Jesus on Film: "King of Kings," "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth"

I just don’t know.  Being such a fan of Star Trek, I, of course, knew the guy who played Jesus here.  It was Jeffrey Hunter, the guy who was the original captain of the starship Enterprise in the original pilot that didn’t sell, and showed up later in the two-parter “The Menagerie” so Roddenberry could use that original pilot and spread it out over two episodes during the first season.  He was different from Shatner’s Kirk, and actually harkened back to the days of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon from the cheap 40’s and 50’s movie serials that the character of Tom Paris loved so much on Star Trek: Voyager.

     I had previously been disappointed in The Greatest Story Ever Told, which I referred to as "Not the Greatest Movie Ever Made About the Greatest Story Ever Told" and hoped this old retelling of the Jesus story would be better.  It seems, however, that whenever Hollywood tackled the story of Jesus, they tried to give Jesus and the material the somber reverence it deserves, and it just doesn’t work.  In their attempt to make Jesus so worshipful and perfect, it always left Jesus, and the material, feeling overly detached instead.  Besides being the Son of God, of course, Jesus was a great teacher and philosopher, but he was also quite human, and was never that detached.  Never do we feel while watching these old movies about Jesus that he has real feelings for the humans he walks with and teaches. Instead, it is some isolated connection to the Father, as if to say, “Yes, I love all you little people, but I am also above you.  Behold me and my grand but quiet love and grace!”  I didn’t get that feeling with Robert Powell’s performance in Jesus of Nazareth.  In that movie, even though he carried the look of grace and wisdom, when he looked at other people, or taught them, he also carried a look of pure love for them in his eyes.  These other movie Jesus’ are always looking upward, and if they do look at the others they are on screen with, it feels like happenstance.  These other movie Jesus’ don’t have the loving connection with people they do with the Father, and that’s just not right.  THEY are the REASON HE CAME!

Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus in "King of Kings"

     While watching King of Kings with Mom, I shut it off after the scene where Jesus collects Peter and tells him he will make him a “fisher of men.”  As shot for this film, it simply felt like actors on a movie set repeating lines of dialogue.  None of it felt real.  I then showed her the same scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazarath, and there simply was no comparison.  The Zeffirelli film seemed infinitely more “real”!  Not only did Jesus seem more real, but so did Peter and all the others, and even the sets were more real.

     The weird thing is, I am sometimes a fan of epic Hollywood bravado, even over realism, and it is the reason I still like The Ten Commandments over some more realistic movies about Moses, such as the TNT version.  But for whatever reason, the same kind of thing just doesn’t work for Jesus.  The best version of the Jesus story is Jesus of Nazareth.  All the others just don’t measure up! 

The Death of Innocence: My Thoughts on the Atadero and Jon-Bonet Ramsey Cases

This is from my journal from August of 1999, as I was detailing some of the major news events of that month and writing down my thoughts about them.  Interestingly enough, however, I just saw a rather fascinating old TV miniseries recently rebroadcast on TV called Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, made in 2000, detailing the events surrounding the Ramsey murder.  My final words on this subject in 1999 are, unfortunately, still true today!

Colorado held its collective breath when a little three year old boy, Jaryd Atadero, became separated from his church group and got lost in the mountains.  They never found him… Not knowing what happened must be torture for his parents!!!

This book tells the whole story

     Also, Governor Bill Owens discreetly pointed a finger at John and Patsy Ramsey concerning the murder of their little girl Jon-Bonet, asking them to “quit hiding behind their high-priced lawyers and help with the investigation.”  The Ramseys’ answer to Gov. Owens, and the nation, will be a tell-all book about Jon-Bonet and her murder, told from a Christian perspective.  I’m sure John and Patsy will paint themselves as an upstanding, loving, Christian family who are victims of this tragedy.  If they are innocent, may God be with them.  But why do they feel so guilty?

