OUTTAKES #023

So that you may sleep well without wondering, the stills are from 1973’s The Twilight People. Merry Christmas everybody!

SHORT FEATURE: THE POWER OF TWO

Don’t worry, we’re not becoming The Chick Flick Catechism (not that there’s anything wrong with that), we’re just addressing the concerns of frequent commenter Xena who laments, “It always gives me the heebie-jeebies this time of year that the birth of Jesus seems to get celebrated without any references to pregnancy or childbirth.” And you know what, she’s right. Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio reminds us that “despite the cuddly image of our nativity scenes, the original Christmas was anything but cozy.  A woman nine months pregnant rides 75 miles on the back of a donkey over bumpy, dusty roads so she can have her baby in a stable full of dirty, smelly animals.” Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think that’s how it was portrayed in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Mary is given many titles as the eschatological icon of the Church: Tower of Ivory, House of Gold, Ark of the Covenant, etc. But during Advent & Christmas, maybe it’s a good time to remember some of the simpler, yet just as meaningful titles Mary held; wife, mother, widow, etc., and all of the subsequent hardships which come along with them. And just because Christian tradition holds that, due to certain Christological necessities, Mary did not suffer the pains of the actual childbirth (Summa Theologica Q35,A6 & The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part 1: The Creed, Article III), that doesn’t mean she didn’t have to put up with some of the rest of the pleasantries of pregnancy. I think it’s safe to assume St. Joseph had to learn to give a foot massage.

INTERMISSION: AND INTRODUCING…

 

Ever notice how tight lipped some actors get about their early work once they make it big, especially the ones who got their foot in the door by appearing in low budget slasher films? And we’re not just talking about the ones everyone is familiar with like Kevin Bacon (Friday The 13th) or Johnny Depp (Nightmare On Elm Street). Dig deep into the slasher archives and you’ll find a bevy of up and coming actors the world would soon be heaping praises on. Can you name the future star (or stars) who made an early career appearance in these crazy killer classics before moving on to bigger and better things? Use your cursor to highlight the answers.

1. Leprechaun (1993) Crazy killer dwarf loose in a small town.
Answer": Jennifer Anniston

2. The Burning (1981) Crazy killer loose at a summer camp.
Answer: Holly Hunter & Jason Alexander

3. The Final Terror (1983) Crazy killer loose in the woods.
Answer: Darryl Hannah

4. The Initiation (1984) Crazy killer loose in a mall.
Answer: Daphne Zuniga (Hey, she’s still working.)

5. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994) Crazy killers loose in the Longhorn State. With chainsaws, natch.
Answer: Renée Zellweger & Matthew McConaughey

6. He Knows You're Alone (1980) Crazy killer loose about town.
Answer: Tom Hanks (who was so likeable on set they rewrote the script so his character could live.)

7. Cutting Class (1989) Crazy killer loose at a high school.
Answer: Brad Pitt

8. Eyes of a Stranger (1981) Crazy killer loose in apartment complex.
Answer: Jennifer Jason Leigh

9. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) Crazy supernatural killer loose in an asylum.
Answer: Laurence Fishburne (And this was after Apocalypse Now)

10. Deadly Lessons (1983) Crazy killer loose at a boarding school.
Answer: Ally Sheedy & Bill Paxton

11. Shadows Run Black (1986) Crazy killer loose at a college.
Answer: Kevin Costner

12. Return to Horror High (1987) Crazy killer loose on a movie set.
Answer: George Clooney (but George also starred in Return of the Killer Tomatoes, so we forgive him.)

Go ahead and just try to get any of these guys talking about their early days in the trenches of B-moviedom. It’s futile. You’d think they broke into the business making porn or something. (Which is silly. Just ask Sylvester Stallone, he’ll tell you what it’s like having to make porn.) These stars seem to want us to believe they sprung onto the scene as the fully fledged arteests the public views them as now. Apparently their egos can’t handle the fact that they started their careers saying lines like “Is anybody there?” and “AIEEEE!”.

