MOVIES: “THE SECRET OF KELLS”

The Oscar-nominated animated gem (or shall I say "emerald"?) "The Secret of Kells" is a definite "must-see." No excuses. Make an effort. The DVD isn't out yet, but the film will be returning to the Siskel Film Theater (State Street, Loop, Chicago) June 25--July 7, as it tours other cities. You DO want to see this on a big screen, and although I'm NO fan of 3-D, the hyper-creative, ever-in-motion, mixed-art-style graphics would have been marvelous in 3-D. There's even a scene where our little hero, Brendan, battles illuminations-come-to-life (you know those Celtic-knot snakes?) in a "Harold and the Purple Crayon" kind of way.

The "Book of Kells," of course, is an ancient (9^th century) embellished Irish manuscript of the Four Gospels on view at Trinity College in Dublin. Its adventurous history (Viking raids, theft, lost cover, etc.) has now been given a completely new life with this partially-fictitious account, bringing the printed/illustrated Word of God to the cinema, and from there, of course, to all the new media! Erin go bragh! (The film is actually a collaboration among Irish, French and Belgian entities.)

Brendan is a red-haired lad who lives at a monastery with his uncle, the sad, stern, red-haired Abbot, and an international community of monks: Italian, African, Chinese, German (?!). They live under the ever-looming, certain threat of the Norse invasion and ensuing destruction. The Abbot's all-consuming preoccupation is to build a huge wall around the monastery for protection, although by all counts fleeing is the only way to face these marauders. Master-illuminator of manuscripts, Brother Aidan (a Willie Nelson lookalike), arrives from the island of Iona, where everyone has already been killed. (The Vikings resemble huge, dark mailboxes with glowing red eyes. They're scary, but not too. The most gore/bloodshed we see is a stick arrow piercing the Abbot's ample robes. Even wee ones would probably be able to handle this.)

Aidan enlists Brendan's help in completing a manuscript—much to the Abbot's displeasure—which requires Brendan to foray into the outside world, specifically a beautiful but treacherous forest inhabited by a friendly girl-fairy, Aisling (who wears white bell-bottoms). The only flaw in the narrative is an abrupt break after Brendan encounters the nebulous evil "Crom Cruach" in the forest and returns unscathed. It seems to me that perhaps there should have been a price to pay.

"The Secret of Kells" is a multi-level, multi-purpose experience. Written for children, it is full of fun (humorous animals and other antics) and fantasy (it mixes in Irish fairytales and legends). It's a tale of faith and art, beauty and "light." (The borders and drawings of "The Book" are called "illuminations.") Light is a big theme in "The Secret." Although "prayer," "miracles" and other Godtalk are manifest, there is no mention of "God," "Jesus," or any of the actual text of the Gospels (the focus is on the artwork), but the fact that The Book dispels darkness is very prominent. "The Secret" is an excellent springboard to diving into Celtic Christianity, culture, art, history, legends, monasticism, and, of course, what gives the Book of Kells its true power: God's Word!

There are maxims and deep conversations about overcoming fear and doing the right thing that adults, too, will ponder. Brendan states that he's "not afraid of imaginary things" (which can be taken two ways in the film). Are you?

OTHER STUFF:

--Other morsels about The Book: When it was stolen, the bejeweled cover was ripped off (and never recovered). The Book was found in a ditch and sustained some water-damage. Other than that, the 680 individual pages are extremely well-preserved. Only two of the pages lack any ornamentation, while entire pages are primarily decoration. Some of the workmanship is so finely detailed that it can only be seen clearly with magnification.

--There's an underlying love of books here. Brendan: "Not everything is written in books." Brother Aidan: "Yes, I think I read that somewhere."

--Nature (the woods) as a "book of revelation" is also a wonderful motif. (This is where Theology of the Body would come in. Also, the theme of light and seeing: "Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness." Luke 11:34)

--If you go to Dublin to see The Book of Kells, beware! Sinners will go blind when they look at its pages! (Just go to Confession first.)

--Some of the animation reminds me of "Bullwinkle and Rocky" and "Watership Down."

--SOK follows a (pre-Franciscan) Irish tradition of communing with nature and animals (see the lives of Sts. Kevin, Columba (Columbkille), Brendan, Bridget)

--For further reading: "How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Cahill, "Brigid's Cloak" by Milligan (fantastic kids' book!)

--In addition to the mystical/magical soundtrack, check out the 90's Christian album "Book of Kells" by Iona (a group who puts the Gospels to song).

--"The Secret of Kells" (and other award-winning children's films) is distributed by http://www.gkids.tv/

--If there isn't already one, a wonderful (Christian) study guide should be written for SOK! (E.g., What were the Norsemen looking for? What did they miss? What is true treasure? Why do you think the Abbot gave up illuminating and was against it?)

--Full disclosure: I'm Irish. Real last name: Byrne (got messed up in Immigration).

MUSIC: "STELLA MARIS"

MOVIES: “DATE NIGHT”

I so wanted to like the new comedy "Date Night," pairing one of THE funniest women in America (Tina Fey) with one of the THE funniest men in America (Steve Carell). I was all set to laugh. Heartily. But this is one of those movies where you really HAVE seen all the good gags and heard all the good lines in the trailers and previews: "Honey, get up: NOW!" "Kill shot!" "I don't want the kids to stay with your mother—she's awful!"

The premise is solid: a "boring" New Jersey couple go out for an extra special date night and--due to a case of mistaken identity--get entangled in New York's criminal underground. Needless to say, their date night IS extra special. How could anything possibly go wrong or unfunny with Fey and Carell? Editing. Big editing problems. Pacing. Big pacing problems. Writing. Big writing problems. Shall I go on? Fey and Carell's comedic acting is fine (as is a nice turn by a blank-faced and shirtless Mark Wahlberg—the shirtlessness is important to the plot, trust me), but the chemistry between them is just a tad lackluster. Editing and pace: This movie needed to be way faster-paced and snappy, at least after Act One. It goes at a snail's pace that never really alters except for a rather hilarious chase scene that involves a sportscar and a taxi stuck to each other. Writing: could have been much sharper with more jokes. Music: the music is NOT fun and sounds like it goes with a serious Lifetime Movie Network biopic. It's hard to believe this flick's multiple problems are the fault of director Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum 2").

Every so often, the movie gels, like the quiet scene in the midst of mortal danger, when wife and hubby pull off to the side of the road (in their stolen getaway car) to have a marital dispute about the little things that aren't so little. I love this because it says that, yes, how this relationship fares IS the most important thing in the world. (How every marital relationship fares is the most important thing in the world, or as JP2G says: "The future of civilization depends on what she will be for him and what he will be for her.") The dialogue at this point is quite sober, and reminds me of the honest, realistic dialogue between husband and wife (about the "little things") in the overlooked recent movie, "Motherhood," starring Uma Thurman.

The movie lands on a truly sweet and specific (concrete proof of true love) note.

But now. PG-13. Really? It's rated PG-13 for "sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference." One of the last scenes is a prolonged and, again, unfunny trip to a strip joint/brothel. Sigh. True, this kind of stuff is all over TV (which of course doesn't make it "right") but movies are bigger, "paid for," public, you know—the whole experience is just different. Do we really need to see MORE of stripper culture? This ploy just felt desperate.

I find the newish write-ups for the movie rating system of WHY the thing is rated what it is to be very helpful. And in this case, accurate: "crude content throughout." I wish I had a clicker (or plenary indulgence) for every tired use of the "p" and "v" word. Hey, this couple from New Jersey really IS boring! Sex is not "dirty," and it can be funny, but to expect audiences to giggle childishly at the repeated mention of "unmentionable" body parts, is, well, childish.

What should have been a rollicking good time never quite frolics. Even the bloopers at the end don't bloop. "Date Night" is one for your "skip list," unless you enjoy meh.

OTHER STUFF:

--One very funny joke that works is how shocked everyone is (EVERYONE) that Fey and Carell's characters took someone else's dinner reservation. (This IS New York, remember.)

--"This gun sucks!" (another good line in context)

MOVIES: "SECRET OF KELLS" TRAILER

Who else CAN'T WAIT to see this????

A MEDIA LITERACY VIEW OF CHURCH SEX ABUSE SCANDAL NEWS REPORTING

The Wall Street Journal also has an op-ed piece today about lawyer Jeffrey Anderson's
involvement. http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/talk.3.31.2010.shtml

The Holy Father That I Know

by the Most Reverend William E. Lori, S.T.D., Diocese of Bridgeport, CT
March 31, 2010

It is Holy Week, that time out of time, when we remember the most
important events of all time: Jesus' suffering, His crucifixion, and
His conquest of death. The world, of course, is filled with
distractions. In this holy season some, especially the news media,
want us to focus instead on the supposed failures of our Pope,
Benedict XVI. The New York Times is again leading the attack, now
accusing the Holy Father himself of being complicit in "the widening
sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church." I want to share with you my
reflections about this subject.

