The Safety of Objects is an amazing movie! Go get it. Now.
A great look at people’s lives…how easy it is to get distracted by the apparent “assurance” of material possessions. An absolutely beautifully written movie. Great cast, great acting. I think that it may work into a sermon later in the summer. People searching to hold on to something and finding tangible objects are easier than God (though of course not explicitly stated) or building strong relationships with friends are families.
The DVD extras are non-existent…but the movie is definitely worth seeing.
So, my time of Netflix has ended (I’ll be gone for way too much of the summer to keep it). However, I'm not quite done reviewing movies from it...
Stage Beauty is a great movie. The acting is fabulous and they are charming characters. While it seems to be based on some real people, in the extras, they admit that they made up a lot of the “historical” information. But I really enjoyed it. Just a fabulous story line that really drew me in.
Well, the summer of conferences has begun. This last week, I spent time with Annie and many other friends in Hyde Park. We talked about being Lutheran and Episcopal Chaplains on college campuses. It was really helpful to make connections and talk with people about ministry. They keynote speaker, Lauren Winner, was pretty controversial. She brought up some interesting points, but often avoided tackling hard questions. When we looked at her books, we found them to be more memoir than theological reflection. I was really missing the theological reflection that could be done around the topics of money, sex, and time. I think that these are really important issues to discuss, but there are no easy answers and she seemed to think that there was one simple solution for any of these can just be put into place and this will solve the problem. With sex – everyone needs to stop having pre-marital sex and all sexual morality issues will be solved. (And we won’t talk about same-sex relationships.)
The conference overall was good – though, I also missed a good conversation between the Lutherans and Episcopalians – the challenge to do things together. Some examples of what people are doing would be helpful. It would be nice to have a list of resources and options and new ideas.
So, several of us went to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was very good. 30 plays in 60 minutes. Which means – if you don’t like one, you just have to wait for a couple of minutes and it will change…
They are entertaining and I’m really sorry that I haven’t gone more often. They are entertaining. Very fun shows with some good stuff…this one has more personal information that I remember from the last time that I was there. Would definitely like to go back again before the school year starts…and nice to have a Sunday afternoon show – so it doesn’t mess up my sleep pattern – which is always a bonus.
I picked up Horseplay because Horse Illustrated had mentioned it. It was an entertaining read. At first, it didn’t really catch me. But then, about half way through, the writer describes a dinner scene that is absolutely hilarious. Things picked up from there and by the end, I was incredibly amused. The end tied up things nicely – probably too nicely – but the world goes on. Of course, it involved horses and that’s not all bad either.
Again – behind on blogging.
But congrats to Si and Nick and everyone else for the great performance of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown last weekend. It was great and I was really glad that I got to see it.
Also – congrats to Northwestern graduates! I attended Honors Day today where 3 people involved with Canterbury events were honored – GO Sarah, Georgina, and Nate!
I’m still no sure what I think of this movie. Part of my problem is in watching these people making decisions based on – what – selfish desire? There seems to be no real redemption for any of the characters. They do what they do without growth or development. The men have a recognition that sexual desire is all that motivates them. The women don’t get voice enough to tell what they really think about any of it. Natalie Portman’s character may have the most development – or just living out the same old pattern in another day.
The script is great, however. As writing, I was really impressed with some of the dialogue. However, the resolution just leaves me confused as to “what was the point?” If it is to just show how patterns are lived and people selfishly live out desire, then I get it. If there was some human redemption in the whole thing, I totally missed it.
This is an amazing book! It’s the thing that I have been looking for. I talked before about Julia Spencer Flemming’s work, which is fine. But Michelle Blake does a fabulous job of including theology in every day life. The main character, Lily, struggles with her call, her job, how to do the right thing.
Julia Spencer-Flemming has an underlying current of adultery flowing through the book. While it has not been acted on, there seems to be no discussion about the sin in the situation and the acknowledgement of the struggle. No search for reconciliation. There seems to be no daily theological reflection for her characters.
Blake just seems to have more meat – more depth. I’m excited to read more and see if she continues along in the same way.
Well, this seems to be going around. Dave tagged Gary who tagged me. I’ve put it off until today because I wasn’t sure that I was going to like my answers. The problem is that I’m supposed to be reading an hour a day (6 days a week). It was my Lenten discipline and then became a personal goal for Interim Ministry training. I am almost keeping up with that, but I’m not really happy with how far I haven’t gotten. It doesn’t help that I started getting more magazines. There were some really good deals – so now I get Horse Illustrated, Equus (need those to stay sane), Discover, Time (it was REALLY cheap - $2 for the year), Reader’s Digest (a present), Preimere (have to keep up with the movies somehow so that I can figure out what to see and blog on), Leadership (work related), and trying to keep up on Shane’s Entertainment Weekly.
