by Dean | Jul 9, 2018 | General
In June, unemployment in the U.S. rose from 3.8 percent to 4 percent. Did it have anything to do with President Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel? The economy is strong. It could be stronger, and might have to be—through the removal of tariffs.
Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg is right: Why are our trade deals so bad if, as Trump says, America is making impressive foreign investments?
I wish our progress against the federal deficit was impressive. Medicare administrators want you to know that Medicare will be insolvent by 2026. Social Security? 2034. Better generate that revenue (and then some). The more jobs, the better. America, pay your bills!
by Dean | Jul 7, 2018 | General
It is unusual these days to see a film where a man suffers inner torment because he has committed sin. But it goes on in the 19-minute Catholic film, “The Confession” (2017)—an award winner at a Catholic film festival—and, as it happens, it is not only the Big Sinner who grieves. So does the confessor priest, who finds he must offer personal forgiveness.
This John LaRaw picture is simple and heartfelt, uncommon for displaying South Korean Christianity. Plus, it has lighting just right for a religious film. You might want to pay “The Confession” a visit on YouTube.
by Dean | Jul 2, 2018 | General
Jane Fonda is magnetically terrific in the 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, losing herself in the role of Gloria, a bitter would-be actress. She and the other characters are desperate, first of all, to survive during the Great Depression and, second, to have their dreams come true. Because they must acquire money, they participate in a grueling dance marathon, but in addition they want natural relief through love and intimacy, even loveless sex. Monstrously cynical, Gloria is also a “loser” who wants to die; and, really, we pity and even respect her when she does die.
Sydney Pollack‘s film, based on a novel by Horace McCoy, is bleak. And it’s more honest than most movies today (e.g., it doesn’t see its female protagonist as more virtuous than any man you could ever meet). Granted, the last few minutes of the film are rather flimsy, flowing less than smoothly from the previous material; but we can be very grateful for the set design, costumes, and general ambitiousness. Pollack, indeed, tried to make a work of art.
by Dean | Jun 30, 2018 | General
Written by JP Miller, Days of Wine and Roses (1958) was a Playhouse 90 TV movie before it was remade as a theatrical film. Though technically crude, it is a memorably strong drama about the ruination of sought-after social mobility—and of people’s lives—by alcoholism. Joe and Kirsten are the broken hard drinkers. Without getting drunk, Kirsten can only see the world as a “dirty” place, and is the more vulnerable and myopic of the two.
JP Miller (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The picture was well directed by John Frankenheimer. Cliff Robertson is a natural for the part of Joe. His acting is nigh effortless, whereas with Piper Laurie (Kirsten) we do see the effort. Laurie is inconsistently convincing, but—interestingly—she does manage to be deep. A psyche is there. . .
I’m glad I finally saw Days (on DVD) after all these years, and, yep, I’m sticking with the original.
by Dean | Jun 28, 2018 | General
Well, I think Gyorgy Ligeti’s Atmospheres is very accessible, despite its lack of melody and, according to Ligeti, “dense canonic structure.” A short piece, it is frighteningly stratospheric before deliquescing.
Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G is snappy and limpid in its first movement and incalculably beautiful in its second. Its third is pleasantly bouncy. A masterpiece. Even greater is Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, evoking the terrors of the twentieth century. It is somber, eerie and adventurous.
Also, it never gets sentimental, and neither does the String Quartet No. 1 (“The Kreutzer Sonata”) of Leos Janacek, an opus as controlled as it is capricious. It’s dark too, though not as dark as Symphony No. 2 by Arvo Part. Menace is everywhere in this not-great but good modern composition, and so is a lovely conclusive quote from Tchaikovsky.
To be continued
by Dean | Jun 25, 2018 | General
Aprops of the film First Reformed, a writer for Movieguide.org avers that “the movie’s politically correct leftist politics . . . are easily refuted by any person who’s done some research on those topics.” I do not doubt the reality of such refutation, but Paul Schrader is not really standing up for leftist politics in the film any more than he’s standing up for right-wing politics. And the observation that “the movie’s very last scene is just silly and anti-climactic, if not stupid” is one I disagree with because the ending seems morally justified and not altogether different from what occurs in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. Indeed, it is an idiosyncratic Christian ending.