It appears that the timing of these articles is calculated. The March
25 New York Times story suggesting that then-Cardinal Ratzinger
permitted a known offender to continue in ministry for almost thirty
years was based upon documents provided to it by Jeffrey Anderson, an
attorney who has received over $100 million suing Catholic
institutions and who is now suing the Vatican itself. Mr. Anderson
received these documents in discovery in December 2008. Why did he
wait until now to hand them over to the Times? Was it to help his suit
against the Vatican? Was it to coordinate with claimant groups
protesting in the Vatican on the very day of the Times report? Was it
to promote legislation friendly to plaintiffs' lawyers such as we are
fighting here in Connecticut and elsewhere? Was it to sully the
holiness of this week? We don't know. We do know that Mr. Anderson
controlled the timing, and the Times helped.

The truth is that there is no widening problem of child sexual abuse
in the Catholic Church, at least not in our country. A comprehensive
"Causes and Contents" study conducted by the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice showed that, by the early 90s, this problem was
largely corrected because many bishops already had in place safe
environment programs and zero tolerance policies. In 2002 the U.S.
bishops took additional steps to reach out to victims and to ensure
the safety of children and young people by issuing their landmark
Charter and Norms. For our Church serving almost 70 million American
Catholics, there were six allegations of childhood sexual abuse by
priests occurring in 2009. No other institution working with children
gets close to this level of safe environment.

Let us now focus on the stories in the New York Times regarding
Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy, the deceased Milwaukee priest who was
accused of molesting young people during the 1960s and 70s when he
headed a school for the hearing and sight impaired. To be sure, his
heinous behavior was utterly reprehensible and destructive. At the
same time, however, the Times' story incorrectly reports that Cardinal
Ratzinger was complicit when, "instead of discipline," Father Lawrence
Murphy was "quietly moved" to the Diocese of Superior where he
continued "working freely with children in parishes" for twenty-four
years until he died in 1998. The police looked into the allegations
regarding Father Murphy in 1974 and apparently found insufficient
evidence to take any action. Nevertheless, Murphy lost his job as head
of the school for the hearing and sight impaired in 1974. The
documents the Times itself posts show that his removal was not "quiet"
but that the police were informed, that there were protests and
leafleteering, and that there was "disclosure and public humiliation
in 1974."

Finally, the Times states that Murphy was "never disciplined." This
simply is not so. The Times does not tell its readers that, shortly
after new allegations came his way in 1993, Archbishop Weakland
promptly suspended Murphy's faculties and ordered him to cease all
public ministry, all unsupervised contact with children, and all
contact with persons, places, and situations giving rise to
temptations. The Times either hid the fact that Murphy was disciplined
by suspension of his faculties because it did not comport with the
story it wanted to tell, or because Mr. Anderson withheld the
documents from the Times that detailed this discipline.

In fact, if the New York Times had bothered to check with Father
Thomas Brundage, JCL, the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of
Milwaukee from 1995-2003, they would have been found that at the time
of his death, Father Murphy was still a defendant in a Canonical trial
(an internal trial conducted by the Church) in Milwaukee for the
crimes of sexual abuse and solicitation within the confessional. Thus,
the New York Times either was less than forthcoming in stating that
Murphy suffered no discipline, or Mr. Anderson, through selective
document disclosures, played the New York Times like a fiddle. The
shameless and reckless assertions by the Times and other media outlets
that then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, somehow
interfered with the trial by the church are categorically false. Fr.
Brundage, who was the presiding judge of the Canonical trial, says
unequivocally "with regard to the role of then Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in this matter, I have no reason to
believe that he was involved at all. Placing this matter at his
doorstep is a huge leap of logic and information."

Here's what I know about Pope Benedict XVI and sexual abuse. As
detailed by John Allen of The National Catholic Reporter, when
Cardinal Ratzinger became the Vatican's "point man" on the problem in
2001, he personally reviewed hundreds of files. He then wrote the
bishops of the world that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith would henceforth handle all sexual abuses cases involving
priests. Under his leadership the Congregation provided bishops with
crucial direction and support in canonically removing offending
priests from ministry. In most circumstances, the Congregation
approved direct administrative actions so that bishops could
discipline and remove priests without the delays of full canonical
trials.

In 2002, I assisted in writing the Charter and Norms for the
Protection of Children and Young People. I was also one of the four
U.S. diocesan bishops who went to Rome to secure approval of the
Norms. I personally witnessed the pivotal and positive role that
Cardinal Ratzinger played in helping the American bishops to respond
to the sexual abuse crisis. Thanks to Cardinal Ratzinger the United
States Norms won approval from the Holy See. Together with the Charter
for the Protection of Children and Young People, the Norms have helped
the U.S. Bishops to bring about a true culture change in the Church.
State of the art safe environment programs have been developed.
Countless victims have been assisted. Priests who posed a danger to
young people are out of ministry. Dioceses cooperate closely with law
enforcement officials (contrary to yet another faulty op-ed piece in
the New York Times). The Congregation also helped bishops of other
countries deal with the sexual abuse crisis. When he became Pope,
Benedict XVI made resolution of the abuse problem a priority. Instead
of attacking this Pope, we should be thanking him for helping the
Church confront this crisis in a way that benefits victims, the
Church, and society.

There is an additional problem with the New York Times report worth
mentioning. It states that Father Murphy "also got a pass from the
police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims." This
clause is the entire comment that the Times gives to the failure of
the one government entity that had the greatest power to conduct an
investigation and remove an alleged sexual perpetrator from being
around children. The Church has no search warrants or prisons. The
police do. When government fails to manage the risk of sexual abuse,
the New York Times and other media too often give government a pass.
If we really care about protecting children, then the fourth estate
needs to focus its spotlight on those institutions with the greatest
problems. In January of this year, the U.S. Department of Justice
reported that one out of ten young people incarcerated in
government-run detention facilities were sexually victimized by their
guards during the single year of 2008. This represents 2,370 victims.
Where was the Times report? And the number of sexual abuse victims in
public schools dwarfs the problem in juvenile detention facilities.

The Times sued our Diocese to acquire privileged documents from court
files so that it could re-publish stories of long settled sexual abuse
cases that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet it ignores that
since 1992 in Connecticut alone, 112 Connecticut public school
teachers and coaches have lost their license to teach because of
sexual contact with students; and since 2006, 19 foster parents paid
by the State of Connecticut have been disciplined for sexually abusing
the children in their care. Where's the outrage and the calls for
resignations? Having the Pope and the Catholic Church bear the entire
blame of childhood sexual abuse may benefit the trial lawyers and
serve the agenda of their media partners, but it does nothing to
protect children today. Transferring billions from Catholic dioceses,
religious orders, and their charitable and educational ministries in a
time of economic crisis only creates new victims. It is time that
Church-bashing give way to responsible reporting and even-handed
public policy.

MOVIES: “LAST SONG”

Miley Cyrus puts in a solid performance in the prolific novelist Nicholas Sparks' latest book-to-film offering: "Last Song." There's something genuine about this not-quite-sure-of-herself-yet, husky-voiced, sassy country girl singer-actress. In "Last Song," Ronnie's (Miley Cyrus) parents are divorced, and she and her little brother are spending the summer with their Dad (with whom Ronnie shares an exquisite musical talent). Only she hasn't forgiven her father (played with nuance by Greg Kinnear) for the break-up, and so has given up on music. Ronnie is real hard on her Dad. Real hard.

Ronnie makes some new friends, including a beau named Will (Miley's now real-life boyfriend, Aussie Liam Hemsworth). So much of "Last Song" looks and feels like "Dear John": the hunky blonde, the seaside summer romance, rich parents with expectations of a different match for their child, etc., etc. But it's a formula we like and a formula that works. (Channing Tatum was a better actor than Amanda Seyfried in "Dear John," and Miley is a better actor than Liam in "Last Song.")

Ronnie is righteous. Almost too righteous. Her unswerving commitment to justice can burn even those she loves. The message of this film—in contrast—is: "Nobody's perfect, we all make mistakes." Over and over again. The film doth protest too much! At a certain point it sounds like making excuses.* And it sounds like just generalized excusisization, not just about the divorce. It is said in the film that love is a "fragile thing" that we just hope lasts. I understand that 1,000,000 things can go wrong between man and woman, but I don't believe that love in general (of which marriage is the core and epitome) is fragile because love is not just a whimsical feeling that comes and goes. It is attraction, sympathy, friendship and a commitment of the will. "Love is strong as death" (Song of Songs 8:6). Please note which book of the Bible that's from. How apropos.

