Loose Canon Archive: February 2005

Hollywood's Revenge

February 28, 2005 | 4:50 p.m.

"Million Dollar Baby" is Hollywood's revenge for not feeling able to give the Oscar for Best Picture to "Fahrenheit 9/11." It's an even worse movie than Fahrenheit. And, unlike Fahrenheit, it's not even filling movie houses.

Charlotte Allen points out

that even though MDB is doing only so-so at the box office ("Because of Winn Dixie," a family-friendly movie about a dog, has almost the same weekly gross, despite having been in the theaters for only ten days), it was destined to win big at the Oscars. She and her sister-in-law both bet on it in advance of last night:

"[B]oth of us knew our Hollywood, and we predicted, quite accurately, that the cinema elite would find irresistible this oh-so-serious Clint Eastwooder with its doubly politically correct whammy of female boxing and plug for euthanasia. For 1999, Hollywood handed a 'Best Actor' award to Michael Caine for playing a friendly neighborhood abortionist in The Cider House Rules, another picture that hardly anyone wanted to see either before or after the Academy Awards show but that pushed a cause dear to West Coast liberals' hearts. That's the way Hollywood is. So, sis, you have a great time on the Strip."

Swami interviewed Sufi sheikh

Kabir Helminski about MDB

. The sheikh, who seemed quite movie savvy, liked MDB, even noting that boxing coach Frankie is a spiritual person because he reads William Butler Yeats. The sheikh also regarded suicide under the circumstances as an acceptable transformation. He quotes a teacher named Rumi: "I died as mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I ever less by dying?"

If that is your view of death, I can see that you might not be bothered by things in this movie that rendered me apoplectic. The movie portrayed Frankie's decision to accede to the wish of Maggie, now paralyzed, to kill her as a wrenching but moral choice. The film depicts Frankie as going to Mass daily, and this gives the impression that, no matter what the Catholic Church teaches about suicide, Frankie was a good Catholic and his decision was thus more human and correct than Church teaching. Before killing Maggie (as we know all along he will), Frankie takes his concerns to a priest, who already has been shown in the movie to be a less than engaging human being. The priest seems sort of a stuffed shirt who wouldn't understand a "real" problem like the one confronting Frankie.

Of course, there's no reason there couldn't be a good movie about assisted suicide--if it were an artistic venture rather than a mere preachment. Like "The Cider House Rules," MDB has an all-too-obvious agenda. That's why the elite so liked these two movies--they preached their gospel.

Think of Medea being rewritten to argue for increased after school programs, or Romeo and Juliet transformed into a play about the need for more publicly-funded teen suicide hotlines. That's about how artistic MDB is.

MDB is preachier than any televangelist on Sunday morning TV. It preaches a passé gospel, left over from the sixties. Here is a closing snippet from Charlotte Allen on why the public seems to be rejecting this bleak little opus:

"'Million Dollar Baby' is cut to the Sixties template: attractive young heroine with every card in the deck carefully stacked against her: poverty, rotten family, no friends (except for the equally down-on-his luck Eastwood), rigged fight, dank, disease-ridden hospital with not a caring attendant in sight. Even the priest is a drone--so much for the moral authority of religion. It's the System, and you can't beat the System. The heroine can't win--and doesn't. It's the audiences that are different 40 years later. Today's young people--and their elders--have more realistic and hopeful attitudes toward adult life. So they mostly don't want to see a cynical movie that informs them that struggling isn't worth it and the society they live in is beyond redemption. The Sixties are over, folks, and Hollywood can plug its favorite brand of nihilism with every Oscar on the shelf, but I predict that not many people are going to buy it."

Andrew Coffin of This Week magazine

notes that family-friendly movies never win

Best Picture. He plots the turning point as Midnight Cowboy.

And

here's something

to make you miss Bob Hope.

But Thumbs Up on Hotel Rwanda

February 28, 2005 | 4:50 p.m.

But good movies are still being made: James K. Glassman saw "Hotel Rwanda" and gave it a

rave review

:

"Unfortunately, 'Hotel Rwanda' is not nominated as best picture for this Sunday's Oscars, eclipsed in the judgment of the Academy by such clunkers as 'The Aviator.' But Don Cheadle is up for best actor, Sophie Okonedo for best supporting actress, and George and Keir Pearson for original screenplay," Glassman noted in a review that came out before the Baby marathon.

