American History X

Brutal and horrible, but totally compelling, I wanted to mention this film for a couple of reasons:

1. It's unusual to find a film that deals so convincingly with the human psyche. It shows how one man in American suburbia realises that the militant white power cause he's been living for is foolish and destructive. He sees that the movement has begun to manipulate him, making him a figure to revere because of the two murders he carried out - while he serves a tough prison sentence, alone and friendless.

At the beginning of the story Derek (played brilliantly by Edward Norton) is a neo-Nazi, full of hate, totally unpleasant, power-hungry, manipulative, clever but arrogant, full of testosterone and turning everything into protecting his family from who he sees as the enemy: foreigners and outsiders. But in light of the way he's humiliated in prison (a horrible section) he gets out of that life, which he tells his younger brother Danny is no good for him. He becomes a man determined to change, and to stop Danny following the same rebellious, anti-social path.

Some of the issues this raises are very interesting. For instance - why is it we tend to desire what is best for close family, even if we have given up on ourselves? This rings true.

And it highlights how, without something life-changing snapping us out of it, we tend to believe what is most convenient, what fits with the ideas that have influenced us in the past. This is how prejudices work I think eg. against immigrants. We can become trapped by ideas, which are actually lies, thinking we know all the facts. We weild the "facts" as weapons, or to stir us on.

And such "facts" can be power - a way to put down others and assert oneself or "succeed" in life. Feelings of injustice and resentment find a target. Responsibility is avoided, and so are responsible solutions, as the system is "against us" - let's just take it into our own hands.

The trouble is - when we want to be angry and take things for ourselves: the nonsense "facts" that we want to hear can sound so reasonable. Whether it's anger at local government for making things difficult, or anger at institutions or communities, it can simmer away in us, and we must be aware of this evil in us. It's true what the (supposedly out-of-date) Bible says: the heart is hopelessly corrupt.

2. The focus on inner-city poverty and the lack of opportunities for the poor is interesting too. Despite the bad patterns of family life passed on through the generations, this is a community that will not give up on its characters. And it's refreshing to see this in a film. Especially the bond between the two brothers, where frustration is met with patience, and respect is fostered. Even the teacher, an outsider, Dr Sweeney (a superb performance by Avery Brooks) won't give up on Danny, while Derek talks to his girlfriend (who seems to delight in being near chaos) to try and convince her to leave the movement with him, and others too haven't given up on the loved ones they have lost. Society matters in this movie - life is not throwaway, like the bad guys dying in old James Bond films. People are precious, especially when you don't have much.

The question is what will emerge at the disturbing end of the film? Will the violence cease? What legacy will these two brothers leave on their families, the next genration growing up in the schools, the world around? What lessons will be learnt about the fruitlessness of holding on to a destructive, angry cause?

Mere Anarchy: Bizarre short stories

I happened to pick up this strange collection of stories from Woody Allen recently, and although I wasn't sure if I'd like it, I'm glad I checked it out. he has a knack for coming up with absurd situations (a little like some of Roald Dahl's adult stories) and they are very funny too!

Particulary amusing was the hubris of one two-bit, no-good supporting actor who gets captured by terrorists in the most bizarre cutting-edge film set-up in a developing country. This has me laughing out loud. The actor tells the story as if the whole thing was a "jaunt" over to the studio, rather than the trying ordeal it evidently was. Once you get used to the strange use of language, you'll enjopy the neuroses of the characters, and the cleverly hidden put-downs they use - which show what they are really after, or their real characters.

I was also loving the first story, with biting satire about a get-successful-quick scheme run through a manipulative new-age "prophetess" who has grown men in groveling in her service as they seek to escape their current mid-life crisis. And although some of the stories do mis-fire, one story called "Above the Law, Below the Box Springs" really cracked me up with a running gag about mattress tags, of all things, and another supremely silly story had me trying to imagine a dispute between Michael Eisner and the Disney character Goofy about screen time.

So take a look if you intrigued by something as daft as a man trying to buy a modern suit with built-in gadgets, or a couple whose nanny must be silenced before she publishes a book exposing what they are really like behind closed doors, or parents threatening legal action against the leaders of a ramshackle mountain summer camp who are demanding a stake in the rights deal for a movie sold to Hollywood.... some of these concepts bring out the pathetic, the ridiculous or the downright dirty in the modern Westerner, and it's funny while being kind of true.

This week I should be writing about some other books, including The Prodigal God by Tim Keller and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. What are your summer top reads, and why?

Film review: The Lost Boys (1987)

Fans of this film at work got me to watch this 1980s classic. So here are some thoughts:

Here is an adventure/horror film which transcends its simple storyline of “kill the vampires to rescue Michael and his family from an evil fate” to deliver something more. This is the birth of “cool” teen vampire, complete with the spirit of rebellious youth, recalling the anti-society and cult-like teen gangs of American suburbia, with their strange initiation rituals.