Part of Nicholas Sparks' genius is that he has something for everyone. The little brother (played by Bobby Coleman) is an astonishing little actor and quite the comedian (as are many in this next generation of thespians! They're a bumper crop!) His tears were so real and he looked so distraught that he kind of acted everyone else under the table (without overacting). As in "Dear John," everyone's perspective, everyone's story is given a full hearing, everyone in the audience can relate to at least one of the characters. Sparks seems to be offering healing for relationships, healing for families through his tales. He creates webs of love and forgiveness. There's a sweetness and cordiality to his characters' interactions that are almost instructive. "Life is what you make it," is what his stories seem to say. "It doesn't have to be this bad, this harsh." "Just have a little courage." Sparks is a master at small dramatic, romantic moments. Just Ronnie and Will taking turns stealing glances at each other is like a sonatina.

The visuals are a smorgasbord: mud fights, sea turtles, piano playing, stained glass making, volleyball, trying on dresses. Again, something for everyone.

The dialogue and scenes, for the most part, are to-the-point, not idle, believable, amusing and well-calibrated. Just what we need to know, then a twist and on to the next thing. Some of the dialogue is throwaway and expected. When Ronnie finally lets down her guard with Will, she quickly throws it back up again because she is afraid she is just one of many to him. Will begins feeding her the lamest lines which she doesn't buy and so he just shuts her up by passionately kissing her and all is well again. There are lots of little scenes to deliver us bits of information and make sure we're tracking. There are some rather stretched out saccharine scenes that the audience in my cinema didn't seem to mind. They only whooped and hollered at what they LIKED. (I've noticed that free screenings seem to bring out the whoops and hollers.) News of a super-tragic death suddenly drops like a bomb to add some gravitas (which almost made me laugh, but then I would have been the only one in the theater laughing).

Maybe audiences eat up the slight melodrama and schmaltzy moments because it's actually something new for them (although it harkens back to "old movies"). We don't see/hear any of these tender things in movies any more, and I think we're starved for it! Another incredible feat Sparks has accomplished is that women AND men like his love stories and they watch them together--just like the "old days."

___________
We do a lot of skits in the convent. One was "I'm Only Human!" about all the excuses we could make for ourselves. Ha ha ha.

MY 10-MINUTE INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS SPARKS (COURTESY OF GRACE HILL MEDIA):

Q: You seem to be single-handedly saving the love story genre. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET???

A: There's really no secret. I write stories for myself, for my readers. Something everyone will enjoy. I try to always write something better than anything I've ever done.

Q: Why do you think even TEEN BOYS like your movies?

A: Because they're GOOD STORIES! They can relate to them. It's their own experiences, which makes the story feel more real. Or at least you'll know someone like that. Or some girl like that. And I let them know what that girl is thinking!

Q: Why did you choose the romance genre to write in?

A: I write love stories, not romances. They can be kind of sad subjects. My first novel was "The Notebook," which was inspired by my wife's grandparents. It did so well that I figured: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, keep going.

Q: What's your creative process? Where do you get all your ideas? You seem to have so many!

A: Well, I do have a lot of ideas, but most of them are bad! Ha ha. I get 10,000 ideas and have to discard most of them. Some sequences of ideas just feel right. Yes, sequences of ideas. I'm always thinking of my next story. It needs to feel fresh. It takes me four to five months to write a story, then one month to edit it. I keep asking myself about the characters: Is she 17 or 30? What difference would that make?

Q: So the characters don't come to you fully formed?

A: No. I keep working with them. Sometimes I know one or two things about them that I know is intuitively correct, but the rest comes later. Like I didn't know right away that Ronnie reads Tolstoy.

Q: What are your inspirations as a writer?

A: I read a lot: novels, non-fiction. My family is also my inspiration.

Q: I know that some fiction authors don't read fiction while they're writing fiction….

A: Oh, no! Not me! I could never do that. I love to read. Reading is my passion. I read all the time.

Q: How does faith inform your writing if at all? [Sparks is Catholic]

A: A lot. When you're writing a love story, the characters can't be together. You have to find a reason to keep them apart. The easiest reason is that one character is married, and I'll never write adultery in (or profanity). I put in explicit faith if it's integral to the story, like in "A Walk to Remember."

Q: But you do put in pre-marital sex, like in "Dear John." Why?

A: Because nobody's perfect. I won't put in sex between teens, though. Only when they're older.

Q: You make writing sound so simple! But it's hard to write simple.

A: Thank you. That's sweet.

MOVIES: “LETTERS TO GOD”

"Letters to God" is based on the true story of a little boy with cancer who wrote letters to God that he would then hand to the postman. And you think you have dilemmas at YOUR job. LTG is directed by none other than David Nixon, the director of "Fireproof" and "Facing the Giants." All we need to do is clone Mr. Nixon so that he can make lots and lots more movies.

LTG is a bright story of a child's faith that is more grown up than everyone else's around him. Although dealing with sickness and death, this is a real "feel good" movie for the whole family. For cynics who may think (with regard to faith): "Nobody thinks or talks that way"—think again. Millions of Christians think and talk this way. Tyler Doherty (the effervescent Tanner Maguire) is a mischievous, soccer-playing kid who just happens to be bald due to his chemotherapy. His best friend is a spunky tomboy , Sam (the equally ebullient Bailee Madison), who defends Tyler from teasing at school. But Tyler's not worried about being teased. The only thing Tyler is worried about is forgiving, being like Jesus, and trying to help others get to know God. It's all so obvious to Tyler, but not to his Mom, his older brother or his classmates, and certainly not to his troubled postman, Brady McDaniels (Jeffrey S. S. Johnson).

Brady is a divorced veteran with a dark secret and a drinking problem. (Kudos to Christian filmmakers for showing a bottle of Jack Daniels in context! Showing tragic behavior AS tragedy is not condoning. That sounds simple, but Christian filmmakers tend to shy away from portraying "bad stuff.")

When I first heard about "Letters to God," I thought: what a fantastic concept! Why didn't someone think of this before? Forget the letters to the man in the red suit! How about letters to the Man in the crimson suit of His own blood who brings us the best gifts of all? OK, that's a little florid, but I just got so enthusiastic about the premise of this film. And then I found out that the film was based on a true story of an actual little boy who thought this all up.

The best part of LTG (besides it being WELL-LIT—many thanks to the key grip or best boy or gaffer or whoever is responsible—and filmed in what looks like glorious TECHNICOLOR) is that it teaches us how to pray without being pedantic in the least. Grandma just naturally holds hands with her grandson and prays when there's a need. People bust out in short prayers whenever and wherever appropriate. Again, if anyone thinks that millions of people DON'T do this on a regular basis, maybe they need to get out more. Mingle more.

QUASI-SPOILER ALERT: Tyler gets almost his whole town writing "letters to God." He shows them how easy it is to pray. Yay! We get to hear not just all the townspeople's different prayers, but the unique voices and styles that people pray in—because everyone IS a unique individual with a unique relationship with God. (You can write your own letter to God at the movie's website: http://www.letterstogodthemovie.com/ under the tab: "Share the Hope"!)

The pace of the movie is definitely Southern. Mayberry slow. Deal with it. LTG never dips down into the dregs of the pain, loss, horror, or chaos of terminal illness, but I daresay not everyone experiences terminal illness the same way, either, and some may be little chosen "warriors" like Tyler. Tyler is a wonderful new kind of film hero. One who never loses faith, hope or love (when he has every excuse to). In fact, he defends God, faith, hope and love to everyone around him as he tries to get them to "ut cognoscant Te" ("to know Thee" is eternal life--see John 17:3).

The theme of community is strong in LTG. Together we "bear one another's burdens" and sorrows become lighter. Those characters that isolate themselves suffer most.

Tyler knew that we come from God and are going back to God, and that life—no matter how many years we are granted—is short.
Tyler knew where he was going. Do we?

OTHER STUFF:

--When I first heard the film title: "Letters to God," it reminded me of a great song by the father of Christian Rock, Larry Norman (1947-2008), called "Note from Mr. God." Here's a music video a college student created to go with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0qDL3ibbg

--Our Evangelical brothers and sisters keep it refreshingly simple.

--Awkward, intrusive use of CCM (Contemporary Christian Music).

--Is LTG too pollyanna? No, barring a few hokey moments. It doesn't shy away from people's generalized anger at God or from life's Big Questions, and doesn't answer them with easy (and often ghastly) "God's will" answers.

--Awesome film campaign: FB, texting, YouTube, Twitter….

--Best use of eyebrows in a film.

--Film's tagline: "Hope is contagious."

