A noose for the news?

Unsurprisingly, the headquarters of our nation’s third most read newspaper, the New York Times, is a tense place. Yet the tensions represented in the recent documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times have little to do with deadlines, caffeine, and ungodly work hours.

The film instead documents the complex ideological and economic grappling at play within traditional (print, mainstream) media organizations as they figure out how to deal with “new media” (think Newser, Gawker, Twitter etc.). The NYT isn’t at peace with the transition – no newspaper or print publication is. From this uncertainty the documentary asks its viewers, Who will mediate our news?

Page One establishes two separate yet related ideological tensions: that between David Carr (a wry, sagelike ever-witty proponent of traditional journalism) and Brian Stelter (a blogger-turned journalist technophile who “constantly berates [his] coworkers to join Twitter), and that between traditional and emergent media. While the former has a playful tone – Carr threatens to throw Stetler’s overworked iPhone over the fence at an office BBQ – the latter tension is met with all of the intellectual gusto that Carr and the rest of the NYT can muster.

News is inescapably narrative, and the story either told well or poorly, thoroughly or narrowly, truthfully or deceitfully. What kinds of stories are we listening to, and how are we judging them? Who will tell the stories of our day well if we don’t support those whose career it is to do so? May the conversation continue.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwTMFXgf95c

JJ Abrams’ life has been filled with wonder boxes. There are few people making films these days that put more stock in the power of your imagination than he does. Knowing full well that you will create a better picture in your own head than he can on the screen, he waits to show his audiences things that they crave to see. Sometimes, he never shows you at all, leaving the imagination reeling.

Super 8 is built on a wonder box. It’s not long before it literally crashes into the frame of the camera and it starts to do its work [and few do crashes better than Abrams]. With a cast of kids moving this story along its tracks, it quickly becomes clear that Steven Speilberg not only produced this film, he breathed his unique take on how kids think, talk, wonder, and explore into it. Super 8 is the closets thing to The Goonies (and E.T.) your local theater has ever offered you. In fact if you take The Goonies [one of Speilbergs greatest offerings to the film world] and mix it will Abram’s Cloverfield [not his greatest moment] you’d get something pretty close to Super 8.

The negative cracks on this film will come from its heavy-handed treatment of its themes at the end [Alcoholic Dad + Workoholic Dad, in almost slow motion, walking side-by-side towards their redemption. Ugh.]. While Abrams trust his audience to do some heavy lifting with their imaginations he loses that trust in the final scenes as he wraps things up.

But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a great movie. It is. It is filled with hilarious lines between the kids and action/adventure scenes that are exactly what we are all looking for with our summer blockbuster dollar. This kind of movie is as American as grilled hamburger.

The “facing your demons,” “learning to let go,” “moving through tragedy takes community” themes are all here. And, if you’re willing to go along for this ride, and don’t mind a slice of cheese on your burger, you’re in for a wonder-filled couple of hours that only Abrams and Speilberg can create.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpzUCA5i6zY

The Tree of Life resurrects the era when Hollywood still aspired to greatness.  Not since 2001:  A Space Odyssey (or less successfully, The Fountain) has a filmmaker attempted to capture both the origins of life and our ultimate destination.   Terrence Malick came of age when movies still mattered.   And with The Tree of Life, only his fifth feature in forty years, Malick has drawn upon ancient biblical wisdom to prod and comfort adventuresome filmgoers. Some will find it tedious and overreaching.  But those who surrender to the resplendent images may find the experience unexpectedly healing.

Countless stories have started with the problem of pain.   We wonder why the innocent suffer.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  The Tree of Life opens with quotations from the book of Job.   In the biblical narrative, Job loses his wife, his children, his health and his home.   Friends offer bad advice, blaming him for his ordeal, suggesting he repent from whatever sins caused God to send so much suffering.   Job is understandably tempted to curse God.  Malick has chosen source material ripe for drama.  In 1959, Archibald MacLeish turned the trials of Job into the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, J.B.    Yet, The Tree of Life focuses not upon the losses of Job but upon the overwhelming answer from God.   Ultimately, Job is humbled by a God’s barrage of questions rooted in creation.   “Where you there, Job?”   “Did you set this all in motion?”  The Tree of Life dares to offer a divine perspective on tragedy.

Without that framework, Tree of Life may seem random and intractable.   It is a poetic meditation on loss.  It unfolds as a visual symphony with five or six movements centered around a core aspect of life:  death, birth, the age of awareness.  The sections are separated by musical cues rather than plot twists.    The soundtrack includes classical compositions by Bach, Brahms, and Holst and contemporary requiems by Henryk Goreki, John Tavener and Mother Thekla.  The threadbare plot flows from tragedy to creation, and from innocence to experience.    A family is invited to move from grief to surrender.    And viewers are taken from Genesis to Revelation.

Read Craig Detweiler’s full review here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXRYA1dxP_0

We all grow up and at some point dream of becoming a prince or princess, right?  At the very least William and Kate have reminded us of this.  Herein lies the allure of the “once upon a time” in all great childhood fairy tales.

Pan’s Labyrinth, however, isn’t your typical “happily ever after” fairy tale.  Rather, it’s a dark, bizarre, haunting story about Ophelia, a young girl growing up in post-Civil War Spain (post WWII) who herself is fascinated with fairy tales.  Her stepfather is a cruel and unforgiving Captain of the Spanish army who sends for Ophelia and her pregnant and sick mother, as she is soon to bore the Captain’s firstborn son, Ophelia’s half brother.