I’m glad we did. And she is, too.

I won’t recap the plot here, except to say that Eli (Denzel Washington) is carrying a book west across the devastated North American continent, and Carnegie (Gary Oldman) — who runs his own ruined town — wants that specific book.Oldman uses every tactic he can think of to persuade or force Eli to hand over the book.

“Eli” is a truly fascinating and remarkable movie. On one level, it’s a stylized post-apocalyptic samurai movie. On another, it is a classic Greek drama, with archetypes, divine intervention, and inexorable consequences. On yet a third, it is a morality play about Good and Evil, one that could have roots in the Middle Ages. Finally, it is a subtle yet profound treatise on faith in general and on Christian faith in particular. There are layers upon layers here, particularly as the film reaches its denouement — and said denouement means that I will go back into the theaters to see it a second time with new eyes.

My main criticism is the language, the principle reason for the ‘R’ rating. (Yes, there is violence, but it is very stylized and not much different from what you’ve seen in films such as “The Lord of the Rings”.)  It wasn’t necessary (the Greeks didn’t need it in their plays), though it did serve as a marker between characters on either side of the great divide.

The acting was excellent; the directing was outstanding; the art direction was very effective (and, yes, the film looked a lot like “Fallout 3″). What was most telling, though, was the depth of characterization and writing. “Eli” shows just how banal and shallow “Avatar”‘ is, both in story and characterization. In particular, Gary Oldman’s character — Carnegie — is vastly more believable, sympathetic and effective as an antagonist than either Parker Selfridge (the corporate scum) or Col. Miles Quaritch (the military scum) in “Avatar”.  Likewise, the religious themes in “Avatar” come across as rather goofy feel-good New Age-ism compared to the themes of faith, sacrifice, and suffering in “Eli”.

As John Notle said over at Big Hollywood, “Eli” in the end is a genre movie. But what a genre movie — possibly the best of its kind (though I have to reserve judgment until I see “The Road”).  Your mileage may vary.

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP (including some discussion of LDS themes in “Eli”).

WARNING. SPOILERS AND REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS.

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The book that Eli is carrying — and that Carnegie wants more than anything else — is the Bible, apparently the last copy in existence. Carnegie wants it because he knows he can use its language to manipulate people and build his power base. Eli is acting on communications from God — God told him where the Bible was buried and has been guiding him west for 20 to 30 years towards a place where the Bible belongs. Eli’s copy is bound and locked, and Eli has been reading from it “every day” for those same 20-30 years. Eli — who pre-apocalypse was a Wal-Mart greeter — has incredibly keen senses and absolutely deadly fighting skills — unarmed, with a large, sharp knife, or with a gun. He wanders into Carnegie’s town looking for a charge on his external battery for his iPod. A fight in the main saloon (Carnegie’s HQ) leaves several people dead and Carnegie intrigued. He offers Eli a leadership position, unlimited clean water (a rarity), and sex with a beautiful young girl (Solara, the daughter of Carnegie’s woman, Claudia) to stick around; Eli refuses all of it and tries to leave town, even as Carnegie finds out that Eli has a Bible.  Confrontations and chases ensue; they end with Eli shot and lying in the dirt, and Carnegie heading back to town (minus most of his men) with the Bible (Eli told Carnegie where he hid it rather than let Carnegie kill Solara).

UPDATE — LDS THEMES IN “ELI”

I’m getting search hits from people wondering about Mormon connections with “The Book of Eli” (much as I did for the movie “Knowing“). I see no indication that Gary Whitta — who wrote the original story/script — has an LDS background or any LDS influence. (He does, however, have a strong gaming background, which again makes me wonder again about how much of an setting influence “Fallout 3″ was.) There are, however, two rather subtle themes that have echoes in Mormonism.

– Eli’s trek. Towards the end of the Book of Mormon, there is a roughly 36-year gap between the death of Mormon (the principal editor/compiler of the Book of Mormon) — most likely in Mesoamerica and quite likely near Veracruz, Mexico — and the point at which his son, Moroni, buries the record (on metal plates) in upstate New York, to be found some 1400 years later by Joseph Smith. Moroni makes that trek of some 2500 miles through what may have been frequently hostile territory, in order to preserve those records for a later civilization. Note that this trek itself is nowhere described in the Book of Mormon; it is merely implied by the apparent setting of the Book of Mormon and the location where the plates were found. (One reviewer who claimed that “The Book of Eli is kind of like watching The Book of Mormon filmed and rewritten as a futuristic action movie” clearly has little or no familiarity with the Book of Mormon itself. )

– The sealed book. The Bible that Eli carries is hardbound, with a locking brass clasp. When Carnegie finally gets his hands on Eli’s Bible, even after he gets it unlocked, he is unable to read it (for reasons explained below in the REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS). This, of course, brings up the classic Isaiah quote, which Martin Harris felt was fulfilled when he brought some characters from the plates to Prof. Charles Anton.

Beyond that, though, there really isn’t much to tie this movie to Mormonism (vs. Christianity in general).