The film also builds on the idea that everything can take on a sinister implication in a strange new town, and some of the biggest scenes are set within the bounds of the new family home, where trust between child and parent is hard to find. The children are pushed into a strange new world, and as you watch you become gripped by both the seductive quality of the vampires and some thrilling set-pieces, where you are not quite sure what is going to happen to Michael or his brother Sam next. It doesn't hurt that the comic relief of junior vampire “experts” the Frog brothers is pretty good, and they round off an impressive cast of characters, almost creating the illusion this is a family film, which is nearly is. But the themes of transgressing natural boundaries, the mystery surrounding the girl “Star” who rides with the vampires, and the exciting final scenes, are aimed more at the teen or young adult audience, and the horror of the monsters the children face is a focus of the film. You might even feel scared for the characters at a couple of points.

The soundtrack features a strong and memorable rock ballad theme “Cry Little Sister” which captures well the dark struggle that Michael, Sam and Star go through. The only thing I had against the film was some of the cinematography is dated and quite irritating – there's one scene where we zoom in on the faces of the two brothers so many times as they gaze at each other in horror.... it's just too cheesy. But minor slips like this won't stop me recommending this fun, well-produced teen vampire film, which excels in encouraging you to invest in its characters and their precarious situation as they hold out against their supernatural enemy.

Comics: Daredevil: The Man Without Fear - and the cat burglar with her eyes on the prize

Today I want to mention some great graphic novels I’ve read, such as the first massive Daredevil Omnibus by Alex Maleev and Brian Michael Bendis. (If I know you and you want to borrow this, just ask - you won’t be disappointed.)

The first story in the volume, Wake Up, has to have some of the best, most emotional and expressionist comic art I have ever seen, and is very well suited to this interesting mystery about just what a child has witnessed Daredevil doing. It shows up the moral grey areas in Daredevil’s violent war on crime. As for the rest: Bendis takes the well-known rivalry between our vigilante hero and Kingpin to an interesting place, when an ambitious young gangster starts on the scene and orders a hit on both of them, in a classic moment of betrayal. Watching Kingpin being cut down in such an underhanded way is like the people turning on their “Caesar” of crime. Where will it lead?

Daredevil lurches from one crisis to another and his reaction to his law partner Foggy when things start to throw their futures into uncertainty is very memorable. What an excellent piece of character-driven crime fiction this is! Towards the end, when Daredevil faces the new Yakuza, it seems to become more than a book should be, movie-like, yet different to a neatly-tied-up movie, perhaps like a carefully plotted TV series - always building on what has been set up and surprising you by revealing has been going on in the hero’s personal life. There is a further volume by this creative team, so I look forward to getting hold of that one in the future.

And now for something stylistically very different to the realism of Daredevil: Selina’s Big Score – This is a great heist story, following all the traditions of that genre, keeping us guessing about whether the criminals will make it out alive. The idea is for Selina Kyle (having a break from being famous burglar Catwoman) has to make some money quickly – and masterminds a plot to steal from Gotham’s gangsters from a train heading in from out of town. Darwyn Cooke, who worked on both the story and the art, shows he can use multiple character narratives well to grab our attention, to show the character’s conflicting desires, and to raise the stakes – they all need this job to come though – and the tension ratchets up towards the finale.

Cooke’s art is at his best here, infusing everything with his unique mood and style – I love it! The story is collected with some of his other comics work in a collection called Batman: Ego and Other Tails – but while Batman: Ego is a fairly interesting look at Bruce Wayne’s war on crime, Selina’s Big Score is better told and paced, and full of energy. So forget Ocean’s Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen and go for something a little more dangerous, but just as colourful and fun.

Book Review: The Ballad of Halo Jones

Why is this acclaimed graphic novel worthy of such high distinction? Perhaps it’s because it is one of the few *true* science fiction epics in that form, which has a beginning, middle and an end? Perhaps it’s the crazy concepts, from the haunting tale of the person whose gender has been erased, to the “forever” time-altered charge into battle in the Crush (on a planet with dangerously high gravity levels). Perhaps it’s the satire about our lives that gets us, and the way writer Alan Moore has thought up a world with a ring of truth about it, down to the details of the way people gossip and use slang. Perhaps it’s due to the strong female protagonist, as it was unusual in 1984 for a comic book to have a female hero – and one whose heroism is highly relatable, as she tries to escape the structures and characters which hem her in and want her to “fit in” and degrade her. You see, this future “Ballad” is, like all ballads, about a journey – and the toil along the way.

