We’ve got two movies to talk about here. Avatar just got passed up by James Cameron’s ex at the Oscars, and films like Star Wars are allegedly getting the 3D treatment. Will it work better than colorizing did? We’ll have to see, but if I were to work 3D into two movies, it would be an adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, and a biopic of The 5th Dimension, just to get as many dimensions as possibile for my money.

Here’s what you may have missed while you were watching people bicker on stage at the Oscars.

- Alice in Wonderland came out last week to reviews that either praised it for its creativity or called it the worst Tim Burton film in a long time. The Hog’s Head, a source of insights and pontificating on Harry Potter (including podcasts and livestreamed discussions) gives it a positive review while comparing it to their favorite fantasy book series:

Alice is Harry Potter, and Absalom is Dumbledore. Whatever else is going on in this film, and whatever complaints one might have about lack of faithfulness to Carroll’s story, this is a great film for Harry Potter lovers for a simple reason. The entire movie is centered around one question: “Is this real, or is this only happening in my head?”

and later

Burton’s Alice is a story about Alice’s use of imagination to understand reality. In other words, this is classic Faerie material, told with stunning and beautiful visual artistry.

- And the other 3D movie that is in the earliest stages of creation is about the first chapters of Genesis. Apparently it has a budget of $30 million (Avatar’s budget was over 10 times that) and will focus either on the creation story or on the fall of Adam and Eve. One of the co-producers is CEO of Walden Media, the company behind the Narnia films.

- Watching Theology is an occasional podcast hosted by the show Steve Brown, Etc (another great podcast) and Key Life Ministries. Their goal is to look at movies and delve into the philosophy and beliefs in film. This week they’ve put out a podcast about The Truman Show, the great 1998 film starring Jim Carrey. This podcast’s current series is on “The Cave” as they call it, and it includes discussions on Flight Club, The Village, and will have Gattaca in the future.

- Popular Science has released 137 years of publication archives online, and they’re partnering with Google to show it for free. Needless to say, there’s an endless amount of things to look at, including 1927’s proclamation that Mars does not have any Supermen, a letter to the editor criticizing Nikola Tesla in 1901, the prediction from 1945 about mobile engines running on uranium, and — in the oldest example I could find — an article debunking phrenology from 1879.

- It’s made the rounds online, but just in case you haven’t seen it, here’s an article from Newsweek in 1995 suggesting that the Internet will stay a fad — giving evidence of crowded malls as an example.

We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

And some suggest that not having someone follow you around to talk about sales is one of the highlights of online shopping. Yes, it’s funny in a “look at how naive he was” way, but before you laugh too much, just remember how much things will change in another 15 years. In 1980, most people never conceived of having a computer in their house, Atari was starting to make its presence known, and few could imagine a portable music player that had flawless audio reproduction. What will we look back and laugh at in 15 years?

For the last few years, the summer movie season has been commencing earlier and earlier, and one could make a convincing argument that it has already started for this year. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is out and making beau coup bucks at the box office. With its April 2 release date, Clash of the Titans won’t be far behind, and then it all begins to snowball, with everything from Iron Man 2, Robin Hood, and Prince of Persia to Shrek Forever Ever (really?) all releasing in May.

With that in mind, there are two new trailers online that have been almost as eagerly anticipated as the films they’re here to advertise.

First up, an explosive new trailer for Iron Man 2, showcasing more of…well, all the elements that pretty much guarantee this movie will be a big barrel of awesome when it hits on May 7. (See it in HD here.)

Next, the first genuine, full-length trailer for Tron: Legacy. This preview is the result of several months of viral marketing and was only recently decoded and put online. It’s our first real glimpse at the shape of the story as well as some really cool visual effects. Tron: Legacy debuts December 17. (You can check it out in HD here.)

A number of pastors, leaders, and Narnia fans have seen a rough cut, and it’s getting good reviews so far. There seems to have been a concerted effort to work on a faithful adaptation, and Christianity Today reports that the filmmakers claim to have learned from previous mistakes, such as those made in Prince Caspian.

