Dream Awakener

Invisible Children Roadies This Saturday at Artist @ the Fountain

This Saturday, April 19th at 7:30 p.m.  Artist @ the Fountain presents a screening of Black is for Sunday.  There is no cover.
 

A four person road crew from Invisible Children will be hosting this event.  They will be giving updates on what is happening with Invisible Children as well as showing the film. If you are in the LA area and want to come to this film screening, the Fountain Room is located at 4903 Fountain Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90029.

ABOUT "BLACK IS FOR SUNDAY"
Invisible Children's filmmaker Bobby Bailey went back to northern Uganda in March 2007 to spend 10 days living among and like the people displaced for 10 years in one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time.  His adventure took him to the heart of the longest running war in Africa and into the life of a child that would change his life forever.

In this film, you will meet Sunday.  Only 15 years old, there isn't a part of his life that hasn't been affected by the war.  Orphaned at a young age, he lives in a displacement camp and struggles to survive amid the affects of poverty, disease, and malnutrition.  Having no family left to depend on, he must try to provide for himself.

But without enough time to work and go to class, Sunday can't make the money needed to pay his fees and is asked to leave school.  The war that has already taken so much from him now threatens to take the most valuable thing he has left: a future.

Come check out the screening.  Spread the word.  This Saturday, April 19th at 7:30 p.m. The Fountain Room 4903 Fountain Avenue  Hollywood, CA 90029  There is no cover, but you can buy black bracelets to help the children in Uganda.

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part V

Today we end this series.  In part one we looked at the plot summary of Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part two we looked at some themes and issues that the films especially related to brokenness and healing. Then we took a look at insights into modern/postmodern culture through these films. In part three we took at look at Patch Adams,and part four Good Will Hunting.  Now for the conclusion.

Conclusion
We are broken people in a broken world, with a broken church.  We all need healing.  If we desire to be agents of healing, we will need to get more in touch with our humanity like Patch Adams did, and realize, like Will Hunting, that healing comes when we are willing to honestly face our brokenness.  As we face our brokenness together, we must remember to work not just with our heads, but with our hearts and hands as well. It was Fredrick Beuchner who said, “Calling is where your deep hunger meets the world’s deep needs.”  We are called to be wounded healers, helping people to become fully human again.

I enjoyed the different interactions that we have had with this series.  And one of the entries sparked Jonathan Brink to write an excellent entry on Restorative Spiritual Healing.  Check it out.

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part IV

We are broken people living in a broken who desire to experience healing in wholeness.  We are exploring this through two films.  In part one we looked at the plot summary of Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part two we looked at some themes and issues that the films especially related to brokenness and healing. Now I would like to take a look at insights into modern/postmodern culture through these films. In my last entry we took at look at Patch Adams, today we will look at Good Will Hunting.   

GOOD WILL HUNTING
One of the ways that I see the contrast of modernity and postmodernity in Good Will Hunting is through the life of Will Hunting.  Will in some ways is the perfect product of modernity.  He is a genius filled with all kinds of knowledge.  He is machine-like in his ability to learn and regurgitate book knowledge.  Yet in all of his book knowledge, he remains isolated in his hurt – radical individualism (modernity).   When Sean meets with him, he confronts him on this.  One of the most amazing scenes is the second time they get together, when Sean talks about the difference between book knowledge and life experience.  Here is just the beginning of that scene, “If I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book written.  Michelangelo, you know a lot about him, life work, political ambitions, him and the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right?  I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine chapel.  You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling and seen that…”  Throughout the movie Sean, in his therapy sessions, not only helped Will to honestly face his past, but he helped him to move from radical individualism (modernity) toward relational selfhood (postmodernity).

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part III

We are broken people living in a broken who desire to experience healing in wholeness.  We are exploring this through two films.  In part one we looked at the plot summary of Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part two we looked at some themes and issues that the films especially related to brokenness and healing. Now I would like to take a look at insights into modern/postmodern culture through these films.  Today I want to look at Patch Adam.

