2:37

I'd been meaning to blog my reaction to this film but never got around to it. Now I have been prompted to do so by Paul's response to the film. Paul highlights the undeniable - this was a well-produced film which brings to the big screen some of the real fears, concerns, hopes and dreams of Australian (and probably other) high schoolers.

The big question of course was as to whether the incredibly graphic suicide scene at the end of the film was exploitative, unhealthy or inappropriate. I guess for me, despite the power of much of the film, I have some real reservations, and I think I can point to two reasons for those concerns.

*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****

The first concerns the 'payoff' for watching a young girl slowly bleed to death on the toilet floor. It seems, given the identity of the victim, that the only conclusion we can draw from the final outcome is that sometimes you never know who or why; that it may well be that the person you least expect is the most psychologically desperate. Now perhaps it's because I have had some exposure to the issue of suicide, but for me, that's old news. For me it wasn't 'worth' the psychological trauma of the film to have that fact reiterated for me.

A second reason for my disquiet concerns the portrayal of the other characters in the show. As Paul has pointed out, these characters are drawn with a realism and insight which is truly evocative. And as we discover, each one of them has some 'reason' which implies that they could be the one to suicide. Their lives, distresses, innermost turmoils are laid bare for our examination. However in the end my own feeling was that these struggles become mere fodder for the 'whoddunit' plotline. In a real sense, the pain of the other characters was 'used' in order to set us up for the twist at the end, and I felt myself resenting that on behalf of the other characters.

Would I recommend the film? I'm not sure. I know that I am glad to have seen it. But I still wonder...

I'm testing Qumana...

I'm a paid up ecto user but have been having some bugs with its syncing with the website. Mark suggested trying Qumana, so I am.

100_0016.JPG

And here's a picture of my gorgeous daughter.

She's the one in the middle, pictured with two friends on our back balcony.

Powered by Qumana

Update:

After some hassles with uncooperative photos, multiple postings etc, I'm back to ecto. But Qumana did have nicer eye-candy...

Five things meme

Stephen tagged the universe, and its a good opportunity to post again on my favourite topic ;-), so here are five things you probably didn't know about me:

1. At age 9ish I was on Japanese TV (if you don't remember seeing me its probably because I was the one in the snowman outfit).

2. My parents went to a Royal Garden party with the Queen (of Australia (curses)) and Prince Phillip, and all I got was this lousy story...

3. I have a life sized cardboard replica of 7 of 9 looking at me in my study (and my wife, Sue, gave it to me!)

4. My first computer was a DEC LSI-11/23 with a hard drive about 2.5 foot cubed which shook the whole house as it ran up to speed.

5. I arranged for Sue and myself to have dinner with Christian writer Adrian Plass and his wife Bridget as my 10th anniversary gift to Sue.

Have a glorious Christmas, New Year and any other relevant holiday!

Book Meme

Some time back, JoBloggs highlighted a Book Meme which I thought I'd reply to, but time gets away from you...

1. One book that changed your life.

Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

2. One book you've read more than once

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the RIngs
(A ritual annual reading since age 12)

3. One book you'd want on a desert island

Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
(I'd have plenty of time to come up with an alternative model...)

4. One book that made you laugh

Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat

5. One book that made you cry

Guy Gavriel Kay, The Fionavar Tapestry (Trilogy)

6. One book you wish had been written

Isaac Asimov, The Jesus I Never Knew

7. One book you wish had never been written

Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, Left Behind

8. One book you're currently reading

Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It?

9. One book you've been meaning to read

David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission

10. Tag five people:

Mark
Paul
Darren
Craig
Cheryl

Liturgical dance?

In a comment on my previous post, Stephen suggests:

Have you considered “upgrading” to a flannelgraph? (iFlannel?) Then all these technical problems would just fade away. Mostly you'd have manually fake dissolves and fades, and keep swapping the lyrics etc.

Maybe the physical activity could double as some sort of liturgical dance.

Unfortunately the idea of seeing me doing a liturgical dance has caused strong men to lose their lunches, particularly after seeing my “Village People” turn...

IMG_0712.JPG

'Nuff said?

Feeling proud... (“the few, the proud, the geeky”)

**Warning slightly technical nerdfest follows**

... but I have to tell someone...

Went to a Council of Synod meeting in Canberra last weekend (Standing Committee of the NSW body of the UCA) and my Presbytery (regional body) was 'on' to do the devotions. I took a CD with a few flash presentations and a couple of recent Keynote presentations. I also took my recently fixed laptop. Only problem is that said laptop is running Panther (OS X 10.3) and I now use Tiger (10.4) on my main machine along with Keynote 3 (which doesn't run on 10.3). I figured I would drop by the AppleCentre at ANU and buy a copy of Tiger and then install Keynote 3 and load the stuff from the CD.