John and Patsy Ramsey

     Is it the overexposure in a biased media, who are trying them out of court in front of the public and finding them guilty?  Is it a bungling police investigation that has taken more than three years without any results?  Is it the action of the parents of the murdered girl, who don’t seem to be cooperating and are using their money to hide from the investigation?  Would I act the same way if I had a murdered daughter and the media tried and convicted me and I had the money and power to hide from a police force that was trying to prove my guilt?

Susan Smith

     I don’t want to try them out of court, but everybody has an opinion based on the evidence they’ve seen.  And the sad fact remains that guilty people will so often proclaim their innocence.  Remember Susan Smith?  She cried in front of TV cameras for a week, begging her sons’ kidnappers through tear stained eyes to please return them safe and sound, and her husband quietly supporting her from the sidelines.  Then the truth came out:  She had locked them into her car and pushed the vehicle into a nearby river, where her little boys drowned.  People maintaining their innocence doesn’t mean they’re innocent!  That’s what police investigators are here for, to catch the liars.  What little evidence we have in the Ramsey case seems to point to John and Patsy due to inconsistencies in their actions and statements, yet I’ll admit, I’m not the one with all the answers and am only casually following all of this.

            Only one thing for certain can be derived from all this:  Justice has not been served, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be served either.

June 2012: Colorado on Fire!

     Fire!

     Even before July's tragic news of a madman entering a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises and opening fire on an unsuspecting crowd of moviegoers in Aurora, killing twelve innocent people, and wounding 59 more, Colorado had already been in the national news because of all the fires ravaging our state.  I wrote this last month:

     June was the month that the luscious, green, and beautiful state of Colorado was on fire!

     Almost immediately after science fiction author Ray Bradbury died (the guy who wrote the classic sci fi novel Fahrenheit 451, I might add), a series of devastating fires developed, starting in northern Colorado, burning through 37,000 acres before it was even partially contained!  Dubbed the “High Park” fire, it burned through another 25,000 acres up by Fort Collins, where almost 200 homes were destroyed.  On the morning of June 12^th, high southern winds blew the smoke and smog even down into our neck of the woods in Westminster, Broomfield, Boulder, Arvada, and Denver.  We could see all the smoke surrounding us when we stepped outside, and it smelled liked a campfire or a barbecue!

     People will try to get away with anything they can.  At work, that means our timesheets need to have lines drawn through the days we didn’t work and a zero with a line through it in the overtime column, because, as you might suspect, people have cheated and written in other amounts after it was signed by their manager!  For these High Park fires, it means someone was dressing as a firefighter and going into the fire zones to steal equipment from the firefighters and stuff left behind by people who had been evacuated!  People will try anything!

     By the end of the month, we were experiencing some very hot days with no rain in sight to help put out the fire, and after this Fort Collins fire burned through 70,000 acres, eight more fires developed around the state on June 24^th, with many homes and businesses lost!  Most were caused by lightning strikes, but the one that struck Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs was suspected of being the result of arson.  All of Manitou Springs, and parts of Estes Park and Colorado Springs were evacuated, and that fire blazed out of control for days at the same time firefighters were still trying to contain the High Park fire, and other fires were starting all over the place, including up in the Boulder area, and which we could see developing and working it’s way over a mountain close to our offices in Broomfield, which they called the Flagstaff fire. 

     My brother posted on Facebook how the Flying W. Ranch that we had been to twice had burned down (yet interestingly enough, we later learned that the building holding a bunch of irreplaceable books was the only building left intact!).

Visiting the Flying W. Ranch for the first time in 2008

This building was amazingly left standing!

Even in the rain, we enjoyed the show in 2011!

     The Waldo Canyon fire down south burned it to the ground, along with several other homes and businesses in the area.  The High Park fire was finally contained after burning through 87,000 acres, and yet the Colorado Springs fire was eventually considered to be even more devastating!