REALLY SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD

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Eli — instead of going back to town after the Bible — continues west, helped along by Solara (she’s got one of Carnegie’s still-functioning cars). They make it to the ruins of San Francisco, and Eli indicates that they need to head out to the island in the middle of the bay — Alcatraz. There Eli indeed finds a community, one dedicated to rebuilding civilization by collecting and reprinting whatever books they can find. But one book they don’t have is the Bible. Eli, still suffering from his wound (Fisher King, anyone?), tells the leader there to get lots of paper — and begins to recite the KJV Bible entirely from memory.

And we see for the first time that Eli is blind.

Change back to Carnegie’s town. Carnegie has the town engineer carefully pick open the lock on the book. Carnegie opens it — and sees that the Bible is entirely in Braille. He tries to get Claudia (who is blind) to read it, but she claims (with a smile) that it’s been too long since she last read Braille. In the meantime, all of Carnegie’s power structure is falling down — most of his henchmen are dead, and his control over the town evaporates.

Back at Alcatraz, Eli finishes dictating the Bible, then dies from his wounds. But the community there prints a hardbound copy of the Bible and places it among the other religious books in their collection. Solara takes Eli’s weapons and starts to head east back to Carnegie’s town and her mother.

Food for thought.  ..bruce..

After having seen “New Moon” on Friday afternoon with my sweet wife Sandra, I was a bit startled in late night browsing to read the following article (hat tip to Big Hollywood):

The latest movie in vampire saga Twilight is a ‘deviant moral vacuum’, the Vatican said yesterday.

New Moon, which opens in Britain today, is a ‘mixture of excesses aimed at young people and gives a heavy esoteric element’, a spokesman added.

The blockbuster opened on Wednesday in Italy and took £1.8million at the box office.

Monsignor Franco Perazzolo, of the Pontifical Council of Culture, said: ‘Men and women are transformed with horrible masks and it is once again that age-old trick or ideal formula of using extremes to make an impact at the box office.’

Huh? “Deviant moral vacuum” for a series that gets mocked because of the lack of premarital sex among its youthful characters? And I’m not entirely sure what “heavy esoteric element” means or why it would be a reason to condemn a movie. After all, the Vatican (as far as I can tell) had nothing to say about “2012″ which actually depicts the violent death of the Pope and the rest of the Catholic Church leadership, along with hundreds of people being crushed by the collapse of St. Paul’s Basilica. Given all the films that are out there, with plenty of morally objectionable content, why would the Vatican choose to unload on “New Moon” of all things?

Then it hit me: the Volturi.

For those of you who haven’t read the series/seen the films, the Volturi are in effect the global rulers of all vampires and the only ones who can and do enforce (via death) a small set of rules — intended to keep the existence of vampires a secret — upon other vampires.

And, by the way, the Volturi live in Italy, where they rule from a large secret domed chamber. And they sit in throne-like chairs wearing formal antique clothing (see photo above).

Now, I don’t think that Stephenie Meyer had the Catholic Church in mind (at least, not consciously) when she invented the Volturi. The Volturi don’t act like religious leaders, and they don’t live in Rome but rather in Volterra (an actual small ancient town in the Tuscany region of Italy). But I suspect that someone at the Vatican saw the film, drew certain inferences, and was not happy, particularly given Meyer’s well-publicized LDS (Mormon) background. I also strongly suspect that if the Volturi had lived somewhere other than Italy that the Vatican would have had nothing to say about the film. ..bruce..

P.S. The movie itself? Meh. Better done than the first one, but the first 30-45 minutes seemed to drag. On the other hand, the 2nd book was the weakest of the four.

The reviews I’ve read of “The Box” (now in theaters) confirm my concern: it’s hard to make a 2-hour film from a 2,800-word short story (“Button, Button” by Richard Matheson) without throwing in a lot of stuff that doesn’t really fit (warning: plenty of spoilers at the link).

On the other hand, I ran into the short (7-minute) film above that takes the same basic concept and turns it into something a bit different.  Enjoy.  ..bruce..

Back when Sandra and I had lots of kids at home, we had a whole collection of what we termed “Sunday movies” on tape: “Ben Hur”, “The Ten Commandments”, “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, “The Story of Ruth”, and so on. These were movies the kids could stick in the VCR and watch on Sunday, either before or after church, depending upon our schedule. We later expanded the list to include some non-biblical films (“Fiddler on the Roof”, etc.), since one can only watch these films so many times.

Well, the VCR and the tapes are all gone, and the only one of these films that I have on DVD is “Ben Hur”. That’s because it’s my favorite of all those films, and the only one that holds up well after half a century or so. I think because the film’s focus is not on the Savior’s life, but on the life of someone who been touched by the Savior, literally and figuratively, without knowing it. The approach of never showing the Savior’s face is very effective.

The scene where Ben Hur, in chains as a slave, is denied water by the Roman slavedriver, only to be given water by Christ, remains one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. It is a reminder that the Savior’s ministry started long before He turned 30 and that the vast majority of the service He rendered fall outside of our records of His ministry in the Gospels.