First problem... as I drove into the parking lot of the AppleCentre I realised that I had forgotten my original media for Keynote 3. Bugger! Oh well, I'll buy that too and give or sell the extra copy to my church who I'm hoping will be buying a Mac in the next week or so.

Second problem. AppleCentre has a copy of Keynote 3 (well iWork '06 actually) but is out of stock of Tiger!!! An AppleCentre without even one copy of the current Apple OS - What the?! Oh well, my colleague Karyn is a Machead - hopefully she will (a) bring her laptop and (b) be running Tiger.

Third problem. Karyn does indeed have her laptop and she has indeed got Tiger running on it. But she has never bothered to update from Keynote 2 to Keynote 3. Oh well, surely Keynote files are backward compatible.

Fourth problem. Well, yes they are... if you save them in the old format... but who would need to do that, eh? I always keep my software up to date... Oh well, I'll just scrub using the Keynote 3 files and use some of the Flash stuff plus write some prayers and stuff.

But I really wanted to use that cool presentation with the Paul Kelly song (Surely God is a Lover) and nice piccy's. It would have impressed them. <sulk>

So anyway, here comes the good idea. I realise that I have an old copy of iMovie on my laptop (version 4). So first I used 'Show Package Contents' to crack open the Keynote file and extract the raw photos and the mp3 file. Then (between 11pm and 2am) I fired up iMovie; laid the mp3 down as the soundtrack; re-created the carefully timed Keynote slideshow transitions by listening to the song to gauge approximate times, then creating appropriate length video clips out of the still photos (adding interest with judicious use of the 'Ken Burns effect'); created titles over the top to recreate the lyrics which had been tastefully laid out as part of the Keynote Presentation; realised I didn't have a blank DVD and it was 2am; exported the movie to a Quicktime file; exported the movie to a Quicktime file again at full resolution to overcome some conversion artifacts; waited 15 minutes for the bloody thing to render into Quicktime (at 2.15am, 15 minutes seems to last about 3 hours); and, 'YAY', I'm home and hosed. The next morning everyone is duly impressed and I am a hero to my Presbytery colleagues.

For an encore, let me tell you about the time I used 2 bent paper clips and a perished rubber band to recreate the entire hash table for a 250Gb database whose index had been corrupted...

My new toy

Well, I think I have just laid eyes on the sexiest sight of my life (other than my gorgeous wife of course!). My new iPod Shuffle was just delivered and it is absolutely stunning. You just can't believe how tiny and cool it looks till you see it in the flesh. The setup was quick and painless and I am now (10 minutes later) listening to a selection of favourite podcasts and music. Man are the kids at the High School going to be jealous next time I address their assembly. (Because I will wear it of course...) (That's why I got it - to help me understand youth culture...) (Honestly, it's for ministry...)

CIMG0841.JPG CIMG0842.JPG

Running behind Lara Croft

I just bought Tomb Raider: Legend and so I guess I'm in for a few more days of running around behind a woman with improbably large breasts! I'm a crappy gamer so when I get good at any game I like to stick with it. Hence I have purchased every Tomb Raider game in turn. I must confess to the fact that the first thing I do after purchasing a game is to download and print a walkthrough. After all, I play for fun and if I've been stuck in the same place for 30 minutes wondering what arcane key combination will get me past the latest trap - it ceases to be fun!

I was also reminded by this to do the “Which Action Hero Would You Be?” quiz, mentioned by Darren (Batman) from planet telex, and guess what...


You scored as Lara Croft. A thrill-seeking, slightly unscrupulous, tough-as-nails archaeologist, Lara Croft travels the world in search of ancient relics perhaps better left hidden. She packs two Colt .45s and has no fear of jumping off buildings, exploring creepy tombs, or taking on evil meglomaniacs bent on world domination.

Lara Croft 71%

Batman, the Dark Knight 67%

James Bond, Agent 007 63%

El Zorro 63%

Neo, the “One” 58%

William Wallace 58%

Indiana Jones 54%

Maximus 46%

The Terminator 42%

Captain Jack Sparrow 42%

The Amazing Spider-Man 33%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

We want your soul!

On an email list, Darren from planet telex mentioned (with lust in his heart) the 'ShowLED' sample movie, which is totally awesome. While watching the movie I was struck by part of the soundtrack and after some googling discovered the totally awesome track, “We want your soul” by Adam Freeland. There is a free download (note risque language) from the site, but the iTunes version is longer and is also interesting. Adam also had designed a “We want your soul” website to add to the viral marketing of his anti-consumerism message.