Sitting in the movie theater, Glassman thought about the United Nations:

"The United Nations, which had a force in Rwanda to oversee a tentative peace agreement between the two sides (their role, says a Canadian colonel played by Nick Nolte, is to be 'peacekeepers, not peacemakers'), pulled nearly all their troops out two weeks later. The Clinton Administration ignored the genocide and refused even to use the term, except as an adjective referring to isolated incidents. In the end, the U.N. helped a few Europeans escape but left Tutsis to die in horrific ways.

"Michael J. Totten, writing on TechCentralStation last month, called the U.S. and European attitude toward Rwanda in 1994 a manifestation of the Genovese Syndrome, a reference to Kitty Genovese, who was knifed to death in New York in 1964 as neighbors looked on without trying to help her."

But Let's Talk More about Bad Movies

February 28, 2005 | 4:50 p.m.

Relapsed Catholic

noticed this

delicious take on some other flicks

that have made it big with the Hollywood/Manhattan elites (yes, you,

Swami

!):

"The general consensus [among Hollywood elites] went something like this: Okay, Michael Moore fabricated much of his 'documentary,' and yes, the evidence shows that Alfred Kinsey may have had a little problem with incessant cheating on his wife and with self-mutilation (and then there was that other little problem with unethical research, including sexual experiments on infants). But aren't those just the kind of men we need to help shake things up in this hopelessly prudish country, especially after an election in which voters seemed determined to take us all back to the Stone Age?"

Making Saints and Changing Doctrine

February 28, 2005 | 4:50 p.m.

Loose Canon doesn't remember which network she was watching, but she was interested in a reporter's explanation of what a pope does: the reporter said that a pope is the only one who can appoint bishops, make saints, and "change doctrine." No, a pope cannot change doctrine. Sometimes heretofore not fully understood doctrines are defined, but they are never changed. Even the pope can't do that. So don't get your hopes up.

Thou Shalt Not Appear in Public

February 25, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

You know things are bad when Baptists come out against public displays of the Ten Commandments. But the Interfaith Alliance and The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty have done just that.

They held a

press conference pegged

to the Supreme Court's scheduled March 2 hearings on the Ten Commandments in public places:

"In the most religiously diverse nation in the world, several religious organizations have filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the court opposing government sponsored displays of religious doctrines. Organizations filing briefs include the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Interfaith Alliance Foundation, American Jewish Congress, Hindu American Foundation, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, and others."

While it's silly for somebody like Judge Roy Moore, reportedly not averse to publicity, to up and erect a monument to the Ten Commandments on public property, it represents a coarsening of society that we no longer want to see them. It's part of an attempt to rid the public square of anything smacking of religious roots.

But the Ten Commandments as "religious doctrines"? Give me a break. The Ten Commandments are about as close to civic religion as you can get. What's dogmatic about, "Thou shalt not kill"?

Indeed, many religions, I'm told, have a similar precept.

Rabbinic Wisdom in English

February 25, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

Speaking of ancient texts,

Opinion Journal has a nice piece

on the new English translation of the Talmud. It's the first new English version in half a century:

"The Talmud is a compilation of the Jewish oral law ('Mishna') and its rabbinic commentaries ('Gemara'), running to 37 weighty volumes composed in Hebrew and Aramaic. The most widely studied version, the so-called Babylonian Talmud, is traditionally thought to have reached its current form in sixth-century Iraq. (A different version known as the Jerusalem Talmud was composed somewhat earlier.) ...

"The quality of the ArtScroll volumes is consistently high, but a translation can never hope to substitute for the original, where nuances of meaning are of central importance. Nor does the existence of a clear and comprehensive English translation mean that the Talmud should now be read straight through, instead of learned in the traditional way.

"What it does is make the original more accessible to those with limited background or understanding. It is said that when a Jew prays, he speaks to God, and when he studies holy books, God speaks to him. In an era when few people have time to brush up their Aramaic, the ArtScroll Talmud will enable more people to hear--and understand--what God has to say. And, no doubt, to argue about it."