That’s a shame because, around these parts, we take no offense at humble beginnings. In fact, as part of the Christmas season, we celebrate them. “Jesus was born in a humble stable, into a poor family.” the Catechism reminds us. “In this poverty heaven's glory was made manifest… No one, whether shepherd or wise man, can approach God here below except by kneeling before the manger at Bethlehem and adoring him hidden in the weakness of a new-born child.”

And it’s not just the location of Jesus’ birthplace which brings a sense of humbleness to the whole proceedings. Father Michael F. X. Hinkley notes that “The birth of God as man is itself an act by God of profound humility. The Christ is not to be found in a palace or in a family of social advantage. Without any loss to his Godliness, Jesus is born in the poverty of the stable. He takes on flesh and all that being human entails save sin. God humbles himself to show us God’s way of love (Ps 25:9). God’s experience of poverty isn’t limited to the economic, either. Jesus enters the poverty of all mankind. God, who is love, comes to know the ravages of our human pain, prejudice and persecution from within the frame of human experience.”

This Christmas season, may we all ignore the example of our man-made mega-stars and follow instead in the footsteps of our Lord, never forgetting where we came from, no matter how humble those places may have been.

SHORT FEATURE: STAR WARS – AN A CAPELLA TRIBUTE TO JOHN WILLIAMS (BOTH OF THEM)

It’s been next to impossible to go anywhere on the Internet this last month without bumping into this excellent video by Corey Vidal. It’s become so omnipresent and omni-liked that it’s been nominated for a People’s Choice Award this year. Corey is actually lip-synching (by permission) to a 2002 recording by the comedy troupe moosebutter who have decided to release a new live video of themselves performing the song in their studio in hopes you’ll go to their site and buy a song or two. (For obvious reasons, we recommend Psycho: The Musical sung to the tune of Music Of The Night.) Here’s the new moosebutter version.

By moosebutter’s own admission, despite the fact that it’s their song, Corey's video has had literally millions of more views than moosebutter's. “That's because Corey is cuter, and smells better.” the group claims. Maybe. But perhaps there’s another reason. You see, even though moosebutter throws in some good gags in the new video to compliment the lyrics, they also can’t hide the fact that it’s after the fact. The new version is laced with the slightest bit of cynicism because, let’s face it, the new films weren’t quite what we all were hoping for. The original recording, in contrast, is saturated with something the new one can never have; joyful expectation.

I admit that I might not have picked up on the tone of the original version so easily were this not Advent, that time of the year we Christians indulge in an overabundance of joyful expectation. We have so much joyful expectation (at least we’re supposed to) around this season that we actually have holidays inside our holidays. “One of the most inspiring days preceding Christmas” writes Fr. Marian Zalecki, OSPPE, “is the feast of “Our Lady of Expectation,” unknown to many today, but still kept alive in many countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland as well as in a few religious orders… The feast is celebrated on the 18th of December, a week before Christmas Day… The Gospel message on this feast relates the story of the Annunciation. God asks a woman, his creature for a favor to be Mother of his Son, and at the same time, he respects her freedom. She is free to say “yes” or “no.” There is a moment of waiting in heaven and on earth: God waits for her answer, the heavenly messenger waits for her answer, the first parents Adam and Eve wait for her answer, all confined in hell wait for her answer. With grateful heart, we thank Mary, the Wise and Prudent Virgin, for saying “yes” to God on our behalf.”

I kind of like the idea of that old feast and wouldn’t mind seeing it make a reemergence here in the States. It kind of gives a double meaning to all that “waiting” we do in Advent. Yes, we wait in anticipation for the coming of our Lord, but at the same time He waits on us also, waits on our response to His call.

OUTTAKES #022

WEEKLY NEWSREEL

Good evening Mr. & Mrs. Catholic, and all you other Christians at sea. The Newsreel continues its year long exploration of Scripture (using The Coming Home Network’s guide to reading the Bible and the Catechism in a year) and for the first time since we started, the New Testament provides this week’s oddity. Now off to press.