The plot of the three books

The story starts in the Hoop – a hi-tech slum floating near Manhattan – where Halo Jones (pictured right) lives with her friend Rodice, and are caught up in poverty and unrest. The people seem enslaved either to the various gangs and factions in the Hoop or to a materialistic code of values, which fools them into accepting the way things are – in fact they have ways of altering themselves to forget and fit in (the “safest” way in the crime- ridden area). When disaster strikes, Halo confronts the world outside the hoop (at the end of book one), and boards a space cruiser. She now is working as a waitress for the rich to pay her way out of poverty and gain control of her life – and a measure of freedom seems in her grasp. But by the end of book two she finds herself battling some more everyday problems that threaten to enslave her: the dullness of unemployment and purposelessness – and alcoholism.

Looking for an adventure, Halo Jones then joins the army – and this final book shines the most for me. It is a scathing attack on the inequality of war, the evil of it and how it can brainwash the soldier, and make them unfit for normal life. In a few pages we can sweep the galaxy, or focus on the significance (or not) of one battleground and one fallen enemy. As we begin to respond to the ideas here, it evokes disturbing and uncomfortable images from today’s wars – what anguish should we feel over the need for our young men and women to go to war and to live that different kind of life – that “necessary evil”? Have we forgotten that these wars (necessary though they may be) have a devastating impact on the lives of the people of the countries where the fighting is going on? Finally (spoiler warning), the folly of war stares at us from the final pages, when it is deemed that the war was carried out in an illegal way. What was all the fighting for after all? It should never have been allowed. What does man fight man for anyway? What purpose does it serve?

Letting the book raise some questions

Told in short black-and-white chapters, this impressive tale starts slowly but ends up with some short episodes that say more than whole novels, in terms of the way they mimic the real world and confront us. How can we escape a mindset of materialism and avoid settling for the entertainment culture that surrounds us? Is that what life is really about? And can we really have control of our lives, in the final analysis, or are there limits we come up against?

Where do we look for real freedom, and the ability to live full lives of purpose and joy?

On that last one: I know to whom I am looking – the one who came to offer just this to us if we accept his verdict on our lives and turn to follow Him. Receiving what Jesus offers does not require being brainwashed, made to "fit in" to an oppressive system, or dragged through hell, or in fact any kind of work on our part. His gift to us of reconciliation with God is free, and simply must be accepted.

But knowing Him and all he's done changes us, and soon we will be unhappy with the way we have been living, we will be stretched mentally, emotionally and physically to live the kind of full life of joy and hard work and pain and love that Jesus lived. To live in community, doing the will of the one who rules this world and who actually does know best for us - and cared enough to come to die for us. Let's not throw our brains away and live passively following the world.  Let's engage with him and what he is really offering us. Let's go to the places Jesus wants us to go to.

Poem: "How to handle it"

I've been reading a book called How to Write Poetry from Bloodaxe Books. I'm not clear how helpful it's been, but at least after a few weeks of having to get on with life stuff, I've had a chance to get writing again. Here's a poem I wrote last night called "How to handle it", though I'm not that happy with the title...

Still in the bedroom
Standing taut,
Blinkers put paid to
Anything much.

Ought to sit down,
Organise it.
Push off to town,
Carry out this

Open-ended exchange.
Meet the people,
Book the car,
See what's gathered

There on each shelf,
Where I see them
Ready for my study,
Grasping topics

One by one now,
Actual limbs moving
In a mind's eye
On a spot,

Feeling about
For the handles,
Carrying out
What I forgot.

Living in relationship with God - more from New Word Alive 2010

I seem to have some impressions still to post about New Word Alive this year. Here's a taster on the teaching from the Psalms, hope you find it useful to think through/pray through. You can order copies of the talks to listen to in various formats from NWA's website.

• From Nigel Stiles in one of the main meetings – we learned from Psalm 42 and 43 (all one poem/song really) that we will need to be pushy with ourselves in difficult times telling our souls, right as they struggle, what we know about God, what we have to base our lives on. So much has been revealed to us about God’s character in the Bible, in history, most of all in Jesus who rose from death. 
• Feelings of pain needn’t be a taboo subject in the church – they mustn’t be if we are to be real with each other and honestly help each other look to our Rock, God. And we know Jesus suffered taunts against His perfect nature, he suffered huge humiliation being stripped and hung up on the cross, total abandonment by men and even by his loving Father on the cross as he bore the curse of sin, and a crushing of his very soul. He knows pain. As he had hope of being with his Father again, so can we – he will bring us with him to a perfect kingdom where love will last and life will be strong, and funerals and mourning will be something "we used to do" in the old days. What a great hope we have! What a spur to our souls in the midst of hurt.

Richard Cunningham and Richard Coekin were excellent on Psalms 90 and 103 (now 2 of my favourites) – showing us the great magnificence of God: let’s stir up ourselves to praise Him with all of our beings, and also let’s ask Him for true wisdom in this mixed-up world.