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

February 25, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

"What's this? A French intellectual starting his book with a quote from Psalm 1?" Mark Farmer, a Baptist minister who was once pastor of a church near the Louvre, said when he opened Jean-Claude Guillebaud's critically acclaimed "Re-founding the World: The Western Testament." [We seem to be talking about Baptists today, don't we?]

According to

Christianity Today

, the book is "the most articulate plea for France to re-examine its Judeo-Christian roots." "[Guillebaud] starts the book by saying that the 20th century has been a century of disillusion. Marxism, evolution, socialism, hedonism, wars have all failed us," Farmer noted. "He says it's easy to be pessimistic, but there are some things that we appreciate about our civilization. For example, the notion of right and wrong that transcends any culture--where does that come from? He stops short of saying that he himself has become a Christian, but he's led the horses to the water."

The article reports other intriguing signs of renewed interest in Christianity.

And that's not today's only good news...

Major Hit for Anglican Left!

February 25, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

Loose Canon had an Anglican item yesterday, and ordinarily I'd wait a few days before again dipping into that well again. But the

statement yesterday

by Primates of the Anglican Communion is hot stuff. Really hot when you consider how polite Anglicans tend to be. The bishops basically stopped a few feet short of kicking the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and the Church in Canada out on their bums. They are about This Far from schism.

"The spin has scarcely begun but early returns suggest that the Anglican left knows it has taken a major hit," notes

Midwest Conservative

. Midwest describes the reaction of the Guardian's

Stephen Bates as lamenting

"the barbarian triumph:"

"The North Americans have precipitated the split because of their progressive stance on homosexuality," Bates wrote, "still regarded as anathema in many other parts of the communion, particularly in the developing world.

"In 2003, the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA) endorsed the election of an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in the diocese of New Hampshire. At the same time, the diocese of New Westminster in Vancouver, Canada, became the first in the communion to introduce a service of blessing for same sex couples.

"It appeared clear that, although the statement does not go that far, it represents a victory for those demanding that the church should stick to its agreed, Bible-based line on homosexuality."

"And [Bates] hopes that Peter Akinola had white wine with his chicken," Midwest teases:

"Last night the leading critic of the Americans and Canadians, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, was said to be entertaining his supporters and the traditionalist American and English evangelicals, who have been circling the meeting semi-clandestinely all week, at what was described as a 'celebratory' party, paid for by the Americans."

Well, they have something to celebrate--this is the first sign (and, mind you, it's only a glimmer) that the Anglican Communion has not made a collective decision at the highest (well, very high) level to go down the tubes. I suppose I should be sad, in a way. It's always heartening to welcome Anglican refugees on this side of the Tiber. On the other hand, I do hate watching an institution that gladdened my youth become ridiculous.

Orate, Fratres et Sorores

February 24, 2005 | 3:40 p.m.

An old man in ill-health is near the end that awaits us all. The Holy Father's latest health crisis may be far more serious than the Vatican press corps is letting on, though there could be a change, for better or worse, by the time you're reading this entry. For now,

Catholic World News is reporting

:

"Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's vicar for the Rome diocese, hinted at the urgency of the Pope's condition when he issued a new call for the people of Rome to pray for the Pope's health. Cardinal Ruini instructed 'all the parishes, religious communities and monasteries, individuals and families, to ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, to protect the Pope again, and preserve him in his mission for the good of Rome, the Church, and mankind.'"

The

Washington Post persists

in treating the Holy Father as if he's just some bureaucrat, noting that he has "indicated that he was determined to continue in his post as head of the world's Roman Catholic Church."

Well, yes. He is the successor of Peter, who ended his tenure by being martyred upside down. It is simply hard for me to imagine the Church with another pope, though it appears that this could happen sooner rather than later.

Oh, Who Cares What People Will Say?

February 24, 2005 | 3:40 p.m.

What do you say when your pastor teams up with a vampire lady?

A piece in

USA Today notes that best-selling vampire author Anne Rice

is trying to help Howard Storm, a minister, promote his new book, "

My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life

" (Doubleday, $14.95). The book grew out of a brush with death:

"Storm says, he had a near-death experience that didn't fit the stereotypical version - the one in which people experience a bright light and the presence of love. Instead, Storm says he was viciously attacked by creatures he sensed were once human. During those attacks, he says, he heard a voice telling him to pray. Storm knew no prayers but began murmuring lines from the 23rd Psalm, the Pledge of Allegiance and 'The Star-Spangled Banner'. Then, he says, he was in the presence of Jesus and angels...."