--A word about lighting on TV and in films. I am sooooo sick of murky. Sometimes I have to turn all the lights off in the room to kill the glare on my (old) TV screen, and I still can't make out what's going on in that back alley or office or hospital room or courtroom or whatever (cop/lawyer/doctor TV shows are the worst offenders). And God help you if it's a dark, RAINY night. The murk will then be SHINY and indecipherable. Splurge on some lightbulbs, people!

--Jesus knows we get discouraged: "Pray always and never lose heart," Luke 18:1. There's a fantastic book of Blessed James Alberione's called "Pray Always" which is out of print but I'm sure can be procured on Ebay for one of your kidneys. For some reason, out-of-print religious books sell for megabucks.

--How do you spell relief? P-R-A-Y-E-R

--I always tell teens: "Anything that makes prayer sound complicated is not of God. Anything that makes you not want to pray is not of God. Guess who doesn't want us to pray?"

THEOLOGY OF THE BODY: FOR TEENS PART 2

THEOLOGY OF THE BODY – MARCH 12, 2010 – PATRICK REIDY FILLING IN FOR FR. LOYA
"THEOLOGY OF THE BODY FOR TEENS"
Pat teaches moral theology & TOB at Northridge Prep (all boys Catholic Opus Dei high school).

[Sr. Helena's dreck in brackets.]

How do good Catholic teens answer why it's wrong to have sex before marriage (before they learn TOB)? (Pat makes it real: "What do you tell your buddy at a party when he's ready to go upstairs with his girlfriend?") The students usually say: "It a mortal sin." (And after a little theology/philosophy: "It's INTRINSICALLY evil." They love that.) Then Pat says: do you really think that will stop your friend?

HERE'S A STUDENT'S ANSWER "AFTER" THEOLOGY OF THE BODY:

SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE? (ONE STUDENT'S "WHY NOT")
1. It's always using someone.
2. You're not giving a total gift and the language of the body (sex) says: "forever."
3. It's adultery in advance. (You are being unfaithful to your future wife/husband.)
4. It's re-gifting yourself.
5. We're supposed to be mirroring the "forever" love of the Trinity in our one flesh union, but in pre-marital sex we're sending a message of defiance to God. How does that feel?

It can be a lot of FUN with teens, actually, when you do apologetics with them and let them come up with their own ways of explaining TOB to their peers.

Youth need STRUCTURE. So even if you can digest JP2G's TOB, you need to break it down for teens into easily memorizable soundbites (that they can feel confident using with others).

We need to convince teens that the Catholic Church has something they are missing and need.

We don't challenge teens enough. We really lower the bar. They want the "ethos"—we need to show them the big picture (in a way their not-fully formed brains can handle).

MOVIE: "PATRIOT"—SCENE OF MEL GIBSON'S CHARACTER'S YOUNG SONGS SHOOTING BRITISH OFFICERS IN ORDER TO FREE THEIR OLDER BROTHER

What enabled those young boys to do what they did?
--training, instruction: REPETITIVE SLOGAN THEY COULD SAY TO THEMSELVES IN THE MIDST OF BATTLE:
"aim small, miss small"
--love for their brother
--confidence in their father

We're in a cultural war, a spiritual battle. "Steady…" You can do this…

ETHOS:

E—EXPERTS: we have to consider ourselves experts and make ourselves experts in this area (TOB). When adults get into TOB, they realize their own woundedness, and that's good! We can grow, too! We have DA COACH: VJP2G
T—TREAT them as LEADERS. Let teens know that we believe in them and want them to advance and be even better than us! Isn't that what good parents, do? Let them know that their friends/peers need them. Teens need to hear adults say: "I believe in you."
H—HANDLE HOT BUTTON ISSUES. Go there. We are not shadowboxing. In "Patriot," Mel Gibson's kids knew what they were doing. HEAR THEM OUT. Young people have a lot to say.
O-- ORIENT THEM TO CHRIST AND THE CHURCH. They HAVE to see the relevance of the Christ and the Church. Where can they go for answers in this crazy, mixed-up world? God came to re-integrate the spiritual and physical.
S—SHOWTIME: Using movies for TOB: the world is NOT that far off in the sense that we are all desiring the same good things…. Show teens how they can find TOB in the pop culture! Let THEM be creative.

Men are called to be warriors, defenders, lovers (not players), priest-father. (4 archetypes: men are more simple)

4 Original Archetypes of Man:

1. King
   



2. Warrior
   



3. Lover
   



4. Priest-Father
   
   
   

Women are:
(12 original mysteries of women: women are more complex)

1. God's Masterpiece
   



2. Model of the Human Race
   



3. Garden Enclosed
   



4. Fountain Sealed
   



5. Master of her own mystery
   



6. Genius (in her receptivity)
   



7. Creator of Culture
   



8. The First Evangelist
   



9. Icon of the Church
   



10. Icon of Heaven
    



11. Daughter, Sister, Bride, Mother
    



12. Sum total of all beauty
    

In short, the one who is loved.

Where you have a contraceptive mentality (more about women) you have a pornographic mentality (more about men).

PORN gives you a template to see all of the world:

Porn D-E-S-T-R-O-Y-S:

D- Acts lie a DRUG

E- Escalatory

S- Stealth/ Sneaks up on you

T- creates a new TEMPLATE

R- Replaces Reality

O- One-sided

Y- Stikes YOUTH

S- Seductive

TOP 3 QUESTIONS TEENS ASK ABOUT SEX:

1. How far is too far? (You start by telling them the question itself is wrong, but then you can get more explicit with them.) Teens are black and white, they really want to know, BUT we have to start leading them toward the ethos and not asking: "How close can I get to sin?"
   
2. Is oral sex sex? Is it wrong? (also "grinding"—dancing while rubbing body parts together, sometimes in a group) It's not sexual intercourse, [but it's mutual masturbation, it's sexual activity], so we as Americans like to compartmentalize. We live on the BELL CURVE. All of life is rhythm: agriculture, a novel /film(rising action, climax, denouement, etc.), the liturgical cycle. Sex is a "movement," a symphony, so you are doing "foreplay." You are pulling it out of its context, like going to the Tabernacle and just helping yourself to the Eucharist because you don't want to go to Mass. Don't we ask the same question about Mass? At what point am I technically late for Mass? (Pat doesn't tell them "it's sex," he just keeps talking about the context.)
   
3. What about homosexuality?

VIRGINITY needs to be looked at through new eyes! It's sexual integrity. Integration of body and soul. What is sexual integrity? You have the capacity to give yourself totally to another (when the time comes). ["I adjure you, do not stir up love before its time." –Song of Songs 3:5 (the most erotic book of the Bible telling us to wait!)]

4 promises of marriage vows: total, faithful, fruitful, free

No longer a virgin? God can RE-CAPACITATE you to have the CAPACITY to make a total gift of yourself! ["See, I make all things new!" Revelation 21:5]

Teens are BOMBARDED with the SECULAR ethos constantly so we have to REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT, DRILL, DRILL, DRILL.

Married couples don't "LOSE" their virginity (sexual integrity), they share it with each other.

Q: What does Pat tell teens about masturbation? (Once you give the TOB ethos/principles, tens can apply it themselves! One teen answered: "It's half flesh union." Instead of the "one flesh" union.)

Teens love: LANGUAGE OF THE BODY, THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE ISN'T HATE IT'S USE, GIFT OF SELF, TABERNACLE (guys love the concept that a woman's body is a living tabernacle—no man is really ever worthy to consecrate the Host OR to approach a woman). A man even genuflects when he proposes!

Give them assignments: Girls, dress like tabernacles! Guys, when you see a woman think: "Tabernacle"! [Not "hot." Dave Den Braber, former free agent with the Dallas Cowboys, now a Catholic youth speaker tells guys to stop using that term because it's a porn term.]

There are very few "stories": boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy fights for girl, boy gets girl. It's like the Mass, the Jesus story.

SCENE FROM "GROUNDHOG DAY" WHERE BILL MURRAY'S CHARACTER IS TRYING TO SEDUCE THE GIRL HE LIKES. HE LEARNS ALL ABOUT HER SUPERFICIALLY AND SAYS THAT HE "KNOWS" HER. BUT SHE DOESN'T BUY IT.

Pat assigns his seniors to write "TOB personals"!! Our teens are capable of A LOT!!

HERE IS ONE OF THE PERSONALS FROM HIS STUDENTS:

"CATHOLIC, VIRGINAL MAN LOOKING FOR TOB-LOVING WOMAN! INTERESTED?

