DB#410 - Saved by Hope
Today on Feedback Friday: Tupelo monkeys and the Giving Campaign - help us reach 40% of our goal this weekend! Pope Benedict’s new encyclical letter Spe Salvi - Saved by Hope; Darfur Saint Josephine Bakhita; The perfect Christmas gift: That Catholic Show arrives on DVD! Internet connection trouble and a freezing PC; Golden Compass feedback: enjoy or worry? New glimpses of Narnia 2: Prince Caspian; why am I here on Earth?
Wikipedia entry on Saint Josephine Bakhita
Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian New Trailer!
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I-Tunes isn’t apparently seeing the feed…???
Thanks…
Did this podcast suddenly stop after a phoe feedback about Golden Campass?
If you click on the button here on the website, the file plays in it’s entirety. The episode should also work in iTunes, try refreshing.
Got it…!!! Thanks!
Fr. please put a note on the SHP feed regarding Sundays event. It would be great to let all the subscribers know about the event.
Bob
Top Movie Critic Roger Ebert Gives “The Golden Compass” 4 Stars
The Golden Compass (PG-13)
Ebert: **** Users: ***
The Golden Compass / / / December 7, 2007
By Roger Ebert -
Excerpt -
“”The Golden Compass” is a darker, deeper fantasy epic than the “Rings” trilogy, “The Chronicles of Narnia” or the “Potter” films. It springs from the same British world of quasi-philosophical magic, but creates more complex villains and poses more intriguing questions. As a visual experience, it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging. Teenagers may be absorbed and younger children may be captivated; some kids in between may be a little conflicted, because its implications are murky.
They weren’t murky in the original 1995 novel, part of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, a best seller in Britain, less so here. Pullman’s evil force, called the Magisterium in the books, represents organized religion, and his series is about no less than the death of God, who he depicts as an aged, spent force. This version by New Line Cinema and writer-director Chris Weitz (”About a Boy”) leaves aside religion and God, and presents the Magisterium as sort of a Soviet dictatorship or Big Brother. The books have been attacked by American Christians over questions of religion; their popularity in the U.K. may represent more confident believers whose response to other beliefs is to respond, rather than suppress.
For most families, such questions will be beside the point. Attentive as I was, I was unable to find anything anti-religious in the movie, which works above all as an adventure. The film centers on a young girl named Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), in an alternative universe vaguely like Victorian England. An orphan raised by the scholars of a university not unlike Oxford or Cambridge, she is the niece of Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), who entrusts her with the last surviving Alethiometer, or Golden Compass, a device that quite simply tells the truth. The Magisterium has a horror of the truth, because it represents an alternative to its thought control; the battle in the movie is about no less than man’s preservation of free will.”
Roger Ebert’s Full Review of The Golden Compass here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071206/REVIEWS/712060302
The United States Conference Of Catholic Bishops has a positive review of The Golden Compass Movie calling it “an exciting adventure story”:
http://www.usccb.org/movies/g/thegoldencompass.shtml
When it says that the court didn’t recognize St. Josephine’s status as a slave, it means that that status had no legal status and was unenforceable, not that they ignored the fact that she had been enslaved. So it was a good thing for the court to have done.
I haven’t had a chance to read Spe Salvi myself, as I’ve been busy editing a review of it.
Michael,
Did you see Amy Welborn’spost about the USCCB review and the way the ad agency promoting the film leveraged the review?
She also has some insights into the notion of using the movie to start a dialogue:
The whole post is worth a read — especially her insights into the appeal of the story for teenagers.
Father,
I’m at paragraph 13 (out of 50 - thank you Wikipedia) of Spe Salvi. It rocks! I hate to stop but had to drop you a line because something in the document resonates well with Tolkien and I know you like intertextual stuff. Paragraph 10 of Spe Salvi is under the heading:
Eternal Life - What is it?
Reading through it one comes across a quote by Saint Ambrose:
“Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin … began to experience the burden of wretchedness in unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing”
Well, Tolkien’s elves - who do not die from natural causes - expand and breath life into that theme in much of his work. As one small example, the fate that Elrond predicts for his daughter Arwen should she stay in Middle Earth with Aragorn is very much like the burden of St. Ambrose’s quote.
Another quote by Ambrose in Spe Salvi has strong parallel’s in Tolkien:
“Death is, then, no cause for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind’s salvation”
While Tolkien’s elves are immortal, Men in Middle Earth are not (as you’ve no doubt learned repeatedly during Shadows of Angmar - wait, on second thought, Tolkien’s men couldn’t reload the last saved game). In Tolkien’s world human death is called, amongst other things, The Gift of Iluvatar (Tolkien monothestic God is known as “Iluvatar” in his work, The Silmarillion). Funny thing, the elves and just about everyone else in Middle Earth wonder why death is a “Gift” for Men…looks like Ambrose (more particularly Jesus) have an answer for them…
Anyway, I wouldn’t have known about Spe Salvi for months if you hadn’t mentioned it. Thanks!!