DATELINE: ACTS CHAPTER 20

The Catechism reminds us that “the study of the sacred page should be the very soul of sacred theology. The ministry of the Word, too - pastoral preaching, catechetics and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place - is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture.” As such, we naturally look forward to the homily each week with great anticipation. And yet, in all likelihood, everyone has probably thought the same thing at one time or another. “It’s been half an hour already! Is this sermon ever going to end!?!” But before we feel too sorry for ourselves over our own enthusiastically long-winded pastors, let us take heart we weren’t in Troas when the apostle Paul came to town.

“Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight… And a young man named Eutychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer; and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him, and embracing him said, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed.”

That’s right, not only did Paul’s exposition knock’em dead, but he actually raised them back to life and made them come back and listen to some more.

Still, despite the desire of the average person in the pew for brevity, there are other considerations to be taken into account when delivering a homily. Father Dario Viganò, director of "Cinema" and president of Ente dello Spettacolo (an Italian foundation dedicated to the cinema) and president of the Redemptor Hominis Pontifical Institute at the Pontifical Lateran University claims that along with a proper length, a good homily best achieves its communicative objective if there is also a consistency of the message with the preacher’s life…

…as well as a general concreteness to the message. "The preacher must speak very, very clearly, so that the listener will leave satisfied and illumined, and not dazzled."

Ahem… yeah, okay. We see what he means.

At any rate, Father Viganò personally believes it was St. Francis who got it exactly right when he "exhorted his friars to use pondered and chaste words in their preaching, for the usefulness and edification of the people, proclaiming to the faithful the vices and virtues, the punishment and glory, with a brief speech, because on earth the Lord spoke brief words." And all the people said, “AMEN!”

And in the spirit of brevity, we’ll end this week’s Newsreel on that note. Until next week, in the words of the great Les Nessman, “Good evening, and may the good news be yours.”

COMING ATTRACTIONS: THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL

Since I survived Santa Claus Conquers The Martians last Christmas, I’ve been feeling kind of invincible. What better way to test my mettle than to spend this Advent season revisiting the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special? And I do mean revisit as I actually saw this the night it aired. What’s that? You don’t think I can handle a second viewing? I find your lack of faith disturbing. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

You know what, just to be safe, I think I’ll go spend some time with my family before popping this in.

INTERMISSION: OH, THANK GOD

Scott Nehring, author of the Good News Film Reviews, has seen fit to honor me with the Superior Scribbler's Award. Must be a side effect from that semi-secret love of most things zombie he carries in his heart. Whatever the reason, Scott, thanks for the gracious compliment, it’s much appreciated. Besides, what movie reviewer could pass up the chance to make an acceptance speech? And the best part, as this is a Christian themed blog, I get to say “all thanks to God” without sounding the least bit like a tourist.

Now, as is the nature of these things, there is some fine print:

• Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
• Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
• Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to this post, which explains The Award.
• Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List (scroll down). That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
• Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Done. So let’s see who I can pass this along to.

1. Well, Deej, Snuffles, & Lucky over at The Sci-Fi Catholic are a given. I mean, how can you resist posts like the Open Letter to the Original Battlestar Galactica? Plus, the combox crowd there can’t be beat.
2. And, of course, there’s Allen from It Came From Allen’s Brain. For a guy with no hands, he sure is a prolific typist. And translator for that matter as his ongoing work on The Gospel of Melvin can attest to.
3. Lately I’ve been lurking around The Deeps of Time, Michael’s blog concerning the intersection of Catholicism and science non-fiction. Hey, it can’t be about giant bugs and alien invaders all of the time, an it? 95% of the time, sure, but not ALL of the time.
4. Speaking of reality, I also really enjoy Archistrategos’ blog Ecce Ego, Quia Vocasti Me as it constantly reminds me there’s more to the Church than my little corner of the Bible Belt. I’m fond of my own parish, but It’s hard not to have a little pew envy when you see stuff like this.
5. The last one is a pure cheat because it allows me to throw in just about everyone I read. Not only does The Catholic Dads blog and blogroll contain a wealth of information, but it’s just nice to know I’m not the only one muddling through parenthood. Yeah, it’s a cheat, but aren’t you jealous you didn’t think of it first?