PATCH ADAMS
In Patch Adams, the difference between modernity and postmodernity is displayed most concretely in the conflict between the institutional way to health (modernity) and the Patch Adams way to health (postmodernity).  The institution, best embodied in Dean Walcott, thinks that all the patients need are experts filled with the right kind of knowledge.  Dean Walcott feels that doctors need to remain distant from the patients in order to keep a sense of objectivity. In one of his showdowns with Patch, he says, “What you want is for us to get down there on the same level as our patients, to destroy objectivity, all to uphold some idealistic buddy system…” At another showdown, he tells Patch that people don’t need entertainers and friends, they need doctors.   

Patch, on the other hand, thinks it is important to connect with people personally, to call them by their name, not just their disease, and to bring a little joy and laughter to their lives.  He considers distance to be the problem, not the solution.  For him, heart knowledge is just as important as head knowledge, and it seems that his way catches on. For his roommate Mitch finally realizes that his rigorous studies can’t make his patient eat when she needs to eat.  He has to call in Patch to personally connect with her for healing to take place.

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part II

In this series we are taking a look at brokenness and healing through Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part one, I just gave an overview of these films.  In today's post, I want to take a look at the themes and issues that these movies engage with. 

THEMES AND ISSUES
Both of these films deal with brokenness and healing.  In Patch Adams, Patch first discovers brokenness in himself and then brokenness in the institutions that are supposed to bring about healing.  In Good Will Hunting, we are shown the brokenness of Will long before he is willing to see this brokenness in himself.  We learn through these films that when we are honest with what is broken, we can better find our way to healing.

When it comes to bringing about healing, both of these films display conflict in regard to the best way to bring about wholeness.   They look to answer the question:  how does real healing come about?  In Patch Adams, the conflict is between the institutional way of bringing about healing and the Patch Adams way.  The institution tries to bring healing by creating the perfect doctors who through their objective knowledge, superiority and focus on the disease, can bring about healing.  On the other hand, Patch seeks to bring about healing through the mind and heart, subjective relationships, meeting people where they are at and treating the patient, not just the disease.  In Good Will Hunting, Will thinks that healing can happen through avoidance and book knowledge and Professor Lambeau believes healing can happen by becoming successful in the world’s eyes, while Psychiatrist Sean Maguire recognizes that the way to healing is to face the past honestly, for then one can move toward wholeness and more clearly see what the future holds.

Both of these films reflect on what it means to discover and live out our calling with a sense of passion, despite being pushed and pulled by institutional forces or people. In Patch Adams, we learn that we find our calling when we discover how we can truly help people. Patch learns to live out his calling, despite the institution’s training that tried to choke the life out of him.  In Good Will Hunting, we learn that some people in the world desire to shape our calling through manipulation according to their own personal dreams (what Professor Lambeau was trying to do with Will), while others help us to find our calling through self discovery and healing (what Sean did with Will).  Will found his sense of calling and passion near the end as he decided to go to California to seek his soul mate.

In the next post in this series, I will talk about the insights we gain into Modern/Postmodern Culture from these two films.   

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part I

Introduction
We are broken people living in a broken world, so how should we pursue a sense of wholeness?  How do we find healing? What are we being healed for?  How does our sense of calling in life connect with our ability to find wholeness?  These are a couple of the themes that are addressed in Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.

Plot Summary of Patch Adams
We meet Hunter Adams in the Psychiatric Institution, where he admits himself after attempting to take his life.  He goes to find healing from the doctors, but instead finds healing through the patients.  He finds healing as he helps the patients, thus earning the nickname “Patch.”  Arthur Mendelson asks Patch a question that sticks with him through the film, “How many fingers do you see?”  Through this question, Arthur helps Patch to focus beyond the problem in order to find solutions.  One of the keys to healing is looking at life from a different perspective.

