I recently saw Avatar, which was -- from a visual point-of-view -- stunning in 3D. Part of the visual genius of the film is the ability to create a world that is incredible / fantastic but which becomes credible to the viewer... the visual effects did not distract or call attention to themselves.

From the perspective of story, however, and especially from the perspective of spirituality, I found Avatar much less impressive. The highly caricatured portrayals of good (Navi) and evil (human) provided a simplistic moral universe very unlike the elaborate and complex visual universe of the movie.

Sure, there were a few human characters who showed an interest in the Navi's world/culture, but in response the solution was to attack the humans, and, in the case of the main character (hero?) Jake, to abandon his human life. He was not some sort of Christ-like mediator figure, but instead one who "switched sides."

Fr. Robert Barron makes some acute observations about the movie's "Hollywood-approved spirituality" and how it differs from a Biblical spirituality. See the YouTube video below:

Labels: hollywood, movies, multimedia

Last December, Family Theater Productions in Hollywood sponsored a Theology of the Body script contest.

The winning script? A characteristically brilliant piece of writing by Sean Dillon, fellow Act One 2002 alumnus:

Labels: hollywood, John Paul II, marriage and family, moral life, movies, respect, theology of the body

I saw an advance screening of The Stoning of Soraya M in Minneapolis several weeks ago. I have a friend at Mpower Pictures, the production company who is distributing.

I think it's a tough sell.

Great performance by Shohreh Aghdashloo, although there are some unanswered questions about how her character came to be the maverick she is.

The stoning is as graphic as the scourging scene in the Passion (Steve McEveety producing on both), but to less purpose here, I think. Watching Jesus suffer is meaningful for a believer. Watching Soraya get bloodied to a pulp is less meaningful as spectacle. Don't see the point in having the camera linger on it. I would definitely not classify this as a family film.

No epiphanies really -- it has a moral (treating women badly is bad) but no theme ... nothing to be argued.

And I don't know what they want the audience to come away with -- except some general sense that the culture depicted needs to be deconstructed / exposed... but it raises all kinds of questions: Are ALL Muslims like this? Are all the abusive men one-dimensional and unsympathetic like the husband in this film? It's a morality play of sorts, I suppose.

For a vigorous discussion of story as epiphany, heroes in cinema storytelling, how dark is too dark, etc., visit the podcast site for last October's Act One Story Symposium.

Panel discussions include Hollywood writers, producers, and the winsome Dr. Peter Kreeft.

Labels: hollywood, movies

As the Year for Priests begins, I've been giving some thought about what I might be doing on my blog during this time.

It seems to me that there is a good deal of confusion in the culture -- and even in some quarters of the Church -- about who the priest is, what is the relationship between the ordained priesthood and the priesthood of the baptized, etc. -- so I'll be highlighting books, videos, essays and other resources that I think are helpful in understanding priesthood.

I might also begin a series of short glosses / commentaries on Pastores Dabo Vobis, the apostolic exhortation written by Pope John Paul II. I began a similar project a while ago with Veritatis Splendor, which I plan to return to one day.

Today, I'm recommending the following video produced by the Midwest Theological Forum: The Catholic Priest Today. You can watch it online here.

Labels: church, movies, multimedia, priesthood, vocations, Year for Priests

On Corpus Christi, a trailer from Grassroots Films:



You can order the complete 10-minute film here.

Labels: communion, Eucharist, movies, multimedia, prayer, vocations

Another Dan Brown novel goes to the screen this weekend. Yawn.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in October of 2003, the murmurs about Ron Howard's adaptation of The Da Vinci Code were already beginning. I picked up a copy of the novel to see why the book was so well-loved. I am imagining that people find the book pleasurable for same reason they enjoy most television: it's a chance to turn off your brain and just marinate your synapses in a series of sentimental and mindless escapades. I read the whole thing as quickly as possible. I approached the book like a plate full of chopped liver -- I swallowed it whole, so as not to suffer the experience of tasting it. The lies were generous, and the writing was embarrassingly bad. My roommate assured me that, in terms of writing style, it was much better than Angels and Demons. I was incredulous. I thought I had plumbed the depths of the fictional abyss. But then he read to me the first paragraph of Angels and Demons, between fits of laughter. I stood corrected. And I never felt in the least bit tempted to read it.

Still haven't seen The Da Vinci Code yet. I've been meaning to check out a copy at the library when I'm in need of an evening of Mystery Science Theater.

So, if you're in a similar situation, but feel that you need to understand what it's about so you have something to talk about with people who have read the book or seen the film, here are a few resources:

• Elizabeth Lev's More to Rome Than Angels and Demons, which includes this interesting bit of backstory:

  I spent almost two years with the production crew of "Angels and Demons," getting to know Ron Howard and the heads of the production staff fairly well. They were fascinated by the Vatican to the point where moments of respect for the Church shine forth in the movie, despite the unsympathetic agenda of the story. Having visited the scavi and seen the tomb of St. Peter, Ron Howard abandoned his earlier idea of having the anti-matter bomb, the pivotal plot device, resting among the bones of St. Peter, to avoid having Robert Langdon's hands disturb the resting place of the first Pope.

• Amy Welborn's Obligatory Angels and Demons Post
• Steven Greydanus reviews the book (and makes some comparisons with the film) here: Fact-Checking Angels and Demons
• Mark Shea has written a short book called Answering Angels and Demons which you can download for free
• Sr. Helena Burns' review of the film; she says it is chock-full of "truthiness"
• keep an eye on the Rotten Tomatoes site for amusing reviews

Oh, and don't miss the glass-is-ten-percent-full review of the film on the National Catholic Reporter website, with the subtitle "The film has seeds of the Gospel, appeals to Catholic sensibilities." Seeds of the Gospel? Appeals to Catholic sensibilities? I'm afraid that Sr. Rose is to the Dan Brown franchise what Doug Kmiec is to the President's policies on human life.

Labels: choleric, hollywood, movies

I have been a long-time fan of the TV show LOST, but I was especially intrigued by the reference to Flannery O'Connor in the season 5 finale last night. Near the end of the first hour of the finale, a character we have never seen before -- Jacob -- is shown reading a copy of Everything That Rises Must Converge.





