic instincts that attract us to genre pieces to begin with.

The dog takes a little more (but not much more) explaining. One of the things that hampers Eastwood is that the script calls on him to verbalize every response he has because it doesn't trust the audience to get even the most heavy-handed underlining. The opening scene is of his wife's funeral and he scowls at the grandkids and then (in case you didn't get it) their two parents (his kids) explain to each other why he is scowling at their kids. ("Did you see him scowling at your kid for wearing a Lion's jersey?" "Yeah, well your daughter is showing her belly button...") My personal favorite example of this ongoing expository dialogue is when Eastwood gets a phone call that begins, "Hi Dad, this is your number one son, Mitch..."

Unfortunately there are several scenes in which there is nobody around to serve as author (or interpreter) surrogate and tell us what his glowers mean, so Eastwood has to do it himself, either by looking in the mirror and/or talking to himself--"What the hell are you doing here?" or muttering under his breath to nobody in particular. In what I guess is the pivotal scene of the film, Eastwood watches a neighbor woman get out of her car and spill her groceries as a group of teenagers laugh and walk by her on the sidewalk. "Will you look at that!" he grumbles and starts to get up from his chair. Before he can, though, he notices his young, Hmong neighbor walk across the street and say, "Here let me help you." Eastwood then looks at the dog and says, "Well whaddaya know?"

Smokey Burner turned to me at that point and said, "The film couldn't just show us him watching that exchange and trust us to figure it out?" But my response was, heck, in for a penny, in for a pound. It would have been much more satisfying if either Eastwood (or the dog) added, "Hmmm, after witnessing this, I begin to wonder if perhaps I've/you've misjudged my Hmong neighbor. Maybe with the gruff but ultimately loving mentoring of the sort of cantankerous old person who is drainingly bitter and racist in real life but irascibly charming and just non-PC in the movies, he might actually bloom into a noble enough character that he's potentially worth saving from becoming the sort of misogynist punk that I'm/you're berating him for not being in the first place."

At the very least, such an exchange would indicate that the film was fully embracing self-parody rather than just flirting with it in a way that Eastwood's character would only call "weak-assed." Granted, people who haven't seen a lot of magical realism might not know what to make of a talking dog, but if they had just made the dog's bits voice-overs a la Look Who's Talking, Homeward Bound, or To Kill a Mockingbird (if, you know, Scout had been a dog), I think Gran Torino would have worked perfectly as a living fable rather than a drama. It may even have been guaranteed one Oscar.

Assuming, of course, that they could have gotten Morgan Freeman to play the dog.

***SPOILERS***

P.S. The film ends with Toad driving the Gran Torino by the lake. If there remains any doubt about how many plot holes the film has or just how cynical a bastard I really am, I confess the one thing I most desperately wanted to see at that moment was the car full of black guys that harassed him earlier in film drive up along side and one of the passengers pull a gun and say, "Give me the keys, wuss--you're Hmongy buddies can't save you anymore!"

Movie Prayers--The Station Agent (2003)

"God, thank you for letting us sit here and enjoy this meal. Please watch over everybody. Please let my dad heal, because he's driving me fucking crazy....Anybody else you want to mention?"

"No."

"Amen."

Doug Cummings on 2008

I read a fair number of film reviews, but I can probably count on one hand the number of critics whose judgments and reviews I respect as highly as my own. I love Doug's writing; I think his write-ups are an object lesson in the difference between sensitively and perceptively responding to a film and merely spouting an opinion about it.

I'm also encouraged by the number of films on his list that I haven't yet seen. It gives me hope that 2008 wasn't as bad as I thought--just that a couple of films escaped me for the time being. (I narrowly missed Birdsong and Hunger at TIFF and Take Out at the local theater.

Doug's list and my own shared one film in the top 10, Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, and one film on our favorite discoveries, Taxi to the Dark Side.

Movie Prayers--Virgin Spring (1960)

Our Blessed Jesus, Father, Son. You alone are the Living Bread that from Heaven came. Make me worthy to receive the Bread of Thy Body and save my souls form a worldly death. Amen.

You see it, God. You see it. The innocent child's death, and my revenge. You allowed it. I don't understand You. I don't understand You. Yet, I still ask Your forgiveness. I know no other way to make peace with myself than with my own hands. I don't know any other way to live. I promise You, God...here on the dead body of my only child, I promise You that to cleanse my sins, here I shall build a church. On this spot. Of mortar and stone...And with these, my hands.

Favorite Discoveries of 2008

I have completed my Favorite Discoveries write up to accompany my 2008 Top 10 list.

The second list are my favorite non-2008 films that I discovered for the first time last year.

2008 Top Ten List

Okay, I finished my write up for my favorite films of 2008.

In the next day or so I'll try to include a write up of my favorite discoveries.

Most of the films on my list are ones I have previously reviewed, so I linked to the full reviews where possible.

2008 Top Ten List -- Happy-Go-Lucky

7) Happy-Go-Lucky -- Mike Leigh

I haven't seen this film topping many (any?) end of year lists, but it sure feels like the film on all the lists that everyone is talking about. Of course, everyone is saying different things about it, which is what makes it so interesting.

My meta-pondering about the film has focused on whether or not that is a good thing. One school of thought (very New Critical that) is that I film should mean what it means, and if it is effective, most people ought to watch it and get mostly the same thing out of it. Another way to think about it, though, is that a film that gets people disagreeing gets people talking about it.

Thinking about Happy-Go-Lucky as a hot-button, provocative film is interesting. People (at least the ones I've talked to) don't seem to merely disagree about whether or not Poppy is happy; they seem to disagree passionately. Which leads me to the question of why we care so much whether Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is truly happy or just putting on a happy face. For me, the answer is somewhat obviously the latter, and the real question becomes whether her ability to do so is healthy, unhealthy, or inconsequential.

If this argument is stacked, it may be because the antagonist who delivers the accusation that Poppy's carefree attitude is calculated and contributes to his poisonous hatred of the world may be such a hostile and negative character that we reflexively go the other way just to disassociate ourselves from him.

