Christian filmgoers ask to consider what (and why) they applaud

Gina Dalfonzo thinks too many evangelicals are a bit too free with their praise for movies like Facing the Giants. I didn't see the movie. If you did, you might want to weigh in on the discussion.

For that matter, the general discussion she's trying to have (if I understand her correctly), is that by not paying enough attention to the sort of quality that can be recognized by the wider culture, some Christians are in danger of feeding the idea that Christians lack taste or smarts. So you might want to weigh in whether you saw the movie or not.

In a semi-related note, in our early days as booksellers, my husband and I cringed at most of the offerings from publishers of Christian fiction.

My, how things have changed. These days, Christian fiction has branched out, deepened, grown up, and a surprising percentage of it has terrific shelf appeal - and impressive sales figures. Over the past few years a lot of people have raised the bar, and it shows. See, for instance, the latest offerings from Bethany House. Or even from Barbour, known in years past for 'bargain books'.

Some history of Zorro

Lars Walker just obtained a DVD of the 1920 silent movie, The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., which gives him an excuse to expound on silent movies, and on the history of the Zorro character.

For history of the 1950s Zorro television show starring Guy Williams, visit Bill Cotter's website.

With some children...

"...the person they ought to be is fast disappearing...", TheHeadGirl says.

I more or less have to agree with her.

Parents, the ball's in your court.

Writing for your target audience

When I saw this cartoon I wasn't sure whether to laugh or weep. Ah, yes, the crazy world of publishing and promotion!

hat tip: The Point: Hope, love, ponies, and Oprah

Poem: Death at Suppertime, by Phyllis McGinley

This is a Phyllis McGinley poem I hadn't seen before: Death at Suppertime. It's about children's programming in 1948, but it's got food for thought for today, I think.

Which science fiction film...

... has the most realistic vision of the future of mankind? Half a hundred academic sorts studied the question, and voted for ....

Well, let Phil from Brandywine Books give you the lead-in and the link.

'Happy Birthday' from a sorry father

I was over on the Death Roe site, and they had a link: "Click here to see what songs should be on every Death Roe Survivor's play list." So I clicked. And found that my computer didn't want to play them (a technical problem, my end). So I went to YouTube, and found one I wanted to check out: Happy Birthday, by Flipsyde. I'm not generally a fan of hip-hop (and this song's not exactly a ringing endorsement for chastity or the sanctity of marriage) but... Wow. Powerful stuff. Good stuff. My thanks to the artists who put it together.

From the Death Roe site:

This video debuted in April 2006 in the US after the song Happy Birthday made waves overseas hitting the charts at #4 in Germany, #3 in Sweden and was in the top 15 in Austria and Switzerland. In addition, Happy Birthday, was in the Top 10 downloads on ITUNES in Germany, Sweden & Denmark. Piper, the lead singer of Flipsyde wrote and sings this song to the baby he helped abort as a young man. Filled with introspection that only one who has truly realized the ramifications of the decision to abort, Happy Birthday should serve as a warning to young men and women seeking abortion as an answer. The reality of fatherhood lost is felt, as you hear Piper wonder out loud what his baby would look like, act like, and if the child could forgive him for what he has done.

Fashionable = ?

Does it ever surprise you how many people seem to confuse faddish with fashionable, fashionable with sophisticated, sophisticated with savvy, and savvy with more than it is?

Just asking.

Traditional families taken out of children's programming

Author John R. Erickson found out the hard way that television can be hostile to the values he holds dear.

"Horton Hears Political Correctness"

Patrick Deneen took his kids to see the film adaptation of "Horton Hears a Who" and found it not quite true to Suess, and not kind to homeschoolers, either. Let him explain.

Family friendly movie rentals

Via Baptist Press's Culture Digest, Faith and Family Flix rents DVDs, without subjecting you and your kids to the trashy stuff. They have an affiliate program, too.

Strolling around their site, on the rates and plans page, right beneath the "sign up now" button, I found this: REMEMBER...WE SHOULD NOT SPEND TOO MUCH TIME PLANTED ON OUR BEHINDS WATCHING MOVIES!

I think I'm beginning to like these folks. :)

From glancing at their blog, I see they're still working out a few bumps, and are working on increasing inventory. They're also taking suggestions on which movies to add.

From the About Us page at the blog:

We are the family and friends who founded Faith and Family Flix in 2007. Steve is the Dad of 8 kids with his wife Ginny. John is the father of 4 (with one on the way) with his wife Rebecca. Other authors will be joining us as we go along, we will add their information to this page later on.

This blog is part of the community that we are hoping will form around FFF. Together we hope to share insights on our movie watching experiences. Along with this blog there is a review system in place on the main FFF web site. Logged in users can click the Reviews button at the bottom of the movie detail page for each movie. We encourage all users to review the movies they have seen and provide our wider membership with good information to help them choose titles to add to their queues

Love2Learn at the Movies has a review of the service.