I haven't watched the second hour of the finale yet, so I'm going to wait before commenting on the significance.


Here's an article in the Union Recorder about the O'Connor reference. A snip:

Executive Producer Carlton Cuse says that O’Connor’s influence weighs in on his and partner Damon Lindelof’s writing of the show.

“Flannery O’Connor’s use of Christian theology in concert with sudden, unexpected violence was inspiring to us,” Cuse told The Union-Recorder. “She was truly an exceptional writer.”

Craig Amason, executive director of the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation said that he was alerted by O’Connor’s publisher that the title would be a prop in the show.

“It’s just one more example of how influential Flannery O’Connor’s work is with pop culture. Over and over again we see this,” Amason said. “The lines from the Joker in [the film] ‘The Dark Knight’ could have come straight from ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ or ‘The Misfit.’ Pop culture is fascinated with Flannery O’Connor’s work. It is obviously a huge hit.”

With so many storylines running in so many directions, it seems only natural that at some point, they would intersect, or converge. When asked if the nod to O’Connor was a clue for “LOST” addicts who watch episodes looking for hidden meaning, Cuse wouldn’t say.

“Damon and I try not to specifically interpret why we place any particular book in the show,” he said. “We hope viewers will explore the books and find their own answers.”

Even if the rest of the LOST franchise jumps the shark, the interest it has stirred in O'Connor's work will be salutary for those in the audience who will now discover her for the first time.

In the RCIA Hollywood program which I co-taught with Barbara Nicolosi, we've used several of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, including The Geranium (to talk about human freedom) and The River (to talk about baptism). Interestingly enough, last year we used both The River and video clips from the Season 3 finale of LOST for our class on the sacrament of baptism. Here's a link to the materials from this class, including an audio podcast, a PDF version of The River, and a Flash presentation on baptism in LOST. It's the second audio podcast that gets into a discussion of The River.

Other Flannery stuff: My lame attempt to adapt A Good Man Is Hard to Find into a screenplay (as an adaptation exercise in my first screenwriting class); a discussion of the Flannery-esque elements in the movie 21 Grams; and an audio podcast (with accompanying slides) from Barbara Nicolosi's presentation on "What Flannery Knew" from last October's Story Symposium in Hollywood.

Finally, read my favorite essay by Flannery O'Connor -- The Church and the Fiction Writer -- here.

Some favorite quotes:

For the writer of fiction, everything has its testing point in the eye, an organ which eventually involves the whole personality and as much of the world as can be got into it. Msgr. Romano Guardini has written that the roots of the eye are in the heart. In any case, for the Catholic they stretch far and away into those depths of mystery which the modern world is divided about -- part of it trying to eliminate mystery while another part tries to rediscover it in disciplines less personally demanding than religion....

It is generally supposed, and not least by Catholics, that the Catholic who writes fiction is out to use fiction to prove the truth of the Faith, or at the least, to prove the existence of the supernatural. He may be. No one certainly can be sure of his low motives except as they suggest themselves in his finished work, but when the finished work suggests that pertinent actions have been fraudulently manipulated or overlooked or smothered, whatever purposes the writer started out with have already been defeated. What the fiction writer will discover, if he discovers anything at all, is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of abstract truth. The writer leans, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is. What-is is all he has to do with; the concrete is his medium; and he will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them.

Henry James said that the morality of a piece of fiction depended on the amount of "felt life" that was in it. The Catholic writer, insofar as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has, for all its honor, been found by God to be worth dying for. But this should enlarge, not narrow, his field of vision. To the modern mind... this is warped vision which "bears little or no relation to the truth as it is known today." The Catholic who does not write for a limited circle of fellow Catholics will in all probability consider that, since this is his vision, he is writing for a hostile audience, and he will be more concerned to have his work stand on its own feet and be complete and self-sufficient and impregnable in its own right. When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist....

If the average Catholic reader could be tracked down through the swamps of letters-to-the-editor and other places where he momentarily reveals himself, he would be found to be more of a Manichean than the Church permits. By separating nature and grace as much as possible, he has reduced his conception of the supernatural to pious cliche and has become able to recognize nature in literature in only two forms, the sentimental and the obscene. He would seem to prefer the former, while being more of an authority on the latter, but the similarity between the two generally escapes him. He forgets that sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence, and that innocence, whenever is is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite. We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our return to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite. Pornography, on the other hand, is essentially sentimental, for it leaves out the connection of sex with its hard purpose, and so far disconnects it from its meaning in life as to make it simply an experience for its own sake.

Love her. That last line alone is perhaps the most stinging indictment of pornography (and its bedfellow, contraception) I have ever read. Modern man has an essentially sentimental attitude about sex. We are all about skipping past the cross to the eschaton, but this is a fundamentally dishonest way of relating to the world.

More on Flannery and LOST after I've seen the entire season 5 finale...

Labels: Flannery, human life, movies, multimedia, paschal mystery, podcasts, RCIA, sacraments, suffering

On May 13, 1917, Mary appeared to three shepherd children in the hills of Fatima, Portugal... 92 years ago today.

I had the chance to be in Fatima for the 75th anniversary of the apparitions, in 1992. It was an amazing week. I was digging through my photo albums a while ago, and it gave me the idea of blogging about my overseas travel adventures: the semester I spent in Austria back in 1992, the summer I spent in England in 1993, and the travels in Europe and Israel during my seminary studies in the fall of 1996.


Today I'm posting a link to the document about Fatima published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the year 2000. It includes several elements about the secrets of Fatima and their interpretation. The theological commentary – which has a great discussion of the proper understanding of private versus public revelation – was written by then-Cardinal Ratzinger. Here's a teaser from the end of his analysis:

What is the meaning of the “secret” of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)? What does it say to us? First of all we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “... the events to which the third part of the ‘secret' of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity. What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the “secret”: the exhortation to prayer as the path of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.

I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world, as we see and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word. From that time forth, the word that prevails is this: “In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise.