     Meanwhile, Obama took time out of shoving that monstrosity of a health care bill down our throats, with the Supreme Court supporting it as a “tax” even though Obama had made a huge point of making sure everyone knew it was NOT a “tax”, to come to Colorado and survey the destruction and devastation, but if you ask me, he was just getting in the way, what with all the secret service and political reporters and other assorted entourage that has to follow him around wherever he goes!

     At the same time all this was going on, we heard reports of Hurrican Debby wrecking havoc in Florida, causing mass flooding and devastation!  They were getting some of the rain we needed to be able to put out all those fires!

     My heart goes out to all those people who lost their homes during this horrible tragedy, and especially the four who died from the fires!  I can’t even imagine losing everything in a fire like that, but those who survived should at least be glad that they are still alive and kicking.  The website for the Flying W. Ranch said it all the best on their website (linked here), expressing their sorrow not only for their own tragedy, but for those who lost their homes, but also announcing that once they have had a chance to gather their thoughts, they will rebuild!  

Pierced Heart: Clinging to Innocence Lost

God, I humbly ask for You to open my heart, like it was when I was a child.  I know that an open heart is easily wounded, and I’m not asking for a wounded heart, even though I know that, in this world, an open heart and a wounded heart are too often one and the same!  I guess I just cherish my innocence, and when it comes right down to it, I’d rather have an open heart that is wounded than a closed, unfeeling heart encased in steel.  A lot of times, I do shut myself and my heart away to keep from getting wounded further, but it has the affect of hardening me, and that, I do not like.

     I think that the harder and more unfeeling my heart becomes, the less likely I’ll make it to heaven, and the less heavenly I’ll be.  And I deeply desire heaven and eternity with God.  There are hints here on earth of what heaven may be like, but also a lot of hints as to what hell could be like.  I hope to make it to heaven, and am willing to do whatever it takes to get there.  If that means opening myself up for more hurt, so be it.  That may be the price I have to pay for paradise.  Jesus’ words could be interpreted that way, for he said the meek will inherit the earth, and the least here will be the greatest there.  

I don’t care if I’m of higher rank in heaven or not; I just want to get in.

- From my journal, November 1999

(The picture was drawn by me using the Microsoft paint program; I couldn't find an image on Google I liked well enough)

What’s so wrong about daydreaming

And what’s so bad about feeling optimistic?

There’s no use tryin’ to hide

It’s right there in your eyes

Well, I can feel it when my heart beats

We’d be fools not to jump in with both feet

Because His love’s comin’ over me, yeah

And His love’s comin’ over you

Well, it’s what we were made for

All I have prayed for

Comin’ to set us free

Yeah, His love’s comin’ over you and me!

Tears ain’t got no business here, no, no

And heartache’s gonna lose its place in line

The feeling’s mutual

There’s no doubt in my soul

If ever my dreams got shot down

I know He’d steady my shaky ground…

I don’t question this moment

And I won’t hesitate no more, no!

This time the shadows

Won’t dare to darken my door (darken my door) Like before, yeah…

(Oh - well, I’ll sing it with ya!)…

-          “His Love Is Comin’ Over Me”

          Clay Crosse

What This Blog is Supposed to Be

Image from  http://edudemic.com/2012/02/technophobic-teachers/typing/

As I said when I first started writing these blog posts, I've been writing in a journal since 1991, and after 20 years, I figured it was high time I might start sharing them in a blog.  I've had friends interested in knowing what I might have to say on any given subject.  When I was out of work in December of last year and going on interviews, I remember telling one hiring manager how much I love to write, and how I've kept a journal for so long, and when he asked me if I blog, I said "No," and he asked me why; and that got me thinking that maybe it was time.

     Ten years ago, I changed the way I wrote my journal.  All the entries were starting to become predictable and rather boring I thought, talking about what I did that day, and what I ate, and then what I did the next day, and what I ate, and occasionally, I wrote about what I thought about everything.  So I decided to keep a running tab on things, and started keeping notes throughout the month about what was going on, and then writing about it when the month was over.  