--LOOKING TO MEET GOD'S MASTERPIECE
--RESPECTFUL OF WOMAN'S DIGNITY—THE "ONE TO BE LOVED"
--HANDSOME AND PRO-FEMININE GENIUS
--DESIRING TO LOVE FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS"

[PAT NEEDS TO WRITE A BOOK!!!]

PAT'S TOB FOR TEENS BOOK LIST:

1. GOD'S PLAN FOR YOU DAVID HADJUK (TEXT BOOK)
2. PURE LOVE, PURE WOMANHOOD, PURE MANHOOD (SMALL BOOKS) BY JASON AND CRYSTALINA EVERT
3. REAL LOVE BY MARYBETH BONACCI (LOTS OF Q AND A ABOUT NITTY GRITTYS)
4. TOB FOR TEENS BY BRIAN BUTLER (TEXT BOOK)
5. TOB FOR BEGINNERS BY CHRISTOPHER WEST (HEAVIER)
6. BODY AND GIFT , PURITY OF HEAR, BY SAM TORODE

PAT'S TOB MOVIES:

1. SPIDERMAN SERIES (MANY SUPERHEROES ARE CELIBATE!)
2. BATMAN BEGINS (ALL ASPECTS OF MASCULINITY, FALLEN AND REDEEMED)
3. I AM LEGEND
4. GRAN TORINO (R)
5. CINDERELLA MAN (LIKE ROCKY)
6. GLADIATOR (R)
7. BRAVEHEART (R)
8. TRUMAN SHOW
9. MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (GUYS STILL LIKE IT, EVEN THO' OLDER WESTERN)
10. ROCKY #1 AND ROCKY BALBOA #6 (ROCKY CAN'T DO WHAT HE HAS TO DO WITHOUT HIS GIRL)

    [SR. HELENA WOULD ADD: "A BRONX TALE" (R) ABOUT TRUE MANHOOD & FATHERHOOD)]
    

MEDIA LITERACY LESSONS FOR K-8!!!

Fantastic new book by Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP!
Can be used for CCD, homeschool, Catholic school, extra credit, summer camp, afterschool, Brownies, Girl Guides, you-name-it! Each lesson is stand alone and integrates the Catholic Faith!

MOVIES: “DIARY OF A WIMPY KID”

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is the best movie of 2010! Hands down. It's what we call in the biz "a perfect movie," because everything about it is sterling: the acting, the story, the dialogue, the soundtrack, the pacing, the humor, the editing, etc. Everything clicks. And pops.

Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) is going to Middle School for the first time, and is trying to navigate and negotiate the labyrinthine, unspoken rules of popularity, coolness, behavior, traditions, rituals, etc. But mostly popularity. Greg is an overly-articulate little operator who desperately wants to be popular and is constantly scheming new ways to get to the top. He is even willing to sell out his decidedly uncool best friend, Rowley (Robert Capron). There are many layers to a tween's life, and Greg's include: a sadistic older brother, baggage from kindergarten (yes, kindergarten), where to sit in the cafeteria, bullies, girls, sports, growth spurts (or lack of them), and general pre-teen angst.

Greg is a keen observer of his own life, and journals and doodles it all. He is precociously civilized, dignified and refined for his age. But he's hell-bent on using his gifts (rather unsuccessfully) only for his own advancement. The moral of DOWK? Ambition and temptations to compromise on what's right start young. Greg is off to a bad start for most of the movie. Greg's only hope for salvation is learning the meaning of true friendship.

DOWK avoids all kinds of movie-making tropes, and is a surprisingly fresh and profound take on young people's development of character. There is no snarkiness or smart-aleckiness. Just kids as kids trying to survive and make their way in life, getting involved in downright hilarious, yet not too impossible, adventures. DOWK is non-stop entertainment—including adolescent boy gross-out humor—but it's never quick and cheap: it's all expertly folded in to a fully-fleshed out story. Every scene deftly advances character and plot. DOWK could be a model for how movies are supposed to be made, without being textbook, formulaic or trite. We don't see what's coming next (unless, perhaps, you've read the books, which I haven't). The props, sets and scenery are jam-packed with delightful sights. Visually, DOWK reminded me a bit of the kid-favorite movie "Matilda," especially the schoolyard scenes.

A wimpy kid exorcising his demons by writing about his own wimpy life and thus becoming a star is just a great underdog concept. I've always thought that growing up is harder for boys than for girls, what with all that stress on being macho and tough. Greg is a small for his age and it seems his only defense is to live by his wits. But Greg is often too clever for his own good. Even dorky kids are eventually liked for persistently and genuinely being themselves. Greg's grandiose ideas of himself and his future need to be tempered by the things that really matter in life. Can we adults learn from a wimpy kid's diary? You bet.

OTHER STUFF:
--My favorite movie of 2009 was "Gran Torino," but even IT was not a "perfect movie"!

--ALL the many families in my theater stayed through the credits (a great rarity in Chicago).

--On the way out of the theater, the Mom of a family with three young boys said: "They [the boys] said this is the best movie they've ever seen. And it was just like the book."

--Great TOB scene involving the older brother: Mom confronts him with a sports magazine found his room with a scantily-clad woman on the cover.

--The slacker older brother is very funny.

--The kid actors have great comedic timing. This is truly one of the funniest comedies I've ever seen. VERY creative. Why aren't there more movies like this?

--Something like "Malcolm in the Middle," but way better.

--The filmmakers really remember what it was like to be in Middle School.

--Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I should NOT have stifled my laughter in the theater!!! This movie was very, very, deep-down, belly-laugh funny.

--Stellar transitions and cuts. The movie NEVER bogs down or loses your interest.

--The adult and kid actors in DOWK do not have perfect looks! Braces galore! All kinds of imperfections!

--Greg can't catch a break and just digs himself in deeper and deeper (like Jennifer Aniston's character in "The Good Girl.") This is great drama. "Oh, what an evil web we weave…."

--There are too many funny predicaments to count: The safety guards with the kindergartners! Drawing the three teenagers' ire by scratching their red pickup truck! THE CHEESE! Ha ha ha. -

--Your tween vocabulary word from movie: "tool." Look it up in http://www.urbandictionary.com/

--Michael Phillips—The Chicago Tribune's movie reviewer—gave DOWK only 1 ½ stars. He was sooooo wrong.

--As Goldilocks would say, this movie is JUST RIGHT.

MOVIES: “JOSEPH OF NAZARETH”

Finally! St. Joseph has his own movie! "Joseph of Nazareth" on DVD, distributed by Ignatius Press. How is it? Not bad. Italy has been producing some ambitious full-length feature-film saint movies of late ("St. Maria Goretti, "Fr. Gnocchi"—quickly changed to "Father of Mercy," "St. Anthony," "Blessed John XXIII," etc.).

Joseph (Tobias Moretti, who looks a bit like Charles Bronson) is a strong, hard-working man of peace, but he's also a man of justice and his temper flairs when provoked by injustice. (He is not beyond grabbing someone's burlap tunic or smashing a clay pot or two. No milquetoast, this Joseph.) One thing that struck me funny is that Joseph is rather, well, talkative! (As is well known, Joseph has absolutely NO lines in the Scriptures. Not even "Yes, Lord." And I've always loved this because he doesn't need them. He was a man of action and obedience.)

Joseph has a lovely British accent, as do most of the other actors. If you liked "Jesus of Nazareth," you'll like "Joseph of Nazareth." It's a full-blown Bible movie of the grandiose sort we are now well-used to: sweeping, symphonic, Middle-Eastern-y soundtrack; elaborate costuming; elaborate scenery and props—sandy terrain, goats, humble huts, the Temple, evil kings and good kings, camels, Roman soldiers.

I was picking the film apart for Scriptural and theological errors as I watched, but it seems to pass muster in the main. (Ignatius Press is very choosy about the movies they carry and are pretty unimpeachable in their choices.) Each DVD case contains a 10-page booklet which includes an article by apologist Carl Olson on Joseph in Scripture. "BetaFilms," who produced "Joseph," were definitely trying to get it right, without being slavish about literally reproducing a verbatim rendition of Bible accounts. There are some clever plot points and reveals that will delight those knowledgeable about Scripture.*

The much-talked-about Joseph in the movie "The Nativity Story," who almost seemed to steal the movie from the Blessed Mother, is a younger, more carefree man than this Joseph who keeps stressing that he's older than Mary (for the census in Bethlehem he says he is 37). This Joseph agonizes over what to do with the suddenly pregnant Mary. He must physically protect her and Baby Jesus as they flee from Herod into Egypt in some tense scenes. He has a backstory with the treacherous Herod.