Finally, mentor and friend Barbara Nicolosi is currently working on the screenplay for a major motion picture about Fatima. Details here: http://fatimathemovie.com

Labels: conversion, hollywood, Mary, moral life, movies, pilgrimage, travel

This week, I posted the ninth talk from last October's Act One Story Symposium:

"How Storytelling is True, Good and Beautiful" by Dr. Peter Kreeft


Here's a short excerpt:

We have strong defenses against goodness in our free choice. We have weak defenses against truth in rationalization -- or we can just ignore it, or live in denial, but that takes effort, and eventually all those walls we put up will come down. But we have no defenses at all against beauty. The will is strong and free. The mind is fairly strong and fairly free. But the heart is as weak as butter and doomed to fall in love with whatever it sees smiling at it. The movies you make are the smiles with which you hail passers-by, with the hope that they will sing "Pretty Woman" to you.

You can listen to the entire presentation by using the player above, or download the audio in any number of ways by visiting the Act One Story Symposium site here.

Labels: communication, hollywood, moral life, movies, podcasts, theology of the body

In recent days, I've uploaded four more talks from last October's Story Symposium:

"How Dark is Too Dark?" by David McFadzean


"What Flannery Knew" by Barbara Nicolosi


"In Defense of Happy Endings: A European Perspective" by Armando Fumagalli


"From Truth to Fiction" by Karen Hall





You can listen to the presentations by using the players above, or download the audio in any number of ways by visiting the Act One Story Symposium site here.

Labels: communication, hollywood, moral life, movies, multimedia, podcasts

I've just uploaded the fourth talk from last October's Story Symposium:

"The Healing Power of Stories" by Chuck Slocum


Here is the way Slocum sets up the discussion:

One of the things that began to weigh on my heart recently -- not for any particular reason, but just in thinking -- I began to become very aware that there were no doubt a lot of women in the audience for the film Juno who had made the opposite choice from Juno and had had abortions, and nonetheless were in the audience for that movie. There were some women no doubt who had made the same choice that Juno makes and had given up a child for adoption. No doubt there were other women who had raised the unanticipated child themselves. And I have not had the opportunity to sit down with any women in any of those categories and talk to them about the experiences of seeing that movie. No doubt, though, that it's a very different experience than me watching that movie. No doubt it's a very different experience for them from watching other movies themselves.

I'd be interested to know how that film interacted with their own personal experience... how the film mattered for them. Did it confirm their choice? Did it confront it? What was it like to have such an intimate aspect of their own life and such a difficult choice dealt with in this screen story and have to relate that to their own life? In some ways, you don't even have to go to see a movie like that to have that confrontation happen, because it's marketed so prominently that even the marketing of that film and the public discussion of that film brings up that confrontation with the experience of the individual.

Well, in some ways Juno is not a great example for this type of exploration because we don't really know how it turns out. Juno, the movie, ends too early. We know that Juno expects to go back to her normal life, but we don't really know how it turns out years later. We know that the adoptive mother is happy with her family of two, but we don't really see what happens after that.

But it provoked for me this larger question of the way that stories affect each of us as we travel our own individual psychological journeys and then happen upon films or television programs that are relevant to wherever we've been traveling personally at a timely moment. If we're at a vulnerable place, can a film contribute to our healing, and to the contrary, can it hurt?

Essayist Joan Didion writes that We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. We look for the sermon in the suicide, or for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices, and we live by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ideas with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Then she goes on to explain that this process broke down in her own life. She writes that she began to doubt the premises of all the stories that she had ever told herself. Indeed, she experienced a breakdown because the things that were happening in her life didn't fit the stories that she had told herself to understand the world. This was all in the same year she was named Woman of the Year by the LA Times.

Professional therapists sometimes use similar language to that used by Didion. Patients who are seeking therapy routinely will share their perception of their own situation with a therapist, and this is almost uniformly shared in story form, quite naturally. Some therapists write letters to the patient summarizing their perspective on the situation, perhaps in a way that the patient hadn't previously appreciated. Sometimes they'll write a letter to the extended family, if it's a family issue, describing the situation as the therapist sees it, or sometimes they'll have the patient write the letter to the family. Sometimes the therapist will write a hypothetical story about an alternate future, a future that gets around the problematic behavior and where the patient copes with the problem, or they'll have the patient write that letter about their own alternate future. The goal is to relate the problem to factors that the patient may not immediately see, and to provide the patient with plausible alternatives. Often the patients themselves are guided through creating those alternatives. The key is to have the patient recast themselves from victim to victor. In our language, the patient is writing a hypothetical third act for their own life.

Is that the same thing that Juno is doing for some of those audience members? Do all or most films have that same kind of potential? Does it have to be intentional? Do they have to be serious films? Can they be comedies? Can they be other kinds of movies?

You can listen to the entire presentation by using the player above, or download the audio in any number of ways by visiting the Act One Story Symposium site here.

Labels: communication, hollywood, movies, multimedia, podcasts

I've just uploaded the third talk from last October's Story Symposium:

"Heroes" by Dr. Peter Kreeft

Kreeft proposes seven preconditions for a hero — hierarchy, teleology/purpose/design, natural law, absolutes, free will, honor, and suffering — in order to start a discussion of the question: do heroes exist today?

Here's a short excerpt from Kreeft's introduction:

Do we live in a world without heroes? We can't answer that question until we know what heroes are. So logically, we should first define the key term: heroes. But I don't want to do that, because I think we have a deep, unconscious, intuitive understanding of what really important things are before we define them, and that should guide our definitions rather than vice versa. Define time, please. Define beauty. Define being. No, but you recognize it when you see it. So I think we know what heroes are because we know what a world without heroes would be like. It would be Brave New World, which I think is one of the most prophetic books of modern times.

Are we moving closer and closer to Brave New World? In the 50's, Huxley, who wrote it in the 30's, said "we're almost there." On the other hand, we're not there yet. It's still a cautionary tale. It's a dystopia; it's not a eutopia... except to some people. The first time I taught it in the 60's at BC, I just threw it at the students, and said, "bring questions about it," without any guidance. After about 5 minutes of questioning, I realized to my horror that most of them had totally misunderstood it. They thought that Huxley was for Brave New World, and then came a second horror, most of them agreed with him, and were very surprised that anyone wouldn't want to live in Brave New World. So maybe we are closer than we think.