Even so, I couldn't shake the feeling that the film's post-coda resolution, with Poppy and friend literally rowing around in circles is dripping with irony. Perhaps it does not have the same hostile contempt that Poppy's driving instructor has for her life, but it does (at least for me) still contain a strong whiff of, "If this is the life your philosophy has gotten you, what does that say for your philosophy?" Poppy is unquestionably happier than the habitually growling inhabitants of her circle, and if the film suggested that she was better off than she might be if she gave in to grousing, I could agree.

But...and this is a big "but" for me, there is a part of me that kept saying perhaps unhappiness is not always an inappropriate response to all situations. Just as physical pain makes Poppy seek out a doctor who treats the cause of her pain, so too can emotional unhappiness spur someone to address the causes of their unhappiness.

Is it better to settle? Is having a relationship that is limited to the current moment with no promise of (nor impetus for) anything further better than being alone? It's not that I think there is anything wrong with clinging to those pieces of good within a sea of bad. It may actually be noble. But there is something wrong with saying "peace, peace" when there is no peace. So the question becomes, which is Poppy doing?

2008 Top Ten List -- The Visitor

8) The Visitor -- Thomas McCarthy

The first thirty-five or forty minutes or so of Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor is just sublime. It is measured. It reveals itself gradually. It is anchored by a sad and beautiful performance by Richard Jenkins. It's leisurely. It doesn't try too hard to be about anything.

If the second half of the film is a bit too relentlessly expository and tries a bit too hard to rise to a level of social and political significance, well...the first half of the film was still sublime. The second half doesn't ruin the film, exactly, but it does slow its momentum, which is, I realize, an odd thing to say about a film that I was complementing for being so leisurely.

When the film is primarily a character study, than the leisurely pace allows us to observe Martin (Jenkins), and the pace gives us an opportunity to observe the layers of his personality. When the camera reverse zooms and we see not just Martin and his new friend, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), but the New York skyline sans Twin Towers I immediately said, "uh-oh." And it didn't take long for the film to announce that it wasn't just going to be about the difficulty of people connecting to one another but about people connecting to one another in a post-9/11 world. In case we didn't get it, there is a mural of the towers at the detention center where Tarek ends up, the deportation lawyer talks about how things have changed in a post-9/11 world, and we generally feel with a sense of rising dread that what has begun as a great film will end as a rote civics lesson.

For all that, though, the film does keep providing genuine moments of human contact, mostly provided by Jenkins's ability to inhabit rather than merely perform. There is a moment when he brings a letter to Tarek who asks him to put it up against the glass so he can read it. Jenkins holds the letter at arm's length and then turns his head away to give his friend some modicum of privacy in a place that has none. It is a moment that is instinctive, not actorly, one that the film doesn't draw our attention to but which is typical of the way the film keeps us grounded in people rather than situations.

Reading back over this, it sounds harsher towards the film than I feel, perhaps because the disappointment one feels at a near miss is proportionate to the level of expectations created. And it isn't even as though I disagreed with the political sentiments. I'm just saying I was more interested in Martin's attempts to learn the drums than I was in his education into the vagaries of our legal system. So, yes, it misfires, but when it is working, it is so wistful and engaging and true we end up just being happy to spend some times with these characters that we are willing to follow them into the land of conventional melodrama just to see how they inhabit it.

Our Sad Tale of Woe

While having lunch this afternoon--biting into my lightly breaded coconut shrimp dipped in mango sauce with just a touch of ginger--it occurred to us that reports of our trip might mistakenly be read with a tone of gloating. To correct for this, we decided it was important to put out a blog post cataloging the numerous hardships, obstacles, and bad things we have had to overcome on this trip, showing that our success has only been through a Herculean effort of maintaining a positive attitude.

--The first key Cindy got didn't work on the rental car.
--The second restaraunt we went for sushi didn't serve lunch on Saturdays.
--Sherry scraped her leg on a rock.
--It took us most of the first day to figure out how to heat the spa.
--The second time the group went snorkeling we saw only a lot of fish instead of a huge number of fish.
--Cindy was the only one who saw a live Honu.
--The remote control to play the DVD player in the minivan was missing, meaning we could only play one episode of "The Shield" on our drive to Hilo.
--Since Kona is not an ACC market, the CBS affiliate cut away from the Duke-Xavier game after Duke went up by 30 points.
--I forgot to pack pants. (Contrary to what is being widely [and I think libelously] reported, I did not forget to bring pants. I was, in fact, wearing pants on the plane. I just didn't have any additional pants (except my swim trunks).
--I lost my Star Sidewinder playing Safari golf in Hilo.
--One of the games we played didn't have instructions, forcing us to make them up.
--The local mailbox store had a note that said Western Union was "temporarily unavailable" and when we asked when it would be available again they said "next year."
--The time difference meant that people occasionally called or texted us at weird hours.
--Sherry had an allergic reaction to some mascara and had to wear sunglassess for all of one whole day.
--I fell asleep half way through Don Cheadle's "Traitor" and so didn't have brownies until the next day (when they were no longer hot out of the oven).
--After going through a whole meal at the Kona Brewery, Cindy was informed that Beer-a-misu was no longer available (even though it was still on the menu).
--The multi-disc DVD player that is hooked up to the home entertainment center with stereo sound only has a next disc function (instead of skip disc function) on the remote, meaning you have to either get up and walk to the unit or let one disc load for 10 seconds if you are on disc 1 and actually want to watch something on disc three.

2008 Top Ten List:: Séraphine

This post has been moved to: http://1morefilmblog.com/wordpress/seraphine/

Hawaii Disc Golf

Well, Hawaii became the thirty-eighth state in which I have played disc golf when Todd, Cindy, and I played Safari golf at Wailoa State Park in Hilo yesterday. There is an official course listed in the PDGA website, but you need a local guide and the number was out of order. So Safari golf will have to do. And I lost a disc.


Hawaii has some big rough.



Cindy's hole had a double mando (which she missed and had to play from the drop zone).


My form isn't the greatest...but we still had fun.



Hey, I bet if I threw from half way across this bridge, the water hazard would be no problem...



Yeah, well, maybe not.

Sunrise...sunset

I'm working hard on my vacation. Here's the sunset from my lanai (that means balcony for all you mainlanders):



In other important news, I've tentatively scored an invite to play disc golf with some locals at a private course on Sunday.

View From My Window This Morning

Aloha to all my friends.