This Joseph knows who he is. He gradually comes to understand his role as the true earthly father of Jesus (heartily acknowledged by Jesus and Mary). But this Joseph was always a good man, which prepared him for the momentous part he would play in the drama of salvation history. He always trusted God's promises, God's unquestionable ways, while others around him lost faith or railed against God. Actor Moretti has incredibly large, luminous eyes that convey Joseph's inner life of prayer and an ability to imagine the unimaginable as it's unfolding. Joseph's God just gets bigger and bigger.

What about Mary? She is very pretty. Not beautiful. Pretty. Very pretty. She doesn't seem to age, either (a result of original sin). In "Joseph of Nazareth," SHE is the silent one! She doesn't say much, (the Magnificat at Elizabeth's house is reduced to one sentence), she seems to worry a bit which makes her appear vulnerable and truly in need of Joseph! She seems a little clueless now and again. Mary's pregnancy is handled rather awkwardly. At a certain point she says to Joseph: "It's not what you think" (after he ascertained she wasn't unfaithful or forced). I almost laughed. Poor Joseph! Um, what else could it be?? There could have been LESS fictional intrigue and exposition, and MORE non-fictional historical-theological exposition which is even more exciting! It's not clear exactly where Mary's baby came from. Suddenly, she is the pregnant "Mother of the Messiah." St. Anne and Joseph look a bit gullible in this scene by just accepting Mary's word about a "voice." The phrase: "The Holy Spirit will overshadow you" is left out. Every single syllable of the Annunciation dialogue is important, and I think these immensely vital scenes could have been fashioned better. Believers will fill in the blanks, but when we watch a movie, we shouldn't have to do that--the movie should tell us everything we need to know. I also watch religious movies with a "secular eye." Will this at least make some kind of logical sense to a non-believer?

Mary's intent to be a perpetual virgin is not totally clear (she tells Joseph what she told the voice at the Annunciation: "I asked him how this could be since I'm not married yet"). This kind of changes the meaning of what Mary actually said. Mary would never have asked the angel "How can this be?" UNLESS she intended to remain a virgin even after "living with Joseph." Mary was already betrothed to Joseph (but had intended to remain a virgin, most likely with Joseph's knowledge/agreement, or with his knowledge/agreement forthcoming) and it would have been the most natural thing in the world for her to become pregnant by Joseph soon enough IF she wasn't planning to remain a virgin. (The angel didn't tell Mary exactly WHEN she would become pregnant.)

There is some pain in her childbirth, but then a sudden (miraculous?) birth. The pain depicted in Mary's childbirth in "The Nativity Story" caused some Catholics to boycott/badmouth the film. It is true that pain in childbirth is a result of original sin (which Mary was free of), but God told Eve: "your pain in childbirth will INCREASE," suggesting that there was some kind of at least discomfort in childbirth before original sin. As C. S. Lewis writes in "The Problem of Pain," not all pain is a bad thing, and he gives the example that after running for the sake of exercise, our muscles ache in a good way. See Paul Haffner's excellent book: "The Mystery of Mary," for what the Fathers of the Church teach on this.

Mary dances for the Lord a little in the beginning. Very sweet. There is genuine affection and admiration between Joseph and Mary, a natural, chaste, tactile interaction between them. It's just wonderful watching the interchange of the Holy Family, the most chosen among the Chosen People! They reason things out together with God's reasoning.

"Joseph" is a great film to show the concept of vocation: people knowing who they are and what God is calling them to be and do, and then following it unreservedly, even when things are difficult and unclear. Even the twelve-year-old Jesus is fully struck--in His humanity—by His mission as He enters the Temple for the first time and knows He is home. (I love that He is upset by the moneychangers NOT because it was commerce in the Temple, but, as He says: "How can anyone PRAY with all this noise?" The moneychangers that the older Jesus gets angry with were selling in the Court of the Gentiles, where non-Jews could go to pray. That's why Jesus says in His anger at that moment: "My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples!"

The lack of using angels in films (I like angels! I wanna see their beautiful wings, or at very least their human form!) almost obfuscates what God is doing. There are no angels for the Annunciation, Joseph's dream, and not even, for pity's sake, the Christmas angels! There's just a really strong sun, a voice, and a really bright star. Soooo people are just acting on the direct voice of God in their heads. But that's NOT what the Scriptures say. There's a reason God uses intermediaries, witnesses as it were. Messengers who speak God's word out loud. It makes Mary and Joseph sound "less crazy" to an unbeliever. Bring back the angels! Away with the blobby lights!

I like almost all the "Life of Christ" movies. Each one has something to offer and some great parts. But none fully satisfies. That's how I feel about "Joseph of Nazareth." But there's some parts that you're really, really, really going to love.* Joseph, the virginal father of Jesus (not "foster father"), who LITERALLY—more than any other man with his child—was called to take the earthly place of God the Father, is the greatest saint in heaven. And this movie is a swell attempt to give him his due.
_______________
*I'll never tell which ones. Watch it!

OTHER STUFF:

--The Magi are from Persia! Correct! Yay!

--Joseph uses the Magi's gifts to get to Egypt! Yay!

--The shepherds give gifts, too! I never thought of that! What do they give? Why, a LAMB of course! (And remember, Jesus ended animal sacrifice!)

--Why does Joseph force Mary to go to the census? Because he's a "just man"? Do you think Jesus ever got counted in the census? Are censuses evil? Remember David regretting having his people counted? There's some talk in the movie about "only God can count his people."

--Big emphasis on us being God's "servants."

--Actors are not cardboard! Lots of fluidity and emotions!

--Methinks there were better means of communication back in the day than portrayed in the film. Merchants, pilgrims, etc., were constantly travelling around the ancient world…. And word of mouth is still effective. Even today!

--I wish they had called "Jesus" "Yeshua." Woulda sounded more authentic-like.

ART: HI BROW VS. LOW BROW?

FOR STORY WITH PICS: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/arts/design/07lowbrow.html?scp=1&sq=%22sacred%20object%22&st=cse

March 7, 2010

Street Art That’s Finding a New Address

By JOHN STRAUSBAUGH

FOR the current fifth-anniversary exhibition at his New York gallery Jonathan LeVine has filled it with works by 35 artists, most of whom he represents. The space is in Chelsea, but there’s no cerebral conceptualism, cool abstraction or painterly gesture on view.

Instead this work, variously labeled Lowbrow Art, Pop Surrealism and perhaps most accurately Pop Pluralism, is the skateboarding, graffiti-tagging, sometimes bratty and rebellious younger sibling of the art shown in most of the neighborhood’s locations. Still, the art in the Jonathan LeVine Gallery seems at home in Chelsea in a way it did not five years ago. After years on the fringes of the art world, “we’ve come to a turning point,” Mr. LeVine said recently. “The mainstream is embracing this work.”

Many artists in the show, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, were schooled in fine art. But their hearts and minds belong to punk rock and hip-hop, “Star Wars” and “Star Trek,” cartoons and tattoos. Their work is typically figurative and often narrative, in a populist, accessible vein. Giant robots stride across Jeff Soto’s spray-painted landscapes. Scott Musgrove’s six-foot bronze statue depicts a cartoonish imaginary creature. Kathy Staico Schorr’s paintings strand Halloween witches, clowns and Popeye in menacing Surrealist settings. The mosaics of Invader, who took his name from Atari’s Space Invaders game, recreate his favorite album-cover art with tiles from deconstructed Rubik’s Cubes.

Unlike Pop Art, which drew on similar sources to comment on art and culture, “for this generation, who grew up on TV, pop-culture imagery is their language,” Mr. LeVine said. “Their culture is pop culture.”
The art establishment was slow to warm to these artists, and vice versa. In the 1980s and ’90s they created their own scene, more youth culture than high art. They illegally postered and painted city walls or hung their work in hip, funky spaces like Psychedelic Solution, a storefront gallery on West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village, and La Luz de Jesus, above a pop merchandise shop on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. The first shows Mr. LeVine organized in the mid-’90s were in clubs and bars like CBGB and Max Fish in Manhattan and Maxwell’s in Hoboken, N.J. The movement even had (and still has) a magazine of its own, Juxtapoz, founded in 1994.

But in the last decade the genre gradually found more acceptance in the art world. Influential dealers like Jeffrey Deitch, Tony Shafrazi and Earl McGrath now represent some of the artists, and institutions from the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney to Fondation Cartier in Paris show their work. Corporate marketers, meanwhile, line up to enlist them in their branding efforts.

