- The Existential Clown is an erudite (and warranted) homage from The Atlantic to the work of Jim Carrey. During my childhood, Carrey was my favorite actor — I’d even go so far as to say he was my idol. “Then there’s earnest Carrey, low-voltage Carrey, Carrey the Oscar chaser, dutifully dialing it down for The Majestic and muting himself in The Truman Show. This Carrey excites a peculiar anxiety: you sit there with your scalp prickling, waiting for him to go off. Which he never does.” In the Enneagram personality test, Carrey and myself are the same: Sevens with a six wing (”Quick-witted and insightful to the inner wonders of fun”). 12/09/2008
- Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class. “In other words, Religulous fails to understand the actual context and realities in which religious people live. This is why the film is actually not a documentary; a documentary at least purports to get at the realities of its subjects. Maher shows himself ultimately to verge on the inhuman in his inability to understand people.” As a side note, ReligionDispatches is quickly climbing the ranks of my favorite religious websites/blogs. 10/18/2008
- My recent rating of There Will Be Blood at 4.5 stars (on the right-hand side of the page; not visible to RSS readers) marks the 100th movie rating since I rated (and reviewed) Superman Returns on June 30, 2006. Thats an average of 0.17 movie ratings per day for the past 588 days. The average rating for a movie is 3.5 stars (3.445 to be precise); the highest rated are Little Miss Sunshine, Once, and Juno at 5 stars, and the lowest rated is The Final Season at .5 stars. I’m sure you wanted to know all of that. 01/31/2008
Four must-see documentaries about teens (or, How to fully understand teenagers in under 8 hours)
January 24th, 2008 | Okay, okay. The title of this post is admittedly hyperbolic. But my point is that there are some fantastic documentaries being made about teenagers – four of which are listed below. Please leave a comment if there’s another documentary that should be on this list!
Frontline: Growing Up Online (2008, whole program online for free)
A tip of the hat to Brian at Rethinking Youth Ministry for this one. I have yet to watch it, but I plan on doing so once this post is finished.
In “Growing Up Online”, FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood. “The Internet and the digital world was something that belonged to adults, and now it’s something that really is the province of teenagers, ” says C.J. Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of California, Berkeley’s Digital Youth Research project.
Frontline: The Merchants of Cool (2001, whole program online for free)
I first saw this documentary during my student ministry internship in the summer of 2005, and it impacted me so much that I referenced it two years later in my senior thesis. Even though it is a bit outdated (which throws many of the figures and facts out of whack), the gist of the film is still quite relevant – alarming, even.
They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts–and wallets–of America’s youth?
Soul Searching: A Movie About Teenagers and God (2007, DVD)
I ordered this documentary after reading Tony Jones’ review. It’s sitting on my desk waiting to be watched.
Based on the book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, which reports on research conducted over a seven year period by the National Study of Youth and Religion. Featuring interviews with the books authors, youth pastors, and teenagers from around the country, this compelling documentary illustrates some of the major themes and findings of the book, and goes behind the book in depicting the inner lives of a sample of American teenagers. Find out what these teenagers really think about God and religion, what their hopes and aspirations are, and what the research says about the effects of religion in their lives.
American Teen (2008, not yet in theatres)
This documentary just debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. The folks at /Film gave it a review that totally piqued my interest.
Set in the small typical midwestern town of Warsaw, Indiana, American Teen follows a self absorbed Cheerleader, a loser video game playing band geek, the basketball star, and the artsy outcast. While at first glance, these descriptions serve as cliche social stereotypes, you will be surprised at how three dimensional these kids are. The drama that is their senior year is both fun, emotional, and at times horrifying. This observational documentary plays out uncensored, giving an surprisingly accurate look at a group of TRL-generation teenagers.
Best of 2007
I am pleased to present the second annual JakeBouma.com “Best of” list. Feel free to argue with my choices in the comments. Here’s the list for 2006.