Todd, Sherry, and I arrived safely at Kona yesterday and met up with Cindy.

The house has such a beautiful, peaceful quality. It's so nice to be here after a long, stressful semester. I was meditating this morning on how much nicer some blessings are when you can share them with people you love and who care about you.

Here are some pictures from the house I took this morning....yeah, it's good to be me!

Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema--Free Preview

Cambridge Scholar's Publishing has upload a free preview of the book that includes Mike Hertenstein's introduction and the first chapter (Bill Scalia's essay on Bergman).

Link is here.

"F" is for Frequency

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

That seemed to be the question worth asking as I perused the 56 songs beginning with the letter "F" in my Itunes library.

The playcount feature on the right column is an odd thing--I don't remember listening to these songs proportionately more than any others (I tend to only really listen to stuff on shuffle play), but here's what the counter says are the five most frequent songs that came up when the shuffling stop:

1) "Fast Car" -- Tracy Chapman. Weird story about this song. I always assumed it was a guy. I had heard it on the radio but never knew who sang it. I had heard of Tracy Chapman but never listened to any of her music. Then I downloaded "Change" after hearing it on a commercial for HBO DVDs and searched for other songs by the same artist.

2) "Find Us Faithful" -- Steve Green. Honestly, I don't remember listening to this song ten times in the last decade, but the counter says...Must have come up when I pulled the earbuds to pay my bills. Fairly well made if conventional CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) that I've always liked since a guy sang it at my church when I was in college. (Though I confess I liked the cover better he did better.)

3) "For Your Eyes Only" -- Sheena Easton. Personally, I think this is far and away the best Bond theme song. (No offense to Carly Simon.)

4) "Further to Fly" -- Paul Simon. You know, I remember playing Graceland during a Spades game in Marye House and Cindy (who was just a friend at the time) asking me who it was. That was the first (and last, really) time anyone who was at all cool artistically ever complimented me on my taste in music. I thought Rhythm of the Saints was a great follow up, but I haven't heard much from Simon after that, have I?

5) "First We Take Manhattan" -- Leonard Cohen. I actually have no idea what this song means. But I kind of like the lyrics: "They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom /For trying to change the system from within."

Graduation Kvetching

By which I mean graduations in general, not any particular graduation I've attended. (They do all blur together, don't they?)

Graduations rival department meetings for the least pleasant aspect of my job. They are the Prufrockian coffee spoons in which my life is counted out.

In no particular order, here are some things that are wrong with graduations:

1) Graduation speakers. Students have had to spend four years (at least) listening to lectures. Nobody, and I mean nobody is there to hear the speaker. And most ceremonies are long enough. I'm not complaining that graduation speakers are always bad. What I am saying is why have them at all? Think back to any graduation you've ever been to...and try to remember something...anything the graduation speaker said. I think, perhaps speakers are a means of trying to lend seriousness to an occasion that is already wrapped in over-seriousness (more on that in just a second).

2) Honorary Degrees. These are bogus. They tend to diminish the presenting institution rather than elevate the conferee. I'm not saying that awards or honorifics are always bad (but they are overdone), just that awarding someone a degree is not an appropriate form of reward. Could you imagine if, to honor me for my service to the city of Washington, the Redskins awarded me a Super Bowl ring? Or, worse, yet, how about if the Carolina Panthers did? (I've seen some institutions award honorary versions of degrees they don't even award academically...so, let's say the Panthers made up a special Super Bowl ring and gave it to me even though they've never won a Super Bowl and my achievements had nothing to do with football.)
Let's say that for writing a film book the Academy of Motion Pictures gave me an honorary Oscar for Best Director even though I've never made a film and then I insisted for the rest of my life that everyone refer to me as "Academy Award Winner..." In fact, hey, Peter, Todd, Cindy, I hereby grant you Nobel Prizes for Beer Brewing and Tasting. From this day forward, I shall refer to the three of you as Nobel Laureates. (I'm soooo jealous!).

3) No cheering rules. When and where, exactly, did this happen? Why have academic institutions become such sourpusses all of a sudden? If you've worked four years to achieve a monumental lifetime goal and friends and family have gathered around to see you get it...don't they have a right to give expressions of joy? I'm not saying be crass or rude or obscene, but whoop, holler, cheer, yell bravo, whatever. If I'm the person before or after you to receive my degree, that doesn't diminish my achievement. Are we so anxious to be taken seriously that we've lost the ability to be genuinely celebratory? I wish university presidents across the country would all read the celebration chapter in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline...and try to make graduations a celebration for the degree recipients rather than a statement of high seriousness for the degree grantors. Let's have a big spread with some good food and music, put on the the cap and gown and give graduates an opportunity to get pictures taken with friends or mentors.

Or why not have micro ceremonies (by discipline or something) throughout the campus...where people can graduate with their friends and have a more intimate setting with their families.

Or something...there's got to be a better way to do this.

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like if the pastor interrupted my wedding for twenty minutes in order to give some elder deacon or donor to the church an honorary wife.

1,169,466 with a bullet!

So someone somewhere bought a copy of my book. I know this because earlier in the week I logged on to the Amazon page and it said they had 2 in stock and today they said they had 1`in stock.

Cha-ching!

I also see that I am now ranked

"#1,169,466 in Books"

Gee, I do wish I could see what was 1,169, 465. (Turns out from a Google search, that it was at one time a kid's book called The Droll Troll: A View from Under the Bridge. No shame in losing to that. Could be the next Neil Jordan film.)

Wanted Rant

Here are the opening intertitles for Wanted:

A THOUSAND YEARS AGO...

A CLAN OF WEAVERS FORMED A SECRET SOCIETY OF ASSASSINS.

THEY SILENTLY CARRIED OUT EXECUTIONS TO RESTORE ORDER TO A WORLD ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS.

THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THE FRATERNITY.

SIX WEEKS AGO...

Now I forget if it was Siskel or Ebert who said one key test of a film is whether or not its plot sounded more or less interesting than a documentary of its actors having lunch. I would certianly say another is whether or not the plot was formed by MadLibs (TM).

Try picking a friend at random and asking them to play MadLibs and then see if your movie premise sounds more or less the same or even better than Wanted's:

A __Number__ OF YEARS AGO...