Despite such successes, though, the artists still tend to speak in anti-elitist terms about their work. “This movement, whatever it’s called, is very blue collar in a way,” said Mr. Soto, 35, who grew up in Orange County in California, majored in illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and supplements his fine-art income by illustrating magazine covers, rock posters and advertisements.
The artists who first inspired him “were designing the skateboards I looked at in the mid to late ’80s,” he said, “just guys working for studios trying to make cool images.” He sees the appeal of his own art and other work represented in the LeVine show as largely a matter of how easily it can be grasped: “People who like fine art can get into it, but also people who don’t know anything about high art, because it tells a story and it’s interesting to look at.” Adam Wallacavage, a Philadelphia photographer and sculptor who created the humorous octopus-armed chandelier that hangs in the show, echoed Mr. Soto. “I don’t like making things that are inaccessible,” he said. He made his first chandelier for his own dining room a decade ago and said he likes that some its descendants now hang in nonart spaces like the clothing shops Mishka in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and RVCA in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, “where anybody can see them.”

“The typical gallery scene is too egotistical and creepy for me,” Mr. Wallacavage, 40, added. “Art is treated like a sacred object. Openings are like weird religious services where the artist is a messiah. Ew. No, you’re not.”
The genre’s roots reach back to the West Coast of the 1960s, where Robert Williams, now its elder statesman at 67, created hot rod illustrations, psychedelic rock posters and underground comics. That background in demotic, countercultural imagery remains evident in his trippy paintings of crashing hot rods and miniskirted vixens in psychedelic landscapes, which he began describing as Lowbrow Art in the late 1970s. The term celebrated what he calls the work’s “devil-may-care vulgarity” and its contrast to the “snobby, blobby, gobby stuff” of much high art at the time. It came to be applied to artists and illustrators of a similar aesthetic, including Robert Crumb, Gary Panter, Ron English and Josh Agle (who signs his work Shag).
But as the genre was passed down to a generation that draws from a wider spectrum of pop iconography, the Lowbrow label has largely fallen out of use. “It’s too limiting,” Mr. LeVine said. “The work is far too diverse now.”
Several artists in his show began as artists. Shepard Fairey, for example, combined his training at the Rhode Island School of Design with his experiences in the graffiti and skateboard cultures to create a widely seen series of stickers and posters in the early 1990s. One of the most ubiquitous pictured the wrestler Andre the Giant above the legend “Obey” — a reference to the sci-fi film “They Live.” During the 2008 presidential campaign this design morphed into Mr. Fairey’s famous image of Barack Obama over the word “Hope,” now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. (The Obama poster is also the subject of a lawsuit brought against Mr. Fairey by The Associated Press because, the suit claims, he based it without permission on an A.P. photograph.)

Mr. Fairey, 40, now has a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and last year he had one at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, where he was arrested, on his way to an opening event for the show, on outstanding warrants in connection with graffiti. In May he is scheduled to be the last artist shown at Deitch Projects, the prominent SoHo gallery.
Mr. Deitch, its proprietor, who is moving to Los Angeles to become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art there, also represents the street artists Barry McGee and Swoon (who is now in the permanent collection of the MoMA) and mounted a group show of skateboard art, complete with a replica skating bowl, in 2002. He said he sees this work as extending a legacy that goes back through Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Andy Warhol.

“The people in the more establishment side of the art world are just beginning to get it,” he said. “They still have no idea how huge street art is.”

Eddy Desplanques, who calls himself W K and signs his work with a fingerprint, began as a street artist in France; he is one of three French artists in the LeVine show, along with Invader and Blek le Rat. He moved to New York in the early 1990s and soon, working late at night, was painting stark black-and-white figures on walls all over Lower Manhattan. “It was totally illegal, very not appropriate,” Mr. Desplanques recalled. But it also earned him instant notoriety, and within a couple of years, he said, “all these brands started contacting me and other street artists because we were trendy, and they wanted to be part of what was going on.” He has created murals, window displays and other public works for Nike, Adidas, Commes des Garçons and other clients.

“At first some other artists picked on me and said I sold out,” he said. “Then everybody did it.”
Mr. Desplanques, 41, said he began showing in galleries about a decade ago, “but the art for me was on the street. I didn’t really want to go to the gallery because it was too much a certain type of people, and not enough people.” Today, besides Mr. LeVine’s gallery, he shows in galleries in London and Paris and said his work sells for $10,000 to around $50,000.
He still puts work up on city walls too and said he was recently caught by the police as he postered a wall in Chinatown at 3 a.m. “I got lucky. The cops knew my work.” They still confiscated the posters, he added.

Even Mr. Williams, the godfather of Lowbrow, is not quite the consummate outsider his reputation suggests. Tony Shafrazi Gallery has shown his work since 1990; he just had a show there last fall. (A review by Ken Johnson in The New York Times called him an “uncommonly inventive, albeit often puerile image maker.”) And he has six watercolors in the current Whitney Biennial.
“Robert’s always had a huge following, but it was outside the art world,” Mr. Shafrazi said. “He never got the recognition he deserved. Curators have always been reluctant to deal with the subversive. Now the time seems right for him. He’s still not as celebrated as Jeff Koons or whoever, but it’s happening.”

Mr. LeVine came to the movement the same way his artists did. He grew up in Trenton and earned a degree in sculpture, but he was less attracted to fine art than he was to underground comics, punk and hip-hop, “anything subculture and edgy.” With a loan from his parents, he opened his first small art gallery in New Hope, Pa., in 2001. After two years he moved the gallery into Philadelphia, and two years later, in 2005, “I spent every dime I had to move to Chelsea. I wanted to try to take it to the next level I felt it deserved.”

Mr. LeVine, who is 41, said his typical collector is between 35 and 45, “my generation, people who grew up on television and collect popular-culture imagery that resonates with them.”
Madonna, Marilyn Manson and the Nike chief executive, Mark Parker, have bought work from him, he said, adding that “my bread and butter is doctors, lawyers, real estate people, a pretty cool bunch who maybe have a little more money to spend than the average person.”
Back to Top Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

MUSIC: JAZZ & PRIESTHOOD GO TOGETHER!

March 14, 2010

On Sunday morning, Father John Moulder slipped into his red and white vestments and sermonized to the congregants at St. Gregory the Great Church, on North Paulina Avenue.
On Monday evening, jazz musician John Moulder strapped on his electric guitar and unleashed torrents of sound at the Jazz Showcase, on South Plymouth Court.

At first glance, the two identities might seem opposed — a man of the cloth igniting some of the most incendiary jazz music to be heard on Chicago's stages. Aren't religious leaders supposed to be above this sort of thing?

Not really, according to Moulder, who believes his callings as priest and jazz musician originate from the same source. He has made this point eloquently in the last two decades, emerging as one of Chicago's most admired jazz artists, as well as a spiritual figure to uncounted parishioners.
Come Tuesday, Moulder will dramatically underscore his belief in the power of jazz to express the divine. For on that night he'll launch the first Chi-Town Jazz Festival, a geographically sprawling event he invented, persuading Chicago-area jazz musicians and club owners to donate their services to feed the hungry. Proceeds from the festival — which Moulder hopes will raise $15,000 to $20,000 — will go to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Greater Chicago Food Depository and the Northern Illinois Food Banks, among others.

No one can remember another Chicago jazz event of this magnitude — featuring top-flight artists — fashioned not for fame or fortune or CD sales but, rather, for the greater good.
"The festival definitely is born out of my desire to help people and my love of jazz," says Moulder, speaking in the residential quarters adjoining St. Gregory the Great Church, his guitars and discs and scores stashed all over the place.

"It's also an expression of something that I seek to live by in my faith, which is really helping people in need and realizing the dramatic increase in need that has been out there. …
"Catholic Charities has said that requests for food have gone up … and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could put something together to help."

Moulder dared to dream big. Last year he began calling Chicago's top club owners, urging each to give him the run of the club for an evening, allowing him to book the musicians and keep the gate for charity. The venue owners, to Moulder's delight, embraced the idea, as did some of Chicago's best musicians.

When word got out about Moulder's venture, institutions as formidable as Symphony Center downtown and as grass-roots as the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest asked in. Both already had ticketed jazz events lined up for the week of Moulder's festival, so they wondered if they might urge their audiences to contribute to Moulder's cause.
No problem.

In effect, a flicker of an idea last fall rapidly has become a major Chicago cultural event, at least on paper. And only one person in Chicago would have had the jazz savvy, the noble intentions and the personal credibility among musicians and club owners to launch it.

Moreover, the same impulse stands at the heart of this festival and the core of Moulder's identity — an expression of faith through religion and jazz. Never mind that jazz long has been caricatured as the music of sin and vice. Moulder and his mentors know better.

"Father John Moulder has an extraordinary musical talent and, like all people so talented, he shares his gifts through teaching and performing," writes Cardinal Francis George, in an e-mail.
"Since who he is is a Catholic priest, and sharing his musical ability means sharing who he is, the gift of his priesthood is also shared in his performances."