“We made some mistakes with Prince Caspian, and I don’t want to make them again,” said Mark Johnson, a producer on all of the Narnia films. He said Caspian lacked some of the “wonder and magic of Narnia,” was “a little bit too rough” for families, and too much of a “boys’ action movie.” He said it’s “very important” that filmmakers regain that magic for Dawn Treader, now in the editing stages—and he’s convinced they’ve found it: “I want to climb on the rooftops and say we have a wonderful Narnia movie.”

This sounds good to me. I thought some of the aspects of the Caspian movie were rather forced, including the attempts to add conflict between the brothers and a romance between the Prince and Susan. And even if pastors and most fans aren’t film professionals, this is some good news. Still, it doesn’t hurt to remember that letting pastors and the like see a rough cut of the film does give the Fox/Walden more free PR. I’m sure that pleasing fans was a desire, but then making sure to generate positive word-of-mouth months in advance also has its upsides.

However, this report could signal a disaster narrowly averted (spoiler alert for those who haven’t read the books):

[Another scene they got right was] The “un-dragoning” of Eustace, which many consider the highlight of the story. (In the book, the selfish boy Eustace turns into a dragon due to his greed; it is only through confession and penitence, and the Christ figure Aslan’s help, that he is able to shed the dragon skin and become human again.) Keller says she learned that writers originally wanted Eustace, still in dragon form, to fight a sea monster and “earn” his return to human form. But she says Flaherty, a committed Christian, “put them straight that you don’t earn grace, you receive it once you are humbled and aware of your need.”

I’m trying to imagine a Narnia where the motto is “Aslan helps those who help themselves.” I doubt this would go over with people who think this is one of the best moments in the series.

Hopefully all of this does indicate that the filmmakers have indeed learned from previous mistakes and are committed to a faithful adaptation.

Variety has announced, “Fox 2000 has won a bidding war for the film rights to Brit author Catherine Fisher’s young-adult tome Incarceron, with an eye to spinning the dystopian fantasy into a franchise.”

I hadn’t heard of the book before yesterday, but found out that it’s been getting fairly good reviews across the pond in Britain. Here’s more from Variety:

Incarceron tells the story of a young boy who lives in a prison that is a complete society; outside the prison, the world is stuck in the 17th century and run by computers. The boy comes into contact with the warden’s daughter, who lives in her own sort of jail, and they find a key that can change everything.

It sounds kind of strange, yet worth a look. The Washington Post has a positive review, saying “Intricately plotted and richly imagined, this novel holds the attention as inexorably as Incarceron holds its prisoners.” I may have to pick this up (or find a library with a short waiting list).

Meanwhile some of the blog buzz is that this might be The Next Harry Potter ™. With the movies for that series of books coming to a close in 2011, something is going to try to fill the gaps. The trick is, it seems like “The Next Harry Potter ™” has been trumpeted and sought almost as long as Hollywood has been adapting them into movies. In no particular order, adaptions for the Lemony Snicket series, the His Dark Materials books, The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Percy Jackson have all been hailed as the next big franchise only to sputter and fade (although Narnia received a second chance). Unfortunately, the only movie series right now that seems to have captured some of that Harry-mania is (sigh) Twilight.

Still, I hope it gets a good treatment. Anything that reminds me of The Prisoner is at least worth a shot.

Have you read Incarceron yet? What did you think?

Congratulations to Nate from Rio Dell, CA, Matthew from Salem, OR, and Benjamin from Lafayette, IN!

These folks will receive a complete set of the Auralia Thread series — Auralia’s Colors, Cyndere’s Midnight, and Raven’s Ladder — signed by author Jeffrey Overstreet.

Thanks to everyone who entered — we hope each of you will check out this series of books! Also, thanks again to Jeffrey Overstreet and WaterBrook Press for kindly supplying the prizes for this contest.

I took a listen, and here’s my take.

In this set of songs we hear a man in his 70s, and with pain of losing his wife very fresh in his life, he sounds quite frail. There’s a lot of talk about death on this album; it’s a topic that had obviously been creeping into his thoughts for the years leading up to his own passing. Somehow, though, this is a peaceful, hopeful album that looks to the past and its memories, but also to the unknown future without fear.