So – with all the magazines, the books have been scattered in there – and not all necessarily finished. It’s so hard to finish theology magazines.
How Many Books Do You Own? I’m with Gary on this – probably 500. A friend that went through seminary with me says that she has at least that many and I figure that we have to be close. This is also with a major fiction purge right before seminary. I tend to get the fiction cheap or free and then pass it on.
What is the Last Book You Bought? The last book that I bought for myself was either a travel (lightweight) copy of the Bible, NRSV translation or the Luke/John New Interpreter’s Bible. I just purchased 2 Books of Common Prayer, 1979 and 2 Bibles for the Canterbury Northwestern graduates. (wow – can’t tell I’m a priest, can you?)
However, we just had a free-for-all at Seabury, so I picked up Metro Girl by Janet Evanovich (to read on the way to California this summer) and a few other paperbacks.
What is the Last Book You Read? The last book that I read cover to cover is The Tentmaker by Michelle Blake. The review will be posted tomorrow.
I’m also almost done with a Luke Timothy Johnson book that I’m interested in finishing…Need to just sit down and read the last 2 chapters. It was a great book.
And of course it’s my job to continually read the Bible and the commentaries in order to write sermons.
Name five books that mean a lot to you.
Yeah, right… Well, I answered it today, so this is what I came up with. Ask me another day and I’ll give you a different 5.
Okay – Dave mentioned Illusions by Richard Bach. I’ll go with that. My college roommate handed it to me.
And Gary mentioned Calculating God which was an awesome book.
For fun, we’ll throw in Go Dog Go! Because it was my favorite book as a child.
Generation to Generation by Edwin Freidman. A great book to help one understand self and community better.
Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley. Challenges how I do my job and how I think about leadership and myself in systems.
Now "tag" five individuals to provide their own lists.
Hmm…so many people I know are in seminary…and I know what they’re reading! (Or – to be more precise – what they just got done reading!) But, we’ll go with Beth, Heather, Phil (because he reads a lot – and hasn’t blogged in a while…), Shane (who also reads a lot), and Wendy (because it’s her birthday today and she hasn’t blogged since December…). Now, if I didn’t tag you, you can still answer the questions…
And, just like walking into a bookstore – I have the feeling that I need to go read.
Well – I saw it (opening weekend). I have this weird thing with Star Wars – it’s not the huge thing for me that it is for some people. I’m definitely glad that I saw it in the theater. And I wasn’t too worried about how “good” it was. I was entertained and it made me want to go see Episode IV again.
I’m not sure that I think that Episodes IV, V, and VI aren’t really what people have made them out to be. Sure – they’re good, but I don’t find them amazing. I think that people are more nostalgic about them than realistic about being "good" - though, as we've found here...being considered a "good" movie is totally in the eye of the beholder.
So – I watched Ebert and Roeper the other day. I’m so unhappy with Roeper. He’s so critical of everything. I mean – sure, you’re getting a lot of money to tell people what to watch, but you’re not suggesting everything. Why are you even bothering? You’re telling people to not watch anything. Oh – except House of Wax!?!?!?!?! What? How could you give everything else a thumbs down and that a thumbs up?
So – Shane and I went to see Crash several days ago. I can almost talk about it now… It was a really intense movie. It was well done. I felt that it moved like a weird mix of Traffic (the intense and crazy content) and Love Actually (the number of characters and how well they kept multiple story lines going).
The movie’s content seemed to evoke the intense emotion that Frogs on Broadway did for me. This intense pain of the world – what do I do with it? What do I hold? How can I fix it? There is much pain and distress in the world. But there are also moments of grace and redemption. That’s the part that I felt that the movie did well that other movies have not done so well. Those moments of feeling that things are okay and that life is good. There are moments where it becomes clear why we do what we do.
How do we live together in a society where separation and isolation are becoming more common? How do we reach out to others who are hurting? How can we reach out in our hurting? It is an excellent movie. You should definitely go see it. But if you’re like me with emotions, it can suck a lot out of you.
In reflecting, we did come up with some moments to think about – how do we help people stop and start communicating better? There was a point in the movie (and ironically – a few points this last week) where things went quickly downhill into conflict or violence because of a misunderstanding. That more communication could have stopped the process and brought everyone to a place of better understanding instead of hurt. How do we affect society so that as a whole, more people can reach out to each other?
So – these and many other questions for me came out of this movie that just named so many issues of society so well.