Aimless, gainless lives

Dame Carol Black has been taking a look at The 'terrible legacy' of the children growing up in families who haven't worked for generations (by Olinka Koster, Daily Mail, March 10, 2008):

Dame Carol, the National Director of Health and Work, has been charged with investigating the incapacity benefit system.

Nearly 3million Britons currently claim long-term incapacity benefit, and one in five children is growing up in a family where one or both parents rely on out-of-work benefits.

The figures heighten fears Britain is breeding a "Shameless generation", named after the Channel 4 television programme which charts the lives of the dysfunctional Gallagher family, comprising the father, Frank Gallagher and his eight children.

Despite Government claims that it has eradicated youth unemployment, figures showed that there are 1.24million "Neets" in the country - youngsters aged between 16 and 24 who are not employed, in education or on a training course.

The number of Neets has risen by 15 per cent since Labour came to power in 1997.

Dame Carol said: "There are too many people with no expectation that their lives are going to get better, no structure, no shape.

Full article here.

Regarding the recent rash of made-up memoirs

Christopher Caldwell has a theory about why various authors have been writing "memoirs" of people they invented. See Tall tales of the would-be victim (Financial Times, March 7, 2008).

hat tip: Real Clear Politics

Beatle-based silliness in South Korea

Oh, my. Dawn Eden links to a video of a four year old boy who really knows his Beatles songs. If you can watch without collapsing in laughter you're tougher than me. And who knew the Beatles were still big, and in South Korea of all places?

I was about that age when the Twist became popular. One of my earliest memories is of my sister and me being talked into doing the Twist at a great-uncle's house, and the grown-ups passing the hat around after they stopped laughing. I didn't 'get' the laughter, but we did get to keep the money that had been dropped into the hat. I think it was the first money I ever 'earned,' and I remember it made me feel rather grown-up and important.

I've often wondered if they'd planned to pass the hat around, or only hit upon the idea when they realized they'd upset little girls by asking them to do something and then laughing at them when they did. My fuzzy, faded, undoubtedly-altered-by-the-passage-of-time memory seems to support the 'oh, my goodness, we didn't mean to make them cry, do something!' theory.

Not that I blame them for laughing. A little girl twisting with gusto would probably be hard to watch with a straight face. Two at once could push anybody over the edge.

The Korean kid, bless his heart, seems to be enjoying himself, and taking it pretty much in stride, despite the adults going nuts around him.

NFL policies on church Super Bowl parties

Starting next year, the NFL's policy will be to let churches show the Super Bowl on large screens if they like, under certain conditions, without throwing lawyers and threats at them.

I can't quite figure out why the league still thinks it can tell churches where they can hold their Super Bowl parties, but at least the new policy is a step or two in the right direction.

Sen. Orrin Hatch led the charge on this, apparently. A Feb. 20 press release from his office is here. At the bottom of the press release is a link to a pdf file with the letter from Hatch to the NFL, followed by the letter from the NFL in response.

Hmmm. Wait a minute (she says, as she reads the letters). If the info from the NFL is correct, they might have been misrepresented in the press leading up to this. Aw, you mean that at least some of the brouhaha was built on nothing, or next to nothing? (Sigh.)

Anyway, the league is now on record as to what it will allow without squawking. I hope that helps.

Only semi-related: I'm going to show my age here, but I helped put on the Super Bowl XIV halftime show. It was a squeaky clean and wholesome, fun show starring Up with People, and back then the NFL went out of its way to reassure us how family friendly they wanted to be for all time. I guess maybe new guys took over or something, eh? (Up with People kind of changed its standards and focus later, for that matter. Very sad. It went out of business for a while, but has been restarted, at least after a fashion. I have no connection to or experience with the current UWP.)

Back in 1979-1980, I was just a minor, junior member of the production team, but I have to say I was treated like a lady by the NFL people I did meet. And I got to drive an official NFL car, too. That was an adventure. I'm afraid, however, that it was more of an adventure for me than for people on the street. Time and time again I saw someone see the logo on the side of the car, and swing his head for a look at who was inside. For some reason, seeing a short, petite young lady who was definitely not a player, a coach, or a cheerleader seemed to cause acute disappointment. I've never seen so many fallen faces in my life. Sorry, folks. I was working on the halftime show. Really.

For the record, I had nothing to do with the exploding palm trees.