Once you’re done with those 50 or so blogs, be sure to come back here as we gear up for our second ever Christmas review. It’s as bad as you could imagine.

ZARDOZ

TAGLINE

“Beyond 1984, Beyond 2004, Beyond Love, Beyond Death!”

THE PLOT

It’s the year 2293 and Zed, leader of a band of pony-tailed red-diaper–wearing mutants known as The Exterminators, has become concerned that his god, Zardoz, no longer wishes him to kill the sports-coat-wearing Brutals, but rather teach them to farm instead. To learn why his god has betrayed the gospel of the gun and returned to the evil ways of the penis, Zed stows away inside Zardoz’s giant floating stone head and travels beyond the invisible barriers to a land full of telekinetic bohemians known as the Eternals. (See, if I reviewed stuff like Pixar movies on this site, I would never EVER get to write sentences like that.) Zed is immediately captured and condemned to death before he can pollute the Eternal’s utopia with his savagery, however, the sentence is delayed for a few weeks so that he can be studied. Over the following days Zed’s presence does indeed disrupt the docile society of the Vortex as he doggedly pursues the secrets of Zardoz, the origin of The Eternals, and ultimately, the reason for his very own existence. As the Vortex erupts into civil war and The Exterminators breach the barrier, The Eternals begin to understand that Zed’s arrival may not have been an accident, but rather the machinations of a higher power so that Zed might bring The Eternals the one thing they have longed for the most, death.

THE POINT

There’s three huge problems with the above synopsis of Zardoz. The first is that it leaves out about 95% of the movie. The second is that it just barely makes sense. The third and worst problem is that if you were to actually start adding in the missing 95% of the movie, it would probably stop making any sense at all.

You don’t have to take my word for it, just watch the thing. The film opens with a monologue given by a disembodied head which identifies itself as Arthur Frayne, aka the puppet master, aka Zardoz. Arthur, who for some unknown reason sports a moustache and goatee drawn on his face with a magic marker, questions the audience’s concept of reality and free will and wonders "Is God in show business, too?" From there the movie transitions into a shot of the giant floating stone head of Zardoz lecturing a bunch of men in diapers about the evils of the male reproductive organ before vomiting hundreds of guns on them. As the head of Zardoz floats off, we cut to its interior where our hero Zed emerges in meaningful slow motion from a pile of wheat. He stares at a bunch of Real Girl dolls wrapped in cellophane until he spots Arthur Frayne, for all intents and purposes his god, whom he immediately shoots dead. The head descends to a rustic mill where Zed discovers plants in baggies, green bread, and charts depicting the evolution of mankind with a question mark at the end. Zed eventually wanders outside the mill where he sees some pastel wearing hippies, a topless woman on a horse, and what is without a doubt the world’s most freckled human being who glares at him until he collapses in a heap. See what I mean? At this point, we’re only about ten minutes into the movie, and thanks to the way the narrative is unfolding, there’s simply no way to know what’s going on. There’s mystery and then there’s madness. After that, there is Zardoz.

Now, none of this is really the fault of John Boorman, who wrote the story. After the movie is over and you have time to think about it (if you have the desire and the strength), you’ll discover the basic plotline of Zardoz actually presents a pretty straight forward tale about a secular-hippy-baby boomer attempt at creating a utopia drawn out to its logical bad conclusion. (Yes, I’m assuming any secular-hippy-baby boomer attempt at creating a utopia will end badly. Don’t you?) Instead, the problem lies with John Boorman, who also directed the film. What the heck was that particular John Boorman thinking? (Or taking!?!) You would think, after making a number of excellent small films like Point Blank (remade by Mel Gibson as Payback) and just coming off the surprise hit Deliverance, that Boorman was poised to unleash a cinematic blockbuster. But armed with only one million dollars ($200,000 of which went to a self-proclaimed underpaid Sean Connery), a bunch of nutty English actors, and complete freedom from studio interference, what Boorman instead attempted to create was something far more insidious. Boorman tried to make a piece of art.