     I kept notes on what was going on with me and the family, and work, and my walk with God, and the news (culture), and then wrote about some things I liked from the world of pop culture, reviewing movies and TV shows I liked, or didn't like, along with the music I was listening to, the books I was reading, and, eventually, the people I was admiring for one reason or another.  I didn't always keep the best notes, and didn't always write the most poetic stuff, but sporadically, I felt I said something halfway intelligent, in an elegant way.  Visiting the internet and reading most of the stuff from the blogosphere, I began to realize that my writing had some style, and a voice of it's own, and unlike many (way too many) of the other writers on the world wide web, I had a pretty good grasp of syntax, grammar, and spelling.

     So my intention with this blog was to start posting both new and old writings from my journal, scouring over some of my old journal entries to post some interesting stuff from years ago in the middle of each week, and finding more recent stuff to post on the weekend.  I've been doing just that since January, and I've gotten a few people to start reading it, perhaps posting a comment here or there (some of those comments seeming to come from people with their own websites trying to sell me something; gotta love it!).  

     I find it amusing to note that hardly anyone will read some of my more serious stuff, like "Three Parables and a Rabid Dog: Nope Nothing Wrogn Here" (linked here) or "Strange Bedfellows: Susan G. Komen, Margaret Sanger, and the Dixie Chicks" (linked here), and that the page with the most visits is the one where I reviewed the movie Bride of Chucky (linked here), and that people are visiting it from doing an image search of Chucky and Tiffany.  I eventually removed the image to calm them down.  I don't want my blog to be known as "the one with the picture of Chucky and Tiffany"!  

     So when a tragedy occurs, especially close to home, like all the fires in Colorado last month, or the Batman Movie Theater Massacre in Aurora in the wee hours of the morning just yesterday, I don't feel it's my place to comment on them immediately (and I certainly couldn't sum it up as emotionally and powerfully as survivor Christopher Ramos does in the second video below):  

I may feel I have a lot to say, and I did post some things on Facebook about them already, including posting that above video, but with all the people talking, I don't feel this blog is the place to add to the conversation, especially immediately with a knee jerk reaction.  I don't feel this blog will ever become that.  And I never meant for this blog to be that.  There are too many other people doing that.

     I may eventually write about, and share, my thoughts about some of these major kind of events, after they've had a moment or two to resonate.  For one thing, the way I write in my journal is a slow and meticulous process.  I keep notes throughout the month, and then write about them in my journal at the beginning of the next month. I've written about the fires from last month already, and will probably share what I wrote about them in here at some point (maybe even next week), but I won't actually sit down and collect my thoughts about modern news events like this movie theater massacre until the beginning of August, and by then, it will be old news.  That's okay though.  This isn't a news site.  It's just my blog.

     Another thing I don't like to do is to get too personal.  I've written some things in my journal that I don't want anyone else to see.  Everybody has private thoughts and ideas about themselves and their friends and family that they don't really want to share with them.  Some journal thoughts are just not the type of thing you want to share with the world.  It's the main reason most journals and diaries are such a private affair.  I also don't want to share a lot of the things that happened with the family because it's kind of like looking at someone's old home movies.  It's boring for the people who don't know you - and even then, it's sometimes still boring!  Still, I have shared, and will continue to share, a few such moments in this blog, if I feel they won't rankle too many feathers, and it is these blog entries that have a more whimsical, humorous style, such as "A Hunting We Will NOT Go," and "The Joy of Camping... NOT!"  (These titles are links to the actual posts).

      These blog posts have been, and will continue to be, selections from my journal writings, meaning they won't be up-to-the-minute interpretations of immediate events, but usually more reflective musings about past events.  There are so many places on the web to get information about pressing events... I don't want this blog to be just one more droning voice among all the noise.  Instead, it's merely entries taken from my journals, which are supposed to be my respite, to help me crystalize and galvanize my thoughts.  