These criticisms appear on the same Christian website that, some years ago, hotly condemned an obscure documentary (I can’t remember the title) that endorsed the idea of universal salvation. To support its view, Movieguide.org presented John 12:31-36 without analysis, without translating any original Greek word, without sufficiency. Why, the site is more flawed than First Reformed.
by Dean | Jun 23, 2018 | General
Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed (2018) gives us a paster, Ernst Toller, with problems.
Enacted by a well-cast Ethan Hawke, Toller does pretty good pastoral work for First Reformed, a church in upstate New York, but he lost a son in Iraq, is divorced from Esther (Victoria Hill), who still loves him, and is ill and often spiritually weak. Schrader meant the film to be derivative—it is a little too derivative—of Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest and Bergman’s Winter Light, but it is also very different from those movies.
After the suicide of a parishioner’s husband—the parishioner is an important character named Mary (Amanda Seyfried)—Toller becomes a temporary madman/radical activist who intends to commit mass murder; but here the film goes astray. Nothing before this suggests that the pastor is unstable or even eccentric; nothing prepares us for his nutty behavior. As a character study First Reformed starts limping, although its ending is fascinatingly fine.
The movie boasts themes: mortification (or laceration) of the flesh, the conflict between spirituality and moral stumbling, love and the human spirit. But shadows of the Bresson and Bergman films perpetually fall on this product because Reformed is certainly a lesser work. I disagree with Kenneth Morefield, a reviewer for Christianity Today, that “Paul Schrader has always been a great writer,” but I do think the current picture is riveting.
by Dean | Jun 20, 2018 | General
U.S. astronauts reach the moon, in the 1950 Destination Moon, only because they choose to defy the government, which has ordered them to stay on the earth. The public fears radioactivity after liftoff, but the determined astronauts slip away and take their historic flight regardless. After they land on the moon, they are distressed to discover that getting home just might be a nonstarter.
Adapting one of his novels, Robert Heinlein co-wrote the movie’s script, so the frequently spot-on technical information is no surprise. And for 1950 the sets are admirable, even though the outside rescue of an astronaut adrift is hopelessly stagy (and with plenty of silliness). To be honest, DM is marred by much, but it is Hollywood earnestness at its most entertaining. Too, I found it nigh spellbinding, and not only in the outer space scenes. Watching it, I got a hankering to read Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel, which will at least spare me, as this movie does not, the presence of Woody Woodpecker.
Directed by Irving Pichel.
by Dean | Jun 18, 2018 | General
The 2003 Peter Pan is pretty good, except for the boringly routine fight scenes. P. J. Hogan‘s film version of the 1904 British play (very old) captures much of playwright Barrie’s sophistication and all of his high spirits. It concentrates on Wendy Darling’s youthful affection for Peter Pan and is aware of Peter’s inability to love, albeit he does know how to grieve for a dead or dying Tinkerbell. . . It dazzles the eye and, almost as much, enchants the mind.
Jeremy Sumpter (Peter) is one of those child actors who, to borrow another critic’s truthful phrase, merely follow the director’s orders, nothing more. Not so Rachel Hurd-Wood as Wendy: she’s spontaneous and unmannered. In a double role—that of Mr. Darling and that of Captain Hook—the versatile Jason Isaacs is thoroughly engaging, while Lynn Redgrave never sounds a false note as the Darling children’s aunt.
by Dean | Jun 14, 2018 | General
However charitable, the churches do not pay close attention to what the Bible is saying. They often speak and behave as though they believe the words of Bill Wiese were scripture: You gotta correctly use your free will so you can stay out of Hell. They are never tempted to think that maybe, just maybe, since the Bible teaches the Predestination of souls, salvation is not a matter of human free will; it is therefore the unelected people who are slated for damnation. If damnation exists.
Dear me, the churches say. What’s all this Predestination stuff?
It’s Biblical doctrine, that’s what. But since the churches fail to give heed to Psalm 22:27 or Romans 11:32, they would naturally distrust the following words of Jacques Ellul: “There is indeed a predestination, but it can be only the one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved.” Hence the unelected do not go to Hell. True, they are chastised (or judged), but so are Christians. Why, however, should there be damnation for a humanity about whom the Bible affirms, in Romans 9, that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy”?