The Onion’s Keith Phipps writes:

American VI: Ain’t No Grave arrives billed as the last fruit of that pairing [of Cash and producer Rick Rubin]. It’s drawn largely from the same sessions that produced American V: A Hundred Highways and recorded at least partly after the death of Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash, as his sight dimmed and his own body failed him for the last time. It’s no surprise that Ain’t No Grave is focused on death and loss. But as usual, Cash uses his Christian faith as the ultimate rebuttal to life’s disappointments. “Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down,” Cash sings, as the musical setting of the traditional title track sounds ominous tones. Hope was his last act of defiance.

I can’t pretend to know what he was going through as this album was being made. I also can’t look on those who sing about heaven and the afterlife with too much judgment: I’m in my early 30s and have two parents alive and well. I have three grandparents living. I still see huge families at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and I’ve lost no one near to me in over 8 years. Most of life still feels new to me.

Meanwhile, my workplace went through a period a while back where co-workers were losing parents on an uncomfortably consistent basis. We have young widows and new widowers. My neighbor is 90 and mentioned to me that she thinks about the time when she won’t wake up. I feel guilty about my weariness when musicians my age or younger write about “being homesick” or write about heaven as if the next 40-60 years of their life will be mere formality.

Yet this album, and much of the final years of Johnny Cash’s output, is not one where you need to know what he is going through: his voice will tell you. He’s in poor health and is putting things in their place while he can. This is not an album of escapism; this is an album that demonstrates hope. Hope is not abstract wishing. It’s based on belief, and it’s clear where his beliefs originated as he sang “Ain’t No Grave.” For a man who made music about rebellion and sang for outlaws, singing like someone who knew death has been defeated seems in line with his persona.

Christians are in a season of remembering Christ’s suffering and death. I nominate this album as a soundtrack. Yes, we return to the earth, but we will not stay there.

They had caught wind of our angst about the so-called “Christian film industry” and commented to let us know of their attempts to help change things. That attempt was their film Dangerous Calling (which we reviewed). Since the film’s completion, it (and it’s creators) have endured a slow burn of increasing awareness and positive reviews that have finally culminated in a distribution deal with Cloud Ten Pictures.

This is exciting news not only for the Daws Brothers (and everyone else who worked on Dangerous Calling), but for all of us who has been frustrated with the typical output of the Christian filmmaking community.

Why?

Because it’s not a typical Christian film, bucking trends that needed to be discarded. Dangerous Calling chooses to pursue the integrity of a story rather than shoehorn a message of evangelism or trite moralism into the final moments of the movie. Also, while most of the DVDs filling the shelves at your local Christian bookstore contain stories built around relationship conflicts, sports-based metaphors for faith, and schlocky end-times dramas with questionable theology, Dangerous Calling is a thriller that plays more like Hitchcock than LaHaye. While it shouldn’t be considered the destination at the end of the road, it’s an important indicator of forward motion in an industry that has largely only been driving circles in a cul-de-sac.

So, congratulations to the Daws Brothers on their distribution deal. They’re already hard at work writing their next film, and we look forward to seeing what it will be.

If you want to check out Dangerous Calling, you can find out more at the film’s official site, and it’s available from a variety of different outlets, including Amazon and ChristianBook.com.

But for now, here’s a few things you may have missed while signing up to win a signed set of the Auralia Thread Series books. (Yes, there’s still time!)

- We’re into the season of Lent, which started on Ash Wednesday last week. Jared Wilson at the Gospel-Driven Church has a good reflection on the season, as well as the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” that many Christians heard on that day:

When you return to dust, even if your body should be burnt to ashes and scattered over the four winds, he who is the Lord over the earth will be able to collect you, reconstitute you, and resurrect you into a body fit for eternity.

It’s a perfect reminder as we head into the season in which we remember Christ’s death and resurrection.