Information Overload

And after more than a decade of writing in this fashion, I've managed to collect a lot of them.  These once a month reflections on Me & Family, Work, God, the News, and Pop Culture (split into reviews of movies, TV shows, music, and books) means I've written twelve essays, commentaries, or reviews for each subject every year, and since I've been writing in this fashion for at least the last twelve years, that's 144 of them for each subject, and probably about 100 people or fictional characters I've mentioned as Real or Reel Heroes along the way.  I don't think I'll ever run out of material for this blog (or any future blog I may decide to start, for I may want to eventually create blogs for the different subjects I write about).  Facebook is not the forum for such long meditations, though I will share little things there, such as the poem I wrote for my niece when she turned thirteen, or the story of how I thought Mom had suffered a stroke one day as we were leaving Target, with her hand bunched up and dragging her shoe along the ground, and then quickly coming to realize she was just trying to scrape gum off her shoe!  

     All I'm doing here is just going through my journals and picking and choosing what I think I might want to share in this blog at that particular moment, and that particular day, and that might just have something interesting to say, and then see what happens...

     ...and if anybody cares.

(last image from http://wgbyeducation.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/technology-is-too-much-information-eroding-our-brains/)
   

The Invisible Qualities of God

     Since I examined the physical world of cause and effect last month (Shared on my blog here), I thought I might expand on that topic this month by stating how I wish God would be a cause that affects me.  He certainly has that ability – Jesus is proof of that!  I really need Him, even though sometimes, I don’t seek Him.  I know He did not set it up this way, and with good reason, but I would still sometimes like a God who would stop me from making mistakes, a God who, whenever I tended to go my own, human way or make sinful choices, would turn me around pronto, perhaps slap some sense into me, and say “What are you doing?  Stop it!  Why are you acting like an idiot!  Remember that you’re trying to make me proud of you!  Don’t screw it up!”

God's Intervention

     But that doesn’t happen, so I’ll just have to continue trying to understand God in my limited, human way, and even though my puny mind can’t comprehend exactly what He is and how He exists, it will just have to be enough as I follow in His light loving Him, worshipping Him, and learning from His words and teaching.

     Can you blame me for wanting more?  The nature of God is that He is so close to us, yet is also far away.  We cannot sense Him with our five senses, or at least not that I’ve experienced, and if I did sense Him, I’d have to question whether or not it was truly God, or something else.  I’d probably end up questioning my own sanity.  Because I haven’t sensed Him with my physical senses, it makes Him pretty much undetectable and removed from the rest of us, even if, in reality, He is not.  And even if I could sense Him, and knew it was my Creator, and not some trick of the mind, or of Satan, I still couldn’t comprehend or understand Him, since He is so immense and omnipotent and exists outside of this dimension.

     Yet all I want, all I’m asking for, is a little push in the right direction.

- From my Journal, May 1999

"The Grey" Starring Liam Neeson: I Hated It... Then I Kinda Liked It!

SPOILER ALERT: This post gives away the ending!  Don't read it if you haven't seen The Grey!  (Not that anybody is reading my blog anyway, ha ha!)

My twin brother and his wife would think I was crazy for picking this movie as a favorite, especially after our initial reaction and the fact that we saw a bunch of other perfectly fine movies this month.  And perhaps they’d be right to make such an observation.  None of us liked it when we first saw it.  It was grueling to sit through, and initially reminded me of Eight Below, the one in which a group of dogs stranded in the wilderness begin to die one at a time.  This whole movie The Grey is really nothing more than one death after another, as a group of plane crash survivors perish in several ways trying to stay one step ahead of a pack of vicious wolves.  Some die from the wolf attacks, and others from sickness, exposure to the elements, drowning, or falling great distances.  We even made jokes at the end, similar to some critics who didn’t like it, about how the movie is nothing but depressing and full of death, and for a survival tale, it’s interesting to note that no one survives.  I couldn’t really understand what my sister and older brother saw in it when they mentioned on Facebook how much they liked it, and the positive spiritual messages it had.  For me, it was similar to Stephen King’s The Mist, which I had picked to watch, and which had an extreme downer of an ending, causing my sister-in-law Darece to stand up and shout “Gary!” and I could only look back sheepishly and apologize, and my sister later reprimanded me for not warning her about it before she and her husband watched it.  But this movie was obviously different.  We had had a negative reaction, but there was all those positive reviews on Flixster, and my sister and brother supporting it on Facebook.  It made me wonder what I was missing.

