Quick Movie and reading update

I've seen three movies recently and enjoyed them all in their own ways.


A Mighty Wind This is from the folks who brought you "Spinal Tap", "Best in Show" and "Waiting for Guffman". As someone who grew up listening to folk music this felt like meeting old friends. It's a wonderful, gentle send up of the folk music scene and some of its pretensions and peculiarities. I know some folks rap it because it is such a gentle even loving view of it's subjects. I really enjoyed it.

X-men 3 The Last Stand - Yeah sometimes I just wanna watch escapist silliness. This certainly fills the bill. There are the usual plot holes you could fly the X-jet through but who cares. This isn't about plot, it's barely about character, it's mostly about spectacle. Hearing Kelsey Grammar's oh so sophisticated tones emerging from the big furry blue face of the Beast is just fun. The violence level is strictly comic book as are the sexy bits. Plus for those of more perverse points of view you can have fun watching Star Trek's Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart who places Dr. X) get blown into tiny little motes of dust (or is he?). Strictly check your brains at the door fun.

And now for something Completely Different:

No, not Monty Python.

Life Tastes Good I caught this on IFC and was just sucked in by it. How to describe it? It borders on film noir actually. There are dream like bits, and erotic tensions and ambiguity and strange which are four of the classic elements of noir (the fifth is cruelty and an argument can even be made for that). It's also strangely touching and rather funny in several places. The cast is entirely Asian Americans and the film budget was obviously very small (the killer uses his index finger. Why or how it works - he just sticks you in the chest with it - is never really explained. The director notes that he couldn't afford stage guns and so he improvised. Gotta love it!) It's a crime story, a story of family, several love stories, a murder mystery and more. It involves lemons, police detectives who still wear hats (Don't ask me, I have no clue) and a hand held tape recorder full of dreams or memories. I heartily recommend it.

I just finished reading (finally) Tony Campolo's book "Letters to a Young Evangelical". It took me a while to read even though it's a very short book, only 280 pages, but I stopped several times to think about what I'd read. It's a great book for non-evangelical Christians because it can give you a whole different view of that branch of our faith family. Campolo notes that "evangelical" and "religious right" have become synonymous for most people. He argues very clearly why that shouldn't be so, now or in the future. Campolo is persona non grata in some evangelical circles because he's not a member of the religious right and he's not a literalist. Yet he remains true to the core of historic evangelicalism. I don't think his point of view about mainline denominations (like mine) is always right but he draws those conclusions from a solid basis. And he does make some very accurate criticisms of the mainlines. This is an easy read and a wonderful thought starter for anyone of faith, even those of us neither young nor evangelical.

Peace