Two years later Patch finds himself at a Medical Institution to get trained to be a doctor.  While Dean Wilcott and the institution want to “train the humanity” out of the students and make them Doctors, Patch Adams sees a need to bring humanity back into the healing process.  This sets up a major conflict between the institutional way of treating diseases to the Patch Adams way of bringing healing.

In the end, Patch realizes he needs to create a space outside of the institution, in order to bring a sense of healing to people.  As he takes this journey, he is able to dodge the arrows of the institution and endure the loss of the love of his life, because he realizes that wholeness comes when we are willing to lose our life by helping others.

Plot Summary of Good Will Hunting
Will Hunting lives in the tough part of South Boston with his buddies and works as a janitor at M.I.T..  He can solve math problems better than the M.I.T. professors, but has difficulty working through the issues of his own life.

Will is a genius when it comes to book knowledge, but an infant when it comes to understanding himself.  While he can speak about economics, science, history and art better than most people on the planet, he finds himself getting in fights, stealing cars and incapable of building a meaningful relationship with a woman.

He avoids a jail sentence by taking the invitation to work with Professor Lambeau and making a commitment to meet with a therapist.  Sean, the fifth therapist, helps Will to understand that there is much more to life than just book knowledge, and that the way to wholeness is by living, by experiencing, and by making commitments to imperfect people. 

Professor Lambeau wants Will to start thinking about the future and use his gifts to become successful.  Yet Sean, his therapist, wants Will to honestly face his past and find healing first.  As Will honestly works through his past and becomes more whole, he is able to take the risk to follow his heart, and leave his friends and a successful career to explore what it means to follow his passions and pursue life with a soul mate.

In part II I will take a look that the themes and issues these films bring up, and then in part III look at the insights the modernity and postmodernity make on these two films.

The Other Journal - Pop Revolutions

If you are unfamiliar with The Other Journal, you really need to check it out.  It is an insightful and challenging on-line journal which explores the intersection of Theology and Culture.  Here are the different categories which the journal explores:

Articles:  This section has connection to the latest articles, this issues topic being Pop Revolutions featuring people like Miroslav Volf and Shane Claiborne.  This section also has links to the most viewed articles like:  All Sexed Up: Is There a Way Out of Chasity, Marriage, and the Christian Sex Cult by Dan Rhoades.  Or Reconciling Sufjan Stevens: Religious Hipsters and The Inevitable Queerness of Christian Music by John Totten.

Examination: Theological glances into relevant historical movements, current events and cultural trends.

Creation: An art gallery that invites you to experience the diverse work of unique artists.

Imagination: A hub of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Creative writing that boldly gazes into the human condition.

Perspective: Articles that interact with film, music, and literature.  Taking a deeper look into the lives and work of current artists.

Social Justice: Articles exploring how to be proactive in affecting the world around us, discussing the problems and solutions facing us.

You may have read a number of journals, but you haven't read enough journals until you have encountered The Other Journal.  I think you will like it.

Words for Artists from T.S. Elliot

For those of you who are musicians, involved in film making or other artistic endeavors, you have the opportunity to help shape people's lives in deep ways.  I hope that this quote from T.S. Elliot will stimulate you to help people think more deeply about the transcendent and reality.  Now for the quote: “A great poet or a serious artist should be able to perceive or distinguish more clearly than ordinary people the forms and objects within the range of ordinary experience and ‘be able to make people see and hear more at each end’ of the spectrum of their sensibility than they could ever notice without his help.” 

Hollywood and the Ancient Text - 2007

So this past year we observed the Christian calendar from Advent to Pentecost.  During the ordinary part of the Christian Calendar year, we are looking at various themes from the book of Genesis.  The first theme is that of creativity. 

In light of creativity and culture, we are doing our annual Hollywood and the Ancient Text series starting today - June 3rd.  It is a series where we take some of the top films of this past year and bring them into conversation with the Scripture.  We took at survey with our congregation here in Hollywood to discover their interest and then I met with some of the people who will be helping to speak during this series.  In light of the survey and the thoughts from the other speakers, we came up with this years line up.  Drum roll please....