The Savior’s parable in Matthew 25:31-46 probably gives us the best glimpse into how the Savior spent his life before starting to preach the Gospel, and there were likely many lives touched by Him prior to then. “Ben Hur” is a reminder of that.  ..bruce..

[NOTE: welcome to all the traffic from Twitter and from Roger Ebert's review of "Knowing"! I've expanded a few things below for clarification.]

I’m going to discuss religious themes, particularly as related to LDS beliefs and themes, as found in the movies “Watchmen” and “Knowing”, as well as in the finale of the TV series “Battlestar Galactica”. In doing so, I’ll freely discuss spoilers, at least in “Knowing” and BSG. You’ve been warned.

If you don’t want to read the spoilers, let me tell you that I strongly recommend the BSG finale (the whole series, really) and the movie “Knowing”. I haven’t seen “Watchmen” (though I’ve read the graphic novel several times over the years), but based on what I’ve read about the film, I don’t plan on seeing it.

Battlestar Galactica finale [Spoilers!]

I was startled — pleasantly so, but still very surprised — that at the end, Battlestar Galactica very deliberately invoked God, angels, and divine intervention at the end, rather than coming up with some scientific explanation for the various strange going-ons during the last four years. Of course, the original (1978) Battlestar Galactica series (which was as wretched as this version was outstanding) was created by Glen Larson, an LDS producer who wove LDS keywords and themes into the series. That, in turn, inspired this entry in Orson Scott Card’s classic work, Saintspeak: A Mormon Dictionary (Orion Books, 1981):

Battlestar Galactica [the original 1978 series, that is] — In an effort to embarrass the Church, the devil caused Mormon terms like “eternal marriage” and “the Council of the Twelve” and “Kobol” (Kolob) to be presented in an uninspired, untalented, badly written television show. Thus, when missionaries tell investigators about the Council of the Twelve, the investigators are quite likely to giggle and say, “I’m sorry to laugh, but that just reminds me of the silliest sort of science fiction.”

This updated version, running over the past four years, was much, much better — in my opinion, one of the finest drama on TV in recent years — even though it maintained at least a few of the references from the original series. Even so, I suspect there were a lot of BSG viewers last night who were very unhappy with the direct religious answers given in the final episode, particularly with Kara Thrace vanishing into thin air. [And they are: see this review, plus the comments. BSG series creator Ron Moore says, "I have more than accepted the fact that there will be people who will never quite get over [Thrace's vanishing].”] But, frankly, it explains everything that has happened for the past four years better than any other answer.

And, interestingly, it steers things ever so quietly into LDS territory by the end. You have the idea of humanity existing independently on multiple worlds; of God using humans (often unknowingly) to carry out His designs; of what is in effect a “war in heaven” over whose plan will be followed; and of repeating patterns of wickedness, war, and destruction, with a small band of chosen people being led from the judged and doomed civilization to a new location, a promised land where they can start fresh. I was particularly struck by the theme — not explicitly spelled out, but certainly implied — that Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six were unwitting agents of God’s judgment and destruction of the human colonies because they had reached yet another dead end.

Once the final set of DVDs comes out, I look forward to watching through the whole series with fresh eyes, knowing now where things are leading. In the meantime, here are some explanations from Ron Moore and others. Again you’ll see from the comments there that a lot of people were angry with the religious aspects of the finale. And here are even more explanations from Ron Moore.

Knowing [Big, big spoilers!]

This movie, starring Nic Cage as John Koestler (an MIT physics professor), just opened yesterday, and my wife and I saw it today. The basic premise is that 50 years ago, a young girl named Lucinda Embry is tormented by whispers that she constantly hears. She also sees this strange, silent man at a distance. When her elementary school class is chosen to draw pictures for a time capsule that will be buried for 50 years — an idea that she herself suggested — she instead fills both side of a large sheet of drawing paper with apparently random numbers. Fifty years later, the time capsule at the elementary school is opened, and Koestler’s son Caleb happens to get the young girls letter to open. He brings it home; Kosetler happens to look at it and notices the string 0911012996 — which he matches with the date 9/11/2009 and the 2996 killed in the attack at the World Trade Center. Further analysis shows that the date, number of people killed, and lat/long coordinates in a long string of disasters over the past 50 years. There are only three disasters left, all within the next week, and the last one has for the number of people what Koestler at first thinks is “33″.

In the meantime, his son Caleb starts hearing the same whispers as did Lucinda, and he begins seeing the same strange, silent men, one of whom gives Caleb a small black stone (more of these stones appear throughout the film, always in association with these men and the whispering voices). Koestler tries to track down Lucinda — who died years earlier — but instead meets up with Lucinda’s daughter, Diane Wayland, and grand-daughter, Abby Wayland, who is roughly Caleb’s age and who starts hearing the same whispers (and seeing the same strange men). During investigation with Diane at Lucinda’s abandoned trailer, Koestler realizes that the last two characters are not “33″ but “EE” — meaning “Everyone Else”. In other words, the world is going to end in several days.

