Paul Kuritz: Opinions

Can You See Your Shadow?

February 4th, 2010

e3b1c237f80dc48e Groundhog Day reminds me of the movie of the same name. The finest analysis of the movie was done by Michael P. Foley:

“Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.”

Read the entire review.

Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsungGroundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

Posted in Movies, Theology | No Comments »

The Kingdom of Love Now Reigns

December 24th, 2009

images “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God – for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us. And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him.God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. ”

1 John 4:7-16

Merry Christmas!

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At the Gideon’s Flame Christian Film Festival

October 30th, 2009

A New Life has been invited to Manila’s Gideon’s Flame Christian Film Festival. I was invited to speak briefly before the screening. Here is what I said:

Thank-you for selecting “A New Life” for inclusion in your film festival.

When I was in film school I attended a book reading group at a local Baptist Church. We read a “God Story’ each week and discussed it. The discussions were fairly dull until we got to Mary Brown’s A New Life. Then the Christians divided on what we thought of the Christians in the story. Were they examples of bad Christians or good Christians? Did they succeed or fail? Was the heroine better or worse off after having encountered them? And finally, did they further the Kingdom of God or embarrass it?

I had been praying for an idea for my first film after graduation and thought maybe this one might provide the basis. The author herself agreed, and as the production demands fell into place I came to believe I had found a means to glorify God through film, my goal in venturing out of theater into the world of movie-making.

The film has both confirmed what non-Christians believe about Christians and again divided Christian viewers over the same questions as the short story.

How does a Christian filmmaker determine if his film is a success? Does he use the world’s standards – audience popularity, invitations to film festivals, awards, box office receipts? Or is there another standard for Christian filmmakers to use?

In his book on acting for the camera, Patrick Tucker distinguishes the stage actor as playing for the numerous people in the auditorium, while the film actor plays for what he calls “An Audience of One” – the camera lens.

I believe the Christian filmmaker, unlike the secular filmmaker, creates for his Audience of One. But in this case not for a camera lens, but for the Creator God Himself. I believe that a Christian filmmaker succeeds if God is glorified either within the film narrative itself or in the impact the film has on one who watches the film.

Does the Kingdom of God break into the life of a character? Does the Kingdom of God break into the life of even a single viewer of the film? If so, I believe God is glorified and the Christian filmmaker has pleased his Audience of One. To paraphrase St. Paul, “so neither is he who films or he who shows the film anything, but only God, who makes His Kingdom grow through the film…. For it is God who worked in your film to will and act according to His divine purpose.”

May God bless you, may His Kingdom come, and may His will be done in all your film experiences.

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ALL THE WORLD’S A GRAVE

October 14th, 2009

Poster

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Remember: Nothing Has Changed

September 11th, 2009

9-11

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A New Life Heads to the Phillipines

September 11th, 2009

My film “A New Life”, based on the short story by Mary Ward Brown, has been selected to be screened at the GIDEON’s FLAME CHRISTIAN FILM FESTIVAL, November 3-7, 2009 in Legaspi Village, Makati, the Phillipines.

“2009 marks the 95th year of existence of the Union Church of Manila. Its main purpose is to spread the WORD OF GOD so that its members and their sphere of influence can be United, Centered, and Maturing in Christ. The UCM strives to attain its goal through various ways. One of these is to encourage the production and distribution of local and foreign Christian films so that this innovative and easily absorbed and assimilated medium can further God’s Word in the hearts and minds of the viewing public.

“It is an accepted fact that films are a powerful force that can influence man’s actions. To this end, the UCM Library Committee launched the 1st Christian Film Festival 2 years ago which culminated in April 2008 with a weeklong showing of Christian films ending with the Awards Night. The team and those involved were encouraged to repeat the activity by both participants and those who were blessed by the films. Thus the holding of the 2nd Christian Film Festival, renamed the GIDEON’S FLAME CHRISTIAN FILM FESTIVAL, which will be the last major activity of UCM’s 95th year celebration. The Festival will culminate with weeklong activities from November 3-7, 2009.

“The name is meant to emphasize that God’s great power can manifest even through seemingly small and weak ways to gain HIS purpose. This event will showcase educational, inspirational, and empowering films even as it encourages young talents to channel their knowledge and expertise to spread the Gospel to their public.