     Then a strange thing happened.  The next day at church, the message was about the courage of St. Paul during impossible situations from the book of Acts, and while the pastor gave his powerful, eloquent sermon, I couldn’t get The Grey out of my mind.  It’s almost like God was nudging me, saying “Look at it from this perspective.  Examine it with Christian eyes.”  I realized it wasn’t a survival tale, as it had been promoted.  It was actually a tale about facing our fears, and death, and in that sense, it has a lot in common with the third Alien film.  It’s basically a film not about surviving, but facing death when survival is no longer a possibility.  What do you do when you realize you are NOT going to survive?  In this case, everything around these men – the plane, the snow, the wilderness, their own health, and particularly the wolves – represent death.  

     Death is the final challenge, the final fear we must face.  Jesus spoke to His followers many times in the Bible concerning the fears they faced, including death, and he told them “Do not be afraid.”  In the film, Liam Neeson keeps seeing visions of his wife before she died of cancer, lying under sheets in a sunny room, and telling him “Don’t be afraid,” and “It’s okay.”  These visions would always end with him being ripped back into the reality of his horrible situation.  The men talk religion and philosophy around the campfires they build to ward off the wolves and the cold, to stay warm, and to stay alive.  In the beginning, right after the plane crash, one seriously injured man isn’t going to survive for very long at all, and Neeson calms him down, asking him if there is someone he loves who can help him cross over, and telling him to just accept it, and it will come upon him, and it will be warm, and that it’s going to be okay.  And it works.  The guy dies rather peacefully.  For the rest of the movie, each one of the survivors meets death.  Some go kicking and screaming.  Others seem to just accept it, like the injured passenger.  After injuring his leg, the guy who was belittling the others simply can’t keep up anymore, and they leave him by the river in the middle of a majestic view, and he accepts what is going to happen to him.  The wolves will be there soon, but there is a peacefulness about him now.  In the end, when it is only Neeson left, he screams to the sky, telling God off, and demanding God for any kind of a sign that He exists.  Then he wanders right into the middle of the wolf den, and though this could be considered God’s answer, that’s not quite how the movie ends.  At the beginning of the film, he’s suicidal, and almost bites a bullet after the death of his wife.  Now, even though he finds himself surrounded by vicious, ravenous wolves, he tapes a bunch of broken bottles to one hand, and holds a knife in the other.  He wants to fight to live.  And then there’s a mysterious five second scene after the credits that shows the alpha wolf laying down on the ground and breathing heavily, like it’s been mortally wounded, and you can see the top of Neeson’s head on the other side of it, as if he’s using it as a pillow, as if he is “laying down with death.”

     I didn’t much care for Alien 3 when I first saw it, because they killed off almost the entire cast of Aliens, and it made that movie and that struggle now seem pointless.  The only survivors were the android Bishop, in such disrepair that he doesn’t want to continue existing, and Ripley, who soon comes to realize she has one of those alien things in her chest and she’s not long for this world.  But that didn’t mean that Alien 3 wasn’t dealing with some interesting themes about death, and facing death, and accepting death.  It’s just not the sort of movie you want to see when you’re expecting a fun, scary, sci fi survival story like Aliens.  The Grey is very similar.  Its promotional campaign made it seem more like Aliens, when in fact, it is much closer to Alien 3.  That means that it may be intelligent, and may deal with interesting themes, but it doesn’t make for such an entertaining time at the movies.  It’s a movie you might not like while you watch it, but that doesn’t mean it might not cause you to think about it later.  As such, this is a film that is also similar to Moulin Rouge and The Matrix, or even Napoleon Dynamite, in that it’s worth a second look.  It’s more enjoyable to think about afterwards, and it becomes one of those movies I might actually want to see again, but with a different mindset.  

