The Ark and The Dove

"The Unfilmables"

I just ran across this article on books least likely to be successfully adapted to film.

Don't forget Frankenstein - even the so-called "Mary Shelley's" Frankenstein movie was nothing like the book, I hear.  If you've read it you know what I mean.

Did anyone see that TV Don Quixote with Jon Lithgow?  How did it turn out?  From what I've seen of him on 3rd Rock From the Sun, he'd be my pick to play the part of the ingenious hidalgo.

Life of Brain

Exercise the gray matter and render me an opinion.  Is Monty Python's movie Life of Brian a mockery of Christ's life, or is it merely non-malicious (if slightly naughty) humor employing Christological elements?

I have never seen this movie, except for an excerpt - the Latin lesson that the centurion gives Brian (which, if you know Latin, is hilarious).  I have heard both of these opinions from friends whose judgment I respect.  Does anyone know what the deal is?  Not that I'm planning on going and watching it, but the Hoff is showing it for free on campus, apparently, which is why people are talking about it.

University of Maryland Med School

Today's Post has an article on UMD's med school 200th anniversary, my favorite historical tidbit:

A medical school janitor (named Frank) would follow funeral processions to a cemetery and go back at night to get the body. In 1830, a professor of surgery wrote to a doctor at Bowdoin College in Maine: "It will give me pleasure to render you any assistance in regard to subjects. . . . I shall immediately invoke Frank, our body-snatcher (a better man never lifted a spade) and confer with him on the matter. We can get them without any difficulty at present. . . ."

"Faith-based" movies

Hollywood is slowly, slowly catching on that in a country where >80% describe themselves as Christian, there are myriad throngs of people out there who don't go to the movies because they don't want to spend their money on immoral garbage that promotes values they hate.

Except for the really diehard ones for whom even the almighty dollar cannot dissuade them from the duty they feel to use their movies to preach the baspel of "progressive" irreligion to the ignorant rabble, movie people are starting to wonder how they can make faith-based films so that more normal people will find them more agreeable .

This is good, but I see a cultural problem that promises to keep this good impulse from reaching its full potential.  The issue that many movie types are not believers and therefore more prone to spiritual tone-deafness aside, many religious people think inside the box that conditions them that in order to be a Christian film or to appeal to Christians a film has to be about Christianity explicitly.  With this mindset there will be this bifurcation of the movie world into "Christian films," such as The Passion, and "normal" or "neutral" films (or "everything else"), which would all be like "Million Dollar Baby" or "Brokeback Mountain."  In other words, the "normal" movies will stay the same or get worse, but they will additionally do some Bible-story movies and the like.

That would be good, but much better would be that this impulse would be channeled into making normal movies about life where the people in the movie act like it's normal to go to church on Sunday and not normal to sleep with your girlfriend before you're married; normal movies about the usual stuff that are informed by Christian values, and also some Bible story movies if they like.