“The GFCFF will commence with a cocktail hour at 6:30 pm on the 3rd of November. Then from 6-9 pm of the same evening up to November 7, three films will be shown daily. These showings are open to the public free of charge.

“The Gideon Flame Award will be given to the prize winner. Critically acclaimed foreign and local films will be interspersed with the entries. On the last day, November 7, Saturday, starting 9 am, children will be treated to films appropriate to their ages. The event will culminate with the closing ceremony, the recognition rites, and the awarding of prizes.”

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The Significance of John Wayne, After 30 Years

June 12th, 2009

“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a story about the death of the American West. John Wayne does more than simply play the title character; he also serves as a clear symbol of the American spirit, and his heroic sacrifice in this film is John Ford’s meditation on the paradox of American individualism.

“Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, the only man tough enough to stand up to Liberty Valance, the local thug. It is the arrival of Ransom Stoddard, an idealistic lawyer, that forces Tom to shoot Liberty, and in the process he sacrifices his own happiness, his own way of life, and the woman he loves.

“The core of Wayne’s appeal is not his swagger or his charm, but his willingness to act and accept the consequences, even when it means the end of his own way of life. Although we see his character dead, largely forgotten, it is Stoddard’s wife who puts the cactus blossoms on his coffin, an unspoken confession of her own love for him. She speaks for us all. We may be married to the security and safety of Stoddard’s government, but John Ford reminds us that it is the cactus roses of Tom Doniphon that grow in the heart of everry Amwrican”

— Nicholas Tucker, a San Francisco–based filmmaker. His latest project is Do As I Say, based on Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book, at National Review

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Memorial Day 2009

May 25th, 2009

Remembering grandfathers of 1917, veterans of The Great War:

Paul Kuric

Peter Briese

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A MUST READ: American Babylon. Notes of a Christian Exile

May 21st, 2009

Father Richard John Neuhaus has left us a remarkable book. Looking through it to prepare a review, I saw that I had highlighted almost the entire book!

To whet your appetite, let me quote the conclusion at length, so that you might hurry off to get a copy

“Through the preceding chapters, these notes from exile have addressed various tasks of hope while living in Babylon. The life of faith has been depicted as a prolepsis of the promised New Jerusalem, the City of God in final tranquility. We examined the distinctively American understandings of life in exile, and the distinctively American ways of deluding ourselves that we have arrived home already. We celebrated progress, and we noted its sobering limits in the realm of morality.

“We tried to engage the atheists among our fellow-exiles in this foreign city whose provisional peace we together seek. And also those who, like Richard Rorty, would distance themselves from hope’s grief by means of liberal irony. In “Salvation Is from the Jews,” we underscored the ways in which our pilgrim path and “the story of the world” are uniquely and inextricably entangled with the people of Israel. Then we explored the politics by which we alien citizens can ameliorate some wrongs and advance a provisional measure of the common good, even in Babylon. Finally, in this last chapter, we considered the impossibility of hopelessness and why it is that to live is to live in hope….

“As Christians and as Americans, in this our awkward duality of citizenship, we seek to be faithful in a time not of our choosing but of our testing. We resist the hubris of presuming that it is the definitive time and place of historical promise or tragedy, but it is our time and place. It is a time of many times: a time for dancing, even if to the songs of Zion in a foreign land; a time for walking together, unintimidated when we seem to be a small and beleaguered band; a time for rejoicing in momentary triumphs, and for defiance in momentary defeats; a time for persistence in reasoned argument, never tiring in proposing to the world a more excellent way; a time for generosity toward those who would make us their enemy; and, finally, a time for happy surrender to brother death—but not before, through our laughter and tears, we see and hail from afar the New Jerusalem and know that it is all time toward home.”

Posted in Books, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theology, World Affairs | No Comments »

Cinevangelism: A Christian Introduction to the Movies

May 21st, 2009

There are some Christians who avoid seeing movies because they fear polluting their souls. Other Christians see every movie, convinced that nothing can harm them. If you know either of these types, The Message Behind the Movie. How to Engage with a Film without Disengaging Your Faith by Douglas M. Beaumont is for you. Read the rest of this entry »