And it does. The Sun has a major flare-up, scouring the face of the entire earth, destroying all life on earth.

First, however, those strange, silent men save a number of ‘chosen people’. As they do so, they transform from human shape into beings that you could interpret as aliens or as angels; their spaceships are wheels within wheels as per Ezekiel’s vision. Among those saved are Caleb Koestler and Abby Wayland. They and the others are chosen by virtue of the fact that only they can hear the whisperings of the ‘angels’, as did Lucinda. Cage cannot, and so he is left behind to die, and we see the destruction of the whole Earth by fire as the Sun flares up.

At the end, Caleb and Abby are dropped off on an unspoiled, Edenic world. In the distance, we can see other ‘ships’, presumably dropping off other ‘chosen’ people. Caleb and Abby go walking through an open meadow, filled with unearthly grass, and then they start running. As they do, the camera pans around until you see in the middle of this (dare I say spacious) field a large, beautiful white tree. Fade to white and roll credits.

The lights came up, Sandra looked at me and said, “There’s gotta be a Mormon involved in this somewhere.” While the concept of the tree of life is in no way unique to Mormondom, I don’t believe it is a common positive (i.e., non-Fall-related) image or icon in most religions other than the LDS Church, particularly when represented as a large, white tree in the middle of an open field. And then you have the small, dark stones, which immediately call to mind Joseph Smith’s seer stones. Another subplot involves John Koestler’s loss of (religious) faith after the death of his wife, and his struggle with the key phrase inscribed by his wife in a locket and used between Koestler and his son: “Together Forever”.  Koestler appears to regain his faith at the end, even as he embraces his parents and sister moments before they are all engulfed in the solar blast. And, of course, as with BSG you have the overarching theme (familiar to Book of Mormon readers) of a civilization destroyed, with a small ‘worthy’ band miraculously transported to a new location, a promised land where they can start fresh.

I thought the film was excellent, by the way. I kept expecting some of the usual Hollywood tropes and resolutions and was pleasantly surprised at how unflinching it was in moving to its conclusion.

[UPDATE: It's clear that Sandra and I weren't the only ones to wonder about these themes; this blog is getting a small but steady stream of Google search hits with searchwords such as "knowing movie mormon", "knowing 2009 mormonism", and "is the director of the movie knowing LDS?". ]

Watchmen

I haven’t seen the movie version of “Watchmen”. I won’t, either,  given the reports of quite graphic sex and violence, more graphic than in the graphic novel itself (which I’ve owned for years and have read several times). And I wouldn’t be mentioning it in this post at all, were it not for the article “God Exists, and He’s Mormon” by Jeremy Lott over at the American Spectator website. I’m not particularly bothered or offended by this article. But as often happens with LDS doctrine, Lott knows a lot less than he thinks he does in making his comparisons between God as Latter-day Saints believe in Him and the character Dr. Manhattan in “Watchmen”. Some key points that Lott misses:

God existed before and created this universe (i.e, this particular time-space continuum). In fact, we all existed before this universe did; after all, we’re all eternal, and the universe is only about 13 billion years old, a mere blink of the eye. Something clearly existed before this universe; our belief in God does not have him as an uncreated Creator, bringing everything into existence ex nihilo. But Lott makes him sound like someone shuffling around materials lying around.

God is indeed omniscient and omnipotent. Lott focuses one interpretation of God’s foreknowledge by Richard Hopkins which is by no means universally accepted within the Church. Lott doesn’t address omnipotence at all.

God apparently served the same role as the Savior when He (the Father) was in mortality. Christ himself says, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.” (John 5:19); Joseph Smith explicitly interpreted this passage in that way in the King Follett discourse. Dr. Manhattan, by contrast, was a regular human (not a God incarnate) who was caught in a nuclear accident.

God is utterly moral, righteous, and pure in love. Lott ignores the fact that Dr. Manhattan is pretty much amoral and self-absorbed, and struggles with the very concept of love.

God is an unchanging God (in key ways). This has been a debate in LDS doctrine pretty much since the days of Brigham Young: does God, now exalted, change in any meaningful sense, or is any “advancement” merely in glory and kingdoms (again as per the King Follett discourse)? In either case, a key to worshiping God is to have faith that He is — in all important respects — an unchanging God (cf. Mormon 9:19, Moroni 8:18, and D&C 20:17).Dr. Manhattan is definitely not an unchanging being in any sense.

In all, some interesting themes.  ..bruce..

Boy, if the evangelicals hated Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling, what will they do when they face the popularity of vampire love stories written by a Mormon for teens and tweens?

Yet — unlike the various Harry Potter denoncements and book burnings over the past several years — I’ve seen almost no press coverage or other indiciation of Evangelical fervor regarding Meyer’s work. In fact, most of the Twilight criticism I’ve run across to date has been on LDS blogs.

