Schoeman, author of Salvation is from the Jews: and editor of Honey From the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ, is interviewed by SoulFoodCinema.com about movies he likes, dislikes, and would like to see made.
... continues. Tim LaHaye, creator of the Left Behind series, and Jerry B. Jenkins, who wrote all 16 of the end-times novels in a total of 22 hours—one for each chapter of the Book of Revelation (alright, alright, I'm joking about that)—have been fighting with Cloud Ten Pictures for some nine years (longer than the Great Tribulation!) to regain movie rights to the novels. From The Christian Post:
Although the first “Left Behind” film sold a staggering 2.8 million videocassettes before its theatrical release in February 2001 and reaped $2.1 million during its opening weekend, making it the nation's No. 1 independent film, the quality of the film disappointed LaHaye, who claimed the producers made a lower quality film than the contract demanded.
The creators of the books, which are inspired by biblical prophecies, were also dissatisfied with the distribution techniques Cloud Ten was utilizing, including the film company’s decision to release the first installment on home video through mainly Christian outlets.
"We thought we had a chance to reach millions of people with our message," LaHaye told the Los Angeles Times in an interview two years ago, amid the fight to win back the rights to the series. "And you don't do that with videos."
LaHaye and Jenkins said they naively sold the movie rights to "Left Behind" too early and ended up with what Jenkins called glorified "church basement movies."
The two had negotiated the film rights between June 1996 and April 1997, before the end-times novels became a publishing phenomenon. According to the contract, Cloud Ten, up until the recent settlement, owned the rights to future "Left Behind" films.
After the nine-year struggle, the agreement finally reached between the two parties resolves all disputes relating to the three films produced by Cloud Ten and grants LaHaye an opportunity to remake the films based upon these books.
Jenkins said previously that he and LaHaye were “hopeful” that another film or series of films would result as their agents pitched to studios.
Apparently God doesn't reach people with videos (what about iPods and movies in digital format?), but does touch hearts, minds, and inner doomsday panic buttons through the magic of the big screen. And to think that Baptists such as Dr. LaHaye once thought movie theaters were dens of iniquity. For the record, although the small fundamentalist church I attended growing up (and which my father co-founded) did have a basement, we watched Rapture movies (such as "A Thief in the Night") in the main, upstairs hall. Really, these painful stereotypes must end. And so must the making of Rapture movies. Especially, but not limited to, Rapture movies starring Mimi Rogers and Rapture movies starring Kirk Cameron. Enough already.
Or, more accurately, the replica of the Vatican built for the filming of Dan Brown's fantasy/romance novel, Angels & Demons. See pictures here (thanks, Sandra). No word if the replica is being built based on accurate information about the actual Vatican or if it relies on Mr. Brown's error-filled descriptions of Rome and the Vatican.
• Does Dan Brown know how to use a map? (June 23, 2008)
..."The Happening"—until I read this. And visited RottenTomatoes.com.
Looks like "The Happening" ain't so happenin'. Maybe I'll go see some fists of furry.
From The Telegraph, news that Catholic churches in Rome will not allow the makers of Angels & Demons to use them for location shooting:
he movie, the sequel to the enormously successful The Da Vinci Code, sees Tom Hanks reprise his role as Harvard professor Robert Langdon. This time, however, Mr Langdon is on a mission to save the Vatican from being blown up by a canister of anti-matter.
The entire film is set in Rome, and Sony Pictures applied for permission to film two key scenes inside the churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria.
The plot of the book sees Mr Langdon arriving in Santa Maria della Vittoria to find a cardinal being set on fire.
However, the scene will now be shot on a soundstage after the diocese of Rome closed its doors against the producers. Father Marco Fibbi, a spokesman, said: "Usually we read the script but in this case it wasn't necessary. Just the name Dan Brown was enough. "
He added that most films are given permission, as long as they respect the "traditions of the Church". Father Fibbi said: "Angels and Demons peddles a type of fantasy that damages our common religious beliefs, just like The Da Vinci Code did."
The highlighted quote is my pick for "quote of the day." Quite funny. But also seriously accurate. The Telegraph piece adds: "The Catholic Church is still angry over The Da Vinci Code, which suggested that Jesus may have been secretly married to Mary Magdalene."
Suggested? Did they read The Da Vinci Code? Watch the movie?
I'll be on Catholic Answers Live sometimes down the road to talk about Angels and Demons (the novel); I'll post info about that when it becomes available. The movie is due out in May 2009.
First Things has posted two reviews of James Carroll's Constantine's Sword, a "documentary" based on the book of the same title. Both reviews are written by William Doino Jr., who writes for Inside the Vatican and who compiled a 80,000-word annotated bibliography on Pius XII published in The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lexington Books, 2004).