Andy P.
I wrote an article a few years back about the persecuted Church in the Sudan and Saint Bakhita; I’ve reprinted the article on my blog today.
Clayton, I wouldn’t put much stock into overly dramatic alarmist diatribes for or against The Golden Compass fiction fantasy movie. After all it is only a single FICTIONAL FANTASY Movie we are only talking about.
According to those that were attentive and paid close attention to what was actually in the movie, people like the person you cited apparently never saw the movie because they are alleging and/or making things up about what is in the movie that in fact are not there. That type of dishonesty discredits them. They are like the person crying WOLF! when there is no wolf.
Many people of good faith are free to make up their own minds and give their own opinions about whether or not they liked this latest fictional fantasy adventure. I wish people would realize the fact that a single fictional fantasy adventure movie is not going to change the world or peoples minds one way or the other. And of course it is in no way, shape or form any threat to my Christian beliefs.
Peace & God Bless,
Michael
Hi Michael,
Totally agree about everyone’s freedom to make up their mind about the movie. Didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. Based on the poor box office performance over opening weekend, it looks like the American public did make up their mind.
Did you read Amy Welborn’s entire post? I don’t think it was a diatribe. Amy strikes me as one of the most measured and well-reasoned voices in the blogosphere. She wasn’t simply spouting off without considering the work itself — she was writing about the Pullman’s books (not the movie) as someone who has read the entire trilogy. Her point was about the books, and about the interest that will be generated in the books by the movie.
Hi Clayton,
Personally I don’t care whether The Golden Compass makes its money back(180 million) or not. It is just one more fiction fantasy adventure movie of many and it has a limited amount of time to make its money back in the theaters. However due to the way the industry is structued it will more than make it money back on just on the after theater run DVD’s, Pay Per View, Pay TV, Broadcast TV, Marketing Specialites and other rights & items.
Objectively by any ones calculation a revenue of 80 Million Worldwide Box Office in just the first 3 days is a huge number. That objective accounting fact including an actual of a few million lower than estimated box office in the U.S. only can not be “poor box office” but a very very big box office revenue.
~~~~~
As far as what unaffiliated “Amy Welborn” who has her own blog wrote, I did read her own essay. Unfortunately, apparently she did not see the movie before writing her words. She wrote specifically referring to the “movie”, “The Golden Compass” and “GC”. She did that four times alone in just the part you quoted plus more in the full essay. By her own words many times she was not writing about the books but assuming things were in the movie that in fact were not there.
What seems to be dishonest writing is when someone writes a strong attack of material that is in the book only and falsely believes that exact material would have to also be in a completely rewritten adaptation to a completely different medium. That type of writing is not measured or well-reasoned would seem to do a great disservice to honest debate and entertaining ideas that we may not agree with.
If someone would like to read what I think is a well-reasoned summary of “His Dark Materials” I would suggest Eric Ryan’s National Catholic Reporter story at:
http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007d/120707/120707s.htm
Consider your source - the National Catholic Reporter. I would say that Mr. Ryan has his own intellectual/theological commitments…
He wrote: It’s hard not to be captivated by the books.
I have heard from other readers of the books who would not agree.
@Michael:
Ummm, Amy Welborn isn’t quite the nonentity you make her out to be; she’s well-known to many of us as a solid, witty, Catholic writer. She has a gift for simplification without being stupid or condescending; a gift I appreciate all the more because I so often lack it. I’m not sure whether she has a formal affiliation with OSV Press, but they do publish a large number of her many books, as does Loyola Press. For what it’s worth.
The Golden Compass had a really poor showing at the box office over its second weekend. According to BoxOffice Mojo, it only grossed $9 million domestically over the 3-day weekend, whereas I Am Legend raked in over $76 million in its opening weekend.
According to Entertainment Weekly, “Legend eclipsed Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to become the highest-grossing December opener ever.”
That should put to rest the theory that The Golden Compass was performing poorly in the US because the box office is soft in general.The reason for the failure of Compass lies elsewhere…
http://www.catholicexchange.com/node/68224
Christmas Edition of Canadian Catholic Register Runs USCCB Positive Review of Compass
btw — I had posted some other links that seem to have been deleted. Why is that ?
If you post too many links in one comment, the Wordpress spam filter might think it’s spam. As long as you limit yourself to 1 link per comment, you should be fine.