Well, thanks to Google News, I’ve found my first Evangelical posting on the subject. I’m sure there have been others; I just haven’t gone looking for them. What’s curious is why this is showing up on Google News right now, since it appears to have been written back in November, shortly after the release of the movie “Twilight”, and why Google News considers the website “Prophezine: Your Source for Bible Prophecy and World Events” to be a news source. But all that said, here are a few key passages:

The series commonly referred to as Twilight is about an out of place sophomore teenage girl named Bella who moves to a new town and falls in love with a handsome 108 year old, but frozen at 17, “vampire” named Edward at her school (108? with a 16yr old? would make him a pervert and pedophile but should biblical (or old-fashioned) morality get in the way of “true” love?)  The story is about their intoxicating infatuation for each other and the consequences of a lustful vampire/mortal romance.

Edward and his “coven” of vampire family are vowed “good” and “vegetarian” vampires as they only feed on animal blood rather than human blood.  Yet, Edward wants to eat Bella every time the sexual tension gets too high.  He avoids having sex with her, not on any moral grounds, but out of fear lest he eat her and cause her to become the “un-dead” like him.  But she loves him regardless and is willing to step into his “eternity” no matter the cost!

Sounds a trite story, but the shocker is that many Christians are attracted to this spiritually dysfunctional romance and worse, are attempting to give Christian applications to its demonic premise suggesting this be acceptable “Christian” discussion. Some Christian reviewers on Christian Internet sites are using the story, to initiate Bible “studies” and discussion on so-called “Christian” principles to be drawn from it. A new “Christianized” twist on demonic deception is invading Christian values!

Here would be a good place to examine exactly what a “vampire” is and ask, can Christians honestly consider it OK for teens (indeed anyone?) to crave a relationship with one? For centuries, vampires have been part of folklore and mythology, understood to be ugly, dark creatures of morbid horror, close to the dead, sometimes known as the undead for they claim eternal life and subsist by feeding on human blood, roam in darkness, avoid the light, and are enemies of the human race.

This repulsive concept was changed with the popularization of Bram Stoker’s famous 1897 novel about a fictionalized vampire Count Dracula, who was presented as an aristocrat Transylvanian nobleman.  He was imbued with supernatural powers, superhuman capabilities and a lustful passion for beautiful ladies whose blood he became addicted to. His blood sucking was two-fold – to maintain his (eternal) “life force” and eventually befall his victim with the curse of vampirism and ultimate death. No matter how resplendent the “vampire” is portrayed in mythology and fiction, in Scripture blood drinking and creatures of darkness are judged as despicable by God. Also, Scripture explains fallen spirits (“angels”) as those who deliberately chose to follow their leader Satan (Isaiah. 14) and deny their Creator God. For this choice, they are damned with eternal separation from God and an eternity in the Lake of Fire. (Rev 15.)

I would argue simply that vampires aren’t real, but I realize that the author (Caryl Matriscian) is making a point based on her own worldview. That said, there’s an unspoken subtext in this article that has interesting implications for LDS fiction. That subtext seems to be that all fiction must, implicitly or explicity, play out within the context of Evangelical Christian theology and must serve that theology.

There is often a similar issue in fiction by LDS authors: must what we write always be consistent with LDS doctrine and history, portray the Church and LDS doctrine in a positive light, and serve to lead people to Christ? This issue has been kicked around for decades; while I was an undergrad at BYU, Eugene England gave the classic talk, “Great books or true religion?“, touching on some of those same issues. The best LDS authors tend to set it aside or deal with it in unexpected ways (cf. Orson Scott Card in Ender’s Game, which indicates that one of Ender’s parents is LDS but suggests that the LDS Church, like many others, has largely been suppressed/disbanded and does not apply LDS doctrine or theology to any of the story’s events).  See also this discussion over at The Red Brick Store, which suggests using Chaim Potok’s novels about Jewish life (The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev) as a model for Mormon literature.

But let’s get back to the article, which then paints a, well, interesting portrait of Stephenie Meyer:

A housewife named Stephenie Meyer “received” the story of Twilight in a dream on June 2, 2003.  The vision she had of a vampire and mortal as lovers compelled her to start writing the story immediately.  She says she couldn’t resist the drive to write down her dream (a similar scenario to J.K Rowlings, author of Harry Potter).  Meyer gives a summary of that first dream: “I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately.”  Within three months, she had the entire novel written.  Within six-months, it had been dreamed, written, and readied for publishing.

She admits she had little to no prior writing experience with only a B.A. degree in English and had to learn from the Internet how to submit a book proposal.  She tried a few times and “miraculously” got published with a $750 thousand dollar publishing contract! Miraculous happenings have been known to come from powers of darkness, and in this case, no matter how it’s sliced, the God of the Bible would not use vampires, sexual tension, lust, boyfriend worship, and teenage romance to spread His Gospel of eternal life and salvation through Yeshua.