A CLAN OF ___Profession (Plural)__ FORMED A SECRET SOCIETY OF __Dungeon's and Dragons Character Type__.

THEY __Adverb__ CARRIED OUT __Nominal__ (Verb in Noun form) TO RESTORE ORDER TO A WORLD ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS.

THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THE __Type of Group or Organization___.

__Number___ WEEKS AGO...

Obama (TM) Administration

In the wake of last month's election, I read several articles pondering how the Obama (TM) campaign's ability to marshal and utilize volunteers might translate to his administration.

One opined that the incoming Obama (TM) administration would have at its disposal a built in PAC constituency, as the campaign had collected data from citizens who had been willing to donate and to volunteer time. The thinking went that perhaps Obama (TM) could appeal directly to citizens to contact local and state representatives demanding support for legislation. Think of all those donation requests you get from various PACs asking you to sign petitions or contact your senator or congressperson. Now think of them as coming from the White House.

This sounds good, but the reality thus far has been that it is not the PAC model that has dominated the Obama (TM) administration's use of donor and volunteer lists but rather that of multi-level-marketing (MLM). Obama (TM) has become a brand name, fit to be put on tee shirts, coffee mugs, or whatever. And brand names are not so good at getting people to do stuff--they are primarily about getting people to buy stuff.

Earlier this week, I got a campaign from the Obama (TM) administration. It might have explained why the president elect thinks we need a new stimulus package. It might have explained his cabinet picks or tried to stump for Jim Martin in the run-off in Georgia. It might have outlined Obama's (TM) thoughts about a why a bailout for Detroit's big three is a good thing. It might have done a lot of things.

What it did was ask me for money. Again. This is roughly the sixth time that Obama (TM) for America has asked me for money since the election. If I send them $35, they will send me (I am not making this up) a four year calendar, decorated with pictures of the campaign trail.

Look, I like Obama (TM).
I voted for Obama (TM).

I just wish that Obama (TM) for America treated me a little bit more like its constituency rather than its customer base. And I wish that Obama (TM) for America acted a little bit more like leaders and a little bit less like vendors.

The Shield

I have an appreciation of FX's The Shield in this month's The Matthew's House Project. There is also a companion piece by M. Leary about the wrap of that show.

Destiny (1921)

Some Screen Grabs; I'll try to talk about these later/elsewhere. Right now, I'm just trying to get them uploaded:

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

That's right, trampled to death.

In stories such as this one, there is often a rush for corporate blame. Yes, places such as stores and stadiums should have processes in place that anticipate mad rushes, but...well, I just don't know what to say. We are not capable of controlling ourselves enough to avoid killing someone? For a sale at Wal-Mart?

Hope in Time of Abandonment

In that tritest of trite movie cliches, Anthony Hopkins tells Zorro that when the pupil is ready, the master will appear. Part of what this means (but only part) is that you may only be able to understand some teaching when you've arrived at a point where that teaching is meaningful to you or has some point of application or interest.

Earlier today I happened to pick up Jacques Ellul's Hope in Time of Abandonment. Ellul's works have been meaningful to me at various times, but I had poked around in this one (or tried to) several times without really getting anywhere. Yet this time the introduction seemed to jump off the page at me.

Here are a couple of quotes:

I have arrived at hope by an altogether different route. My purely sociological and historical intellectual approach had led me into a blind alley. There was nothing to say to a person of my society beyond a stoic exhortation to keep going in God's abandonment. I was up against a wall, against a finality, against the insoluble, against the inescapable. After that--nothing.

And after that--everything was given me, but by a different route. No intellectual step prompted this conviction, apart from that by which I took note of the concrete situation. (vii)

Another quote:

I knew all too well, in true orthodoxy, that it is very wrong to look to the biblical revelation for an answer to the question one is asking or with which one is faced. I knew, in true orthodoxy, that it is God who questions us and who awaits a response from us, not the other way around. No consoling formula or solution was to be sought in the Bible. That was simply the way things were. When the response is called for, one has to make up one's mind. (viii)

Finally,

We must learn to hear what the question is which is really being asked by the person of this age. It is not being asked in the public square, nor in speeches and parades. It is not being asked by the actor facing his audience. It is being asked offstage, in the secret places of the heart. It shapes the architecture of the other questions. Unseen, it is gnawing and killing. (ix-x).

Ellul says that he was given a gift, that we all have been. That we do have the answer to the question.

If I know one thing about Ellul from previous readings, it is that he doesn't trade in platitudinous hot air, so I look forward to reading more.

Oddly, I haven't been reading too much Bible recently. But I do find myself drawn to those who can and have drawn from the Bible and can help me to do so as well rather than those who simply point me to it as a spiritual chore to engage in that will help me but they know not how.

I've also been listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen:

Who is more obnoxious?

Awhile ago I ran a series of "What's Better?" challenges in honor of the now defunct website.

Today, I wanted to momentarily cross that game with the (as far as I know) still running "Am I Annoying? Dot Com" web site to form the "Who is More Obnoxious?" game.

Today's question pits fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer against fans of The Wire.

I should admit I have friends and colleagues among both groups.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans tend to have to reduce everything to the fact that Buffy was and is the greatest show of all time. Therefore the principle fault and meaning of every other show (except, perhaps, Firefly) is that it isn't Buffy. Recently at Salon.com, Laura Miller trashed the Twilight books. She did a good job, too, describing what sounds like an insipid series. But, of course, it wasn't enough to simply state why the books are (in her opinion) no good. The whole story has to be framed around the contention that Buffy is a real story for feminists, the real complement to Harry Potter, the real thing we ought to be addicted to. Ask a typical Buffy fan to name the five greatest television shows of all time and you'll probably get a reply along the lines of..."Well, there's Buffy, and then maybe Firefly and Angel, but beyond that, I don't really watch television because it is an inferior medium that has never produced anything culturally relevant...."

In the other corner we have fans of The Wire. Now, I happen to like The Wire. I watched all five seasons on DVD. It was great. But I totally, totally snarfed in laughter when Slate's culture gabfest compared the relative indifference of fans of Mad Men (who shrugged and said "yeah, you're right" when one host complained that the show was a little slow) to fans of The Wire (who get that crazed look and said "It is a cultural imperative that you must watch this show! Baltimore is suffering!")

