PeaceBang

“The Orphanage:” A PeaceBang Review

This film by Guillermo Del Toro (who did “Pan’s Labyrinth”) was truly scary and has lingered with me since we saw it a few nights ago. The acting is terrific, the sets and cinematography gorgeous, and the screenplay is deeply disturbing. It’s the kind of movie where, the day after you see it, you’ll be calling the person you saw it with at work and saying things like, “Do you think she killed him, or would you really blame the ghost? Or was it ultimately the mother of the ghost, would you say?” And then you’ll talk about it and then you’ll say, “I’m afraid to go upstairs. When are you coming home?” And the other person won’t even think that’s ridiculous, because he’s been kind of afraid to go to the basement at work all day himself.

Just leave lots of room to think about everything that happens, and leave time to go back and replay certain scenes. I’m not a fan of horror movies but this was wonderful.

“The Visitor:” A PeaceBang Review

I am preparing for a five-week sabbatical and a bit swamped, so I don’t have time to give this beautiful film the detailed review it deserves.

So maybe you should just read the Rolling Stone review here and hie yourself to a theatre to see it yourself as soon as you can.

What I loved best about this film was that it featured eminently decent people living through a crisis with no gratuitous scenes of sex or violence designed to manipulate the viewer’s emotions and raise our blood pressure to create the sensation that the movie is something more than it is (”The Brave One,” I’m talking to you!).

Richard Jenkins, the wonderful character actor you’ll remember as the father from “Six Feet Under,” has the role of a lifetime as Walter Vale, a widower whose life is changed by an encounter with a Syrian and Sengalese immigrant couple. You definitely want to see this on the big screen; it’s a film about faces, eyes, small shifts in expression that communicate depths of emotion that can never be spoken.
Hiam Abbass, as the mother of the Syrian man arrested in the subway and held in detention, will break your heart with her feminine dignity and ordinary-wife-and-mother beauty.

I think Richard Jenkins should get a big, fat Oscar for this performance. I would double vote for him because not only is he brilliant in this film (I will always love Walter Vale), he was the artistic director for the Trinity Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island for years, and that’s just plain cool.

“To Patrick Swayze, Thanks For Everything, Victoria Weinstein”

I wrote a little tribute to drag queens, and to Patrick Swayze over at my other blog. The news that Swayze is battling pancreatic cancer was a blow.

“To Wong Foo,Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995) was released very close to the break-out drag queen hit “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” and I know I’m in the minority in believing that “To Wong Foo” was by far the better picture. To me, “Priscilla” was a wonderful road story but an overly-mincing performance by Guy Pearce and unbelievable casting in Terrence Stamp (I love the man, but he can’t move, and drag queens — especially legendary ones — have serious moves) made it impossible for me to buy his character).

“To Wong Foo,” first of all, totally gets the aesthetics of big American drag right, and exquisitely so. The three actors playing the key characters (John Leguizamo as Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Wesley Snipes as Miss Noxeema Jackson, and Patrick Swayze as Miss Vida Boheme) were unbelievably good together, and threw themselves into the roles with total abandon. Given the three “girls” differences in economic class, culture and race, this is a great movie about America itself, land of the free and the brave, where we are free to recreate ourselves in whatever image we can afford emotionally and financially. The dialogue is wickedly funny and mean, such as when the Latina “baby drag queen” Chi-Chi starts to run away from the car in the middle of the night in a fit of pique and Wesley Snipes, the African-American Amazon goddess Noxeema Jackson, calmly watches her from the back seat and says, “Look at her, lookin’ like she runnin’ for the border.” The script is full of this kind of racial and class tension dealt with through affectionately biting sarcasm, which makes it true to the American experience and to the drag community.

Yes, the hetero men in the movie are mostly macho, dumb stereotypes (watch for the sweet Arliss Howard trying to persuade us that he’s a drunk wife-beater — bad casting, there!) and some have complained that they didn’t appreciate the whole “It takes a man dressed as a woman to teach a woman how to be a woman,” but I loved it. I loved it because it can be true. Just as it can take a woman to teach a man how to live more fully into his masculinity, so can the opposite be true.

I remember when I moved to Massachusetts from Maryland, having lived as a sexless frump for three dateless years and having totally subsumed my sense of femininity in the work of ministry. My friend Nathan, a drag queen, took me shopping in the summer of 2003. He coaxed me into more fitted jackets than I would have purchased, a sexy skirt that hugged my hips, and a pair of Nine West pumps that I first refused. “I don’t wear heels, Nathan, I’m too fat!” “HONEY,” he replied, from his full height of well over 6″ with one hand on a not-at-all slim hip, “If I can wear 4″ heels, you can wear these little 2″ things. GET THEM.” I did, I woke up to the fact that I was hiding myself behind layers of fat and big, shapeless clothing and I began to consider why I was doing this, and how it served neither myself nor my ministry. I started working out, I started dating, I started integrating my identity as a minister with my femininity, and I have never looked back. Thanks, Nathan.

And thank you, Patrick Swayze, for your marvelous creation of Vida Boheme. I wish you well in your cancer treatment, and want to say now that to me, you will always be immortalized in that great lady; a performance underappreciated by critics and by the general public.