- People have been talking about making fuel out of common household garbage for decades, and now it may be closer than ever:

University of Central Florida professor Henry Daniell has developed a groundbreaking way to produce ethanol from waste products such as orange peels and newspapers. His approach is greener and less expensive than the current methods available to run vehicles on cleaner fuel – and his goal is to relegate gasoline to a secondary fuel.

That’s right, we may finally be on our way to catching up with technology in time for 2015.

- Another Toy Story 3 trailer has been released, and while you don’t learn a whole lot from just a basic viewing of it, there are a ton of details to discover if you watch closely. Pixar is known for inserting many hidden gags and references into their movies, and /film has a growing list of examples. As usual, there are a lot of references to other Pixar works, fuel for the Apple cult, and even a Totoro sighting (at about :49 into the trailer).

- Christianity Today has put out its lists of Best Movies of the Year, as well as the Most Redeeming Films of 2009. The first is their critics’ choice, while they describe the second:

We mean movies that include stories of redemption—sometimes blatantly, sometimes less so. Several of our films have characters who are redeemers themselves; all of them have characters who experience redemption to some degree—some quite clearly, some more subtly. Some are “feel-good” movies that leave a smile on your face; some are a bit more uncomfortable to watch. But the redemptive element is there in all of these films.

Both are good lists, as Christianity Today has made a point of focusing on quality over swear-counting or cheering on Christian Industry films just for the sake of cheering.

- Finally, via Filmwell, here’s a slideshow of subtitles that didn’t quite work out. You can tell when movies are dubbed into another language and then re-translated back. It’s kind of like playing with Google Translate. For example:

If you’re unfamiliar with Jeffrey Overstreet, he has written extensively on film and continues to do so at his website, Looking Closer, as well as on the blog Filmwell. His book Through a Screen Darkly (“a travelogue of dangerous moviegoing”) examined the world of film from a different perspective than do most Christian authors, and his writings have appeared in magazines such as Christianity Today, Image, and Paste. The first book in the Auralia Thread, Auralia’s Colors, was published in 2007, and the sequel, Cyndere’s Midnight, arrived in 2008. This year’s release of Raven’s Ladder is the third of four books in the series.

You can find out more about Jeffrey Overstreet at his site. You can also check out Faith & Geekery’s reviews of Auralia’s Colors and Raven’s Ladder, and we invite you to enter our contest to win one of three signed sets of the Auralia Thread — all three books — by visiting our contest page!

FG: Welcome, Jeffrey! Diving right in…one of the aspects of your books that I’ve personally appreciated is their unique artistic focus. So many books in the fantasy genre are really just ripping off Tolkien, but your books have a very original take on a new sort of world.

Jeffrey: Thanks. I’ve frankly become so bored with “How many ways can we rewrite Tolkien?” (or Lewis, for that matter) that I would lose interest if I tried a project like that myself!

FG: I’ve noticed a very large faith element in these books. To refer again to Tolkien and Lewis, they each had a unique way of dealing with their faith in their writings. Tolkien simply let his faith show through in the way his worldview naturally worked itself into his books, while Lewis crafted very intentional metaphors. Where do you land between those two camps in the way that your faith gets into your writing?

Jeffrey: Well, I definitely am not interested in turning these stories into some kind of evangelical tract. I’m interested in story as exploration, but I trust that what is revealed, if it is beautiful or if it rings true, it will not contradict what I believe as a result of my Christian faith.

I don’t have any deliberate intent to try to persuade the reader about Christian faith. I’m more interested in, “okay, if art reveals something true, how does it do that?” If art is revealing something true, then that must imply that there is such a thing as absolute truth. If art does convey truth in a powerful way, then is that not in itself a redemptive function? Even if the art is disturbing. Even if the art shows us things we don’t want to see. Is that not a redemptive influence that it has?

I just sort of take it for granted that because I am a Christian people will find echoes of the gospel in these stories, but I don’t like to be stuck in the “Christian fiction” box, because as soon as you put that label on it, then you’re suggesting that there is an assumed agenda or a particular response I want from readers, and frankly I’m not thinking about how readers are going to respond when I write! I’m thinking about what’s going to happen next, scene by scene, and how does that change as I write and rewrite and revise for the sake of trying to craft beautiful language.