Whenever I hear fans of The Wire speak, I always have visions of the Dauphin in Henry V. Yes, it is truly a most excellent...horse.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the only show, play, novel, or art work that is truly feminist.
The Wire is the only show, play, novel, or art work that is real about the modern city.

If you don't like Buffy you are a misogynist snob.
If you don't like The Wire you are a racist homophobe.

Oh, to be able to lock all the Buffy fans and The Wire fans into some room at MLA until only one came out.

So, my question for today is...who is more obnoxious? Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans or fans of The Wire?

It's Here!

Well today I received my contributor copy of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema.

This is a book I edited (and contributed a chapter for) about representations of faith and spirituality in films from directors such as Bergman, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Dreyer, and many others.

I am very grateful to the contributors who helped make this process more than I dared to hope for. I am especially thankful to Doug Cummings and Mike Hertenstein who went above and beyond the call of duty (and, perhaps, what they signed up for) by not only helping me select essays but providing the cover design (Doug) and writing the introduction (Mike). The latter really put the book over the top, in my opinion, helping to solidify a unified vision and make it a whole, not merely a collection of parts.

To order a copy of the book, try:





or

Cambridge Scholars Press

"E" is for Eclectic

Okay, so I haven't been working through the Ipod recently. I think my trek through the alphabet got stuck on "D." Hard to find new ways of sorting the list, and I figured anyone who sees an ample amount of The Police, The Pretenders, or Billy Joel in letters "A" through "D" will no not be surprised to find "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic," "Every Mother's Son," or "The Entertainer" on my Ipod's list of "E" songs.

I have 46 songs beginning with the letter "E" in my Itunes library. For this letter, I decided to focus on the eclectic--songs from artists of whom I have less than one entire album. This generally means that there was something about that particular song that caught my attention even if I didn't normally listen to the artist. Here are the "E" songs that qualify:

"Ebudae" by Enya. This is from the Toys Soundtrack. I sort of liked a few other songs on that album, but once I had it, the Enya song grew on me. I think we got one of her albums once, but it all sounded the same to me (sort of like Liz Phair, right Sherry?) so I didn't upload it to the Ipod.

"Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks. Well, I do have a Fleetwood Mac album, so I wonder if this one qualifies. Strictly a nostalgia piece. There's no music quite like the music that was popular when you were in high school.

"Eli's Coming" by Three Dog Night. Blame it on Sports Night, if you must.

"Even if My Heart Would Break" by Aaron Neville and Kenny G. I cannot tell you what this song sounds like. It was apparently on the soundtrack for The Bodyguard that I uploaded to get some Whitney Houston songs. Since I just made a folder for "E" songs to put in shuffle play, perhaps I will actually listen to it this month.

"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears. They aren't quite one hit wonders (I do still have "Shout" on Itunes as well). Great theme song for Dennis Miller's show and used quite effectively in Real Genius.

"Eyes on the Prize" by the Emmaus Group Singers. From the Green Card soundtrack. See, now this is what I love about my Ipod. I never much listened to that song because there were like two or three good cuts on that CD. Now I can take those two or three and put them in rotation.

Other "E" notes:

--I have four different artists (Dixie Chicks, Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Dar Williams) that have songs beginning with the words "Everybody Knows" (yeah, the one is a cover, but, still, that's weird).

--Since I have an entire album of The Nylon's their version of "Eli's Coming" doesn't count.

--My (current) five favorite "E" songs (in no particular order):
"Easy Silence" -- The Dixie Chicks. Just a beautiful song with beautiful sentiments.
"Eat for Two" -- 10,000 Maniacs. Not sure what to make of the lyrics, but I love the haunting tone of Natalie Merchant's voice. (It is Natalie Merchant, right?)
"Everybody Knows" -- Leonard Cohen. Call me perverse, but I like Cohen's voice. What a consummate lyricist.
"Everybody Want to Rule the World" -- Tears for Fears. I make no claims for it musically, but it I can listen to it a lot and not get tired of it, which is something.
"Every Day" -- Don MacLean. Very easy to listen to.

Juror's special prize: "Embassy Lament" from the Soundtrack to Chess: "Oh my dear, how boring/He's defecting/Just like all the others/He's expecting..."

Of Motes and Beams

It used to be that John 3:16 was the most ubiquitous Bible verse, but these days I think I've been hearing Matthew 7:3 a lot. I think it may have become our favorite verse. It goes something like this:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in Ted Stevens's eye?

Oh, is that not the way you learned the verse? Me either. I mention this because Republican Mark Sanford invoked this verse in response to the recent presidential election.

Sanford said:

I believe in the Biblical notion of taking the log out of your own eye before worrying about the splinter in someone else's. Accordingly, let me focus on my own party and the way Ted Stevens personifies what went wrong in the election.

It's hard for me to disagree with his personification of Stevens, but I do find myself quibbling a bit over his application of the Biblical verse. Particularly when the verse says to not focus on your "brother's" fault. Clearly Sanford is trying to identify with corporate errors, but he does so by focusing on some other member of his party and saying the fault is theirs. In the same piece he insists that the lost election is not a repudiation of his party's principles--and certainly not of him.

Sanford begins the piece by saying that as an American he wishes the new president "every success." By the end of the piece he is speaking not of the faults of the GOP but of what he "fears" the Obama administration will become.

Is it possible the American electorate rejected the GOP not because of (alleged) corruption of one Alaska Senator (who still has an appeal pending) but because of the a blanket failure to offer alternatives to trickle-down economics and members who simply bad mouth the other guy? I don't know, I'm just asking.

What I'm saying, though, is that whether or not Sanford's piece is poor politics, it sure seems like poor Biblical exegesis. How the taking the "log out of your own own eye" became a synonym for scapegoating Ted Stevens is not exactly clear to me.

It's funny to me how many people these days have taken to citing this verse aggressively, as a means of telling others that they have beams that they should take care of before criticizing someone else (usually the person citing the verse). Isn't doing so--attacking someone else with this verse--the very opposite of what the verse admonishes us to do? Isn't it, in the semantic sense, a perversion of this verse?