Postscript: It does, on further reflection, seem rather ironic that a company producing a promotional video would use as a soundtrack a song decrying consumerism...

Greed

So what does it say about me that the thing which gets me blogging again is the possibility of personal gain?

Nonetheless I do think that the MacAppADay offer sounds a great one. My Mac productivity and experience is greatly enhanced by a whole raft of shareware and freeware programs (maybe I'll blog that list later) and if MacAppADay helps to get more people looking, downloading and trying apps it will be good for Mac development and the Mac platform.

So sign up to MacAppADay's RSS Feed and check back throughout December. I will be!

So I've seen it now...

Yesterday I went to see The Da Vinci Code. Mark Berry points to a very negative review by fellow Australian and well known apologist Phil Johnson, but I have to say that my own reaction was quite different as was that of the two mates I went with. We all thought the film was quite enjoyable and the acting was good. It was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours and we didn't begrudge the $9.50 it cost.

Phil Johnson rightly points out that none of the film's (or books) central themes are particularly new, but my own question then is, 'Why, given the relative lack of historical backing for these ideas do they still have such enormous traction within the general community?' And my own answer is that there is something pointed to in these books, films etc which has been missing from the 'run-of-the-mill' portrayal of the Christian faith. I'll be interested in exploring what that missing something might be with some of my friends who aren't 'heavy-duty church-goers'.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the way in which the Tom Hanks character (Langdon) is 'softened' in the movie. This was particularly obvious in the scene where Teabing is filling in Sophie on the grail legend. In the book both Langdon and Teabing are singing from the same hymnsheet - almost tag-teaming to destroy Sophie's presuppositions about Jesus, the Bible and Christianity. However in the film version Langdon is seen more as a moderating influence - regularly challenging Teabing's view - bringing up (more traditional) alternatives etc. There was a similar subtle change in the dialogue leading up to meeting Teabing, with Langdon being much more cautious and suspicious about grail 'lore'. I wonder was this change in Langdon's character meant to make him more likeable or the film less offensive to those of Christian sensibilities? For me it actually robbed the film of some of its power.

All in all I thought it was worth seeing and the gorgeous architectural scenes made it a big-screen event in a way which (sorry Mark!) won't be captured by the video.

On my wishlist...

I've always enjoyed the writings of Daniel Dennett. As a philosopher and cognitive scientist I find him challenging and top-notch. The fact that he has a negative approach to religion hasn't bothered me - I figure that if my faith can't stand up to questioning from a good thinker it's not worth having.

So I'm fascinated to actually put my faith 'head-to-head' with Dennett as it were, in his recent book, Breaking the Spell (subtitled 'Religion as a Natural Phenomenon).

I've ordered it today and will blog my thoughts when it arrives.

A previous wishlist book, The Secret Message of Jesus, has arrived. I'm enjoying it so far but am only up to Chapter 1 - more to come later.

Movie magic...

On the fishers, surfers and casters blog, Paul Teusner asks, 'Why should we think about mass media?' In the comments, Stephen posed the challenge,

What would your list of 5-10 books be that would make a good introduction to religion and media?

My comment in response was,

Really given the article, shouldn’t it be 5-10 *movies* which would be illustrative of a good introduction to religion and media…?

And Paul naturally asked me to put my money where my mouth was. :-0

So here is a list of some movies which inform / provide the vocabulary for / become a medium of, my own spirituality. I'm keeping it brief but am happy to enlarge on any of them in comments if someone is interested. Also I found that it was hard to pick specific films, for the reason that movies are so much a part of my life - I've watched hundreds (thousands?). And the movie which speaks to me at one time is clearly a function of what's going on in my life at that point, what the spiritual issues or questions are for me then etc. Nevertheless, here goes:

The Village - What is fear? How does it shape our lives? Our beliefs? How can we continue to be part of a messy, hurtful world? Did the Creator get it wrong?

X-Men (1 or 2) - Alienation seems to be part of life. What makes us human? More interestingly - what prevents us from being fully human?

Dogma - Alanis Morissette as God. Need I say more? No seriously - a playful, quirky God. That speaks to me. The rest of the movie is also an interesting exploration of justice, right and wrong, consequences.

Saved - Ok, so it's not rocket science, but I went to that school (except our principal couldn't do standing somersaults...). If evangelical / conservative faith is so true, why is it so ugly?

Spirited Away - I can't explain this one. I just know it moved me in a way few other things in life have. Maybe its because I lived the first 12 years of my life in Japan. Natsukashii ne... But there's also something I can't put my finger on in the content, that says something about the way the world is.

