Sam Phillips’ Don’t Do Anything set for June 3rd release!
Listen to a collage of clips from the upcoming Sam Phillips album on her MySpace page!
There are also some interesting new details she’s posted about herself:
Smelly Bibles: When I was eight years old, I was given my first Bible at Hollywood Presbyterian Church by a minister who looked like a football star/leading man. Around the same time my beloved dance teacher gave me a small bottle of perfume, which I loved too much to use. After reading the story of Mary pouring her best perfume oil on Jesus’ feet, I decided to pour my whole bottle of perfume on the Bible. Since that perfume was my only treasure at the time, it was an extravagant expression of faith. That smelly Bible was one of my first attempts to make art.
In one of the most important election years in the history of our United States, I am bringing out a record called “Don’t Do Anything”. This is not a political statement. The line of the song it’s taken from is “I love you when you don’t do anything”. I might have written this to my child, a lover, a friend, a dead person, or all of these. Maybe I wanted someone to write it to me. Maybe an extravagant expression of faith is the last thing we need this year. Maybe it’s the first. There is a lot to do in between.
Favorite Books: Lately, I like the ones with pictures. Drawing From Life: The Journal As Art; My Life and Times by Henry Miller; Ed Ruscha: Photographer; You Are The Measure by Gordon Matta-Clark, and everything by Jean Giono, because he writes such beautiful pictures.
Favorite Films: After a recent visit to Forest Lawn I watched The Loved One and loved it. Because I have a child, I have seen most of Miyazaki’s animated films, which are all unique and wonderful.
Is it any wonder I’m crazy about her?
And now this, from the latest Sam Phillips newsletter:
Happy New Year. I am happy to say I have a new collection of recordings that will be coming out June 3rd on Nonesuch. I had a finished record to release early last year, but got happily distracted. I have two guitars…. one you just play and one you plug in. I started playing the one you plug in and it made me think of some more songs. Then, as I was doing some “new Madison Ave.” collages, I found more words I wanted to put to music. A new and improved Don’t Do Anything has gone to press and is in the hands of Nonesuch in New York City. This record is the first one of my records that I have produced myself with the talents of rhythm man Jay Bellerose and violinst/arranger Eric Gorfain. Eric, Jay and I are hankering to play these songs again live and hope to do so later this year.
Some very talented gentlemen will be making samphillips.com and myspace.com/officialsamphillipsmusic look new and pretty and a t shirt I designed will be available soon.
Most of all, I wanted to thank you for your interest. Though I am a little shy about the web, I have really enjoyed communicating with many of you through MySpace.
I will be posting some edits of the new songs on myspace.com/officialsamphillipsmusic shortly.
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Is There Will Be Blood anti-Christian?
Is The Wind That Shakes the Barley just Communist propaganda?
I’ve been trying to ignore this, but Movieguide’s Ted Baehr just keeps bashing away at Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood for being “anti-Christian,” and for including “one of the worst, most superficial stereotype of Christian preachers ever put on film.”
(Similarly, Barbara Nicolosi slammed the movie in a post called “There Will Be Bigotry”, which you can find in her archive here… but you have to scroll down a bit. The 105-comment discussion connected to it became rather lively too.)
Meanwhile, the film took second place in Christianity Today Movies’ Critics’ Choice awards, it tied for 10th place for 2007 among Christianity Today Movies’ readers, and soon we’ll learn how it fared in the Faith and Film Critics Circle awards. Quite a stark disagreement among these Christian moviegoers!
Would I like to see more portrayals of preachers who are men of integrity? Sure.
But there’s nothing wrong with telling stories about sinful preachers. Heck, even the Bible includes depictions of wicked men clad in clerical garments. There are a lot of sinful preachers and religious hypocrites in the world, and some of them are rather spectacular in their tactics and sinister secrets. Such traitors and crooks have had a prominent place in storytelling for centuries.
In his reviews and press releases, Baehr’s missing the fact that the character of Eli Sunday, pastor of the “church” in Little Boston, isn’t really a Christian preacher at all. The movie makes this pretty clear. Eli Sunday uses some of the language of the gospel as a blunt instrument in order to manipulate and bully unbelievers, and to dazzle the townspeople. But his presentation is not the gospel. It’s something else. He’s as false as false prophets come. (Remember Christ’s words about how “Many will come in my name, and deceive many…) Sunday proclaims a new revelation… a “Third revelation.” And he proceeds to set up something like a cult in his troubled community, involving a spirit that apparently inhabits his stomach, which is an interesting detail in a movie about building pumps and pipelines.