The first review—"James Carroll’s Unholy Crusade: A Critique of the Film Constantine’s Sword"—published in the April 2008 issue of FT, is a lengthy, detailed refutation of the film's many errors and slanders. It also reveals a man whose tenuous grasp of basic facts about Catholicism is equaled by an unsettling irrationality:
If Constantine’s Sword teaches us little about history, it reveals a great deal about James Carroll. Anyone who has read his memoir, An American Requiem: God, my Father, and the War that Came Between Us, [86] knows about his love-hate relationship with his father, Joe, an Air Force lieutenant general who helped prosecute the Vietnam War. Critics have drawn a connection between James’ paternal rebellion and his revolt against the Church. [87] Freudian analysis aside, what strikes one most about this documentary is how much Carroll puts himself at its center. Constantine’s Sword appears to have meaning only to the extent it illuminates James Carroll’s own tormented life. Describing how he was misled into the priesthood, he points to the sacred Catholic relics he was shown as a child—only to learn that they were “fiction” and “pure invention” [88]—and ultimately blames his parents: “My mother told me that she was the Blessed Mother’s representative here on earth—that is to say, her name was Mary; and she made me understand that she was associated with Mary. Of course, I was aware my father’s name was Joseph; my initials were J.C. I just came of age in a relationship with my mom and dad that very much included God in the family circle.” Such religious doting, combined with a special audience his family arranged with Pope John XXIII, induced Carroll to enter the religious life. But when he did, he says, he knew nothing about the violent history of his Church. “I didn’t know any of it when I made the most important decision of my life.” The problem, you see, was that Carroll bought into the Church’s own propaganda: “I was a young Catholic brought into this perfect Church—it was the place that human beings were entirely pure. We had saints; we knew who they were; and our priests and our bishops and our popes were holy, holy men. I hadn’t a clue about the failure.”
This narrative defies belief. Faithful Catholics believe that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ; as such they hold that it is sinless, in its spiritual essence. But the Church does not teach, and has never taught, that all its members are perfect—quite the contrary. Original sin and human imperfection are core elements of Catholic teachings; so pronounced are they that an enormous body of literature exists, among disaffected Catholics, accusing the Church of saddling them with feelings of “guilt” and “shame.” Yet Carroll wants us to believe that the preconciliar Church taught that all Catholics were sinless, holier than angels. Are we to believe that Carroll never heard of the sacrament of penance until he entered the priesthood? Perhaps he did but wasn’t aware that popes and bishops attend to it as well. Even more incredible is the idea that Carroll had no idea about Catholic history when he decided to become a priest. Sixty years before Carroll was even born, Leo XIII had opened the Vatican’s archives, asserting that the Church “has nothing to fear from the truth.” [89] And when Carroll was growing up in the fifties and sixties, historians like Henri Daniel-Rops [90] and Hubert Jedin [91] were publishing massive church histories, leaving no stone unturned regarding the sins of Catholics, including high-ranking prelates. If Carroll was unaware of these facts, at the moment he made “the most important decision” of his life, that’s an indictment of his own ignorance—and lack of preparation for the priesthood—not the fault of the Church.
Doino's second review is an abridged version of the longer one, and it was posted today on the FT site.
When the documentary premiered last year, it was praised by some critics—unfortunately, mostly the ones who had little knowledge about the subject, a pattern that has been repeated since the film’s national release. A puff piece in the Los Angeles referred to Carroll as a “devout Catholic”—a curious designation given Carroll’s own well-documented rebellion against the Church.
The documentary wastes no time getting to its bottom line: Christianity is violent by nature and poses a threat to non-Christians, especially Jews. Focusing on anti-Semitism as Christianity’s original sin, Carroll speaks about his own upbringing—lamenting the anti-Jewish stereotypes he was fed—and accuses the Catholic liturgy of fostering anti-Semitism. The genesis of it all, we are told, is the New Testament, presented in the movie version of Constantine’s Sword as a poisonous document and a warrant for genocide.
Brought on to support Carroll’s apprehensions is Elaine Pagels, a highly controversial academic with no patience for orthodoxy. The camera shows her calling the Passion narrative “an extraordinary twist” on what actually happened, concluding: “It looks completely at odds with what we know about history.”
Along the way, Carroll conveniently skips over the persecutions of the early Christians; their sufferings do not interest him. What grips his imagination is the story of Constantine’s conversion, which he sees as catastrophic for the history of the Church. According to Carroll, Constantine took the image of the cross and elevated it to a place never previously held in Christianity; worse, the emperor used it as an instrument of war, turning a religion of peace into a religion of violence.