Wrath of Khan - Yeah, ok, I know I'm sad. Still... I cried when Spock died. Sacrifice and love are at the heart of the universe.

Ok then, there's half a dozen. I'm sure there's more. What about you?

Movie magic...

On the fishers, surfers and casters blog,  Paul Teusner asks, 'Why should we think about mass media?' In the comments, Stephen posed the challenge,

What would your list of 5-10 books be that would make a good introduction to religion and media?

My comment in response was,

Really given the article, shouldn’t it be 5-10 *movies* which would be illustrative of a good introduction to religion and media…?

And Paul naturally asked me to put my money where my mouth was. :-0

So here is a list of some movies which inform / provide the vocabulary for / become a medium of, my own spirituality. I'm keeping it brief but am happy to enlarge on any of them in comments if someone is interested. Also I found that it was hard to pick specific films, for the reason that movies are so much a part of my life - I've watched hundreds (thousands?). And the movie which speaks to me at one time is clearly a function of what's going on in my life at that point, what the spiritual issues or questions are for me then etc. Nevertheless, here goes:

The Village - What is fear? How does it shape our lives? Our beliefs? How can we continue to be part of a messy, hurtful world? Did the Creator get it wrong?

X-Men (1 or 2) - Alienation seems to be part of life. What makes us human? More interestingly - what prevents us from being fully human?

Dogma - Alanis Morissette as God. Need I say more? No seriously - a playful, quirky God. That speaks to me. The rest of the movie is also an interesting exploration of justice, right and wrong, consequences.

Saved - Ok, so it's not rocket science, but I went to that school (except our principal couldn't do standing somersaults...). If evangelical / conservative faith is so true, why is it so ugly?

Spirited Away - I can't explain this one. I just know it moved me in a way few other things in life have. Maybe its because I lived the first 12 years of my life in Japan. Natsukashii ne... But there's also something I can't put my finger on in the content, that says something about the way the world is.

Wrath of Khan - Yeah, ok, I know I'm sad. Still... I cried when Spock died. Sacrifice and love are at the heart of the universe.

Ok then, there's half a dozen. I'm sure there's more. What about you?

What is the emerging church?

When people ask me what the 'emerging church' is, one of the resources I point them to is the book Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger. In a recent email conversation I summarised the 9 common characteristics they find in emerging churches, and a number of people seemed to find my summary helpful so I thought I'd put it up here for reference.

The Cliff Notes version is this: they identify nine characteristics of emerging churchs:
  1. they tend to identify heavily with the life and teaching of Jesus as much as his death and resurrection - a 'kingdom' emphasis if you will;
  2. they tend to break down the secular/sacred dualism thus being generally far more optimistic about culture (seeing God at work in it) and identifying with the concept of the church joining with God the Missio Dei, rather than the Church being the sole (or main) instrument of God's work. They are also thus warm towards a sacramentalist approach.
  3. they tend to emphasise the importance of community; and value family over institution.
  4. they tend to value hospitality, generosity to the stranger, inclusiveness.
  5. they tend to value service to others and to see that such service should be generous and transparent (without ulterior motivation).
  6. they tend to emphasise full participation with God in the redemption of the world and hence worship tends to be multi-sensory, all-age, participatory, dialogical, holistic, etc.
  7. related to this, there is a strong emphasis on creativity (participating with my gifts) and aesthetics.
  8. leadership tends to be seen as relational, corporate, vulnerable, influential (rather than authoritarian), passionate (rather than rationally driven), facilitative.
  9. there is a strong interest in learning from, and incorporating into life and worship, the 'best' of ancient thinking but more particularly *practice*, especially practices of spirituality (some refer to an emergence of a 'new monasticism').

That movie again...

In Australia (as no doubt elsewhere) that film, The Da Vinci Code, is stirring up a hornet's nest. The Sydney Anglican Diocese has funded $50,000 worth of ads to show in cinemas and a website, Challenging Da Vinci. Clearly there is interest in the person of Jesus, but the real question for me is do we take the negative approach of debunking the movie (and book), or can we actually connect positively? In the article above, the Uniting Church President, Rev. Dr. Dean Drayton is quoted as saying that popular culture was an 'important avenue from which Australians may start to search for answers to the deeply spiritual questions they continue to ask today.' This is good.

But even better are the comments of Brian McLaren on SojoMail, where he says,

'For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true. ... I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown's suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown's book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion's grasping for power. Again, there's something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.'

I think that my own response might be to see if I can organise a discussion event entitled 'The Scandalous Life and Words of Jesus' noting that just like Dan Brown, Jesus was someone who regularly aired concerns about the church and was at his most critical when addressing religious hypocrisy.