Jesus Was a Teenager

Jesus was a teenager once

Not much about those years are known

                But you can best believe

                He had more up His sleeve

And even then, His light brightly shone

He lived then in a much simpler time

No Limp Bizket to idolize

                No Duke Nuke ‘Em games

                No Kool Rap’R names

No vampire slayers to feast the eyes

And I often wonder what Jesus would do

If He were a teen today

                He’d have Metalhead peers

                The kind with “No Fears”

And I often wonder what He might say:

“The things of this world, the things you are into

Are corrupting, negative and vile

                You may think they’re cool

                But your lives they will rule

If you expose yourself to them awhile

“Throughout world history, it’s always the same

And it happens again and again

                You may think you’re fine

                But only I am divine

And you are in the lion’s den

“Teens often do not see what they like with the

Discerning eye that comes with age

                The teenage years

                As adulthood nears

Are the hardest upon this world’s stage

“So I tell you, beware of the fashions and trends

So awesome, radical, and new

                Don’t just join the crowd

                Make both you and me proud

And ask yourself, ‘What would Jesus do?’”

- Written by Gary Van Buren, August 1999

That's Right, Walt Disney's "Fantasia" is Demonic!

Image from http://www.disneydreaming.com/2010/09/02/fantasia-and-fantasia-2000-special-edition-blu-ray-and-dvd/

Last week, I posted how Walt Disney's Pinocchio had very strong Christian connotations.  This week, I'll examine Walt Disney's Fantasia, which was released during the same year (1940).  Unlike Pinocchio, it is NOT Christian... not in the least!

     Before reviewing Fantasia, however, here's a brief note on the follow up, Fantasia 2000, which wasn’t much of a movie:  It clocks in at a mere 75 minutes, and that’s even with a replay of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from the original film (poorly introduced by Penn and Teller, I might add).  Despite some stunning animation at times, such as the sequence with the humpback whales flying through the Aurora Borealis, not even the animators seemed to be making such a big deal about it all.  After all, you can find stunning animation all over the place these days.  It is no longer such a great thing.  The first Fantasia was full of a bunch of pomp and circumstance, but Fantasia 2000 manages to introduce the animated pieces like some retrospective you might find on some awards show or one of those TV specials where they count down the best commercials or best big screen kisses.  Steve Martin jokes all the way through his presentation.

    And in retrospect, it makes the original Fantasia seem not all that great either.  The one thing I kept thinking about the original Fantasia while watching it was how undoubtedly brilliant this early animation was, light years ahead of the “Silly Symphonies” Disney had already done or the “Merrie Melodies” over at Warner Brothers, and with just Snow White and Pinocchio having been released as animated features at the time Fantasia was released.  At the same time, I was thinking how much of a polar opposite it was to Pinocchio on a purely spiritual level.  While I easily gave a Christian reading of Pinocchio (last week, linked here) I’m afraid Fantasia would come off looking very poor by comparison. 

Some of Fantasia's more Demonic, Pagan, Racist, and Evolutionary Darwinist Elements

      The main sequence, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” shows Mickey Mouse performing what looks to be questionable black magic in a sorcerer’s dungeon, and those multiplying brooms with arms are actually quite creepy if you think about it.  In fact, almost every sequence could be considered questionable from a Christian perspective:  The Faeries in the Tchaikovsky piece, or the heavy emphasis on the gods and creatures of Roman myth, with Zeus throwing lightning bolts at defenseless creatures on the ground (aside from the horrid black stereotypes they had to edit out for the DVD release), or the “Rite of Spring” sequence that implies, the same as Darwinists, how life evolved from nothing by chance.  Even back then, there was no way for them to explain how these era’s came about, and were reduced to creating a “mud screen” in the water which would clear and show the next explosion of life.  Evolutionary science has followed this same path all these years.  There are an unbelievable number of “mud screens” in which nothing has ever been explained.  The only large sequence to escape this, by the way, is the humorous “Dance of the Hours”, with dancing ostriches, hippos, elephants, and crocodiles.  