Rice was intrigued by the book. I don't quite know what to say, except that this is interesting because people tend to make vague noises about being in "a better place," while really believing that death is the end.

"People say 'What are you doing with Anne Rice? She's a vampire person, and you're a Jesus guy,'" Storm says.

"I tell them Anne and I are on the same wavelength."

Scary thought, even if director Neil Jordan's "

Interview with A Vampire

" (my only brush with the Rice canon) is one of the all-time great camp (vamp?) classics. You have to love Brad Pitt as the reluctant vampire--he can't stand killing people. "Feed on what you will, Louis, rats, chickens, (sardonic laugh) poodles," uttered by the disdainful Vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise), is always good for a laugh.

My only advice to Mr. Storm: Just try to remember that Jesus and the angels are real, while Miss Rice's vampires are imaginary.

The Road to Rome

February 24, 2005 | 3:40 p.m.

Like many converts to Catholicism, J. Budziszewski, "one of the intellectual lights among Evangelical Christians in America," sojourned in the Episcopal Church before crossing the Tiber. (The Episcopal Church wasn't called the via media for nothing.)

The eagle-eyed

Relapsed Catholic

spotted these words from an interview Budziszewski gave to

Ignatius Insight

:

"The last three of those years [as an Episcopalian] were really difficult. My wife and I had not yet reached that point of obedience. We were still in 'faithful remnant' mode. In a sort of a compromise--which, in retrospect, seems rather unsatisfactory--we decided that if the Episcopal Church ever came to incorporate the prevalent abominations into its canons, that would be our signal to get out.

"The signal we were waiting for came unmistakably during the summer of 2003. It was bad enough that the Episcopal general convention ordained as bishop a man who had abandoned his wife and children in order to live in sin with another man. That might have been viewed as an aberration. Much worse was the fact that the general convention authorized drawing up rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. That converted the aberration into a rule.

"But the signal turned out to have been unnecessary, because we had already crossed our Rubicon. That summer, we visited an Episcopal church in another town. No sooner had we entered than we encountered a 'tract table' offering visitors free pro-abortion bumper stickers bearing the Episcopal shield.

"That was the last straw. We knew that we could never consider ourselves members of the Episcopal Church again."

Priceless

February 24, 2005 | 3:40 p.m.

Following George W. Bush through cheese land, the Guardian, said to be a highbrow news paper,

explains it all

:

"...The transatlantic reconvergence, in other words, is for real. The problem is that its purpose remains both unstated and, even to those closest to the process, somewhat unclear.

"Much of this is summed up in the current transitional fluidity over the politics of Iraq. The war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects."

Republicans, Bloggers, and Gays! Oh, My!

February 24, 2005 | 3:40 p.m.

Feeling that you should somehow be incensed by "Jeff Gannon," who lobbed softball questions at White House news conferences while using an assumed name (you'd

better

use an assumed name if you're going to do that in a Republican administration!)? But not quite certain

why

you're so mad?

In a piece headlined, "Republicans, Bloggers, and Gays! Oh, My!,"

Anne Coulter comments

on the Democrats' strange reaction to "Gannon:"

"The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?"

Wouldn't It Hurt Less If You Didn't Try to Think?

February 23, 2005 | 5:28 p.m.

Loose Canon isn't going to spoil

Constantine

, the new movie in which Keanu Reeves plays a failed suicide/exorcist who has the ability to see fallen angels and demons, by revealing the ending. Haven't seen it yet, but I was intrigued with some ruminations provoked by the movie on

Get Religion

.

The item is by Terry Mattingly, a religion writer who teaches a course in exegesis and culture:

"The problem, of course, is that it is often hard to find out precisely what some of the artists of popular culture are trying to say. Often, it seems that they do not know. I mean, 'knowing' is such an old-fashioned concept, you know? Also, some artists are not interested in telling potential ticket buyers

what the signal is all about

. In the end, it is often hard to find interviews with the artists in which they clearly express what they are thinking....