Who are our heroes today?

You can listen to the entire presentation by using the player above, or download the audio in any number of ways by visiting the Act One Story Symposium site here.

Labels: hollywood, movies, multimedia, podcasts

I received this message today from Mark Banks of Soul Food Cinema:

The Catholic Herald newspaper, Soul Food Cinema and Catholic media retailer St Anthony Communications, have joined forces to discover those films that Catholics value most highly; both in terms of their technical and artistic merits as well as their moral and spiritual merits. The three UK-based Catholic media partners have organised this Top-100 poll in the hope that it will help Catholics to identify and embrace those films, both past and present, which are in accordance with Catholic-Christian principles. The poll is open to Catholics worldwide. UK-residents also have the chance to enter a DVD prize-draw. Voting closes on Friday, March 6th, 2009.

Contribute your top-10 favourite films here:

http://www.soulfoodcinema.com/vote/herald100.php

UPDATE (3/20/09): The results are in, and can be found here.

Labels: hollywood, movies

I've uploaded the second talk from last October's Story Symposium:

"Story as Epiphany" by Chris Riley

After Chris spends about 20 minutes unpacking the notion of epiphanies in movie storytelling, and asking questions about the difference between epiphanies and moments of propaganda, he opened the discussion to the panel.

As a teaser, here's what panelist Dr. Peter Kreeft had to offer to the conversation:

In an epiphany, you see something new. You don't just get soothed by something you've known before, and you don't just get argued into something which grates on you. In an epiphany, you see something new and yet it's old. You always knew it, but you didn't know that you knew it until this moment, so it's coming from inside you.... If you're inside your art, instead of manipulating it from outside, however gently, you can appeal to that inner force in the audience: deep calls unto deep. Because in some mysterious way, your heart and the audience's heart are much closer than anything else in you to the audience, including the mind.

You can listen to the entire presentation by using the player above, or download the audio in any number of ways by visiting the Act One Story Symposium site here.

Labels: hollywood, movies, multimedia, podcasts

Last October, Act One: Training for Hollywood held a two-day symposium on storytelling.

It was a great symposium. The format -- presentation followed by a roundtable discussion with a group of panelists -- was a great way to percolate and explore ideas. The panelists and presenters included:

• Dr. Peter Kreeft, renowned philosopher and author of over 50 titles, including Socrates Meets Jesus


• David Mc Fadezean, Executive Producer, Home Improvement, What Women Want


• Barbara Nicolosi, Act One Founder, Screenwriter, VP Development, Origin Entertainment


• Armando Fumigalli, professor, Catholic University of Milan


• Karen Hall, writer on several shows, including M*A*S*H, Judging Amy, Hill Street Blues, and Moonlighting


• Dean Batali, Executive Producer, That 70's Show, writer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer


• Bobette Buster, Creative Executive and International Story Consultant


• Chris Riley, Screenwriter and Author, The Hollywood Standard


• Bill Marsilii, Screenwriter, Deja Vu


• Chuck Slocum, Assistant Executive Director, Writer's Guild of America

I helped to audio record the entire event, which I'm now in the process of editing and posting as podcasts.

The first podcast is now available. It's a presentation by Bobette Buster on "The Big Idea." It's a good primer for what is going on in the entertainment world right now, and also has a few prophetic words about the Oscarability of Slumdog Millionaire.

Labels: hollywood, movies, multimedia, podcasts

A friend of mine recently wrote and directed a 20-minute film called This is My Body. It's been in one film festival so far, and is now available for purchase.


I think this film would be a good discussion starter for high school / young adult groups about abortion and human life. It's not preachy, and a free study guide for the film is available for download.

I built the website for this film and am hoping to find some creative ways to promote the film, especially with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade (January 22) approaching. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated...

Labels: Eucharist, human life, movies, multimedia

Here's a brief review of Gran Torino, which I saw almost a month ago.

This movie was less painful than I anticipated. The trailer for the film looked weak, and I was expecting a variation on Million Dollar Baby. It promised some of the same ingredients... Clint as himself, one-dimensional narcissists as supporting characters, and priest character as two-dimensional straw man...

But the film itself had a few fun moments. Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a wizened but gruff widower and war veteran who thinks the neighborhood is falling apart when a Hmong family moves in next door. His biases are challenged as he gets to know them. The scenes in which Clint's character visits the neighbors offer lighthearted moments that save this film from its overarching earnestness. Some of the humor falls flat, though. Read the excellent review over at Rightwing Film Geek for more on this.

It's not a great film, by any stretch of the imagination. There are long stretches of predictability, and pretty much every scene involving the priest character is tedious, awkward, and unnecessary. There are many poorly acted sequences.

A few thoughts by way of comparing the priest characters in Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino: Both are cardboard cutouts. Both have the pastoral acumen of someone at Dell Technical Support. Neither resemble actual human beings. Both are simply window dressing on the theme that organized religion is shame-based and impotent to effect personal change. (The real moment of grace in Torino is a confession between two characters through a screen door, as contrasted with the actual celebration of the sacrament earlier in the film). The priest in Torino is far more prominent, but less integral to the plot and thereby more annoying.

One thematic parallel between MDB and GT is that you can achieve redemption on your own terms, and in isolation from the rest of the human community. In both films, Clint plays the Lone Ranger of Grace, out to set things right by himself and in his own way. Clint seems to be given over to this form of sentimentality. As Armond White of the New York Press noted in his review: "Gran Torino panders to convenient sentimentality, leaving audiences no wiser about life, death, civilization or justice.... Gran Torino’s only truth is a half-truth."

Labels: movies

I'm posting this on behalf of two of my friends here in Hollywood. Sounds like a great contest!

Choose one or more of the following major lessons from Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body,” write a short film script 5 to 10 pages long that helps illustrate that point(s) and submit it to our festival by February 14th, 2009.

The winner will receive $100... and fantastic food. Runner ups and other finalists will receive cool prizes as well. Here are the major points...