June 3rd - The Pursuit of Happyness
June 10th - Blood Diamond
June 17th - The Devil Wears Prada
June 24th - Letters from Iwo Jima or Babel
July 1st - Little Miss Sunshine
July 8th - The Last King of Scotland

If you are in town, drop by, if you are elsewhere, tune into the podcast. Just go to itunes and search for  Kairos Los Angeles.

Heinz 57 Spirituality - Part I

First, this is a quick announcement to all those trying to get your start in film.  Heinz 57 is having a competition for the next great commercial. You post your 30 second commercial on YouTube and then they will pick the top 15 and put on their site.  After the voting the winner wins $57,000.  Complete rules are here.  It is a pretty clever advertising scheme.  But that is not what this series of posts is going to be about.

A few weeks ago, I started to make a post on the topic of Spiritual Formation or Communal Transformation.  I am starting it one more time.  The next several posts are actually a paper I just wrote for one of my classes at Fuller.  So I hope you enjoy this new series that I have entitled Heinz 57 Spirituality.  I would love your thoughts on this as I post it.  It is the seed of an idea I have for a book that I hope to publish someday, Lord willing.  Enough said, let's dive in.

HEINZ 57 SPIRITUALITY
Living in the New Hollywood Apartments gives me plenty of opportunity to test out my lack of knowledge as a Carpenter.  Even though for six months in my life I was a carpenter’s helper, the only thing that I really learned as a carpenter’s helper is how to demolish things that were messed up, because we worked a lot with restoring houses and businesses that were fire damaged.  I never got a handle on fixing things up again.  So when I have to fix something in my apartment, it is a real nightmare.

A while back I was trying to fix a drawer. I came to that one screw I had to get loose, and the more I worked to loosen that screw the tighter it seemed to get. A carpenter friend of mine was visiting me and saw my dilemma.  He looked for a moment or two and said, "Oh, this has a left-handed thread. It's a reverse screw. You have to tighten or loosen it going in the opposite direction." I’m thinking, it took me 10 years to find out how screws work, and now they change the rules on me?

There's a sense in which Spiritual Formation is kind of like a reverse screw. Everything in the culture that seems right, in the Scripture, comes out wrong. The way up is the way down. The way to spiritual wealth is to acknowledge your spiritual poverty. The way to live is to die. The way to rule is to serve. I mean, the screw just doesn't work right. It's out of place.

But unless we understand the reverse nature of the screw, we will never be the people that God is longing for us to become.  Too often, we approach life transformation in the same way the world does, we adopt the values of our culture and work real hard to tighten the screw only to find out that the tighter the screw gets the less we become like Jesus.

The sad fact of is that if I am honest with my community and myself, we aren’t the kind of people that God wants us to be yet, we aren’t even the kind of people that we hope to be.  When I look back over this past week, or this past month, or this past year, I ask myself “Is there anything I wish I would have done differently?”  I can think of time when I wish I had kept my mouth shut, rather than saying something stupid or degrading to someone else.  There are other times I wish I would have opened my mouth and given someone encouragement, comfort or a proper rebuke.  There are times I wish I would have been more humble, or more respectful.  There are times where I feel I have fallen into the consumeristic trap and lived more selfishly than I wanted to live.  I am a cracked pot.

BECOMING MORE LIKE JESUS
More than anything in life, I want to be more like Jesus. It is my prayer and hope that the community that I help lead would become more like Jesus.  An encouraging verse I was thinking about recently was, “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” 

Being Christ-like has been a primary idea in the many books we have read for ML582.  We are to be more like Jesus, not just as individuals, but as communities of God’s people.  John Drane in The McDonaldization of the Church has this to say:

"Counting people should not be made a substitute for taking the risk to focus on discipleship, renewal and ministry.  A more discerning question will be not, 'how many of us are there?' but 'how much like Christ have we become?'" (47)

Stanley Hauerwas put it this way:

"The most important social task of Christians is to be nothing less than a community capable of forming people with virtues sufficient to witness to God’s truth in the world… it is not the task of the Church to try to develop social theories or strategies… rather, the task of the Church… is to become a polity that has the character necessary to survive as a truthful society." (3)

And finally, Dallas Willard encourages the church to focus on the goal being like Christ by putting our efforts under God and making  “spiritual formation in Christlikeness the exclusive primary goal of the local congregation.” (235)

Being a Christian means following the ways of Jesus, living like he lived.  What is encouraging to me is that John, who spent a lot of time with Jesus, also had a hard time following him. We know he was messed up, because we have the gospels to prove it.