Thank You, Soldier

I read a lot of articles this political season about people dissing yard signs. Well not yard signs exactly, but the notion that yard signs persuade or comfort others and create a bandwagon effect.
Part of what allegedly helped one campaign was direct contact. I've been thinking about that this morning when it comes time to ponder the call to "support" our troops. I'm sure there is a value to flag pins and yellow ribbons, but I know, too, that when I'm around military people the thing that I do that most consistently gets a positive response is to say "thank you for all that you are doing and sacrificing for me and our country."

That's not to say that we do not need to support our troops in tangible ways as well. We need to honor our commitments to them, whether it be for Veteran's care or by providing the tools they need to do the job we ask them to do.

We should also pray. Regardless of where we think our military personnel should or should not be, when they answer the call of duty let us pray that they would soon be rejoined with their families.

I was reminded this month of what a great privilige it is to be an American and of how many freedoms I enjoy, including the freedom to cast a vote for who will lead our country. These rights were obtained for me and preserved by citizens and, at times, soldiers, who gave of themselves for the good of the whole.

Thank you, solider.
Thank you, veteran.

What is "Christian Fiction"?

The new reference encyclopedia, Books and Beyond: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Literary Genres is now available (see link below). It includes an entry written by yours truly on "Christian Fiction."

The essay contains a definition of the genre, a history of its development, common themes, current issues, and selected authors who participate in it. I do manage to cite M. Leary's "How Should we then Review?" essay as well as E.J. Park's essay about commercialization (in Christianity Today) and my own essay in The Matthew's House Project on evangelical pornography).

While the price of a three volume set of reference encyclopedias would probably be prohibitive for individual buyers, I do recommend the essay if you have access to a reference library and (if you work at or in conjunction with an academic institution) think it would make a good addition to a school reference library that could be recommended to your acquisitions department.

Do You Believe in the Power of Prayer?

Just catching up on some pre-election shows on DVR, including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Colbert made fun of some clip of a guy praying for a McCain victory and reminding God that His reputation is at stake because members of other religions "for various reasons" are praying to their gods for the other guy to win.

I asked Cindy if she ever prayed for Obama to win. She said, "not specifically."

I thought back and realized that, well, neither did I.

So here's my questions to anyone who wants to answer:

1) Did you pray about this election?
2) What was your prayer?
3) To the best of your understanding, was your prayer answered?
4) What inferences, if any, do you draw from the answer to #3?

Just the Luck of the Draw?

Harvard political historian Barbara Kellerman made headlines over at CNN by suggesting that history will be kinder in its assessment of George W. Bush's presidency than his current low approval ratings suggest.

Her quote:

"I think it's possible when people have stopped being as angry at the Bush administration as they are now ... that they will realize that some of this is just ... the luck of the draw."

Kellerman, author of the book "Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters," noted that Bush has not had luck on his side for the past eight years.

"He [Bush] has been a quite unlucky president. Certain things happened on his watch that most people don't have to deal with -- a 9/11, a [Hurricane] Katrina, the financial crisis, being three obvious examples," she said.

"And yet they happened on his watch. He is being blamed," she said.

Huh.

Was Bush blamed for Hurricane Katrina or for how he handled Hurricane Katrina? Does Bush have low approval numbers because he is being blamed for 9/11 happening or for what he did in the wake of it? Is Bush unpopular because the financial meltdown just happened on his watch or because deregulation and a culture of greed contributed to it?

I certainly don't think President Bush has a top secret weathermaking machine in the basement of the White House that he unleashed on New Orleans in the secret hope that red-state Lousiana would learn a lesson. But I do totally understand how, in the wake of it, someone like Kanye West might draw the conclusion that George W. Bush "doesn't care about Black people."

I, of course, don't think that George W. Bush had anything to do with 9/11, but I certainly find persuasive the argument made in No End in Sight (and elsewhere) that his advisers and think tanks wanted to go to war in Iraq even before 9/11 and I don't think history will view the Iraq war as something that just unluckily coincided with Bush's time in office nor view it as a necessary response to events that did (i.e. 9/11). I do blame him for pushing the Patriot Act through and eroding our civil liberties in its wake and empowering people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Alberto Gonzalez to torture first and ask questions later. I don't think those things just "happened" on his watch.

I'm reminded of some people I used to play Euchre with online--who would win about 42-48% of the time over literally thousands of games (a good euchre player wins on average about 52% of the time, great ones make 53-54) and complain about how unlucky they were and how they never got good cards, especially at the key moments.

Yeah, that must be it.

A More Perfect Union, Still Imperfect...

I've gotten away from blogging about film or much else besides politics in the past few weeks. I hope to change that soon.

Last night was a time of renewed hope more me; it was a time that reaffirmed my hope in the American people and reminded me of what it means to be an American and what a great honor and privilege it is to be relatively free.

While watching President Elect Obama's speech, I commented to my wife that the mood was more sober than triumphal and that they audience was not going wild. She responded: "They're listening."

Maybe that was Obama's real victory. He got us to listen again, to believe that there is power in the exchange of words and ideas, that a politician might actually be saying something that we needed to think about and not just responded to when "Applause" went up on a teleprompter.

There were a number of things that alloyed that joy. Some were selfish, others were and are more things that made me somber about the challenges the new president elect faces in bringing a divided culture together. They are:

1) North Carolina still hasn't been called. I wrote at another venue:

According to results posted at Fox News and ABC and CNN, Obama is ahead by 12,160 votes. (Fox says 99.8% have reported, ABC and CNN say 100% but haven't called it.)

This is a difference of 0.3%. (Obama 49.84; McCain 49.54; Barr 0.59%). Bob Barr's 25, 181 votes was double the margin of victory.

Every vote matters

The outcome of the national election isn't in dispute, but (this is one of the selfish ones), it matters to me that my state goes blue. It will be bittersweet to me if the general election is won but North Carolina lost by the slimmest of margins.

But how must my friends and colleagues who voted Republican feel? Intellectually, I understand that winner take all is no different at the state than national level, but there seems something odd about all the electoral votes going one way when the margin is less than 1/2 of 1 percent. Will there be a recount? I hope not, but state law allows for a candidate to request it in a margin this close. I sincerely hope that some day we can do away with the electoral college. It is a remnant whose time has passed, that served its function but is not the best way, I think, to elect a president.