La Vie En Rose: A PeaceBang Review

Now, there’s nothing I love better than a good entertainment bio pic; especially one featuring a super diva like Edith Piaf and the age-old “she came from the streets, lived in a brothel, drank hard, loved hard and had brass lungs to beat the band” variety. But “La Vie En Rose,” except for a marvelous performance by the recently Oscar’d Marion Cotillard, was just not very interesting. Yes, we marvelled at her great characterization of Piaf, we loved the Parisian scenery, we thought her lip-syncing was extraordinarily good, but we were, in the end, unmoved by this story. Why? Because it just seemed an endless, wearying epic of bad luck, more bad luck,sordid characters, a lot of drinking, drugs and hoarse shouting, cliched lines like “I’m gonna be a STAR - THEY can’t keep me DOWN!” and the de rigeur tragic love story.

Maybe it’s a French thing. I was absolutely riveted by “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” the wonderful bio-pic about our own American version of Piaf, Miss Judy Garland, played in the film by Judy Davis. Aside from one really bad fat suit, Davis got into the heart and soul of Garland and made her a force of nature you cared about, whereas with Piaf’s character I just felt she was a rather boring gal who happened to have a really distinctive and strong voice. Yes, we got the whole Svengali scene in “La Vie En Rose” where an abusive mentor breaks Piaf down and gets her to use her arms and her full heart and soul to express l’amour and such, but in the end I felt her a shallow woman, not much there, just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing but the will to survive. That isn’t to discredit Miss Cotillard’s exquisite work, but perhaps a critique of the screenplay or the direction.

I think I’ll watch “Me and My Shadows” again soon, just to revel in the amazing performances by Tammy Blanchard (who doesn’t impersonate so much as reincarnate the young Judy) and Judy Davis, and to get all the wringing-hankie dramatic pay-off at the end that I had hoped for from “La Vie En Rose” but didn’t get.

Excellent Book for Training Pastoral Associates

It has been a real joy to train our first group of Pastoral Caregivers at my church. As I prepare to go on sabbatical, it means the world to have a terrific team of lay pastors to “walk the parish” and to make calls and visits on behalf of the church. We introduced them to the congregation this past Sunday and will do a formal Commission in the fall.

But for now, I just want to share that although I read a ton of books in preparation for the training sessions, and have taken many classes, seminars and workshops on pastoral care, I found this book to be the best guide of all in organizing our sessions.

A Pastor In Every Pew: Equipping Laity For Pastoral Care by Leroy Howe. I just think that, chapter for chapter, Howe’s book is the most conversant with the realities of pastoral caregiving, that it anticipates all the most significant questions and anxieties that arise for laypeople learning to do pastoral care, and that, although written from a strictly Christian perspective, it is the most useable for Unitarian Universalists.

It looks like ChristianBook.com has them on sale.

Four stars and two thumbs up!

The Dying Gaul: A PeaceBang Review

Did anyone see “The Dying Gaul,” based on a Craig Lucas play by the same name and directed by the playwright? It was a 1995 production starring Patricia Clarkson, Peter Skarsgaard and Campbell Scott. Reviews and a precis are here.

This was a finely acted piece about a Hollywood producer who seduces a gay writer into selling his beautiful screenplay (also called “The Dying Gaul”) to the studio for a million dollars on one condition: that he change one of the lovers in the story to a woman. After the deed is done, the pair easily move into a sexual relationship, and soon after that into a triangular intrigue of manipulation, lies and a lot of internet chatting. There’s some New Age bathos, a touch of Lucas’ earlier screenplay “Longtime Companion,” and an obvious attempt to create something that at least touches the hem of the garment we call Greek Tragedy, but which, in my opinion, does not succeed. If you want to see a brilliant contemporary Greek tragedy, rent “House of Sand and Fog.”

Aside from a very badly directed and written, truncated ending (SweetieBang and I both far preferred the “alternate ending” provided by the DVD extras), the film is diverting enough, well-acted and brings up great, let’s-sit-up-and-talk-late-into-the-night-about-it moral issues. However, it seems that none of the movie reviews I’ve read even mentioned what was, for me, the salient point of the movie, which is that people who dabble in spiritual philosophies totally alone and apart from a religious community are playing with fire, and risk deluding themselves in terrible ways, twisting the message of their chosen path to suit their own ego needs and even to justify acts of evil. God knows that we who live in religious community are easily enough deluded together, but “The Dying Gaul” was, for me, a chilling reminder that calling oneself a disciple of any tradition while flying entirely under the radar of a disciplining and discerning community can be a dangerous path indeed. Especially in Hollywood, standing in for Sodom and Gomorrah in today’s popular consciousness.

See it and let me know what you think.

There Will Be Blood: A PeaceBang Review

You’ve undoubtedly heard the buzz about Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnificent film, “There Will Be Blood.” I don’t have time to write much about it, but I thought it was a masterpiece.