Not only that, but John was writing to people like us who were messed up.  The good news is that he believed that God had the power to transform people to the point that, if Jesus came to live in their shoes for a day, there would have been no difference.

So how will this transformation happen?  What are ways in which we can assess our own spiritual formation as well as that of our community or ministry?  Stayed tuned for Part II.

Interesting News

  Italian love 
  Originally uploaded by Pensiero.

In Defense of Film Critics
As a person who loves to engage culture, who has planted a church in the Hollywood and a person who loves films, I found this piece on film critics interesting.  I love films, but I also enjoy hearing a good honest review of a film by a film critic, often before seeing movie.  In this article, the Christian Monitor's movie critic weighs in on why viewers and reviewers don't always see eye-to-eye.

We are All Hokies
This article talks about social networking at it relates to the Virginia Tech Tragedy.  It says, "Social networking sites have played a major role in this catastrophe, linking up members with information, hotline numbers and the latest news stories."  Facebook has been the most active social network, with over 500 new groups have been created to give tribute to those at Tech.  I joined facebook about a month ago and found it the most effective way connect with people in my past.

The Democratic Presidential Debate
I was unable to watch the debates last night, but was glad that MSNBC put it all on video, question by question on their website to watch.  If you didn't get a chance to watch the debates, you can watch them on-line now.  You can watch the debate, some after debate interviews as well as different people's analysis.

The Holy Spirit

  Der Heilige Geist 
  Originally uploaded by Princeps autem justus.

Kim Fabricius has another set of propositions listed at Faith and Theology. This entry is entitled: Ten Propositions on the Holy Spirit.  As a taste, here are two entries:

8. The Holy Spirit gathers the church – in order to send the church. “The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning” (Emil Brunner). In his seminal Transforming Mission, David Bosch observes that whereas Paul relates pneumatology primarily to the church, “the intimate linking of pneumatology and mission is Luke’s distinctive contribution to the early church’s missionary paradigm…. For Luke, the concept of the Spirit sealed the kinship between God’s universal will to save, the liberating ministry of Jesus, and the worldwide mission of the church.” Bosch also observes that while the early Fathers focussed on the Spirit “as the agent of sanctification or as the guarantor of apostolicity,” and the Reformers “put the major emphasis on the work of the Spirit as bearing witness to and interpreting the Word of God,” it was only in the twentieth century that there was “a gradual rediscovery of the intrinsic missionary character of the Holy Spirit.”

10. The Holy Spirit is the divine glorifier. After Moltmann, both Pannenberg and Robert Jenson find a direct connection between pneumatology and eschatology. Both accord an ontological priority to the future and link it to the Spirit: Pannenberg speaks of the future as God’s mode of being, and Jenson says that “the Spirit is God’s own future that he is looking forward to.” They both seem to bind God’s deity to the perfecting work of the Spirit, which is the apotheosis of creation. Although there are philosophical (Hegelian) problems with this vision, and theological dangers too, there is an awesome boldness, beauty, and grandeur to it. In the eschaton, the Holy Spirit is stage centre, cover of anonymity blown, face-to-face in the faces of all the redeemed in their infinite diversity (Vladimir Lossky). The end is doxology.

My Top Five Films in 2006

  filma1 
  Originally uploaded by hkvam.

While there are many good films I have yet to see this year; I wanted to share with you my favorite films from 2006 as of today.  While they are not in any particular order, I have included a little blurb of why I enjoyed the film and what the film got me to think about personally.

