I've learned how to laugh and I've learned how to pray
My friend William is a great guy. We’ve known their family for fifteen years or more, and he’s the pastor of a great church in Virginia. He wrote a pretty good book on leadership based on the minor prophets, he taught me everything I know about Hebrew (which isn’t a lot, but that’s my fault, not his), he married far above his station, and he and his wife have two awesome daughters.
He also has two great failings.
Making a great motion picture isn’t that difficult. All it really takes are two things. There must be a cast made up of actors who can handle any demand, from a heart-pounding moment of drama to a free-for-all comedy assault. It’s also mandatory to have a script that evokes real emotions without being cloying, takes a smart look at life without coming across as seeing the world through a superior viewpoint and presents dialogue rich in subtleties delivered in a real world manner.
Rick Bentley
I bought a soundtrack to a fifty-year old movie this week.
Which, of course, got me thinking about my favorite movie soundtracks. (Why, doesn’t it you?) I’m going to exclude musical soundtracks; that’s kind of cheating, since the soundtrack essentially is the movie. Or a large portion of it. So, no Sound of Music (ugh), no Funny Lady (double-ugh), and most definitely no La-La Land.
Good movie soundtracks are usually unobtrusive; they make the movie better, but don’t take attention away from it. Great movie soundtracks, however, not only make the movie better, they become a character themselves, a character so good that you can’t help but notice them.
A couple of weeks ago, as we were leaving the church building, our pastor called me over and said, “Don’t you think that Harry Potter is essentially the same as LOTR, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, just set in a sorcery and wizarding context?” As I stared at him blankly, he said, “Something to think about. Might make a good blog post.”
I was staring at him blankly because his question was the literary/movie equivalent of asking him, “Aren’t all religions essentially the same?” It’s not that the question is difficult, it’s that there are so many things racing through your mind it’s hard to know where to start.
I wrote this four years ago for a friend's movie site. That site is no longer, so I'm re-posting this here, for reasons I'll get into at the end.
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I watched Mary Poppins live in a sit-down movie theater upon its first release. I was a first-grader, and I was mesmerized. There were several indelible scenes for me: the pulling of the lamp out her purse, the animated penguins and the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the floating in the air at the uncle's house, the rooftop chimney-sweep serenade of Mary, and most of all how sad I was at the end when Mary went away and left the children on their own.