Scenes from the well animated but ultimately demonic "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence

     The worst offense, of course, is what is generally considered the film’s high point:  “Night on Bald Mountain” with the skeletons, ghosts, hellish demons, and the dark figure who looks surprisingly like an interpretation of the devil in all his evil.  

     He is vanquished in this film by church bells, which give way to “Ave Maria” which ends the movie, with figures moving quietly through a picturesque countryside with glowing lanterns, but this sequence is so slow and languid, it comes off as very inferior to the dancing demons and scary skeletons of the previous sequence.  That’s not the best compliment you can give to an old animated movie, and probably one reason Fantasia isn’t quite as adored by generations of children as Disney’s other films have been.  I think you’d find that Fantasia is probably mostly appreciated by adult animation aficionados only, and they probably aren’t Christian.  I am, and although I bought it, merely because I am also a bit of an adult animation freak, I am having reservations about doing so after having watched it again.  Despite the early achievements in animation blended with classical music, there is no continued narrative to hold the whole thing together, and it is about as interesting today as watching an old block of pretty good music videos.  It’s just not the same as a good narrative movie, especially with all these spiritually questionable elements!   

In Defense of "Trivial" Humor: A Validation of Mad Magazine

     Comic books now?  Talk about desperation!  Talk about trivialities!  Well, yes, but as I said before, it may be the trivial that is the only thing that keeps me sane!  Or to put it another way, Mad keeps me from going mad!

     It’s nostalgic.  I used to read Mad Magazine all the time when I was growing up.  It’s artistic.  Mort Drucker is one of the best caricaturists in the business.  It’s funny.  I recently read the parody of the movie The Shining, and it was just brilliant.  After seeing all the malevolent spirits and blood all over the hotel, Danny’s finger (Tony) tells him it isn’t real, just like in the movie.  When Danny gets covered in blood, he complains to his finger that he’s just a kid and can’t handle it.  His finger replies, “Well, what do you want from me?  I’m just a finger!”  At the end of the parody, when the Nicholson character dies by freezing to death, the Shelly Duvall character looks at him and suddenly remembers she’s got a frozen ham in the freezer.  Then she tells Danny, “Now that your father’s dead, we’ll have to find jobs to make a living.  You can sell newspapers, and I may even have to sell my body.”  The kid then says he’ll feel sad to know that he’ll be making more money than her!  I can't write any of that without giggling yet again.

Weird Al Reads Mad

     This is a sad, or even evil world we live in sometimes, and I am so glad for humor because it is about the only thing that can, at times, make life palatable.  Many people turn up their noses at the likes of Mad Magazine or “Weird Al” Yankovic for being so low-brow and unsophisticated (even Jerry Springer Trailer Trash pull this kind of attitude).  What I’ve discovered, however, is that brilliance can be found anywhere, though some people simply refuse to see it.  Sure, these comedians don’t always hit the mark, but who hits it all the time?  What is true of “Weird Al” is true also of the guys over at Mad Magazine.  They are usually funny (and there’s nothing wrong with that), and are quite often brilliant, without garnering the accolades their talent would suggest.  So I’m reviewing a comic book in my journal (and now this blog, a whole decade later), and I complained in my journal before about how I sometimes applaud things this world finds juvenile and trivial.  I should rethink that embarrassment.  I mean, funny is funny, and as long as it’s not just sick (like a lot of modern entertainment), then I see nothing wrong with liking some good comedy along the path of life.  At the very least, I shouldn't be so discomfited by it.