Daniel Day Lewis is riveting as a misanthropic oil man - he’s in nearly every scene and does an impeccable job creating an unforgettable character that should earn him an Academy Award and cement his status as one of our best living actors — but it’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s story-telling skills that really got me in this one. It’s a wonderful film: totally American yet Shakespearean in scale and operatic in emotion. The first hours can be slow, but the cinematography and exquisitely detailed period set pieces, plus the thrilling score (so fascinating that I had to nudge my friend and say, “This music is SO COOL” to which he whispered back that someone from Radiohead had composed it. Is this true?).

So, I loved it. It was well worth the 2 hour and 40 minute investment. Paul Dano is to be commended for holding his own on screen with the demonically talented Day-Lewis, and I think all preachers should rush right out and see it on the biggest screen they can find. This is not a renter. This is a go-see-a-matinee and take sermon notes work of art.

Attend the Tale Of Sweeney Todd

After at least ten years of patient waiting, I finally got to see the cinematic version of “Sweeney Todd.”

Before I discuss the movie, let me say that I think it’s one of the most genius pieces of musical theatre ever written — it is, after all, the musical Leonard Bernstein once admitted he was quite jealous he hadn’t composed himself — and I had the great privilege of playing the female lead, Mrs. Lovett, in a 1994 production (Good Lord, was it that long ago!?). I adore the score note for note, and I thought it would bother me a lot that neither of the film’s leads could sing and that so much of the score would be edited out for (I suppose) reasons of pacing and relevance. After all, a six minute song about baking people into meat pies, so charming and rolicking onstage, would just seem like a pretentious indulgence of Sondheim lyrics on the screen.

But I shouldn’t have worried. It’s a fantastic movie. My nerves have been shaky lately, it’s true, but I thought I know this score inside and out, I know all the dialogue, I know all the business, none of the murders could possibly surprise me, and I’m well-acquainted with Tim Burton’s cinematic style. Wow, though. Even with that level of familiarity I was gasping at times, clutching at my friend’s sleeve, and overwrought by the intensity of the violence and the sadness of it all. I was practicing deep breathing the rest of the day and had to play a soothing lullaby CD before bed (thanks, Chris and Regina and Brian!). This film packs a wallop.

It’s true — Depp doesn’t have the voice for the role but he more than makes up for any vocal deficiencies with his acting, his total willingness to get lost in Benjamin Barker, and Helena Bonham Carter is such an alluringly damaged Goth goddess, you almost don’t care that she has practically no singing ability at all. Those eyes! That ratted hair! I assume that the average audience member lost 75% of her lyrics and dialogue since she near-whispers everything but she’s like a silent film star — who needs dialogue when you’ve got eyes like that? I painted my nails in a deep blue-black in tribute. If I could drag around for the next few days in tatted lace gloves and ratty velvet gowns with deep-cut bodices, I would. No one makes decrepitude fun like HB-C.

The secondary cast is perfect — and I so appreciated that the sailor Anthony was scruffy and raggedy as he should have been; he’s so often done up like that sailor boy on the Cracker Jack box and that’s all wrong. Some little English rosebud plays the locked-up ingenue Joanna, with one of those perfect nymphs-and-shepherds pure British sopranos that totally redeemed the often-insipid “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” aria for me. Let’s not even talk about Alan Rickman as the lecherous creep Judge Turpin! Alan, you will always be my heartthrob from “Sense and Sensibility” and it just hurt me to see you get stabbed in the jugular like that. There’s no respect.

Look also for Sascha Baron Cohen as the arrogant mountebank Pirelli — another wonderful performance for our “Borat” (is there anything this guy can’t do?) that requires him to transition from twinkling, unctuous fathead to cobra-like predator in a split second.

So this is a great triumph for director Tim Burton and another marvelous collaboration with Johnny Depp, who should just get some kind of lifetime achievement award for being the coolest actor in the world already.

And will someone please mount a local production of this show so I can try to play Mrs. Lovett again?

The Story of Carlton Pearson

You might remember this story about the charismatic pastor Carlton Pearson who got slain by the Holy Spirit one night and became a universalist.

I’m preaching on the free and responsible search for truth and meaning this Sunday and listening to his story on This American Life at Panera and trying not to cry. My sermon is called “The Free, Responsible (And Sometimes Shocking) Search for Truth and Meaning.”

I was doing okay not bawling until I hear a recording of Pearson reading some Scripture (I John, 2) to his congregation and when
he says, in a voice full of passionate intensity and love “Listen to this, babies,” I lose it.
Napkins! Napkins!

To think of being named an actual heretic in this day and age. Heart-wrenching.

(It’s a real shame that the reporter doesn’t seem to have the vaguest clue about Universalism — it’s a serious and seriously upsetting omission — when he means Universalists he says “Unitarians” (as in “The Unitarians stopped believing in Hell a long time ago). He also mistakenly reports that the United Church of Christ is “the only denomination that accepts gay marriage.” )

Better Get To Livin’

I saw this video on Jezebel last night and almost keeled over with delight.

Check it out, and share it with your favorite Female Negativo, ’cause that’s what Dolly would want!

Dolly and Amy Sedaris, brazilliant.