For the record, when the announcer with the gorgeous, clear as a bell voice introduced the halftime show, he did say "Up the People" instead of "Up with People." It's awfully hard to put on a show when you've just been misintroduced, and in such a way, but somehow everyone managed. You gotta be able to roll with the punches when you do live shows. :)

The 'patron saint' of drug pushers, coming to a neighborhood near you

From Mexican Robin Hood figure gains a kind of notoriety abroad by Kate Murphy (International Herald Tribune, February 8, 2008):

HOUSTON: Jesús Malverde has been revered for almost a century in northwestern Mexico. According to folklore, he was a Mexican Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor until he was killed by the police in 1909.

Now, immigrants have brought his legend to the United States. His image, which is thought to offer protection from the law, can be found on items that include T-shirts and household cleaners.

Malverde is widely considered the patron saint of drug dealers, say law enforcement officials and experts on Mexican culture. A shrine has been erected atop his grave in the remote city of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which has long been associated with opium and marijuana trafficking.

"The drug guys go to the shrine and ask for assistance and come back in big cars and with stacks of money to give thanks," said James Creechan, a Canadian sociologist and adjunct professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in Culiacán.

But Creechan, who presented a paper on Malverde to the American Society of Criminology in 2005, added that the poor also pray to Malverde for money and safe passage across the border into the United States.

An influx of immigrants from the Sinaloan region in recent years has made Malverde's image increasingly visible on this side of the border, particularly in the Southwest and in California. His legend has spread among Hispanics, Creechan said, inspiring many to build altars to Malverde in their homes, as well as to wear Malverde cologne.

His image, which looks suspiciously like that of Pedro Infante, the Mexican matinee idol of the 1940s, appears on T-shirts and patches sewn on jackets and backpacks. Busts of Malverde can be seen next to cash registers at restaurants, bars and discos.

Read the rest. Please note that in the next to last paragraph it states Malverde is not recognized as a saint by the Catholic church. Please also note that it's a pretty safe bet that the Catholic church frowns on asking saints to protect immoral behavior.

From the same article:

Indeed, drug enforcement authorities in Mexico and the United States said Malverde statues, tattoos and amulets can be tip-offs to illegal activity.

"We send squads out to local hotel and motel parking lots looking for cars with Malverde symbols on the windshield or hanging from the rearview mirror," said Sergeant Rico Garcia with the narcotics division of the Houston Police Department. "It gives us a clue that something is probably going on."

Courts in California, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas have ruled that Malverde trinkets and talismans are admissible evidence in drug and money-laundering cases.

"It's not a direct indication of guilt, but it would definitely be used in combination with other things" like piles of cash, baggies and scales, said José Martinez, a special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

Ah, yes, nothing like having crooks who advertise...

As a side note, I have come to believe that the popular rendition of Robin Hood being someone who took from the rich (simply because they were rich) to give to the poor isn't adhering to the best of the legends. I prefer the 'Robin of Locksley fighting evil Prince John until King Richard can return and save his loyal Saxon subjects from slaughter and starvation at the hands of cruel and heartless Normans' theme. In those versions, he does indeed steal from the rich, but he's generally stealing back what was taken from honest folk. The people he's helping are, on the whole, in danger of starving to death if they don't get help. This isn't a rich man versus poor man battle, in other words. It's refusing to let your neighbors be wiped off the face of the Earth by people who are abusing their positions of power. It's providing for the needy, not simply redistributing goods. It's fighting injustice because it is injustice. It's loyalty and bravery personified. Admittedly, I switched to this view of Robin Hood after watching Richard Greene's portrayal of him... (Richard Greene has my vote for best onscreen Robin Hood. Who has yours?)

And, for the record, I'm pretty sure I have both Norman and Saxon blood in my veins, amongst other ethnic groups. That many of my ancestors were mortal enemies, at least off and on through the ages, doesn't bother me any. This is America, the land of burying the hatchet. (Or, at least, that's the ideal.)

Wikipedia has several articles on Robin Hood, including this one that tracks the legend through the centuries. Robin Hood has been the best of the best of men, and the worst of the worst, as well as all sorts of in between, it looks like. In glancing through that article, I came across a footnote for this short BBC article from October 2006, about a Master's program for students of the legend. The university promoting such a degree? Nottingham University. Are we surprised?

Book business notes

The traditional book is facing competition. With that in mind, JollyBlogger asks Is Print Dead?. In that post, he links to Why Traditional Books Will Eventually Die (From Where I Sit, November 20, 2007), by Michael S. Hyatt, President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing. (ed. note: corrected date)

Elsewhere, novelist Rebeca Seitz, who is also president of Glass Road Public Relations, is interviewed at Novel Journey about the world of book publicity. (Previous related post: Creating demand in the book market, Suitable For Mixed Company, Feb. 1, 2008)

Update: Add this to the mix: Online Book Sales Booming (People of the Book, January 29, 2008). That's around the globe, especially in 'developing nations.'

