1. “I am not Jesus, but I have the same initials.” Thus sang Jarvis Cocker on the classic Pulp track “Dishes” (at bottom), and it now looks like he has a new contender to the throne, Tim Riggins himself, Mr. John Carter of Mars. That’s right: Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton’s first live-action feature is out this weekend, and the consensus thus far is that there’s no consensus. Some claim that it’s an overblown mess, others that it’s the sort of exceedingly fun pulp adventure that doesn’t get made anymore. But Stanton is a filmmaker that I trust over any…
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Another Week Ends: John Carter, Obesity FAILs, Mary Karr on Suffering, Winning!, Friends with Kids, Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and Community Returns
America / Business / Children / Church / Everyday / Film / Humor / Identity / Literature / News / Science / Sermons / Theology / Week In Review
Another Week Ends: DFW50, Simpsons 500, Ira Talks Radiolab, Rowling Talks New Novel, Helpless Women, Helpless Kids, Lenten Identity, Cormac McCarthy Pictionary
All the best wishes for those mockingbirds at the Liberate Conference in Fort Lauderdale this weekend, including our very own David Zahl.
1. Along with the rest of the blogosphere this week, we wish David Foster Wallace a happy 50th birthday. There’s too many blessings to recount, but the web has exploded with numerous avenues for you to get your feet wet or soul soaked. Take a look at The Awl’s “46 Things to Read and See for David Foster Wallace’s 50th Birthday,” a piece of which includes an 86-minute interview with German TV ZDF, the first of which you’ll find…
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Another Week Ends: Immortal Smartphones, Jefferson Bethke, Adolescent Rewards, Profound Comedy, Therapeutic Irony, more George Lucas, Pixar and Hunger Games
1. In last weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Carina Chocano explained “The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg” – AKA what our current obsession with “data” has to say about our humanity – dropping her usual allotment of insight bombs along the way. Not only does she point out the increasingly prevailing illusion that if something wasn’t ‘documented’ it didn’t happen, she gets at the real crux of our smartphoned existence: the false promise of immortality. In other words, a familiar serpent has found its way into the, um, Apple Store:
This is the dilemma of being a cyborg: It’s not just that…
Finding Freedom in Finding Nemo: When Andrew Stanton Tried to Get Fired
From the New Yorker’s recent profile of Andrew Stanton, Pixar writer/director extraordinaire of Finding Nemo, WALL*E and the upcoming (live action!) John Carter, starring none other than Tim Riggins himself. The author writes of Stanton’s cathartic, career-making crisis a couple years into the Nemo process, when Stanton, in response to enormous internal pressure (not to mention the Law represented by Pixar’s winning streak), faced his worst fears and experienced what can only be called a “bottoming out” moment of repentance. It almost reads like a Judgment and Love entry:
For years, Stanton believed that the original braintrust—Lasseter, Stanton, Docter and Joe…
Friendships and Fender-Benders in Cars 2
The release of Cars 2 this past summer marked the first Pixar movie to receive almost unanimously poor reviews. While some of this criticism was probably veiled jealousy of Pixar’s consistent success, I still have to admit that this film lacked the heart-tugging storytelling I’ve come to expect. The film has lots of flash – with some enthralling technical wizardry, but the substance was disappointingly thin. Or better, I didn’t enthusiastically identify with any of the characters.
The success of a movie usually depends upon the audience’s ability to sympathize with the main character – if we don’t care about them,…
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Another Week Ends: Of Gods and Men, Unitarian Boundaries, pi Haters, Pinksy on Cowper, Jayhawks, Wilco, Morrissey, FNL, Falling Skies and Brad Bird
1. No doubt you’re familiar with the martyrdom of the monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, who were assassinated in 1996 by Jihadists. It is, without question, one of the most inspirational true stories of the past twenty years – regardless of where you’re coming from on the religious spectrum. You may have even heard that the recent film based on the events, Of Gods and Men, was Grand Prix winner at Cannes last year. If that weren’t high enough praise for it shoot to the top of your Netflix queue (when it becomes available on Tuesday 7/5), Andrew Sullivan’s stirring…
Another Week Ends: Free Won’t, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cars 2, more Super 8, Antinomian Letters, The Killing and Futurama
1. I can’t stop my leg! A fascinating post on Psychology Today about the groundbreaking research of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet into the area conscious choice/willpower, entitled “Free Won’t,” ht JD:
Given our common sense notion of how our actions work, we might expect that we first have a conscious awareness of an intention or urge to act, then the brain activates the motor area that sends a signal to the muscles of the wrist or fingers. The surprising thing is this is not what Libet found.