Meyer, a Mormon mother of three, states that some of her inspiration in writing her vampire saga came from a band of musicians called Marjorie Fair.  “For New Moon, they were absolutely essential. They can put you into a suicidal state faster than anything I know . . . Their songs really made it beautiful for me.” Also an inspiration for one of her characters was a band called My Chemical Romance.  She states, “It’s someone . . . who just wants to go out and blow things up.” See mind blowing information about the music industry and a shocking spirituality many are involved in.

Scaringly, Meyer’s fictional character Edward took on the “terrifying” form of “real” spirit when it leapt from the pages of her saga and communicated with her in a dream. She says she had an additional dream after Twilight was finished when her vampire character Edward came to visit and speak to her. The Edward who visited her in the night told her she’d got it all wrong because he DID drink human blood, and could not “live” on ONLY animal blood as she wrote in the story.  She said, “We had this conversation and he was terrifying.”

Conversation with spirits (saying they need human blood to suck!) and frightening dream visitations by spirits are part of occult communication. Meyer’s spiritual experiences could well be influenced by her Mormon faith which allows for communication with the so-called “the dead”; indeed “the dead” of former generations are baptized into Mormonism in Mormon Temple ritual. Mormon founder Joseph Smith was “visited” by a communicating “angel” called Moroni, whose statue stands atop all Mormon Temples. This fallen angel of Mormonism gave Smith messages on which he formed his Mormon doctrine about prior civilizations, none of which have been discovered despite endless archeological digs to substantiate Mormons claims. Others Mormon teachings conflict with biblical Christianity such as Mormonism’s claim that Jesus (Yeshua) of the Bible is the half-brother of Satan.  Mormons additionally believe numerous teachings about the spirits that oppose Bible truths and could help embellish Meyer’s Twilight series.

In 2007, Stephenie Meyer wrote portions of a work titled, “Prom Nights from Hell,” which is about supernatural events surrounding evil prom nights. On May 6, 2008, she released her adult novel, The Host, which is about “invading alien souls” that take over a person and get them to do what they want. This behavior is called demonic possession, a state Jesus came to set captives free from.  Meyer’s so-called fiction “crosses over” to severe occult philosophy.

What’s interesting about this article is that it really does illustrate the principle that our foundational premises profoundly shape our worldview. Almost none of the LDS commentary, positive or negative, that I’ve seen on the Twilight books or movie has raised concerns about the occult, Satan, or vampires, and I have seen no suggestions that Meyer might have been inspired by, helped by, and directed by evil spirits in writing these books. For that matter, I haven’t seen any LDS commentators suggest that Meyer was inspired by the Holy Ghost, either. Instead, we treat her as an author who came up with the concept for a book, spent the time to actually write it out, and managed to break through the various barriers to publishing to achieve success. We see her Mormonism as informing some of the symbolism and themes in the novels themselves but not as having anything to do with how she wrote the novels and got them published.

Anyway, it is worth reading Matriscian’s entire article just to pull out all of the spoken and unspoken premises that shape her portrayal and criticisms of Meyer’s work.

Plus, it’s entertaining.   ..bruce..

Tiffany Gee Lewis has a wonderful column this morning about how kids seem to grow up overnight. Kids grow up and grow away, and we deal with that with a mixture of loss and relief (I say that as the father of nine and an empty-nester).

Years ago, when Steven Spielberg filmed Stanely Kubrick’s planned film, “AI: Artificial Intelligence” (2001), it was seen largely as a science fiction movie, and received something of a lukewarm reception. My take on the film was quite different: that is was a brilliant, painful and cautionary story about parents and children. I wrote a review to that effect which is still lodged in the eternal archives of the internet.

Reading Lewis’ column brought that review to mind, so I’ve reprinted the review below. It has spoilers, though, so if you’ve never seen the film, you may want to go watch it on your own first.

AI: A Horrific Fairy Tale for Adults [SPOILERS BELOW]

I have been fascinated by some of the sharp divisions of opinion surrounding AI as reviews (official and un-) have come out in the past few weeks. Today, my wife Sandra, our 18-year-old daughter Crystal, and I all went to see the 12:00 noon showing at the Uptown here in DC (enormous screen, great theatre). I believe that Crys was entertained but not particularly moved. Sandra and I — who between us have 9 kids from our separate prior marriages — both felt as though we had had a dentist with sharp, tiny, hand-held instruments working on our hearts for 2 1/2 hours, with pauses to let us recover, only to dig in again. Why the difference? Because we’re parents and she’s not. And therein, I think, lies much of the great divide.

AI is not hard SF. It is a cautionary horror story cum fairy tale cum myth, probably one of the best examples since Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. It takes a simple premise — what if we could teach a machine to love as a child loves, to think as a child thinks, and to want to be loved as a child is loved? — and carries it through to some excruciating, non-obvious and unflinching consequences that, I suspect, resonate primarily with parents who have had children of that age. As with Frankenstein, the core of AI involved hubris, temptation, rejection, and consequences. Hubris was the unthinking arrogance of Dr. Hobby and associates in tampering with the ecology of family and love without due regard for the unintended consequences — set, ironically, against a backdrop of melted icecaps (frankly, my first clue this wasn’t hard SF) and other unintended consequences of meddling with the physical ecology at large.

