Animal Planet

Animal Planet

We’re watching Planet of the Apes.

No, not the Charlton Heston onethis one.

Only it’s supposed to be this one, from last year.

So we’re on the middle one, the “first remake” (excluding the 17 sequels to the Charlton Heston one) and it’s by Tim Burton, with all that that entails, from Helena Bonham Carter to claustrophobic sets — and I mean claustrophobic in a good way.

We’re watching for a church discussion group so it’s going to be interesting, and a little confusing perhaps, to have two and maybe all of these in mind when we talk. The Sunday School involves worldviews, using the Brian Godawa book as a rough foundation and asking questions about God, man, sin and salvation.

Who is God?
What is Man?
What’s wrong?
What’s the answer?

I’m enjoying it more than I expected to, but I like Mark Walhberg more and more all the time anyway. In this case, though, the movie is for me pretty compelling. The set does look like an over-decorated zoo exhibit — the stone looks fake — but this may be on purpose. Burton’s sets are purposeful in all ways, I suspect.

And the story, largely the same as the original, tweaks its tweaks in slight and helpful ways, as they should. The backstory of the chimp being sent into space, for instance, the revelation by the dying father telling us what we already know about what Wahlberg may “discover” at the end. But we already know it because we’ve seen Charlton Heston shrieking on the beach. Even the dialogue references — swapped from human to ape — aren’t annoying. I should add we’ve only see half of the movie so far …

And of course it’s not even the right one for the discussion, so we’ll probably see the 2011 version — a prequel to 2001? — this weekend, before church.

The class is really good, and it’s for junior high and high school kids. It runs these movies through the four questions, and honestly deals with what is good, bad, and ugly about them. A companion class for adults takes these questions to a broader level, to include all of culture.

It’s a pretty good church that can do this.

 

[The follow-up post to this one is here.]

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Metered Sins

Poetry’s a sneaky bastard. All the time sidling up to one on false pretenses — ‘It’s just the one’ … ‘We won’t intrude’ — and they’re all lies damn one’s eyes! Lies-damned-lies and no need for statistics and the pile of warm laundry does not diminish and soon loses its warmth and begins to glower

Read More »

Mad Men: The Imploding Don Draper

It took me the better part of two seasons to realize the story of “Mad Men” was the story of the self-destructing Don Draper. Then again, it took Draper himself at least three. And as the bright and shining lie he’d crafted, arced and crashed at his feet — represented in real time by his

Read More »

Trouble and Strife

Septic tank is Cockney rhyming slang for “Yank” which may suggest what trouble and strife is slang for. But it’s not fair of course, and good men, and most men some of the time, know she’s not only that. Upon noting once how, yes, “children are a bother,” Dallas Willard made the important philosophical distinction

Read More »

Hide and See

Something lost, Dallas Willard said once, might yet be very valuable. One’s car keys for instance. He was speaking somewhat in the context of salvation, if I recall … the general point was calling something lost doesn’t mean it’s not wanted — quite the opposite. Yet it remains … until finding its way out or being found

Read More »

Related

Lyric Lent

Mostly I gave up meat for Lent. Or to put it another way, I gave up meat (mostly) for Lent. And this is how Lent often goes and the difference I think isn’t usually that it doesn’t go that way but that it’s OK when it does. Not that it’s OK to give our word

Read More »

Barbaric Yawn

One of the saddest things about Mildly Somnolent and Her Raging Nonesuch is she prolly thinks she’s transgressive, mayhap even original. Please. Madonna did it 30 years ago. Figure 15 more for Britney’s turn. Now it’s 15 again. See Ecclesiastes for explanatory of this clockwork snore — What has been is what will be, and

Read More »

Whispers and Words

My dad died in my sleep. 2:35 AM in an upstate New York hospice; 11:35 PM in a Southern California house. A text saying to call and two voice mails I still haven’t listened to and speaking was as a sunrise. New but not unexpected. * Who’s the dust in this scenario? Remember, O Man, that thou art but

Read More »

Trilemma

Bear no malice nor ill-will to any man living, for either the man is good, or naught: if he be good, and I hate him, then am I naught; if he be naught, either he shall amend, and die good, and go to God; or abide naught, and die naught, and so be lost.  

Read More »