Here are some tidbits about some films and television shows this blog’s been following:First up, Nativity. In its section on the film, CBN includes Scot McKnight’s piece, How do you solve a problem like Mary? McKnight, whose just published The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus, laments the too-often presented “version of the pious, downcast eyes of the Medieval Mary. . . . a woman draped in a Carolina blue gown, a woman whose hands are constantly pointed toward heaven in prayer, or a woman whose facial expressions are unemotional.” Instead, he hopes Hollywood will turn to the Gospels, where we find a very different Mary:
. . . . she’s the kind of woman who had the temerity to reprimand her twelve-year old son for dallying at the Temple, who had the expectations of him to solve a wine supply that was flagging, and – get this – who once hauled her other children to home where Jesus was teaching under the impression that he had now gone over the top by associating with all the wrong sorts. That’s the problem I call Mary, and I’m wondering how Hollywood will solve her. Will she be the traditional character, or will they freshen her up a bit by pondering the Gospels long enough to let the real Mary stand up to be seen for who she really was?When you’re done there, head over to Christianity Today, where they’ve interviewed Wyck Godfrey, one of the film’s producers. Then hop over to BibleFilms blog, where Matt’s put together a central page for the film.
In other film news, IGN is reporting there may be two Hobbit films in the making (hat tip to Christianity Today). And ComingSoon reports that the trailer for Spider-Man 3 will debut this Thursday on MTV and then attach to the new James Bond flick, Casino Royale, which opens Nov. 17.Speaking of comic book stories (which is a favorite topic for this blog), ComingSoon also reports that Moon Knight—the story of soldier of fortune turned super-hero Marc Spector who hunts criminals and brings them to justice—is on its way to becoming a live-action television series.
And, speaking of television, you can catch the trailer for the upcoming season of 24 (which has popped up on this blog before) here.
And, if you are a watcher of Battlestar Galactica, check out this interview with with Ronald Moore, who just won the TV Writer of the Year Award at the Screenwriting Expo 5 for his work on BG. At one point, Moore comments: “One of the foundational elements of the show is the religious conflict between the two civilizations. The monotheism of the Cylons. The polytheism of the Colonies. You know what is God? What is human? What does it mean to be alive?” The interviewer follows up with this question and records Moore’s answer:
And that’s all for now.
Q: The venue has changed and there is now a supernatural quality. Something like the force is at work. Can you talk about that?
Moore: Well, I sort of felt that as the religious aspects of the show were becoming more and more prominent and they were starting to dominate plot lines and certain character attributes, you had to sort of make a choice at some level of whether that was all bulls**t or not. Does it mean something? Is all this worship just about talk and about made up religions that don't mean anything or is there possibility of something greater? It's the extensionalism question. Is this all that I am? Is there something more? Why am I here? If all the characters on the show are asking themselves that, I felt that on some level I wanted to sort of give it a hint that maybe they're not all fools. Maybe there is some greater truth that they're all struggling towards. That none of them can see perfectly and so I started to fetter in ideas that could not be explained by rational means, but to never really come out and say, God is behind the curtain, you know. But, I wanted to add elements of it. I just felt like I think one of the things that I had noticed that working in "Star Trek" and science fiction was that mainstream films science fiction tended to shy away from this subject.
(Images: Natvity, NewLine; Spider-Man 3, SonyPictures; BG, Sci-Fi)