Of course, this requires Carroll to contradict himself—remember, he just finished claiming that hatred began with the New Testament. But even on its own terms, the historical claim is wrong. Surviving Christian art and symbols from A.D. 230—well before Constantine—reveal that the cross is a prominent symbol in the catacombs. The early Christians often made the sign of the cross just to sabotage pagan ceremonies; and in doing so they were following the teaching of St. Paul, who said, “We preach Christ crucified.”
• James Carroll's "documentary" indulges in one-sided, pseudo-scholarly sloppiness (April 18, 2008)
• Were the Crusades Anti-Semitic? | Vince Ryan | IgnatiusInsight.com
• The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin
• Crusade Myths | Thomas F. Madden
• The Inquisitions of History: The Mythology and the Reality | Reverend Brian Van Hove, S.J.
AVAILABLE SOON FROM IGNATIUS PRESS:
Behind Bella: The Amazing Stories about the Making of Bella and the Lives It's Changed
by Tim Drake
Available July 15
Profusely illustrated with many photos from the acclaimed movie and the making of it, this beautiful deluxe volume provides a behind-the- scenes look into the beloved, award-winning feature film from Metanoia Films. Much more than the typical book about a movie, this work presents compelling, never before told stories from the producer, director, actors and others involved in the film’s production, and also movingly portrays the deep impact that a motion picture can make on its audience.
The movie, with its beautiful life affirming message, has saved at least 14 children whose parents were planning to dispose of them through the horror of abortion. This book tells the remarkable story of how these children were saved through the powerful message of the film, and what can happen when we say “yes” to life and “yes” to God.
The book includes inspiring insights and stories from famous and common people about how this film touched their lives. The lavish photos and lovely book design, combined with the book’s stirring messages, make this a wonderful collector’s book and a perfect gift book.
Lavishly illustrated with many photos from the movie!
Large 8.25 x 10.75 Coffee-table edition!
See sample images and learn more about the book.
• Bella (DVD) and Behind Bella (book) combo
Bernadette (2nd edition)
150th Anniversary Edition
Available June 20
New Widescreen Edition with many new Special Features!
From Jean Delannoy, one of France’s foremost filmmakers, comes this top quality feature film production of the story of St. Bernadette and the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes. Actress Sydney Penny gives a beautiful performance as Bernadette, and the rest of the cast is equally superb. Also stars Roland Lesaffre and Michele Simonnet. It is highly recommended by the Vatican as a “sensitive portrayal of a very moving story that deserves a wide audience.”Shot on location in France with outstanding cinematography and a beautiful music score, this is the film that was chosen to be shown daily at the shrine in Lourdes.
Special Features: Re-mastered new Widecreen edition; Includes French language film version (first time available) and English language version; English and Spanish subtitles; Film interview with actress Sydney Penny on playing Bernadette; Audio interviews with Sydney Penny; Collector’s Booklet. Includes music CD with acclaimed “Song of Bernadette” by Oscar and Grammy-winning singer Jennifer Warnes.
See sample images and learn more about the film.
• Visit the Bernadette film website.
From the Communio website:
The new film version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited coming out from BBC Films this fall has generated some discussion regarding faithfulness to the text, on one hand, and whether Waugh's novel of decadence and theology can be made intelligible to popular culture at all, on the other. As a contribution to the discussion, we have brought up from our archives the 1983 article, The Death of Charm and the Advent of Grace: Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, by Thomas Prufer. Prufer, who taught philosophy at the Catholic University of America from 1960 to 1993, argues in this short text that Waugh's achievement in the novel is "to have made a work in which the integrities of both art and faith are respected in their interaction," and offers a reading of the novel's depiction of the place of worldly charm: as only a forerunner, but also a real forerunner, of grace.
The article is in PDF format.
• Brideshead Revised, Rewritten, and Ruined? (May 23, 2008)
From a review on ComicBookBin.com (ht: Mark):
How do we know god loves us and wants us to be happy? Ben Franklin thought it was beer. Hans Urs von Balthasar though it was the presence of beauty in the world. But for me, dear reader, the proof is in my ability to write the following: I got to watch Indiana Jones kill communists.
Granted, it ain't much. But it is something. What next? Perhaps a reference to Henri de Lubac in a review of the upcoming "X-Files" movie? Hmmmm.
Meanwhile, speaking of the new Indiana Jones movie, The Guardian lets readers in on a simple but helpful invention called the "Indiana Jones Random Plotline Generator." (ht: Sandra) Use it at home. At work. In the doctor's office. Etc. As I can attest, it saves you money; I'll now probably never see the movie...