There are clear signs of Sunday’s false religion throughout the movie, from his belief that “God does not save stupid men” to his argument that his “spirit” has a “gentle whisper” when in fact he shrieks like a banshee or a demon. So it’s no surprise that the source material, Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, made an even bigger deal about The Church of the Third Revelation being the emergence of a twisted, perverse mutation of the true Gospel.
It’s not hard to find similar strains of twisted, cult-like distortions of the Christian church in American history. So what’s the big problem here? Why is it wrong for Anderson to dramatize this in a movie?
It isn’t wrong. In fact, it contributes to this story powerfully, making the film a nightmarish vision of what can happen with faith is corrupted by greed, and when the wolf of greed-driven capitalism is disguised in the sheep’s clothing of the Christian church.
In the end, the movie ends up vividly portraying the wages of sin, the consequences of arrogance and selfishness, the damage done by neglectful fathers (and father figures), the corrosive effect of a competitve spirit between brothers and businessmen, and the emptiness of ill-gotten gains.
Furthermore, one of the film’s central characters is rescued from a hellish existence by a seemingly Christian woman, who appears to have abandoned the Church of the Third Revelation for a more traditional Christian church. And the church wedding at the close of the film appears to represent one character’s hopeful future, and a flourish of grace.
Thus, Baehr’s put-downs sound like the protests of someone who didn’t see the whole movie. Moreover, his rants make him sound suspiciously like, well, one of those judgmental hellfire-and-brimstone preachers that appear so often in movies.
At Crosswalk, radio host Paul Edwards offers a different perspective on There Will Be Blood. Edwards’ willingness to think through the movie is much more insightful than Baehr’s rash write-off:
Based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood chronicles the degeneration of the fictional 19th century oil man Daniel Plainview who (as my own 15-year-old son has accurately described) becomes “less and less human and more and more reclusive” as his story unfolds. Because the movie vividly depicts the violence, lust and greed which accompany Plainview’s descent, many Christians see in it no socially or spiritually redeeming value. I disagree.
To see you just how much Baehr enjoys bashing movies, check out Baehr’s long list of put-downs. The list reveals more about the reviewer than it does about the films he’s addressing. For example, Baehr gives “The Uncle Joe Stalin Award The Wind that Shakes the Barley – Worst Communist Propaganda” (Does that mean it’s bad Communist propaganda? Would Baehr prefer good Communist propaganda?)
I encourage you to watch The Wind that Shakes the Barley for yourself, Ken Loach’s moving, powerful depiction of the origins of the IRA. No, it may not be 100% accurate according to history. But it’s a challenging exploration of the ethics of revolt.
Check out Tony Watkins’ article about Barley here.You can join the thoughtful discussion of the film here, at ArtsandFaith.com. Barley is one of the best movies I saw in ‘07, and a riveting, thoughtful portrayal about the challenges that face anyone group that wants to rise up in protests, both non-violent and violent, and the compromises that must sometimes be accepted for the sake of change. And it’s not propaganda… at least, not compared to the mediocre, severely biased documentaries that Baehr celebrates on his own site.
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Time for a Beautiful documentary
Read Kenneth Turan’s words on A Walk to Beautiful and you’ll probably agree — this is a must-see!
“A Walk to Beautiful” will leave you speechless two times over — first with despair, then with joy. Neither unmentionable subject matter nor nonexistent commercial prospects can keep this documentary from having a power over your heart that is unparalleled.
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The Film That The Chinese Government Never Wanted the World to See… and much more than that?
And Summer Palace sounds interesting too:
As politically provocative as it is sexually candid, the ambitious and assured “Summer Palace” is just the kind of film calculated to give the Chinese government fits. And it did.
An intense romantic epic covering two continents and more than a dozen years of recent Chinese history, including the shootings at Tiananmen Square, “Summer Palace” was spirited out of the country in 2006 for a slot at the Cannes Film Festival. The Cannes jury inexplicably passed it by and director Lou Ye paid a heavy price for his passion: the national bureaucracy banned him from filmmaking for five years.
Yet though it’s being advertised as “The Film That The Chinese Government Never Wanted the World to See,” “Summer Palace” is much more than that. It’s the swirling story of love in a time of revolutionary upheaval, a film where personal chaos mirrors the political to mesmerizing and unsettling effect. It’s the story of the Tiananmen Square generation that treats the restlessness of youth not as an indulgent cliché but as something painfully real.
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Semi-Pro, semi-funny?