It’s the only feasible explanation for some of the things you see in Zardoz. (Okay, drugs are also a distinct possibility, but we’re trying to give Boorman the benefit of the doubt here.) Along with the stuff already mentioned, this movie also includes such visions as a room where the glass walls and ceilings are lined with live contorted nudes and baby dolls. ART! There’s another room full of hippies dressed in Logan’s Run hand-me-downs viewing a power point presentation on the workings of the male sexual organ. Not satisfied with the lecture, they try to get the bestial uncivilized Sean Connery to provide a live demonstration by showing him a video of two women mud wrestling. ART! You have the same group seated around a circular dining table silently voting on Zed’s impending execution by vogueing. They follow this up by making jazz hands at a hippy named Friend while the man screams maniacally, “I will not go to second level with you!” ART! You get a scene of people standing in a darkened room speaking in tongues (the foreign language kind) while slides of random images are projected onto their semi-nude bodies. ART! There’s even a scene involving Sean Connery wearing a wedding dress. ARRRRT!!! Or drugs. Definitely could be drugs.

Still, before we write Zardoz off as just another early 70s LSD trip gone horribly wrong, maybe we should explore the art option just a wee bit further. In the introduction to his book Art In The Seventies, Edward Lucie-Smith writes “The art objects produced in the 70s have to be looked at in a variety of ways… perhaps the most fruitful of all, is to classify works of art, not in terms of style, but in terms of the ideas and feelings they are trying to communicate. Essentially, this leads to the thought that the work of art is not absolute, but has a fluidity of meaning and even of value which is related to the fluidity of the social context within which we find it… A fruitful ambiguity is in fact one of the great strengths of the art of [the 70s].” Or to put another way, by the time the 70s were in full swing, it was getting to be next to impossible to figure out exactly what artists were trying to say with any given piece of art. To that effect, we saw the rise of that bane of art students everywhere, the “artist’s statement”.

Matt Siber, writing for the art department of Columbia College Chicago, gives as good an explanation as any as to what that is. “An artist’s statement is a short written piece accompanying your artwork that describes what you do as an artist. Artist’s statements are used to help communicate the artist’s ideas, concepts and motivations to the viewer… As visual artists we rely on our art to communicate our ideas, but visual art communicates much differently than written language. By this token, it is not expected that the artist’s statement explain every detail and nuance of the artwork. If it did, we wouldn’t need the artwork. Instead, it should provide insight into the artist’s concept and motivation behind making the work.” In short, an artist’s statement is a hint. When you’re standing in front of a piece of art and wondering what the heck was going through that guy’s mind when he made it, you can read the artist’s statement and possibly get a clue. Sometimes. On the commentary track provided with the DVD, John Boorman relates how he tacked on the monologue delivered by the head of Arthur Frayne (which is basically the equivalent of an artist’s statement) to the beginning of Zardoz after test audiences didn’t quite understand what the film was about. “It didn’t work” a bemused sounding Boorman quips. Even he seems to realize the movie is just too much of a mess.