What I noticed about most of the films I chose this year, is that they tended to be either tragedy or comedy.  This reminded me of something I had read in one of N.T. Wrights books entitled Simply Christian, where he said,

“The ancient Greeks told a story of two philosophers.  One used to come out of his front door in the morning and roar with laughter.  The world was such a comical place that he couldn’t help it.  The other came out in the morning and burst into tears. The world was so full of sorrow and tragedy that he couldn’t help it.  In a sense, they were both right.  Comedy and tragedy both speak of things being out of order – in the one case, simply by being incongruous and therefore funny; in the other case, by things not going the way they should, and people being crushed as a result.  Laughter and tears are a good index of being human.  Crocodiles look as though they’re crying, but they’re not sad.  You can program a computer to say something funny, bit it will never get the joke.”

With that said, here are my top five films of this past year, again, in no particular order:

Blood Diamond
This film depicts that we tend to go after what we consider to be most valuable in life.  For some people it is a gem, for others a world-breaking story, and for others its their family.  We are reminded that if our greatest passion is not God, we all inevitably help to make the world a bloodier place.

Babel
Ever since the Tower of Babel the need to be understood and accepted has multiplied.  This film helps us to remember that most people today still live in Babel, and in a strange way, in all its rawness, the film also reminds us that the human spirit longs for a fresh sense of Pentecost where we can find understanding and acceptance.

Little Miss Sunshine
This comedy gets us laughing at the craziness of being human and reminds us that we are all messed up and somehow molded by the world around us.  The film gives the words “dysfunctional families” a new name and a new laugh.  In its honesty we are reminded that ever since Cain and Abel, every family is qualified to get their MTV reality show.

The Illusionist
Perception is reality for the observer; but what is real and what is an illusion?  This film through a number of surprising plot twists always keeps us thinking about our own perceptions of reality and reminds us that how we perceive life tends to shape our actions. In a world of deception and illusions, we all need a little medicine for our eyes from the One who fully lives in reality.

The Departed
In a world filled with many moles, it can be hard to know whom to trust. Who are our allies and who are our enemies?  While we long to live in a world where we can trust people more readily, life can often get to the point where we don’t know who to trust anymore.  At that point, we have a few options. One option is that we live for ourselves, and find a way to get rid of every potential mole.  But this option leaves us a bit lonely. The other option is that we entrust ourselves to the One who calls us to love both our friends and our enemies.  While this path involves suffering, it also involves fellowship with the One who suffered much.  In the end, our choice of whom we trust determines if we will live alone or in rich unending community.

The Golden Globe Nominations

Okay, living in Hollywood kind of demands that I keep up a bit with what is happening in the film industry.  It is part of practicing bilingual theological reflection - learning the grammar of the culture and the grammar of the Kingdom.  Not only that, but I enjoy watching films.  They often cause me to reflect more deeply about life issues, at least the good films.  Babel ended up getting the lead in Golden Globe nominations with seven, while Scorses's The Departed picked up six nominations. 

So here are the Golden Globe nominations for categories of best picture:

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Babel
Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Koji Yakusho, Andriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuschi  Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Bobby
The Cast is huge, including Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Demi Morre, Martin Sheen, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood and others
Director:  Emilio Estevez

The Departed
Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg
Director: Martin Scorsese

Little Children
Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Gregg Edelman, Sadie Goldstein, Jennifer Connelly, Jane Adams, Phyllis Smerville, Trini Alvardo and Sarah Buxton
Director: Todd Field

The Queen
Helen Mirren, Micheal Sheen, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms, Alex Jennings, Helen Mccrory and Roger Allam
Director: Stephen Frears

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Sacha Baron Cohen, Pamela Anderson and Ken Davitan
Director: Larry Charles

The Devil Wears Prada
Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Emily Blunt and Adrian Grenier
Director: David Frankel

Dreamgirls
Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles and Eddie Murphy
Director: Bill Condon

Little Miss Sunshine
Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, with Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin
Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Thank You For Smoking
Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy and Robert Duvall
Director: Jason Reitman

If you want to learn more about who has been nominated for best actor, actress and the rest, then you just click here for this years nominations. While I haven't seen all of these films, I have seen six of them and in my next post I will probably be mentioned the top five films that I have personally seen in 2006.