"At the moment, many of my students are interested in Constantine, the latest franchise to spin off from the world of comic books. It's a fable about heaven, hell, angels, demons, relics, rites and a shotgun shaped like a cross. I wrote about this recently for Scripps Howard. The lead on that

column

: Hell looks really cool, when seen through a Hollywood lens.

"I was amazed at the degree to which some of the writers and artists were interested in the spiritual content of their film, but not anxious to address the central question: What were you trying to say? Then again, perhaps they knew that what they were trying to sell might now be all that popular in certain American zip codes."

The piece quotes from a New York Times interview (no longer available online) with Tilda Swinton, who plays Gabriel, a "gender-neutral angel" in the movie. Swinton says that Gabriel is "not a baddy. He becomes insane because he starts to think that if you wrap yourself in God's clothes you can do anything you want, and it ain't true.'"

Well, no, of course it ain't true. Becoming even more hackneyed in her thoughts, Swinton continues:

"[T]hat attitude of righteousness is a reason for pretty much anything now. What's shocking is how easily that's peddled today. It's like Gabriel's rationale. I don't remember the exact lines, but it's essentially, 'My job is to get as many souls as possible to heaven, and I have noticed that you are at your most spiritually open when the place is in flames, so I'm going to torch the joint.' It's a beautiful piece of reasoning, and it's a righteous argument, but it's terrifying.

"Q. Religious absolutism can be found in many places.

"A: True, there is all sorts of religious extremism all over the place, but the reason for this partly has to do with the fascist attitudes and language of absolutism coming from Washington. It's challenging for people outside of America that Bush was re-elected. It means we're all going to have to work a lot harder to understand what so many more Americans than we thought really want. It's an identity shift in our minds about America and maybe for many Americans as well."

It's like really great to be able see a movie about an exorcist as anti-Bush, isn't it?

Signs of Change in Lebanon

February 23, 2005 | 5:28 p.m.

Loose Canon has a special fondness for the troubled land of Lebanon, once the Paris of the Middle East and war-torn but still ravishingly beautiful when I was there in the mid-1980s. I was delighted with a report of signs of change there from

globe-trotting Washington Post columnist David Ignatius

:

"'We want the truth.' That's another of the Lebanese slogans, painted on a banner hanging from the Martyr's Monument near the mosque where [recently slain leader Rafiq] Hariri is buried. It's a revolutionary idea for people who have had to live with lies spun by regimes that were brutally clinging to power. People want the truth about who killed Hariri last week, but on a deeper level they want the truth about why Arab regimes have failed to deliver on their promises of progress and prosperity."

Why the change?

Ignatius quotes Walid Jumblatt, patriarch of the Druze Muslim community and, until something changed, an advocate of accommodation with Syrian occupiers: "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

Couldn't We Just Turn the Property into Swanky East Side Apartments?

February 23, 2005 | 5:28 p.m.

Sure, the oil for food scandal at the U.N. was sorta shocking. And, yes, the recent resignation of a high U.N. official accused of sexual abuse was also a mite unsettling, even for those who don't mind the traffic problems the East River Debating Society creates for New Yorkers.

"But that's hardly the worst outrage that's been bubbling at the UNHCR," writes

investigative columnist and longtime U.N. follower Claudia Rosett

. "If you believe in the U.N. charter's promise to promote 'justice and respect for obligations arising from treaties, along with 'the dignity and worth of the human person,' then the real scandal--less racy, but colossally more devastating in human cost--has been the UNHCR's failure in recent years to stand up for refugees fleeing North Korea. The problem here is not, as far as I am aware, one of embezzlement or fraud. Nor is it on a par with any amount of sexual harassment in the comfortable Geneva headquarters of the UNHCR--however upsetting that might be. The true horror is the way in which the well-mannered nuances of U.N. bureaucracy, structure and management have combined to dismiss demurely the desperate needs of hundreds of thousands of human beings fleeing famine and repression in the world's totalitarian state."

Remember, O Man

February 23, 2005 | 5:28 p.m.

Just want to stick in a Lenten tidbit, and, being an ecclesiastical history buff, I believe

this piece hits the spot

.

Continued on page 2: »