If I had to take a guess, (which is about all you can do with this movie) I would suggest the main reason for this (assuming it wasn’t drugs) appears to be the serious disconnect between the way the movie was filmed and the ideas it was trying to communicate. You see, Zardoz was shot in that hallucinatory avant-garde visual style which permeated counter culture films of the late 60s and early 70s. Unfortunately, the typical audience for that style of film was composed mostly of young secular-hippy-baby boomers, the very people whom Zardoz paints as well intentioned, but ultimately misguided, idiots. You can just imagine that crowd filing in, ready to grok on some trippy visuals, and getting instead a treatise on the notion that their ideals, if given free reign, would only lead to an effeminate, impotent, barren society. Probably worst of all, especially to the more secular members of the audience, was Boorman’s solution to the problem his movie presented. As the ending of Zardoz suggests, the ultimate salvation of mankind does not lie in eternal youth, non-gender specific relationships, clothing-optional bohemian communal living, uber-pacifism, vegetarianism, blah blah blah, etcetera, ad nauseum. Instead, Boorman reaches the shocking conclusion that if mankind is to have any real future, it will lie in restoring the one thing which had been totally exorcised from the “enlightened” society of the Eternals; the natural proclivity for human beings to form a traditional heterosexual family focused on cranking out children.

You can almost hear the cries of “anathema” ringing out from auditoriums across the nation, can’t you? One can imagine that for the secular artsy crowd, this idea amounted to something of a heresy. After all, Boorman was one of them, a secular humanist to the core who believed religion to be a myth and found the Catholic Church in particular to be “a very repressive force, very stultifying.” So how could he possibly be putting forth an idea that sounds suspiciously like something released in 2003 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger? “The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.” Now why would a non-Christian like Boorman promote something remotely resembling this idea taken from the precepts of natural law?

Well, as Pope John Paul II, an actor before he entered the priesthood, wrote in his 1999 Letter to Artists, “In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are.”  So, if Boorman really was trying to make art with Zardoz (and not just on drugs) then, basically, he just couldn’t help himself. Boorman admits as much in the commentary when he relates “I was somewhat criticized here for having as a conclusion the notion of attraction and love between a man and a woman. It perhaps seems rather a simple notion in the face of all these other ideas, however… I happen to believe it to be the case.” Now perhaps Boorman’s acceptance of this notion is just one of those odd convergences where an atheist comes to accept on his own something Christianity has taught all along. Or possibly its some stray bit of deeply ingrained philosophy left over from the days his non-Catholic parents forced him to go to Catholic school. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a truth he just couldn’t find a way to talk himself out of no matter how much it angered his pals. As the Catechism notes, “The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history; it subsists under the flux of ideas and customs and supports their progress. The rules that express it remain substantially valid. Even when it is rejected in its very principles, it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies".”

For whichever reason is the correct one (and I actually don’t think it’s drugs in this case), what we ultimately have with Zardoz is a card carrying secular-hippy-baby boomer attempting to make a movie which visually appeals to his peers, but at its core has a message repulsive to them. There’s no way they were gonna make it a success. Regrettably, especially for Zardoz’s ticket sales, the mainstream audience who might actually agree with and appreciate that message… well, they probably tuned out the second Sean Connery showed up in a diaper. If only there were an audience which could revel in both the weirdness and the message… waaaait a minute!

THE STINGER

I promised Xena, the nice reader who requested this review, that I would reveal my secret to surviving a movie like Zardoz. Elementary, my dear Xena. Art school. After enduring week after week of listening to artist’s statements containing sentences like “My piece invokes the inherent irony present in the application of plastic art forms thereby allowing me to conceptualize and explore the expressive potential within the realistic representation of a bowl of fruit.” watching Zardoz is a walk in the park.

SOMETIMES HOLIDAYS ARE FOR THE BIRDS

A perfect storm of personal difficulties required the staff to make an impromptu trip out of town to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with some family we didn’t think we would see until Christmas. Frankly, it’s turned into the kind of month that makes a person understand some of those Psalms just a little bit better. You know the ones; the Catechism describes them as “the distraught situation of the believer who, in his preferential love for the Lord, is exposed to a host of enemies and temptations, but who waits upon what the faithful God will do, in the certitude of his love and in submission to his will.” Yeah, those. Anyway, we’re back in town and although things are still bumpy around here, we should be back on schedule in a few days.