1. The family is the fundamental building block of society. Hence, the way we treat marriage and procreation has a direct effect upon society (positive and negative). See October 22, 1980 audience and January 16th 1980 audience (section 5)
   
   
2. Earthly marriage and the conjugal union between a husband and a wife is meant to mirror the relationship between Christ and the Church. Hence it is a sign pointing us to heaven (i.e. God). Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the Church: selflessly. However, it is dangerous for us to get caught up in the sign (conjugal union in marriage) while not paying enough attention to where it is leading us (heaven). See August 11, 1982 audience


3. Christ not only calls us to avoid being lustful but to allow Him to change our ethos, or the inner desires of our heart in regards to lust. He wants us to follow his teachings out of love, not obligation or guilt. He wants us to find lustfulness unattractive. He wants us to attain the freedom that allows us to be in a relationship with God and away from the emptiness of sin. See September 10, 1980 audience


4. Christ calls us to affirm the value of the person in "every" situation by never treating another human being as an object for our own selfish pleasure. We are called to always think of the dignity and welfare of others, before our own desires. See January 7, 1981 and January 14, 1981 audience


5. The use of contraception is directly opposed to the free, total, faithful and fruitful love Christ calls us to in marriage. See August 22, 1984 audience


6. The body has a "language" that is meant to proclaim the truth of God's love. However, if we are able to speak the truth with our bodies we are also capable of speaking lies. See August 22, 1984 audience (section 4 specifically)

FOR MORE THOUGHTS ON WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR, SEE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE

Email your script to: tobscripts@gmail.com

Sponsored by Family Theater Productions

Labels: movies, theology of the body

I saw The Dark Knight a second time today, and I have a different opinion of the film now, so I revised my review by adding the following:

I have to take back the part about the satisfying ending. There is a line given to Batman near the very end about people needing something better than the truth. Either this was a very sloppy piece of writing, or the whole movie leans into nihlism, becoming a pointless charade of over-earnest silliness.

Labels: hollywood, movies

Here are a few impressions after seeing The Dark Knight yesterday:

• The Joker, as inhabited by Heath Ledger, is perhaps one of the most compelling villains of comic book history, a veritable ha-satan from the book of Job (for more about the satanic vision of the human person, see my review of War of the Worlds)
  
  


• Harvey Dent's character provided some interesting commentary on the current political climate, in which some people seem to be looking not for a president, but a messiah. I think of paragraph 676 of the Catechism:

  The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

  
  
  


• The title of this post suggests that I would draw some parallel to the treatise on the spiritual life by St. John of the Cross. It would be a bit of a stretch to do so, especially in a movie as agnostic as this. Evil appears in stunning technicolor, while goodness is far more obscure and muted. If any references to the Dark Night could be sustained, it might be the way the story strips away illusions from characters who imagine themselves to be self-made solutions to the problem of evil. (See Fr. Bob Barron's YouTube video for the best treatment of this concept that I've seen). I'm also reminded of one of John's Sayings of Light and Love:

  Never take others for your example in the tasks you have to perform, however holy they may be, for the devil will set their imperfections before you. But imitate Christ, who is supremely perfect and supremely holy, and you will never err.



• The motivations and demeanor of the Joker are truly diabolical. Loyal only to disloyalty, gathering men only to divide them, baiting men with ideals only to break them, and purposeful in spreading purposelessness. He's a character with no illusions of grandiosity and no false hopes of victory. His only desire is to pervert the noble and to drag as many as possible into the abyss of his chaotic hate and self-loathing misery. The absence of love drains him of any creative potential, and the only way he can assert himself is to seduce others into a life of destruction.


• The last half hour dragged a bit, I thought... but the very end was quite satisfying, and had some interesting religious resonance... disabusing the hopes of a false messiah, yet hinting at the need for -- and the possibility of -- atonement.


• ADDED 7/27/08: After viewing the film a second time, I have to take back the part about the satisfying ending. There is a line given to Batman near the very end about people needing something better than the truth. Either this attractive lie was a very sloppy piece of writing, or the whole movie collapses into nihlism and becomes a pointless charade of over-earnest silliness.


• Finally, a few pictures of the actual costumes from the movie (on display at the Arclight Hollywood yesterday). My favorite photo is the incongruous juxtaposition of the face of DeAnna Kuhn over the Joker's suit.

  

Labels: hollywood, movies

There's been an event. It will be targeting large populations today, but it will target smaller and smaller crowds from here on out, as the director loses more and more credibility with his audiences. Yes, you guessed it, it's M Night Shyamalan's latest train wreck of a movie, The Happening.

I'll try not to give you any spoilers, but it's difficult with M Night, because with him, the movie's real hook is always the thing to be spoiled. This film strikes me as a rip off of the War of the Worlds concept, with a similarly inhumane premise. As much as I disliked Speilberg's take on War of the Worlds, it was a much better film in many ways: Better dialogue. Better acting. More genuine pathos (which is saying a lot!). Greater credibility. Far less silliness / fakey gruesomeness. Less resemblance to a commercial for allergy medicine.

I get the impression that M Night wants to prove he can do "dark" films. Umm, okay. So he did. It happened. Dark and silly. I was laughing at all the wrong moments. And especially at the movie's sermon, delivered via a commentator on a television screen.

What really struck me is how desperately the movie wants to evoke pathos, and at the same time, how incapable it is of doing so. We witness the first on-screen act of violence before any character relationships have been established. Then we have a series of scenes in which characters curse (the film ends with a curse too). Curses are an easy substitute for evoking feeling. Then there's the shot of bodies falling from a tall building. For one thing, the bodies look like rag dolls as they flimsily descend. But more importantly, the director has taken another shortcut to real drama by dragging out the audience's emotional baggage from 9/11. Then there's the use of violin music to tell us how to feel. At times, characters speak out their subtext; in one scene, a character says to her husband, in the company of friends, something to this effect: "You know how I feel about revealing my inner life in public!" A couple of moments of self-revelation are trotted out in such a predictable fashion that you just wish the whole scene had been edited out. Then there's the gratuitous on-screen gore, which actually causes the audience to stiffen, not emote. Finally, the movie tries to help us get inside the feelings of the characters with -- are you ready for this? -- a mood ring. Not kidding.