2) Not All Life is Equal, Apparently.
A lot of Americans care about the unborn...as long as they aren't born and grow up to be gay.

Whatever bittersweetness I might feel at North Carolina being so close, I can only imagine it is a small sliver of what gays and lesbians must feel while watching the results come in. African-Americans have waited so long for the practice of America to approximate its promises that I can only be thrilled and happy for them and for us. But I did feel some hackles raised when both William Bennett (on CNN) and John McCain gave variants on the spin that this historic election means that no longer should Americans tolerate the "excuse" that achievement is impossible for some individuals because of insurmountable barriers. Unless, of course, that achievement is marriage and the individual is not black, but gay.

With between 96-100% reporting, clear winners seem in place for these ballot iniatives:

Arizona 102 (Ban on Gay Marriage)
Yes--56% No 44%

Arkansas 1 (Ban on Gay Couples Adopting Children)
Yes--57% No 43%

California 8 (Ban on Gay Marriage--only 92% reporting)
Yes--52% No 48%

Florida 2 (Ban on Gay Marriage)
Yes--62% No 38%

Over the last eight years, I've often chided the Republican party for being schizophrenic in its pro-"life" stance...of talking the talk on opposing Roe v. Wade but not walking the walk when it comes to respect for all human life. So, too, the Democrats seem to have chosen a candidate who embodies hope and inclusion and tolerance, who includes talking about gays in his speech, while on the state level telling that candidate that they want equality, but not, apparently, for everyone.

We must crawl before we can walk, I suppose.


3) You know, in spite of the fact that I kept hearing about record turnout, I was surprised to hear from FiveThirtyEight.com that the youth turnout only went up about one point. According to the North Carolina election board site. Approximately 67% of registered voters voted. I suppose there are reasons that might prevent someone from voting, but consider this--in an historic election, facing two wars, a financial crisis, the possibilit of several supreme court appointments, etc. nearly 1 out 3 registered voters in North Carolina didn't vote.

Sports Illustrated's Peter King quotes Saints player Scott Fujita yesterday:

"A lot of people think their vote won't make a difference, or that their voice will never be heard,'' Fujita texted. "But if we all felt that way, then the system would be broken. There's a lot more good than bad in this country, and the only way to begin to fix what's bad is to get out and vote. Also, suffrage rights didn't come without incredible struggle for a lot of people in this country -- women and blacks in particular. To me, not voting would be a huge slap in their faces.''

How many people fought and died so that I could cast my vote? How many didn't give the ultimate sacrifice but gave of their time, talents, and income? How many lawyers fought for my rights? How many politicians put the ideals of democracy against expediency? How many that walked before me had to give of themselves or sacrifice so that I could be free? How anyone could take that for granted or receive that gift with anything other than awe and respect is something I simply cannot fathom.

Come on North Carolina....

...make me proud of my adopted home.

I get to spend Christmas with friends and relatives from California and Ohio.

Don't make me be the only one hanging my head.

*************************************
ABC NEWS Says 100% reporting:

McCain (R) 2,088,670 49%
Obama (D) 2,102,175 50%


YES! I LOVE YOU, TARHEEL STATE!

Even though I am a Duke fan, from this day forward the phrase "Tarheel Blue" will have a special place in my heart.

One Voice Can Change the Room...

View From the Trenches in a Swing State

I spent 3-4 hours this morning volunteering at the local Obama precinct house in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.

They said what they needed was canvassers. People to go door to door with their lists of voters in high priority districts to ensure they knew where to go (election day precincts are different from early voting precincts), that they had voted, or whether they needed any assistance getting to the polls.

It was raining steadily all morning, but the turnout in the precinct house was impressive. Some of the people I rode or worked with said that in comparison to previous elections, a high percentage of people indicated they had already voted (early or earlier in the day) or were heading out to do so.

I've heard over and over that voter turnout favors Obama. If that is the case, things look good in these trenches. I was worried about the weather, but, again, many had already voted and those who were on there way were not to be deterred. Just about any model for a McCain victory that I've seen depends upon polling seriously mismeasuring voter enthusiasm or turnout.

A side note, too.

This is the first time I've felt strongly enough about an election to donate time or money. Participating in the process does make such a difference. I would urge many of my friends or colleagues who are indifferent or undecided (God knoweth how) to be a bit more engaged rather than taking the "I'm undecided CONVINCE me" posture. That low level of interest tends to lead to apathy. Getting out, even if it is just a couple of hours (I spend 2-3 hours on two different days canvassing neighborhoods and disseminating information) takes you away from your Internet or neighborhood bubble and shows you how people live. It moves the consequences of an election (local or national) from the category of the abstract to the real.

To my friends who want to vote Obama but are concerned or influenced by Republican rhetoric regarding Roe v. Wade, I make a last minute appeal:

If all you cared about were legalized abortion on demand, you wouldn't be undecided, would you? The fact that you are struggling tells me on some level, in your heart of hearts, you really want to vote for Obama but are afraid--of your (sub)community, friends, maybe even family. It's okay. God gave you a mind to reason and a conscience to listen to. There is more than one commandment and we all fail every day to be perfect. There are people who are great Christians in both political parties--who disagree about how to reduce abortions (and unwanted pregnancies for that matter). I won't repeat all of the arguments here, because most of you have heard them before.

What I will say is--I give you permission to vote for Obama. If you lose your credibility or respect as a Christian because of your vote, then your friends and community don't care about the sum total of your relationship with God and development of your faith, they only care that you are either "with us or against us."

George MacDonald wrote in Wilfrid Cumbermede:

The upper hand of influence I had over him I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling me to his notions. He believed that truth could afford to wait until I was capable of seeing it for myself, and that the best embodiments of truth are but bonds and fetters to him who cannot accept them as such. When I could not agree with him he would say with one of his fine smiles, "We'll drop it then, Willie. I don't believe you have cuaght my meaning. If I am right, you will see it some day, and there's no hurry."

Many will tell you there is a hurry, and urgency. That you agreeing with them is a matter of life and death. That may even be true, but I'm not sure that it is God's way. Even in the matters of life and death truth must be truth to the listener or it cannot carry the force of accepted fact. Don't let others decide for you or spiritually bully you into going against your beliefs.

