Dick Staub & The Movies

Another delightful evening with The Kindlings Muse, this time discussing the theology of the Best Picture nominees with film critics, philosophers, and movie short directors.

For the first time I'd seen 4 of the 5 Best Picture nominees- and the one that won, The Departed, I have no intention of seeing because I'm just not into gangster movies. At one time I went through and watched all of the Academy Award winners ever- but I skipped the ones about adultery, the highly sexed ones, and all of the mob films. (Yes, there were a couple still left.)

This year I thought Iwo Jima was excellently done, but so violent I had to leave the theatre for a moment. It is particularly good if you've first seen Flags of Our Fathers, as many scenes are shown from the other perspective. This is the first time a major Hollywood movie is showing what happened from the Japanese perspective (and may be the first time to see war from the "enemy" side since Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front). Detested Little Miss Sunshine, though I thought the girl was a phenomenal actor. Liked The Queen, and the great acting of the woman portraying her, and absolutely loved Babel, as I've mentioned before.

Staub and his geusts had a lot of interesting and imaginative ideas on the theology of these movies. It did seem most of the movies offered a lot of despair and images of how awful the world was, with little hope. I got another question in on the other bookend of Babel- to what extent the theology of Pentecost was expressed in the film. And Staub actually referenced me in the first segment, referring to a teacher in Morocco and the lack of guns present in that country, and to what extent that influenced the message of the movie. To hear more about this and other comments, visit The Kindlings Muse.

Comments

Popular Posts