A place I always visit before seeing any film is Rotten Tomatoes.  I enjoy their format.  I like to see what both the critics and the typical person are thinking about the film.  Here is the news story on the Golden Globes - "Babel," "Departed," And a Few Surprises Lead the Golden Globes Nominations.     

Los Angeles Film Critics 2006 Awards

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association came out with there picks for 2006.  Clint Eastwood's World War II drama "Letters From Iwo Jima" - a recollection of the famed 1945 battle told from the Japanese perspective was named best picture. It opens December 20th.  As far as how they will affect the Oscars, The Envelope says, "The LAFCA's choice for best film has rarely agreed with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' winner.  It has been 13 years - when they each selected "Schindler's List" - that both groups have been in accord."

"Last year, though, several of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. winners went on to Oscar glory - best actor Philip Seymour Hoffman for "Capote," best director Ang Lee for "Brokeback Mountain" and best animated film, "Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit."

If you want to keep up on the latest Oscar buzz, then check out The Envelope.   Another site that gives some helpful information on the Oscars is The Film Experience.  Here are some of the LAFCA awards, you can go to their site to get the rest of the awards.

Blood Diamond

Last night I had the chance to see Blood Diamond in a special screening at the Arclight in Hollywood.  It was a moving film that caused me to think about a number of issues.  Having just got back from Africa a couple of months ago, and continuing to do some work in Kenya, I am especially drawn to films like Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamond, because they are based on real life issues.  In fact, the UN states in an article on this issue that "December 1, 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted, unanimously a resolution on the role of diamonds and armed conflict, as a contribution to prevention and settlement of conflicts. In taking up this agenda item, the Gener
al Assembly recognized that conflict diamonds are a crucial factor in prolonging brutal wars in parts of Africa." (More about this and the Kimberly Process at the end of the article.)

While I'm not intending on writing a review here, I will say that Edward Zwick the director did cause me to think more about the ethical choices that I make in life.  I like movies that do that for me.  I felt freshly awakened to care about more justice issues. 

Edward Zwick has produced and/or directed the likes of The Last Samurai, Traffic and Shakespeare in Love.  In an interview about Blood Diamond he shared, "To me this movie is about what is valuable.  To one person it might be a stone; to someone else, a story in a magazine; to another, it is a child.  The juxtaposition of one man obsessed with finding a valuable diamond with another man risking his life to find his son is the beating heart of this film."  I would have to agree and say that it did make my heart beat.

A particular moving story line for me was watching how Dia, who is the son of Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), was recruited and trained to be a part RUF a rebel army.  Watching that part of the story line helped me remember the hundreds of thousand of kids in different parts of Africa are being recruited to fight wars they don't really want to fight.  It seems what is happening in Sierra Leone with the recruitment of kids into rebel forces, as depicted in Blood Diamond; is very similar to what is happening in Uganda, with the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), as told in the rough cut film The Invisible Children. (That film is a must-see as well.)

To learn a little more about blood diamonds or conflcit diamonds in today's world, Amnesty International has written a couple of articles on the issue.  In the conflict diamonds article they talk about a major milestone that occurred in 2003, "when a government-run initiative known as the Kimberly Process was introduced to stem the flow of conflict diamonds.  The Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) imposes requirements on participants to certify that shipments of rough diamonds are conflict-free.  In the US, the KPCS is enforced by the Clean Diamond Trade Act, also introduced in 2003, which requires annual reviews of the standards, practices and procedures of any entity in the US that issues KP certificates for the export of rough diamonds." I would say, check out the movie and then let me know what you thought about it.  It looks like DiCapro is getting a little Oscar buzz for both this film and The Departed.