1. Army of Me – Citizen
2. Matt Nathanson – Some Mad Hope
3. Andy Davis – Let the Woman
4. Anberlin – Cities
5. Kanye West – Graduation
Honorable Mention: Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger, The Alternate Routes – Good and Reckless and True, Eric Hutchinson – Sounds Like This, William Fitzsimmons – Goodnight
1. Once
2. Atonement
3. Bourne Ultimatum
4. 3:10 to Yuma
5. Sweeny Todd
Honorable Mention: Ratatouille, American Gangster, I Am Legend, Oceans 13, No Country for Old Men
1. Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From A Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation by Andrew Root (Review forthcoming)
2. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K. A. Smith
3. Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr (Review forthcoming)
Honorable Mention: The Courtier and the Heretic by Matthew Stewart, The Primal Teen by Barbara Strauch
1. Chicago Cubs games
2. Heroes
3. Man Vs. Wild
4. The Colbert Report
5. Project Runway
1. Google Reader (seriously, I live a different life because of it)
2. Twitter
3. Bleed Cubbie Blue
4. IAmJoshBrown
5. Rethinking Youth Ministry
The Final Season
The Final Season is a new movie releasing October 12, 2007 which tells the story of the 1991 state championship baseball team from Norway, Iowa. 1991 was the last year that Norway played with its own team, before a major school district consolidation. It stars Sean Astin (a.k.a. “Rudy”) as the head coach. I tell you this for two reasons.
First, who doesn’t love a good baseball movie, especially one that takes one in Iowa? Don’t forget that the greatest baseball movie of all time takes place near Dyersville, Iowa.
Second, as the coach of the team, Sean Astin proudly wears a Luther College t-shirt in the movie, and you can even see it in the trailer. The story is based on Kent Stock, a 1985 graduate of Luther who was the actual coach of the baseball team. 1970 Luther grad Terry Trimpe is an associate producer of the film, and played a role in getting Luther College on the big screen. You can read Luther’s press release here.
Click here to view the trailer for The Final Season
Click here for the official website for The Final Season
And a tip of the hat to Shawn for informing me about the movie and its Luther references.
- We all know that I loved Little Miss Sunshine. Well, the upcoming movie Juno (IMDb) has been called “this year’s Little Miss Sunshine”. 09/16/2007
Pan’s Labyrinth
Not sure where I heard of this movie, but I finally got the opportunity to watch it this afternoon. The Apple trailer website for the film describes Pan’s Labyrinth1 as “a gothic fairytale set against the postwar repression of Franco’s Spain. Harnessing the formal characteristics of classic folklore to a 20th Century landscape, [Guillermo] del Toro delivers a timeless tale of good and evil, bravery and sacrifice, love and loss.”
After the movie, my brother and I talked about it and decided to both give it a rating out of ten. My initial reaction was eight, but the more I think about it the more I want to give it a nine or a ten. The movie is basically a fairy tale for adults, which is partly what makes the movie so moving. It’s a fairy tale that feels real. The next part might have some spoilers, so if you want to see the movie (and you should), maybe you should hold off reading the rest until you’ve seen it. If you’ve (a) already seen it or (b) don’t care, just click below.
- The original Spanish title is El laberinto del fauno, which literally translates as “The Labyrinth of the Faun”. ↩
Spring break
My spring break is pretty much going as planned. I have been making lots of headway on my senior paper, spending about four hours per day reading/taking notes and formulating the basic outline of the paper. As far as movies are concerned, I have seen three of the seven on the list: The Number 23, 300, and Zodiac.
The rest of break looks to be about the same. More reading and more movie-watching. Keep in mind that I am still restricted to dial-up at home which is reflected in my lack of posting.
Spring break is for flicks
Unlike many college students, I have never taken a spring break trip, and this year is no exception. In the past I have spent the week at home, getting some R&R and catching up with some friends. I have only two goals for this spring break: (1) make lots of headway on my senior paper and (2) see as many movies as possible.
Listed below are some of the movies I would like to see while I am on spring break. Links are to the respective trailers.
Are there any movies missing from my list? I should probably prioritize my paper, but it would totally be nice to see a bunch of movies.
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