Creating demand in the book market

From Why Does It Still Take So Long to Publish a Book? - New York Times, by Rachel Donadio:

Technology may be speeding up the news cycle, but in publishing, things actually seem to be slowing down. Although publishers can turn an electronic file into a printed book in a matter of weeks — as they often do for hot political titles, name-brand authors or embargoed celebrity biographies likely to be leaked to the press — they usually take a year before releasing a book. Why so long? In a word, marketing.

[...snip...]

As soon as a literary agent has sold a publisher a book, and even before it’s edited, copy-edited, proofread and indexed, the publicity wheels start turning. While writers bite their nails, the book editor tries to persuade the in-house sales representatives to get excited about the book, the sales representatives try to persuade retail buyers to get excited, and the retail buyers decide how many copies to buy and whether to feature the book in a prominent front-of-the-store display, for which publishers pay dearly. In the meantime, the publisher’s publicity department tries to persuade magazine editors and television producers to feature the book or its author around the publication date, often giving elaborate lunches and parties months in advance to drum up interest.

Read the whole article

Now, as far as I can see, that article applies primarily to certain big name publishers and big name retailers, playing their long-established games. Bully for them, especially if they're publishing something I can sell in my little bookstore. (We have standards they sometimes don't meet, even though we're not as picky as perhaps we ought to be.)

But they're only a segment of the publishing world. They're a significant factor, sure. But if selling books has taught us anything, it's that the big publishers' obsession with creating fads, and replacing them quickly with new fads, isn't what a lot of consumers want.

Good backlist books, midlist books, small press books, niche books, regional-interest books, even self-published books, can do surprisingly well if they're kept in print, and are easily obtained. Novelty sells. But so does something that somebody stumbles across. Or backlist of an author a customer has recently discovered, perhaps years after the publisher has whipped up buzz and then abandoned the titles and the author. I won't be surprised if more big book houses learn to keep more books in their catalogs, long after the talk shows no longer care. We'll see.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but when I read the New York Times piece linked above, the thought that popped to mind was "Me thinks they do protest too much." (However that's supposed to go. Thinks? Thinketh? Protest? Protesteth? I never can remember...) If they want to keep giving elaborate parties, that's their business, of course. But I have to wonder if they're trying just a bit too hard to convince the rest of us that a high-flying style of promotion is necessary, in a day and age in which authors can self-publish, and self-promote, without ever even leaving their home, not to mention that this is a day and age when talk shows and magazines have more competition than ever, and perhaps can't quite drive the popular culture as much as they used to? It's not like the old days, when there were three networks, and no podcasts or bloggers, etc. Is it?

Am I calling big publishers and their marketing departments dinosaurs? Oh, my, no. Think Harry Potter. Think how people lined up to get into stores at midnight. Think how crazy some folks got waiting for the release date, book after book. Think how much people enjoyed the countdown.

Marketing can be powerful. No question. But word of mouth can spread a lot of different ways, and it can and does sell a lot of books ignored by the talk shows and magazines and newspapers. If I were one of those hotshots who is used to being wined and dined, I think I'd be keeping one eye out for signs that the gig was wearing thin. I wouldn't necessarily be sweating, because people who like to live high aren't likely go frugal without a fight. But I would be keeping one eye out.

More praise for 'Bella'

Baptist Press - 'Bella' receives critical acclaim while literally saving lives' by Michael Foust has more information on the movie, and its success so far.

I haven't seen the movie yet (where I live, I have to wait for a DVD), but that's not keeping me from cheering on the founders of this little, start-up movie company and their first film. From the Foust article:

Bella is the first film released by Metanoia Films, a new company formed by Verastegui and four other partners. Verastegui himself is well-known in Hispanic cultures, having starred in Spanish soap operas and even being named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in People en Espanol. But after taking the lead role in the U.S. film "Chasing Papi," Verastegui had a change of heart as to his involvement in edgy productions. Metanoia Films subsequently was formed.

"In my opinion I was poisoning our society with the projects I was involved 'with'," he said. "One day I made a decision, made a promise to God that I would never use my talents to do anything that will offend my culture, my family. That's when I had this conviction to open a production company to produce films that will have potential not only to entertain but to make a difference."

Verastegui, one of the movie's producers, said he wanted to make films so clean he could "invite my mother or my grandmother."

"At the same time I was so passionate about promoting the gospel of life, the sanctity of life -- to show in a very subtle way and a very artistic way why life is sacred, life is a gift from God," he said.

I get so frustrated when very talented people use their talents to produce something toxic. At the same time, when they do pick up a moral compass and go where it points, they can do a tremendous amount of good. Here's hoping Metanoia Films continues to help lead the way in producing worthwhile entertainment.

Another Bella fan

Add Rebecca Hagelin to the growing list of people who recommend seeing the movie Bella. (But, she says, it's not for little ones.)