Surprisingly, the participants’ reports of their conscious awareness of the urge to…
A Row of Your Favorite Cereals, Anytime You Want: The Gospel According to Pixar
Anthony Lane of The New Yorker penned a fantastic and very thorough profile of everyone’s favorite studio last week, Pixar. As suspected/rumored, their “corporate culture” appears to have been lifted straight out of Grace in Practice; they understand intuitively that great work is always the fruit of a root, that motivation/the internal life is everything when it comes to creativity, that art cannot be leveraged out of people. Indeed, (lasting) collaboration itself is a matter of friendship and shared interest, and even perfectionism can be subordinated to story. Lane’s descriptions of Pixar head honcho John Lasseter almost bring Thornton Wilder’s…
Why Pixar?
In case you needed another reason to check out our own The Gospel According to Pixar, I submit to you the following cartoon from poe-news:
It’s funny because it’s true. The Dreamworks formula is to get big name talent (Jack Black, Jerry Seinfeld, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, and Will Farrell to name a few) to inflate a less than stellar story, while Pixar just keeps putting out Oscar winning movies.
More Pixar! – Animated Short "One Man Band"
In case you haven’t noticed, we at Mockingbird happen to be big fans of Pixar. The following comes from the Pixar short “One Man Band” (video below). For further reading, see our recently published book The Gospel According to Pixar.
The plot of “One Man Band” is fairly straightforward. A street performer, “Bass,” tries to persuade a young girl to give him her only coin. His light-hearted tune is interrupted by a new performer named Treble. With his fancy strings Treble wins the young girl away from Bass. The simple struggle over a single coin quickly escalates into a war. Without…
Another Week Ends: False Danger, Stress Vaccines, Alien Baptism, Michael Vick, King of Kong, Online Dating, Get Low, Pixar
1. Another in a series of great articles from Lisa Belkin of the NY Times, this one entitled “Keeping Kids Safe From the Wrong Dangers,” in which the author continues in what appears to be her (and Jonah Lehrer’s) quest to unveil the irrationality at the base of human decision-making. There’s also a great line in there about measurement being an instrument of discontent rather than, say, greater happiness and health:
If history is any guide, we seem to veer between overreaction and underreaction — all while defining our own response as “moderate.” There is an inherent hypocrisy in our attempts…
T.S. Eliot’s “The Elder Statesman” Part 2 – Sins of the Past
The following comes from T.S. Eliot’s play “The Elder Statesman.” It’s part 2 of 4. For the previous post go here.
Those who flee from their past will always lose the race,
I know this from experience. When you reach your goal,
Your imagined paradise of success and grandeur,
You will find your past failures waiting there to greet you.
The entire play can be seen as a demonstration of the truth these words spoken by Lord Claverton to his son Michael. Claverton has lived a mildly successful political life, yet the sins of youth have now greeted him in his old age.
Like Scrooge of…
The Gospel According to Pixar: Cars
General Plot: Lightening McQueen is the hot new rookie race car who is stealing headlines with every race. He’s super fast and he knows it. He’s a one man show and vocalizes it. When his pit crew ditches him, he doesn’t care… He’s headed to California for the big championship race (between the King–the current Dinoco Spokescar–and Chick) to decide who will win the treasured Piston Cup and become Dinoco’s new spokescar. But on his way to California, following a string of unfortunate incidents, Lightening McQueen finds himself on a barren stretch of road in a little town, Radiator Springs.…
Toy Story as a Trilogy of Heroic Repentance, Part Three: Imputation, Salvation and the Theology of the Cross, Pixar-style
The conclusion to Jeremiah Lawson’s AKA Wenatchee the Hatchet’s brilliant and very touching look at the Toy Story trilogy. If you haven’t read parts one and two, we highly suggest that you do so before reading this final part. To order a copy of Mockingbird’s brand-new publication, The Gospel According to Pixar, go here.
When we look back on all the things Woody has said and done in the three films, we see that he could often be bitter, craven, wrathful, envious, fearful, and self-absorbed. Yet he has also become more selfless, more giving, more patient, more compassionate, and more…
Announcing The Gospel According to Pixar!!
Beginning with Toy Story in 1995, Pixar Animation Studios has taken American cinema by storm, setting a new standard of excellence in animated filmmaking and earning a fortune in the process. Their movies are not only highly entertaining but wise. Pixar has an all-too-rare gift for telling stories which speak about the reality of life and complexities of the human heart – and making us laugh while doing so.
Mockingbird’s brand-new publication, The Gospel According to Pixar, looks at how each Pixar film portrays the basic concerns of everyday life and seeks to connect them with a Christian understanding of the…
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