The dialogue is abysmal at times. In one scene, a car pulls into the frame behind a couple. Then wife says to husband, "Here's a car." In another scene, when the same couple and a young girl are clearly in peril, but caring for some people who are wounded, the wife says to husband: "We have to run. We have to save the girl." This sort of stuff should be left on the writer's beat sheet. How did it end up as a line of dialogue?

I also noticed that, a la There Will Be Blood, the most psychotic and anti-social character is also the most religious character in the movie. She wears a cross, has an image of Jesus on the wall in her bedroom, and paces in her garden saying the Our Father in a trance-like way.

The real problem with the plot is that humans have nothing meaningful to do but freak out, run, hide and panic (oh, yeah, and formulate bizarre explanations for what is happening). In this way it resembles War of the Worlds. Things happen to people. It's all just happening. "There are forces at work beyond our understanding," says Wahlberg's character. We don't have actors on the stage of life, with meaningful choices; we merely have cogs in Fortune's wheel. The very heart of drama -- human freedom, dilemma, moments of deliberation and decision -- are only present in a few scenes. I'll grant that one crucial scene does exhibit drama... but it was late in the movie, and I had stopped attempting to care about the characters at least thirty minutes earlier. For the most part, this film is tragedy without the choices. Which reduces things, in this case, to a gory, wooden melodrama which is also quite preachy. (I won't say how, as that would involve a spoiler). Without revealing too much, I'll summarize the essential inhumanity of the movie by saying that the most interesting character in this film, as in War of the Worlds, appears to be a non-human entity. The story presents a very impoverished anthropology vis-a-vis the rest of the created world.

Can this be Happening? People greenlight movies like this? And how did I end up going to the theater to watch such a thing? Clearly, there are forces at work beyond our understanding.

My advice? Don't waste your theater-going dollars on this one. It's not a big-screen spectacle anyway. Maybe catch it on DVD if curiosity gets the better of you. But don't blame yourself. Remember, it just happened to you.

Labels: movies

Jeffrey Overstreet is having an interesting discussion on his blog about moviemaking since Mel Gibson's The Passion.

Here are my two cents:

I don’t think Mel Gibson intended to initiate a new epoch of Christian filmmaking. He just had something to say and he said it with the considerable filmmaking skill at his disposal.

Did The Passion change anything? I’m not sure. It demonstrated that excellence can sell, but not necessarily that it will sell… or that executives will distribute excellent product. (For example, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford didn’t receive adequate distribution, although it achieved excellence in several ways.)

Did The Passion give some Christian moviemakers the impression that there were “Passion dollars” to be made? Yes. Did it lead to better filmmaking among Christians who are actually getting projects made? There’s been less evidence of this.

On the contrary, some Christians have adopted the guerilla marketing techniques of The Passion without having the goods to deliver, taking advantage of the good will of Christians who want to have an impact on popular culture. I think this is problematic given the Christian principle of ends not justifying means.

Join the conversation here.

Labels: movies

On March 28, I saw a VIP screening of Expelled at the Director's Guild in Hollywood. This documentary hosted by Ben Stein explores the way in which the modern scientific intelligentsia has it out for those who are open to the possibility of intelligent design in the universe. I highly recommend that you plan on going to this movie when it opens this weekend in theaters nationwide.

This documentary is very well done, very thought-provoking, very funny. It includes one especially funny exchange between Ben Stein and Richard Dawkins. The words exchanged are only part of the fun; the body language and facial expressions are even better. (But who am I to assign or discover meaning in anything such as "body language"? The whole idea of intelligence in the universe is being questioned, so I shouldn't be so bold as to attempt to interpret body language. Ahem.) The scene really deserves to be watched a second time, with the volume turned all the way down.

Although the movie has lots of humor, it is also sobering, as a result of its bold and troubling expose of the connections between Darwinism, eugenics, the Holocaust... and even Margaret Sanger/Planned Parenthood.

Please go and see this film, then return to the comments box, and let's use our intelligence to argue whether or not intelligence exists. I guarantee this will be fun. In the meantime, enjoy all the ink being spilled over at Wikipedia re: this movie and its ideas.

Here's a variation on a comment I left over on the official Expelled blog this morning:

Many of the comments in your average blog combox can sorely test one’s sense that intelligence has ever made an appearance in the world. This, it seems to me, is the only tempting argument against intelligent design: observing the stupidity demonstrated by those who argue against it.

I mean, what is the point of making an argument to anyone about anything if a source of intelligence does not exist in the universe? Debate of any kind is simply verbal ping-pong if there is no ultimate intelligence in the universe, if no universal truth or order or meaning exists. Then debate merely becomes nihlistic self-expression, such as…

Did you see the sunset last night?

No. However, I am 27 years old.

Oh, I hadn’t considered that.

Right. But I am fond of magenta.

Very good. So you agree that pancakes are round?

I am always surprised at the number of people who have an uneducated opinion, but not an intelligent thought, to express in a blog comments box.

This does tend to tax my belief in intelligent design. When creatures do not appear to be intelligent, it doesn’t lend much credence to an intelligent origin.

Still, I think the very existence in the universe of creative thought, of meaningful exchange of symbolic language, of freedom and of personal sacrifice for sake of another are all very significant stumbling blocks in the path of a creed that would insist there is no intelligent design in the universe.

Beauty presupposes an orderly arrangement of parts; see Aristotle’s Poetics, section 5.2:

a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order.

Science presupposes intelligent design, otherwise any attempt at the study of patterns would be unintelligible… or simply plain stupid… I mean, either there are patterns in the universe, or there are not. Either there is something intelligible there, or there isn’t.

And if patterns exist, will you really be so foolish as to attempt to prove that they were fashioned by the purposeless collision of stuff? What could possibly motivate such an attempt? Certainly not science. Only the blind faith of scientism could be interested in such a claim. And you would sabotage your own efforts by having to appeal to intelligence and patterns along the way.