That does happen — that’s very interesting to me that the more I revise how the language sounds, or the possibilities of how poetic it might become, the more the story changes! That’s something I’m very interested in. So I’m pleased whenever anybody interprets this as a story that has to do with art rather than evangelism, because that’s certainly more of what’s on my mind as I’m working.

FG: I remember the first chapter in Auralia’s Colors and all of the descriptive “color” language you used in the opening paragraphs…I could tell right from the beginning that it was going to be a very art-based thing.

Jeffrey: I appreciate that. That’s what happens when you can take ten years on a book. It’s been a struggle since then. Cyndere’s Midnight I wrote in eight months, and Raven’s Ladder I wrote in eight months and then had to cut it in half in order to get it down to a publishable size. It’s very difficult to maintain the kind of impressionistic approach that I took with the first book when I’m writing at that rate.

I’m lucky if I can just get the plot down in a way that doesn’t have massive continuity errors, so to achieve any kind of poetry in the description is much more challenging. It’s what I miss in so much fantasy writing. The books I read when I was a kid that I loved the best were the ones that sounded good when they were read out loud. That’s hard to do!

FG: Changing gears a little bit…as we mentioned, your faith is expressed very clearly in these stories. Is there a character that closely matches how you view things? Not a character that you think of as yourself necessarily, but a character that is more “you” than perhaps some of the others?

Jeffrey: In some ways I relate very strongly with Cal-Raven in that everything he sets out to do seems to fall apart! Sort of the way I used to relate to Indiana Jones: “Oh, I’ve been pursuing the wrong thing. Oh, I’ve got it. Oh, and now someone has taken it away, and –”

FG: “–and now there’s a snake.”

Jeffrey: “And now there’s a snake! And now I’m tied to a post and someone else is getting the glory.” I definitely relate to Cal-Raven in his sort of perpetual disappointment in having to step back and change or revise his dream, revise his expectations. That probably goes hand in hand with having a life in the arts!

In a way, Jordam is a character I tend to connect to most personally in that he is constantly wrestling with weaknesses, constantly feeling the pull of temptation, constantly falling back into violence and then having to step back in horror at the consequences. I mean I’m not a physically violent person…but I can become very upset! I can say things I wish I hadn’t said.

[It's like how] someone will relate to Gollum when they read Lord of the Rings. We all know how it feels to be mastered by something — an emotion, or maybe something as concrete as a drug. So as Jordam is fighting against his weaker nature, I definitely relate to that. I think that was some of the most personal stuff of the series.

I definitely relate to Auralia, too, in her frustration at how people want to exploit her work or put it in a box or label it, turn it into a product for the kingdom. There was a lot of personal emotion in her angry reactions when she was arrested in the first book. I don’t notice these things until I step back and read them later, but then I realize, “Oh, good grief, that’s right out of the script of my life.”

FG: There’s a definite “Beauty and the Beast” aspect to the second book, and as I was reading Raven’s Ladder various other things struck me as being possibly inspired by fairy tales — things that bore aspects of everything from Cinderella to Rapunzel. Was that intentional on your part?

Jeffrey: I just sort of soaked in fairy tales when I was a kid, so it doesn’t surprise me at all. I hadn’t thought of Rapunzel, but I guess [one character at one point] is climbing a tower and this woman is standing in the window…

It was very deliberate to make Cyndere’s Midnight a “Beauty and the Beast” story. It just felt right. I always felt like one of the missing elements of the conversation about Beauty and the Beast was “why was The Beast drawn by Beauty?” We always talk about, you know, could he be redeemed, could the spell be broken, and why was she drawn to a beast, but I was always interested in the idea of the aesthetic power of beauty — what role does that play in that classic story?