MacDonald also wrote in The Hope of the Gospel:

If then we go wrong, it will be in the direction of the right, and with such aberration as will be easier to correct than what must come of refusing to imagine, and leaving the dullest traditional prepossessions to rule our hearts and minds, with no claim but the poverty of their expectations from the paternal riches.

Trust yourself, but more importantly, trust God. Believe that if you will but move in the direction of the right as you see and feel it (even if that is not the direction that seemingly makes sense to your friends or comrades) that you will train your heart to be obedient to the convictions God places there and any errors you make will be "easier to correct" than will be the results of refusing to imagine, refusing to think that you could be right and those who are so very sure could be wrong. Easier to correct, indeed, than the results of substituting someone else's conviction for your judgment, and taking the path of least resistance rather than the one that you think to be true.

New Article

The November issue of The Matthew's House Project just went live, and they included my essay, "I Am a College Professor (and I am not Ashamed)."

Understanding Poetry...err, I mean Torture

My English 101 class is working on critical thinking skills by analyzing a series of pro and con arguments about controversial topics. One of the issues the students selected to discuss was whether or not torture is ever morally justified.

The affirmative is argued by Mirko Bargaric and Julie Clarke in a strange article entitled "Not Enough Torture in the World?" They argue, following Alan Dershowitz's lead, that harm minimization can be attained by making torture legal so that oversight can be made. In a section called "The Formula" they set out the circumstances in which torture would be acceptable. And let me just say before I quote, that I am not making this up and it is not a piece from The Onion:

The strength of the case in favor of torture can be mapped as follows:

W+L+P
--------
T x O

Where:

W=whether the agent is the wrongdoer
L=the number of lives that will be lost is the information is not provided
P=the probablility that the agent has the relevant information
T=the time available before the disaster will occur ("immedicacy of the harm")
O=the likelihood that other inquiries will forestall the risk.

Whew. Where to start?

I find it funny that "W" is represented as an either/or quanity but "P" is a probability and hence on a sliding scale. One wonders whether or not the numerical value of "W" is such that it can be "0" and the numerical total crossing the threshold could still be reached? If it isn't, then is it so high as to make L and P irrelevant?

These are, of course, ridiculous questions for a ridiculous formula. My real question is this. Where is Robin Williams when you need him?

Disc Golf Life Lessons

I played disc golf today at Buckhorn. My lifetime average on that course is about a 54, though I've been getting steadily better in the last few years. Since I hadn't played the course in a while and it was a bit cold, I set a goal of 54 (par) for my round.

Things went bad pretty quickly.

I lost my yellow, special edition Leopard during warmups, a key disc in my bag. I spent a good 45 minutes to an hour looking for it since that disc is not manufactured any more. My the time I gave up, some muscles had tightened up, I had stepped wrong on a sore ankle and pushing off with my knee was was a bit painful. I also didn't have one of my key drivers. After holing out for a birdie on the first hole, I proceded to bogy the next five holes to put me at +4. Holes 7 and 8 are birdieable, but I went a bit deep on 7 and missed my come back for biride when I hit the lip of the basket. On hole 8, the shortest hole, I hit a tree, leaving me a little short and again hit the basket on my birdie bid for a tip in par.

So I stepped to the ninth tee, almost half done, without a key disc, sore, and having bogeyed two of the easier holes on the course (2 and 5).

I have been trying to work on not giving up on rounds when things don't go well, but this wasn't even really a matter of a few weird breaks. The wheels were off. Nevertheless, I tried to imagine myself in a competitive round where each stroke mattered. I made a long drive on 9 but went a little deep and left, but I finally made a long putt for birdie. A good drive on hole 10 was ruined by hitting a tree, but another booming drive that actually went dep on 11 had me set up for a long putt. I made it, and all of a sudden I had that inexplicable thing called momentum.

Not for long, though. Hole twelve is a 297 foot right turning hole, and I set myself up for a decent par bid. I delivered my putt square in the chains and reached down to pick up my marker when the hole literally spat the disc out. Very rarely in disc golf you can hit a putt too well. It can be so centered that it pushes the chain into the pole and bounces off the pole and back. Or, it can, as in this case, become tangled in the chain and fall out when the chain rattles. (Picture a swish in basketball that doesn't hit rim but has so much back spin that the net curls around the ball and then backspins it back up and out of the rim. I couldn't have placed the putt any better, and 99 times out of 100 it would have stayed in. That my 1 in 100 bad break came at the worst possible time seemed to give credence to that part of me that said, "Today's just not your day."

I had six remaining holes and was back to +3 and three of the remaining holes were ones I usually used my Leopard for. On hole 13 I threw a Sidewinder low with a cut slice rather than trying the long anhyzer with a dive back at the end and managed to skp low up to the hole for a birdie putt. On hole 14 I threw a DX Sidewinder and while it didn't turn right as much as my Leopard, it left me to the left of the hole and deep for another birdie putt. A part on 15 left me with one remaining birdie hole, and I threw a perfect left to right slice for a birdie tip in to, miraculously, find myself back at par.

Here's the thing, though. Holes 17 and 18 are no gimmes. 17 is a long shot over water that I have to lay up on and try to approach over water close enough to get a par putt. I've gotten a five on it (for going in the water) more times than I've gotten a three, but today I managed to gut out a 20 foot putt to come to the 18th. Here again I made a good throw, but I got just too much turn and hit a tree, which kicked me away from the hole and into some rough.

Golf is like life in so many ways. A friend of mine once said bogeys are like trying to lose weight...one bad hole can take a lot of work just to get you back to where you started. Or, it's like the stock market, which doesn't care what you had to do on the last few holes to finally pay off some bills only to tax your resources once again. Well, I made about a 120 foot approach, snaking through some sparse, skinny trees and laying up for a twelve footer to save my par and a round of 54--hitting my goal on the nose.

Cindy is fond of reminding me that you don't know what kind of round you are having while you are having it. That's a hard life lesson to learn as well as golf lesson. I've had better scores, but I'm not sure I've had much more satisfying rounds. I had to fight not just the course but myself and the human tendency to just throw in the towel when things get tough and say, "Life was against me today."

Turns out it wasn't.

I'll Have the Chicken

David Sedaris sums up my feelings on this year's presidential election.