Existence and the life of the mind are real inconveniences for the nihlist, the atheist, and the present-day so-called scientist.

On a related note, I think this book will be the next one to migrate from my bookshelf to my nightstand: Science and Theology Meet: The Evidential Power of Beauty by Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.

Labels: hollywood, movies

I'm liveblogging the Oscars this year from the party in our apartment. We have about 15 guests so far, who arrived via our red carpet entry earlier this evening. Here's the red carpet recap from our apartment:



5:30 pm PT - We established a coin bowl. Everytime someone does Blue State grandstanding at the event, everyone is invited to add a coin to the bowl. We expect to be millionaires by the end of the evening.

6:00 pm PT - Jon Stewart has already offended pretty much everyone in the Kodak Theater.

6:03 pm PT - Steve Carrell takes a short break from political commentary to announce the animated feature award.



6:17 pm PT - Someone spilled lasagna. Our carpet looks like the finale from There Will Be Blood. And oh, yeah, they just announced the best visual effects award.

6:31 pm PT - Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) was just denied the best supporting actor award. I am officially blowing a gasket.

The Assassination of the Best Picture Award by the Coward Academy (sigh...)

6:34 pm PT - Just saw the "waking from a dream" montage. Prophetic glimpse into what tomorrow morning could be like.



6:45 pm PT - Our priest-chaplain, Fr. Don Woznicki, arrives!

6:48 pm PT - Tilda Swinton has a classy accent. More guests arrive.

6:51 pm PT - My roommate Sean just attempted to move our 300 pound TV so that our 20+ guests can all see the picture. Our IKEA entertainment center is about to re-enact the oil tower scene from There Will Be Blood.

6:57 pm PT - Coen Brothers accept for adapted screenplay. Ethan exhibits typical economy of thanks.

7:00 pm PT - Entertainment center is still standing. Sean feels vindicated.

7:01 pm PT - Several of our neighbors just made a 30-second cameo.



7:10 pm PT - Best sound mixing: Hillary Clinton's video blog?! Nope. Bourne Ultimatum.

7:19 pm PT - Ellen Page just lost the best actress award, and everyone reaches for more alcohol. But consolation prize: winner mentions angels in this city. We'll settle for spiritual, not religious at this point.

7:50 pm PT - For Once, novice filmmakers are honored by the Academy. Someone will be losing their job for cutting off the female recipient before she could speak.... UPDATE: Maybe not. Jon Stewart gave her the mike again later in the show...



8:00 pm PT - Jesse James was denied the cinematography award. There Will Be Nihlism brings home the Oscar.

8:06 pm PT - A moment of eternity in the midst of a night that basks in temporality: The obituaries / dedications, which ended abruptly with Heath Ledger...

8:16 pm PT - Troops in Iraq announced the best short doc award nominees... The recipient didn't comply to the don't ask / don't advocate policy...



8:20 pm PT - The crowd here is beginning to dwindle...

8:27 pm PT - Diablo Cody breaks protocol by having something heartfelt / profound to say. Bravo!

8:32 pm PT - My roommate Sean, looking exhausted, remarks to me as he runs to and from the kitchen: "I wouldn't want to be on a plane with these people." He returns to hosting, I return to blogging. I have chosen the better part, and it will not be denied me...

8:35 pm PT - Daniel Day Lewis receives the best actor award. Remembers his grandfather, father and brothers. Doesn't look like there will be blood.

8:48 pm PT - Coen Brothers for Director(s), No Country for Old Men for picture.

3 1/2 hours and 7 cookies later, it's a wrap.

UPDATE: One of my friends was kind enough to assemble a photo gallery of the evening, entitled A Night of Skewed Priorities.

And now that we're done skewering the celebrities, how about we start praying for them?

Labels: hollywood, movies, multimedia

I saw There Will Be Blood last night. My review, in brief:

Good stuff first: Some nice cinematography, a few good performances, a couple of haunting and cathartic moments, a few smart sound design choices (pulleys of an oil rig sounding like church bells, for instance) but what are we supposed to make of the rest of the movie? The movie was at its best when it explored the relationship between the main character and his younger counterpart, but it didn't spend enough time on this to warrant a 150+ minute film.

This movie impressed me as slow, cynical, nihlistic, self-indulgent and self-important. A thematic mess. Characters whose motivations we don't understand, especially the main character. (What is his backstory? We know almost nothing about this sociopath) On-the-nose dialogue that is embarassingly bad. The sound design / score constantly called attention to itself.

If someone finds depth and intelligence in this movie, I think it's because of their own effort, and not because of what the film offered. Definitely not a strong candidate for Best Picture. Okay, I get that it highlights the evils of oil and Christian fundamentalism (in an election year, of course!). We get the refrain that George Bush is evil. This makes the movie trite and predictable.

Jeffrey Overstreet calls this film "a masterpiece." I don't think he has interpreted the film on its own terms; instead, he has imposed his own worldview on the movie -- this is eisegesis, not exegesis.

How did this movie get a Best Picture nomination, and not The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford?

Barbara Nicolosi shares her thoughts on the movie here. And lots of discussion in her combox here.

If you have a different opinion, please post a comment. I am honestly interested in alternate viewpoints / insights.

Labels: movies

I saw Cloverfield tonight.

Initial impressions: The movie delivers as experience, but is problematic as story... not much attention paid to character arcs, plausibility, or honoring the contract with the audience.

Some may argue that the device (telling the story entirely through continuous footage of a single videotape) limits the story-telling possibilities. I don't agree -- I think much more could have been done to put a meaningful narrative in relief.

If I was supposed to sympathize with Rob, the main character, I don't think the film succeeded. Empathy, yes; sympathy, not so much.

Cloverfield is masterful in its evocation of horror, and cathartic. It is violent, loud, and unrelenting. Out-Speilbergs Speilberg in setting up a familiar world that horror lunges in to upset. Clever in several ways, wise in almost none. Will generate lots of DVD sales... so people can pause to look for visual clues/information. There are a couple of things I just noticed in re-watching the trailer that put things in a different light. Definitely setting up for some kind of sequel.

The shaky camera wasn't as nauseating for me as in United 93 or The Blair Witch Project. (But I was way too close to the screen for both of those movies).