Matt Zoller Seitz on Semi-Pro:
Mr. Ferrell’s latest star vehicle, a raunchy, R-rated goof written by Scot Armstrong and directed by Kent Alterman, isn’t as tenderhearted as Mr. Ferrell’s “Elf,” nor does it hit the surreal peaks of “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” with its jazz flute solos and gang fights between news teams. But like many of Mr. Ferrell’s recent films, “Semi-Pro” finds the sweet spot between sports melodrama and parody, and hammers it for 90 diverting minutes.
And then…
Between its Me Decade jukebox soundtrack, sinuous widescreen photography (by Shane Hurlbut) and fetishistic period details (including the most stunning array of big hair this side of a Tower of Power album cover), “Semi-Pro” often plays like a wacky, sports-themed cousin of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights.”
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Bonneville’s matter-of-fact Mormons
And then… Matt Zoller Seitz on Bonneville:
As it happens, Carol, Margene, Arvilla and many other major characters are devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The film’s screenwriter, Daniel D. Davis, and its director, Christopher N. Rowley, treat their characters’ faith as a given — as merely one characteristic among many. It’s the Mormon flip side of a typical Hollywood movie set in a world in which no one ever mentions God, prays or enters a house of worship. The movie’s no-fuss treatment of religion is as deft as it is unexpected.
Good thing too, because the film has many tiresome elements…
Wouldn’t it be nice to find more films that treat Christianity with such respect? (Actually, I’m still reeling from the mature, thoughtful portrayal of Christianity in Longford, which is a remarkable film starring Jim Broadbent. Don’t miss it!)
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“Condi! Canya get in here?”
Bob Geldof journals about his trip to Africa with Dubya and Condi. My brother-in-law works with the company that organized this trip for the President.
We sat in the large, wood-paneled conference room of Air Force One as she cruised the skies of the immense African continent below us. Gathered around the great oval table, I wondered how changed was the man who said in 2000 that Africa “doesn’t fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them.”
“Hold on a minute. I said that in response to a military question. Condi! Canya get in here,” the President shouts out the open door, leaning back in his chair. The Secretary of State, looking glamorous and fresh despite having been diverted to Kenya to articulate the U.S.’s concern over matters there before jetting back to Rwanda to join her boss, sits down. “Hi, Bob.” “Hi, Condi.” It’s like being inside a living TV screen.
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Focus Features brings us the next Coen Brothers film, and much more
I love Focus Features. Most of their movies prove to be tremendously rewarding. So I’m excited about this lineup:
Focus Features today announced that it will open Burn After Reading, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen, Academy Award-winning directors of this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner No Country for Old Men, domestically nationwide on Friday, September 12th.
Joel and Ethan Coen are writers, producers, and directors of Focus Features and Working Title Films’ Burn After Reading. The film stars Academy Award winner George Clooney, two-time Academy Award nominee John Malkovich, Academy Award winner Frances McDormand, Academy Award nominee Brad Pitt, and Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton. Working Title co-chairs Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are executive-producing Burn After Reading with Robert Graf, who has worked on the Coens’ last five features in various producing capacities.
In the dark spy-comedy, Mr. Malkovich plays an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise D.C. gym employees intent on exploiting their find. Ms. Swinton, this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Michael Clayton, plays the wife of Mr. Malkovich’s character. Burn After Reading also stars Richard Jenkins, who previously starred for the Coens in The Man Who Wasn’t There.
The director of photography on Burn After Reading is Academy Award nominee Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men). BAFTA Award nominee Mary Zophres is the costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive feature with the Coens. Jess Gonchor, production designer on No Country for Old Men, encores in that capacity.
Focus Features (http://www.focusfeatures.com/) is a motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company committed to bringing moviegoers the most original stories from the world’s most innovative filmmakers.
In addition to Burn After Reading, current and upcoming Focus Features releases include Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes, which world-premiered as the Opening-Night film of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams; Andrew Fleming’s irreverent comedy Hamlet 2, starring Steve Coogan; Shane Acker’s animated fantasy epic 9, starring Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly;
Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated feature Coraline, starring Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher; Cary Fukunaga’s immigrant thriller Sin Nombre; writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s new film, tentatively titled The Limits of Control, starring Isaach De Bankolé; Gus Van Sant’s Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk; and a contemporary comedy to be directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes.
Focus Features is part of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and 20% owned by Vivendi.
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Your daily dose of monster
Seen today’s Daily Monster? It just gives me a headache that this fellow is making these monsters upside-down.
I went to the good Dr.’s site this morning and saw a headline that screamed, “Homosexuality is still deadly!”
It may be true, but the lack of candor almost made me spit out my coffee.