In a more perfect world the Weeper of the House would be standing in front of the national press corps crying from shame in admitting that he'd failed the American people and his constituents by not supporting a fair and balanced debt extension instead of trying to blame the President for being "like a bowl of Jello" in the same conference where he said the President had always been firm and respectful.
Then again Bernie Sanders wouldn't be speculating on the need for liberals to primary the President before 2012.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to my right, here I am: stuck in the middle with the anxiety.
In truth we all want another world, but we're stuck with this one and one another.
Someone get the lights, plz., as we head off to another shore or some other planet....
Then again we could always go back to Middle Earth...
The Hobbit: A Unexpected Journey
Not only is the first story of JR Tolkens earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit, being made into a film of its very own, but it's being made into TWO movies: Part I An Unexpected Journey, and Part II, There and Back Again. Part I isn't scheduled to be released until December 14, 2012 with its finale to open on December 13, 2013. The big news, if there really is any here, is that this week saw the release of the first official teaser trailer.
OK. So with the nonsense going on in DC these days I was desperate to find a movie that might take my thoughts back to hope in some future bloody outcome since we seem to be staring down a battle currently raging between the two Towers of our very own making.
Rumor also has it that Peter Jackson will appear in this coming attraction as a CGI enhanced monster of some sort or other not specified. With the extraordinary expertise his brand of film making demonstrated through the realistic creation of Gollum, this new creature promises to be, at the very least, credible if not gruesome.
The Hobbit was first published in 1937 just prior to the Second World War. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was written in stages from 1937 through 1943 mostly during that conflict. Along with its off-spring trilogy, The Hobbit is the second best-selling novel ever written next to the Bible, with over 150 million copies sold.
No doubt there is quite a lot of hobbit in each and every one of us. Bilbo Baggins, for instance, lives very quietly in his comfortable little hobbit hole, burrowed into a warm, sandy hill nestled in The Shire, a suburb that really needs no particular city to define it. He likes to eat at least twice every day, and smoke his tobacco in his little pipe while day dreaming about expanding his garden someday. Bilbo is very blue collar middle class. He also thinks about his nephew and wonders how he can best take care of him after all he's done in this life to secure his future well being. But Bilbo turns out to be something exceptional among Hobbits for he finds himself wandering into strange places and encountering strange creatures when most Hobbits would simply prefer to stay at home in their predictable and comfortable environments.
It was the Hobbits encounter with the creature Gollum and his showing mercy to him even as he stole the creatures precious possession that nearly unravels not only his own life but the future of the Shire. The ring, of course, which -Obama- Bilbo takes possession of and tries for years to resist is made out of a special enchanted form of gold and only by destroying it where it was originally created can future generations live free from its corrupting power and curse.
If we were to apply the lessons eventually learned by the Hobbit to our current financial crisis and distress I would say the key must lie in melting down the Gold of today's Gollumgarchy in order to provide for the needs of our most ordinary of Hobbits in one Shire after another.
Oh, what the hell. One more time....
Another Earth
Opening yesterday, Friday July 22nd, Another Earth, winner of the Sundance Film Festival Best Picture award is a beautiful film and science fiction at its best. The best science fiction tells stories about people in extraordinary environments and situations that serve to open up the vast, still largely unexplored terrain of the human heart. Mike Cahill's Another Earth is located somewhere just beyond the Twilite Zone reflecting its light upon our waters.
Director Mike Cahill has woven sci-fi imaginings and quantum physics theories of parallel universes into a provocative meditation on the prospect of rewriting your life history. It is no simple task to spin such abstract notions into smart (versus cheesy) entertainment, but there is such a strong creative voice stirring in Cahill's first feature that it's easy to forgive the shortcomings.
The film stars the ethereal young actress Brit Marling, who co-wrote and co-produced with Cahill, and the rock-solid William Mapother (Ethan on "Lost"). They are strangers whose lives are upended by tragedy on a night seemingly filled with endless possibilities bought about by the discovery of a replica of Earth, dubbed Earth 2, in our skies. What-ifs abound — what if there's another you, what would you say if you met your other self?
From the LA Times film review
The story opens after a young woman is released from having served a seven year prison sentence for the tragic mistake of having gotten behind the wheel of her car when she really shouldn't have. When she was hardly old enough to drive in the first place and just hopefully setting out on the road of life, she finds her dreams for the future and a rewarding career after college and MIT have simply disappeared as a consequence that has left her with little other than regrets. I imagine many people in WI and across America who voted in Republicans during the mid term election may understand the feelings, those who wound up with Teahadist Representatives in Congress, but this film goes beyond the remorse of politics to the politics of remorse.
What if I could go to another world where I had made other choices, where I might know a different set of realities that may or may not be the same, batter or worse than the world I have created for myself? Would I go? Would you?
You know what they say: Ifs and buts are sore nuts, and lately I've been doubled over in pain. This mess is ours and there's no escaping it. Whether we can rise above our collective mistakes is yet to be seen. There's still much work to be done right here, right now.
End Credits / Closing Remarks:
Given that the greater part of our site's purpose here on the Street of Prophets is to provide a place where people who might describe themselves as faithful progressives can come together to explore not only faith but the larger questions that revolve around it and our hopes of impacting the world in a positive, progressive way, I am providing these sometime weekly film reviews (whenever). I thought that submitting reviews of controversial or off-the-beaten-track films that often nudge this kind of thought and discussion might be a plus. I'll be offering this each week on Fridays (as the Spirit moves me) and would happily entertain recommendations for future reviews. Feel free to post comments about the films reviewed here today as well as your own recommendations of films you feel may fall along these lines.
My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live. Miguel de Unamuno