Coming out of the theater, my primary question is: does this film bear any meaning? Do we learn anything new in this NYC post-9/11 film? Not at all sure about that. The narrative is pretty much devoid of spiritual theme / vertical dimension / transcendence. There's a love story (sort of), and some humane concern for others, but nothing profound.

Don't expect Lost. Expect Blair Witch Project with a budget and special effects, or a more humane version of War of the Worlds.

Labels: movies

I'll write reviews of these two films later, but if you're looking for films to see over the holidays, here are two of my recommendations: Juno, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. See Barbara Nicolosi's reviews here and here.

Unfortunately, Warner Brothers seems reluctant to put the latter film into wide distribution... it is currently showing on only 10 screens.

Labels: movies

By now you've likely heard all about the new movie Bella. Believe it or not, I hadn't seen the movie till last Friday; somehow I managed to miss all 7 or so opportunities for an advance screening.

So what did I think of the movie? I liked and enjoyed it. It was heartfelt, genuinely moving at times, had moments of humor and grace and was all-around humane. The performances were good, especially Tammy Blanchard as a single mother-to-be. It was filmed with care and style. No bitter aftertaste, really. I'm glad it was made and the artists involved have a right to be proud of what they achieved.

I received several requests asking me to endorse / publicize the movie, but I wanted to see it first. I'm not of the opinion that it is a "must-see" film, but it's definitely worth seeing. I wanted to encourage these artists, so I paid for my ticket as a show of support/solidarity. I know a few of the people involved in this project, and I look forward to seeing even better things from them in the future.

Here are my criticisms of the movie, mostly from a story point-of-view. I did feel it was too long, for the amount of story presented. It would have worked better, in my opinion, as a short film. As a feature, I felt the parts of the story left untold were excessive... which I might not have noticed if it were a short. Without getting into spoilers, I'll just say that the character arc for Eduardo's character was pretty much unexplored -- and the largest part happened off screen and before the main narrative. I would have found his character more interesting if there were character flaws -- things he had to overcome -- but nothing of the sort really surfaced... All we know about his former life is that he liked soccer and dancing and had a lot of money... not really character flaws. Maybe a bit of an inflated ego. Later he no longer dances, plays soccer or has money... he's a simple bearded man, a cook, and a generous, humble soul. How did it happen? Not many details here. But to be fair, it's not his film -- it is more about Nina (Tammy Blanchard) and her choices. Again, her choices happen pretty much offscreen, so we're left with before and after moments (a bit of a story problem, to my mind -- but I suppose you could see it as a device). I liked her character more, because she had some rough edges which made her believable. One other critique of the narrative -- the jumps in place and time were confusing in the first half of the film (particularly the clinic scenes), and in retrospect didn't seem meaningful. The scenes themselves had meaning, but not their placement in the narrative. If I see cuts to past/future in a film, I always want to be able to find a reason for it; for example, in Dead Man Walking, I interpret the flashbacks as the unveiling of the main character's conscience -- to the point where he can fully admit his crime. One other observation: The imagery was interesting, beautiful to look at, but not always coherent in terms of adding meaning/thematic value to the film. There were a lot of butterflies -- but what did that mean? Maybe butterflies represent transformations that happen completely off camera...

A few more thoughts, not about the movie itself but about the marketing for the movie. In short, it was a bit much. In addition to hearing about it from the pulpit last Sunday, I received no fewer than 5 emails asking me to promote the film -- from The Catholic Association, MN Family Council, and a couple from Eduardo's gmail account. (Update on 11/11/07 - Here is the most over-the-top email I've received to date.) I guess I've become weary of something that may just be inherent in the world of movies: relentless marketing. I wish it were possible simply -- and un-selfconsciously -- to make good art and let it speak for itself. But movies are expensive, both to create and to distribute, so there's a need for marketing to recover one's investment and get wider distribution. However, when it comes to distributing media, and using the networking potential of faith/church associations, it's sometimes a fine line between media at the service of the church and church at the service of the media. And leveraging the good will of people who want to see positive / humane projects can go too far. One quote in an e-mail I received about Bella was a little unsettling: "A young girl who cannot afford her own rent, took all of her savings to adopt a theater." Hmm. I am not sure I'm ready to call this movie project (or any other, for that matter) the pearl of great price.

I don't want to discount the positive impact the movie could have (and has already had, according to some reports). One email reports that "a number of pregnant women considering abortion decided to give love and life a chance after seeing this powerful film." I think that's great. Film does have power to move us, and this movie had a lot of heart, so from that point-of-view I applaud the filmmakers. I'm simply tentative about the hype of marketing campaigns, as I think they can take advantage of the good will of people who -- not surprisingly -- want to feel they can make a positive difference using the power of the big screen. Some might call it synergy, others might call it use.

AFTERWORD: I forgot to answer the question: Is the movie pro-life? I think that it's definitely open for debate. The movie seemed to me to be pro-choices that bring happiness, but not in a way that was ready to define what that meant, so I couldn't really call it pro-life. It was life affirming... pro-life in a nominal kind of way... as in, this was a good choice -- and it was for life -- and if the coincidence was meaningful, it would be because of what you brought to the story, not what the story brought to you.

AFTERWORD 2:  On 11/17, I received yet another request for help promoting the film... bringing the total to a least a dozen emails...

Bella's distributor is doubling our theaters and this is Bella's opportunity to go to the moon! But, if Bella doesn't perform this weekend it will be kicked out of theatres for good. The Good News is... if Bella succeeds it will be in theaters for the busiest week of the year - Thanksgiving!
If you are interested in helping Bella here is what you can do:
1. Send this email to your entire data base and ask others to do the same; 2. Adopt a theater by buying all the tickets for a particular Showtime (cost of $1500-$3000) or Adopt a market by buying 5k-10k tickets. To do this visit: HelpBella.com; 3. Buy tickets and give them to friends and family. Invite everyone you know to the movies - it is a film you can invite everyone to see; 4. Promote Bella through every means possible, online and offline; 5. Volunteer to promote Bella in your market.

Labels: movies