And here is the fourth and final video interview I took this year:

Our God is an awesome God

Recently I preached on Psalm 21 and was challenged to the heart to consider the power of God, and all the many benefits of knowing Him.

• He brings salvation to those who trust him.
• He deals with our greatest enemies for us - those of death and sin.
• He is our life. Out of his generosity he goes before us to bless us and gives us eternal life.
• Like the king in the psalm, God has won us incredible riches in heaven (see Ephesians 1 for instance). This is the weight of glory to look forward to.
• He works with his hand of power to protect and preserve his people. Even if things are tough and we struggle or are in pain in this life - our souls are secure with Him.
• He is the Most High, and the Lord of the promises of the Bible - and so we will not be overcome by any other power if we are safe in Him. There is no-one higher. It's entirely by his help that we are secure. He is so strong one day all who oppose him will know him acting against them to destroy them. This is a holy God of power and might - power for his people and against his enemies. This is THE God of the world and it's good to know him and his work for us.
• Our struggles are not purposeless, but part of God's plan for his people to see him better and glorify him. God wants the Israelites in this situation to see all that God has done for them - so they trust and have confidence in Him, the only one who is a true, secure Rock for humanity. The pattern is that the king has great joy in God's power and in all he has received from God.
• God intervenes in our lives to position us in places where we will glorify him and know his benefits and his work in our lives. He is our strength to do good and he is behind every success. We must depend on Him!

I also love the joy we see in this song, which the people of Israel would sing, and specifically their joy about their king's relationship with God (see pic above). There's a kind of pride about it: "Our king trusts in God and will never be overthrown!" Their security comes from their King's relationship with the LORD God.

Likewise for us as Christian believers today. We know our security lies in having a king, King Jesus, who has the best relationship of all kings with the Lord his Father in heaven, and who has made us his people, a people of privilege, sharing in his blessings now and in the knowledge of the secure eternity we have to look forward to. Let's go praise our Father and our King!

The talk in full should be added to Solent Evangelical Church's website soon for you to download. It's a little bit technical and could definitely have used more illustrations!

What worked in Iron Man 2?

So I went to see Iron Man 2. I really liked it, despite some obvious problems with the narrative, and over-reliance on CGI near the end.

Here are some brief impressions: 

- It's great fun I think, and I like how it picks up on some of the history of the character of Tony Stark. They have got an interesting mix of his large ego and self-destructive behaviour in there.
- Some of the action is pretty thrilling, eg. the chaotic bit on the Monaco race track.
- This sequel has kept the sense of humour from the first film, which is a definite plus. The humour didn't edge too much into "dumb" for me, though that's a matter of personal opinion. Particularly the parts with Black Widow provided some well-timed gags in the middle of some cool martial arts.
- Overall the sequel tries to add in too many ideas and doesn't develop some of the subplots satisfactorily in the second half eg the idea that Tony is going to benefit the world by carrying on his father's legacy. The way they deal with the new enemy Whiplash at the end is pretty disappointing - he goes from having the upper hand as a resentful genius to being beat up far too easily.
- I like the way they are continuing to develop Tony Stark's relationship with his secretary Pepper Potts - this is an aspect that really adds to the humanity of the film. 
Verdict: 7 or 7.5 out of 10 because it's a good Iron Man film. Now I'm looking forward to Thor!

New Word Alive 2010 - building courage to speak for Jesus

Here's some more thoughts from sessions at New Word Alive. If you were there, how did it affect you?

4) An evening with David Robertson – author of “The Dawkins Letters” and who has developed a great outreach to atheists (and curious people of all kinds in the UK). He inspired me that although our message is a hard pill to swallow for many brought up to believe they are in charge of their lives or those confused (or hurt) by the impressions of Christianity they have received – despite all this: Now is the time to speak out, when the debate about belief in God is still on the agenda, and issues of faith are becoming more controversial and more talked about. We must come with integrity, a robust clear answer to the questions people have. Let's tackle the questions head on: Why do we believe? Why don’t we believe what the atheists argue?

We need to have huge honesty and care deeply for people, and show we are real people of emotion. We have the full technicolour truth, which so many people haven’t even begun to taste yet to see what it’s like (as one former dogged atheist put it, who recently became a Christian through reading some of the arguments for and against atheism and through talking online with David.)



5) Becky Manly-Pippert (wasn't able to get an interview with her, but UCCF did) – through a helpful evening of discussion we saw the importance of prayerful dependence on God, asking Him for help to be his light in the world, and help to speak to our friends and those around us about God. And we must be ourselves with people, aware of the ways in which we are understandably afraid to freak people out by blurting out our message! We must be real with people and see them as people God loves, eternal beings with eternal destinies.

Great to hear these encouragements to be the people God called us to be.