Jazz and faith, in other words, are inextricably intertwined in Moulder's work, a fact that becomes apparent when you listen to him play. At his best, his solos surge from one soaring climax to another, his improvised melody lines sounding at once utterly spontaneous and thoroughly inevitable. You don't have to know he's a priest to sense the spiritual undertow of this music.

"You listen to his solos, and they were meant to be," says drummer Wertico, who has collaborated with Moulder in concert, on recordings and on tour since the early 1990s.
"As a guitar player, he's totally melodic, but he's also totally fiery. He's got passion in everything he plays. …
"I think one of the reasons he wanted to become a priest was to try to help people, and that's what his playing is about. … It's like he's on the planet just to do good."
Looking back, Moulder's arrival at this juncture may seem almost preordained. The youngest of six siblings growing up in the Lake Forest/Lake Bluff area, he was smitten with music before he could talk and soon wanted to play a piano, says his mother, Echo Moulder.
But with the boy's parents divorced, there wasn't enough money for a piano, so the nascent musician turned to guitar briefly at age 8, then again at 10. "He was always creating his own compositions, from I can't remember how young," says Echo Moulder.

By eighth grade, young Moulder fell in love with the blues and quickly progressed to jazz, lured by its harmonic challenges and technical demands.
At the same time, though, Moulder was drawn to religion, in Catholic school and in church.
"I remember reading scripture on my own when I was younger and thinking about those types of things," says Moulder, 48. "My father was very religious. … My grandmother was an important wisdom figure for me, in terms of my own unfolding spirituality.
"I have recollections of her being one of the first people to pray with me. I would be going to bed, and she would tuck me in, and we would pray for different people who were living. I have very fond memories of that."

All the while, Moulder's musical skills deepened — so much that he didn't really feel he needed to go to music school to continue studying the art: "I could get a lot of what I needed from playing or listening to records, transcribing," he says.
Instead he majored in psychology at Southern Illinois University, playing in Carbondale bars to sharpen his musical craft.
"At that point I had the idea of bringing a couple of these worlds together: music and some kind of helping profession, either counseling or going into pastoral work," recalls Moulder.
After a brief sojourn in 1984 to Boston, where he took private guitar lessons, he returned to Chicago and enrolled in Mundelein Seminary in 1986, meanwhile plunging into Chicago's robust jazz scene. Both arenas suited him well, he says, and his dual life "just kind of kept snowballing together."

Musically, Moulder made a striking impression with his debut CD, "Awakening" (Mo-Tonal Records, 1993) and with his most explicitly sacred work "Trinity" (Origin Records, 2006). His newest recording, the profound "Bifrost" (Origin Records), was one of the best of 2009, a sure indication that Moulder continues to mature as artist and man.

"I've always felt that you participate in the life of the spirit by using the gifts that God gave us," says Moulder. "I enjoy thinking of God as a creator, and that the artist participates in that creative enterprise in their own way, and that the spirit inspires that in us. … And when I say spirit, I mean God's spirit and the human spirit kind of joined."

By all appearances, Moulder is flourishing both as pastor and musician, his Chi-Town Jazz Festival just the latest manifestation of his impact on life and culture in Chicago.
"If he had to make a choice" between religion or jazz, says his mother, "if he had to leave one or the other, I'm not sure which he would choose. The combination seems to work for him."
And us.
hreich@tribune.com
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

THEOLOGY OF THE BODY--YOU HAVE NEVER, EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS. WATCH THE WHOLE THING. YOUR JAW WILL DROP. MINE IS STILL ON THE FLOOR.

I don't usually share random videos, but this is totally unbelievable.

Half-time at Army-Navy Basketball Game
Only young people could pull this off:

MOVIES: “HURT LOCKER”

"The Hurt Locker" won big at the Oscars, a total of six awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Film Editing), making history in the process: Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win in the "Best Director" category. Did it deserve it? And what is the Academy trying to say by this sweeping bestowal of accolades?

First of all, "The Hurt Locker" is a fine movie with bold sound, "you-are-there" cinematography, and some incredible acting, not only on the part of the main character, SSG William James (Jeremy Renner, nominated for Best Actor), but also his two comrades-in-arms: Sgt. J T Sanborn (Anthony Mackie, who could have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor), and Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), the scared, stressed soldier in therapy between missions. Although the movie is placed in the buzz of war, there's really only these three characters, so when you think about it, this is a small movie in a mid-size war. It reminded me immediately of a movie about three other soldiers in the First Gulf War, "Three Kings," but without the surreality. And for all its gritty, meticulous re-creation of scenarios that have become familiar even to us back home, HL is not a strict re-enactment of anything. It is a fictional drama, a sophisticated Hollywood movie, plopped down in the midst of America's long war.

Part of Bigelow's genius and artistic vision is that she slowed down much of the action to very long, yet tense and riveting scenes that require our full attention and appreciation, and from which we cannot look away.

The story begins by cutting deep into a day in the life of a specialist detonating IEDs. He is dressed in a protective outfit that looks like something from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." He doesn't make it and is promptly replaced by SSG William James--a crack, reckless and preternaturally-gifted bomb-dismantler. (HL is not a violent explosion or gorefest as I thought it might be.)

There have been several other Iraq/Afghanistan War movies made, but none have captured our imaginations until HL. Why? Perhaps because HL doesn't seem to be saying anything "political," doesn't seem to be taking "sides." Some criticize Bigelow for not overtly condemning war with her movie, but she defends herself by saying her movie shows what war is and what it does to people on both sides. I found that she did portray the Iraqi people as real characters, and although the audience is "embedded" with our troops, we are made to feel very much that we are obviously and unavoidably in someone else's territory. There is an acknowledgment that a different people thinks and lives somewhat differently than we do. Nobody's life is "realer" than anyone else's, everybody's life is precious. No one is demonized, no one is canonized, and yet the moral framework of every situation, every decision to be made, stands tall. What doesn't stand tall is the overall question of war, and this particular war. But perhaps it is no longer politically correct, patriotic or polite to ask these questions. But maybe what is more insane than war itself is NOT asking "Why?"

James is a not a typical or orthodox soldier. But at the end of the day, he's a very good soldier, one of the best, which makes one question what it takes to be a good soldier. As has been said in other reviews, James is a creature of war. But I thought he'd be portrayed as a little crazy. But he's not. He's perfectly sane. And kind to all. After all, his job is not combat, it's protecting lives. My fear and complaint about HL is primarily a visual one. Although James is not a combatant, is he not still the image of the immortal, invulnerable American warrior? His heart in the right place in a war without end, a war with endless resources? SPOILER ALERT: No one we get to know, no one we have come to love and care about in HL gets killed.

As John Paul II says, "War is an adventure from which there is no return." Perhaps war is also a lie: a man is wired to answer the call to defend family and homeland, but the call to war takes him far away from family and country, and he deprives his wife and children of what they need most from him: his presence. Warfare and his buddies become his life, and he is often rendered incapable in mind or body (or both) to ever return to his hearth.

With all due respect to Jeremy Renner, I thought Anthony Mackie was a slightly better actor who never, ever slipped out of character for even a whisper of a nanosecond. One of the times that I felt Renner did this was probably not his fault. It was towards the end of the film when James sums up the whole theme of the movie in one exposed-like-a-wire, on-the-nose statement. If you haven't seen the movie yet...wait for it. We really didn't need that. We get it.

Was HL deserving of all this praise? Yes, although not as consistently excellent as "Precious." And what are the Tinseltown powers-that-be telling us by this choice? Hollywood—at first unsure about our present wars--has come around to a kind of unmitigated support of them. Do they feel guilty? Grateful? Or are they just saying that HL is high-quality entertainment? Can war be entertainment?

HL raises lots of questions and so do its awards.

OTHER STUFF:

--As a story, there's really not much to HL. It's more a "slice of life," "day in the life" type of experience. The characters barely have an arc (except for quick switch at the end for Sgt. Sanborn). Our main character changes not a whit. We are so caught up in the fantastic filmmaking and character study that we might fail to notice this. But maybe this stasis, this tautology, speaks loudest of all. Have we, as Americans in particular, accepted, made peace with a "permanent state of war"? Why are we not asking the big questions we asked at the beginning of the war(s)? (Like: What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? What about international law?) Are we afraid to denigrate the sacrifices of our service men and women? Do we not want to clarify and understand what they ARE sacrificing for? What happened to being pro-soldier (pro-all human beings, pro-life) and anti-war?

At the end of every movie, we are supposed to ask: "So what?" What would it matter if this movie were never made? What have I gained from seeing this film? Or at least, what does the journey of the movie mean for the characters? If they made a journey.

--Was the choice of name "William James" connected to the fact that American philosopher William James (my fellow Bostonian) was a pragmatist? (Pragmatism--as a philosophy--is considered to be a truly American philosophy.)