In Raven’s Ladder, there was no model that was so deliberate, except that I was starting to see — even in the first book — I was starting to see that this was headed for a reversal of what seems to be the common Christian fantasy story: the eventual encounter with and deliverance by Aslan or Gandalf or whatever Christ-like, angelic, or Messianic figure is waiting for his moment. As soon as Auralia’s Colors came out, some reviewers didn’t even call the Keeper “the Keeper,” they just called the Keeper “God,” and I knew when I drafted the first story that the Keeper was not necessarily the God figure in the series, although it was important to me that the characters think so.

This is a danger for any artist: when you become so attached to a conviction or an idea that you don’t allow for the possibility that there might be something bigger going on. For a lot of artists, that’s a political view, and pretty soon their movies or their stories start to sound like political campaign speeches instead of art. For Christian artists, it can be the Christian lingo that we’re used to, or it can be the easy morals to the stories that have just sort of become as easy as vending machine products — you push the button and you get the lesson of God’s grace or whatever.

In the works of art that mean the most to me, I couldn’t tell you what the moral of the story is in two crisp, clear sentences. It’s mysterious to me, and in my own life the more I focus on questions of what I believe, the more mysterious God becomes to me. This seems to come up for artists all the time. Recently we’ve seen the singer/songwriter David Bazan talking a lot about the disintegration of his faith, and so many Christian audiences seem shocked by this. But David Bazan is one of the most serious artists I’ve ever paid attention to. He’s not just going to sing the clichés. He’s going to pursue the questions, and for him that has led to a lot of distress.

My faith isn’t falling apart, but it is certainly more mysterious to me now than when I was six or seven, and when I read stories of heroes of the faith, faith seemed pretty mysterious to them, too. Whether it’s the burning bush or coming down from the mountain with a meeting from God and your face is shining, I mean…faith leads you to very mysterious, even frightening places, where your reaction is to take off your shoes and be completely humbled by the encounter.

So it made sense to me that these characters, if they were really going to pursue the Keeper, if they were really going to follow those tracks, if they were really going to look for the origin of Auralia’s colors, all of these things would lead them to something completely baffling and unexpected and humbling — something that would cause them to see how insufficient their current understanding and their definitions are.

FG: That whole idea of the mystery of faith is certainly something that art does the best job of capturing, but especially the more “out there” genres of fiction, like sci-fi and fantasy. They deal so much better with the obscure concepts and the unknowns — they illustrate them so much better and help put them into words.

Jeffrey: Yeah, and if you read the prophets, they write some scary, mysterious stuff. We can sense there’s something true there, but we’re grappling still — even after the events that were prophesied have supposedly come to pass — grappling with what that meant. You know, when the transfiguration happens and Christ’s disciples immediately want to build a shrine, they want to build a monument, they want to say, “Here’s where it happened. This was the best thing ever,” and He says, “Whoa, don’t build anything. Don’t decide that this is it. There’s more! I’m making all things new!”

I think that is what great art is after. C.S. Lewis describes it as casting a net and then seeing what you’ve caught. That’s the artistic process. You don’t already have something and you go to deliver it; you’re casting out a net of words or images or something and then standing back to see what the relationships you’ve set into motion reveal to you.

I keep getting emails or notes on Facebook saying, “So what’s going to happen?” or “How does it end?” or “Can you give me a hint?” And it’s like, “No, I don’t know yet! The story is still unfolding, even to me.” I have some ideas about where some things might end up, but if I decide now how it all ends, the story will narrow, and I think the reader will have a sense that, “Oh, this is all so calculated,” and life doesn’t feel calculated to me. It feels more like jazz. It feels more like collaboration and improvisation and I don’t doubt that God has everything under control, but I also believe that for the sake of love He allows us to, as Tolkien said, co-create right along with Him. And I think there’s quite a bit of evidence in scripture that God was often surprised by things.

Thanks so much to Jeffrey Overstreet for taking the time to chat with us. We hope we can do it again some time!

If you watch it more than once, use the timeline slider to watch the earth turn and the sun come up over the the STS-130 in time lapse.

From the chatter at the end of the video, it sounds like they’re Firefly fans up there. Or maybe it’s just a coded message: plans to scrap the moon project and future manned flights are under way.
(HT: TR)