Temptation was Monica, watching her flesh-and-blood son Martin in cryonics for five years, not knowing whether a cure would ever be found for him (another fairy tale/myth motif), now being confronted with a machine, called David, that looks like a little boy, that — if and when she says the magic words — will fall eternally in love with her. Monica has a void inside which remains gaping and unhealed because of Martin’s suspension between life and death, which is what makes her temptation so real. In far too many movies and novels, the key temptation is so stupid and the consequences so obvious that I lose most or all sympathy for the character (e.g., King’s Pet Sematary). What made this movie so painful for me was how realistic I felt the temptation was. If I had one child, frozen, near death, with no clear prospect of ever having him/her back and no prospect of ever having another — yes, I might be tempted, and I think my wife even more so, to have something like David to fill that void, and we would stumble into the trap without realizing what we’ve done.

Rejection comes with the realization of the artificial, unnatural aspect of the relationship. Children grow; they mature (usually); there is always a bittersweet aspect to losing the simple, passionate love of a child, especially once they become brain-dead adolescents , but one wishes children to grow and go out on their own. Kubrick/Spielberg first carefully lay out the slowly-unfolding hell of having a child-like automaton with real feelings stuck at that particular emotional age, then accelerate and compound that hell by bringing back the real child, warts and all. Can one love a machine when one’s own flesh and blood is at hand? What are our loyalties, our instincts? Martin’s and David’s reactions to each other are very believable (speaking particularly as someone who has had experience merging two sets of kids together into one family), as are frankly the different reactions to the situation between and her husband Henry (with whom, remember, David has not bonded; a classic parent/step-parent divide, one with strong Oedipal/Freudian overtones). Martin is less pleasant, less pure in his love, less physically perfect, less lovable — but his is Monica and Henry’s flesh, their progeny; having nearly lost him once, can they reject him in favor of something that runs off electric current, something manufactured? What would that say about them as humans, as parents? Yet David really loves Monica, and she has to choose between him and the rest of her very-human family.

Whatever the twists and turns of the future projected, the emotional consequences for all involved, but particularly for David, are as inexorable as they are logical. For me, one of the most haunting lines of the film is when Monica abandons David in the forest (another classic fairy tale touch), shouting cautions even as she does so, then pauses and says — as her final words to him — “I’m sorry I never told you about the world.” There’s a deep, wrenching stab at any parent’s heart, capturing the twin heartbreaks of forcing a child out into the world, away from the safety comfort of a parent’s arms (with a loss of security) and into all the pain and cruelty and tragedy that the child is likely unprepared for. David then embarks on a classic, almost Campbellian fairy tale quest, complete with faithful sidekick (Teddy) and rogue knight (Joe). He’s off to see the wizard (Dr. Know), to win the Sphinx-like riddling challenge and find out what he needs to know to become a real boy so that Monica will love him. But unlike the comforting, Disneyized fairy tales we’ve come to accept, this one holds to the hard truth — there is no blue fairy, David will never become a real boy, and Monica will never love him the way he loves her, the way he so desperately wants to be loved, as someone unique and irreplaceable — and this is where it is most wrenching. David’s hopes are raised to their highest peak by the mysterious message in the Dr. Know booth and its literal unfolding as he and Joe travel to the ‘ends of the earth’ — and then they are utterly smashed as he finds what lies at the end of his quest. His homicidal (robocidal?) rage at finding another, duplicate David is chilling and utterly consistent, calling to mind Henry’s seemingly-overblown worry much earlier in the film that “If he [David] is capable of love, then he is also capable of hate.” And then all his hopes are utterly crushed as he discovers that he himself is merely a simulacrum of Hobby’s own dead son David, and that he is being mass produced for human consumption. It leads to two attempts at suicide, one out of despair, and one based on obsession with his goal leading to indifference to everything else, trapped in a dark prison of his own making.

Some have objected to the third part of the movie, yet I think it was very much keeping in spirit with the old-style fairy tales and myths. It has the irony of robot survival and human extinction (brought on, with further irony, by a profound ice age). It has the resurrection motif, with acceptance into the company of gods or near-gods, not as an equal, but as an honored icon (much as Greek gods elevating heroic mortals to Olympus or into the constellations). And, as gods, they grant not what David wants but what they can — a single day with Monica (Clarke’s third law should be enough to deal with any quibble about DNA), with no competition from Dad or Martin or from the world at all. Again the Oedipal/Freudian overtones may seem a bit blatant, but it’s still utterly true to life, for a child of that emotional age, as to what heaven would be. And David’s choice — that he would rather have that one day, with the increased sense of irrevocable loss afterwards, than not to have it at all — goes to the heart of vast numbers of myths and tales about what is so essentially human. Indeed, David for all intents and purposes now is the human race. And as the day ends and Monica passes away, David — for the first time in his 2000-year existence — sleeps and dreams.

But does he wake?

– Bruce F. Webster, 2001.

Courtesy of Ace of Spades comes the most reviled, most wretched “holiday special” ever produced. First, here’s the Vanity Fair article to give you the entire ugly background:

In the summer of 1978, Bruce Vilanch had a bad feeling about the Star Wars television special he’d been hired to write. A veteran of the comedy wars who has since written material for 16 Oscar telecasts and starred as the extra-large Edna Turnblad in the Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters’s Hairspray, Vilanch had just finished working on Bette Midler’s 1977 TV special, Ol’ Red Hair Is Back, for producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion when they threw him what sounded like a plum assignment: a spot on the writing team that would help George Lucas adapt more of the Star Wars saga for television.

A year had passed since the theatrical release of Lucas’s gee-whiz space epic, and in that time Star Wars had become the highest-grossing movie in history as well as a cultural phenomenon with its very own lexicon and mythology. With a sequel still two years away from theaters, Lucas had been sold on the idea that a Star Wars holiday television special—to be broadcast on CBS the weekend before Thanksgiving, when Nielsen audiences were plentiful—would sustain interest in the franchise, move more toys off the shelves, and maybe even pick up some new fans who hadn’t seen the movie.

Though Lucas would not be involved in the actual shooting of the special—Smith and Hemion would oversee that—he knew the tales he wanted to tell and planned to work with the show’s team of seasoned TV writers to develop his ideas into a viable script. For those who had been summoned, the prospect of collaborating with the father of the Force initially sounded like a sure bet. “We were really excited, because, ‘My God, this is an annuity—Star Wars!’” says Lenny Ripps, another writer who worked on the special. “How could it lose?”

How indeed.

For those of you with the stamina, here a link to the complete Star Wars Holiday Special itself. I suspect most (if not all) of the actors involved wished that no record of this existed.  Heh.  ..bruce w..

This remains my favorite Christmas movie (yes, even over “A Christmas Story”). It is a musical version of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, starring Albert Finney in the title role. I am not alone in my praise for this movie; note that of the 406(!) customer reviews for it at Amazon, 366 (90%) give it 5 stars and another 21 give it 4 stars.

“Scrooge” didn’t do all that well when it was released theatrically in 1970. Movie critics didn’t like it, feeling that it was somehow silly in the light of the earlier ‘classic’ versions of “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 Alastair Sim version). For years after that, if “Scrooge” showed up at all, it was in a chopped-up, pan-and-scan version on TV; I can remember my own profound disappointment when I first saw it on TV. The VHS release wasn’t much better — while not chopped up, it was still pan-and-scan, losing much of the outstanding cinematography and choreography.

But for five years now, it’s been out on DVD in an uncut widescreen version. The movie itself has held up very well. The score and libretto are outstanding; a few of the movie’s songs have crept into the mainstream over the years (I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing one on their weekly broadcast earlier this year). As mentioned above, the choreography is outstanding as well, as are the cinematography and art direction.

The real key, though, is Albert Finney in the title role. The director cast a young man (Finney was only in his early 30s when this was filmed) as Scrooge, figuring that it was easier to make a young man look old than to make an old man look young. Furthermore, the old Scooge is not played as a stern if elegant patrician; he’s played quite literally as a dirty moneygrubber, with a permanent hunch to his back. His Scrooge is not someone you would want to cross or meet in a dark alley.

The movie shows a bit more of Scrooge’s young life (via the Ghost of Christmas Past), giving a better sense of Scrooge’s descent from a tall, handsome, modest young man to the bent-over miser he becomes. It also adds a scene of Scrooge in Hell (as part of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future) that is quite humorous and at the same time chilling (so to speak). And there are a few changes in the final sequence of events as well, but they represent a payoff from things set up early on.

At its core, though, “Scrooge” fully delivers on Dickens’ original message of regret, repentance, and redemption, and it does so in a powerful fashion. I recommend it without reservation.  ..bruce w..

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.

Twilight is fantastic. It’s a page-turner that pops out a lurching, frightening ending I never saw coming. It’s also the first book that seemed at long last to rekindle something of the girl-reader in me. In fact, there were times when the novel—no work of literature, to be sure, no school for style; hugged mainly to the slender chests of very young teenage girls, whose regard for it is on a par with the regard with which just yesterday they held Hannah Montana—stirred something in me so long forgotten that I felt embarrassed by it. Reading the book, I sometimes experienced what I imagine long-married men must feel when they get an unexpected glimpse at pornography: slingshot back to a world of sensation that, through sheer force of will and dutiful acceptance of life’s fortunes, I thought I had subdued. The Twilight series is not based on a true story, of course, but within it is the true story, the original one. Twilight centers on a boy who loves a girl so much that he refuses to defile her, and on a girl who loves him so dearly that she is desperate for him to do just that, even if the wages of the act are expulsion from her family and from everything she has ever known. We haven’t seen that tale in a girls’ book in a very long time. And it’s selling through the roof.

Be sure to read the whole thing, and then ask yourself: why are the “Twilight” novels and movie so popular among adult women as well?  ..bruce..