Box Office Mojo > News > ‘Pirates’ Loot Piles Up, ‘Lady’ Walks Plank

M. Night Shyamalan used to mean must see in our house. He creates films that make my family think, while giving us a good time. He has managed to create films that the morally traditional who are not prigs can enjoy. His best films (Signs! The Village!) frighten as Doyle or Poe would frighten with intelligent writing instead of CG effects.

It is no accident that Wheatstone Academy used “The Village” to discuss film and pop culture last year. It raised important issues of community and values that most other movies are afraid to ask. We will not be doing the same with “Lady in the Water.”

Why did M. Night Shyamalan think he could make a movie with a story that he was making up as he went along? The “Lady” has a script so messy, but is filmed so beautifully that when it ended I assumed I had missed something. Surely, no movie by M. Night Shyamalan could be this bad. It telegraphed its ending and it introduced plot twists without building up to them.

In the “Village”, you felt any plot surprise was natural to the story. In “Lady,” you could hear Shyamalan saying, “Cool. Let’s try this.”

Reviews on the web keep using terms like “self-indulgent.” I doubt that. It felt more “tired” as in “I am on a roll and my backers, and hungry family, want more movies from me. Better strike while the iron is hot, but I am out of stories to tell.” so M. Night Shyamalan decided to cannibalize his bed time stories to his children from plot. That works when you are Tolkien, but it turns out that Shyamalan is no Tolkien.

The acting in the film is very good. . . both Ron Howard’s daughter, Bryce Howard, and an eccentric Paul Giamatii are very good. Any given moment of the film is beautiful with Howard often looking like an icon of the Blessed Virgin and the Dante-like ending (Saint Lucy!) nearly redeeming the film.

But the Eagle that comes at the end of the film feels like part of a pointless universe, not like the Eagle of the Comedy with its mythic roots or even Bilbo’s Eagle in the Hobbit. M. Night Shyamalan looks like he is in search of truth, goodness, and beauty and has decided to find it in his own head.

Since his head is full of clever ideas and at least does not seem stripped of myth like most Hollywood types, even this film has merits. However, these merits are not worth the money for a first run viewing and only merit a “dollar theater” run if you want to see pieces of a good movie. Feel free to get pop corn, in this movie the sum is less than the parts.

The box office suggest I am not alone.

We continue our journey through Britain and Paris by looking for Arthur, attacking Henry, and wondering about Warwick.

When I imagine the sky, I always see it through the leaves of the Glastonbury thorn. The Southern California sky is too empty and the sun too bright for my weak eyes. The sun of England is not so strong and the gentle shade of the Thorn tree helps me see.

They say, in Glastonbury, that in ancient times Joseph of Arimathea traded in tin here and brought the young Jesus here for a time. After the Christ died, Joseph came and built a Church and planted the Thorn tree. He may, the stories say, have also hid the Grail somewhere in Glastonbury.

The Glastonbury legend may not be true, Jesus may never have walked to the top of Tor or lived near the mines of the Roman village, but it is still a sacred place. Hundreds of years of Christians built here, worshipped here, and tended the thorn tree . . . hoping to see it bloom on Christmas day. I am told that the Queen, God save her, has a cutting from the Thorn in the palace at the Christ Mass.

(more at Middlebrow…)

It is with great sorrow that I am informed of the following (based on my post regarding the Scott home)

Dame Jean Maxwell- Scott, the last direct descendant of Sir Walter, a great, great, great grand daughter died just over 2 years ago. As a result the future of the house is in doubt at the moment and there is no Scott relative in residence.

(more at Middlebrow…)

His first veto was to save unborn children. His first veto will not be popular, but listen to what he said:

In this new era, our challenge is to harness the power of science to ease human suffering without sanctioning the practices that violate the dignity of human life.

Do you think Hilary would have taken this stand? Or Kerry? Are both parties the same? If so, read the rest of the story here.

Opposition to Bush and to these babies consists of facile arguments that boil down to babies having a duty to die so that I can live.

Google up the reaction from people on the other side who see the baby Bush is holding in this picture and wish policy were such that this infant had no chance at life. One says:

Brain damaged Bush ranting and raving about adopting frozen embryos. Please. Don’t we have enough real live babies in the world who need adopting without adopting snowflakes? Just a thought.

Do you really want to give those folk the keys to Congress, because you are irritated with some things Bush has or has not done?

I have spoken at Orange County’s Nightlight Adoption Agency, a pioneer in this practice. I have met the energetic and delightful children the other side wishes would go away.

Nightlight and George Bush are willing to allow their potential to become actualized and enrich us all. The Nightlight folk in particular are good people who deserve your support and whose unsung heroism to give children life helped make Bush’s brave stand possible.

Adoption. Life from death. A brave leader who defies the polls to do what he must. Politics is sometimes a dirty business, but today we are reminded why we have to be in it.

And by the way, the most accurate poll in the last election says:

For the first time since April 13, the President’s Job Approval rating has moved up to 45%. Just 53% disapprove. These figures include 22% who Strongly Approve and 37% who Strongly Disapprove of his performance.

What does Jimmy Carter have in common with Richard III? Who is Jon Olson? What do Constantine and James Herriot have in common? What is so great about York Minster? These and other questions will be answered, at long last, in our continuing journey through Britain.

York is underrated, really underrated. Of course the country side is lovely, All Creatures on PBS, taught us that. The city is great as well, marked by the best of Britain. . . combining old world streets (the Shambles), fun Ye Olde Tourist Shoppes, and a first-class modern city. Avoid what bothers you, there is something for everyone in York.
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John McCain keeps saying things like this:

…”I urge my friends who complain about the influence of the religious Right, get out there and get busy. That’s what they do! Now, if we believe in the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, the big-tent party, then we have to get out there and show that. The fact is, some of us have sat idly by while those very active people have basically set the agenda for our party. I get attacked every day because I’m working with Ted Kennedy. How can I work with Kennedy? Because I want to get something done!” …

This interview is confusing. Is he saying there is room in the Republican party for traditionally religious folk and others? That is true enough, but his later comments (”those very active people. . .”) imply he opposes the agenda they set and that he doesn’t care for them. McCain has made that kind of noise before this.
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If any friend of Mitt Romney, one thinks of Hugh Hewitt here, is reading, then I would like to make the governor and future candidate for president an offer.

A great many people are saying that Romney cannot get Evangelical votes for president, because he is a Mormon. I think they are wrong. The Evangelical community is mature enough to know that they are voting for President not Chief Pastor. It is too early to pick a candidate but Romney looks good: very smart, a leader, and good on the Big Issues.

I would like to invite Romney to speak to the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University this fall to see if I am right. Biola has a long, positive history of interaction, positive engagement and thoughtful disagreement with the LDS community especially under the leadership of Craig Hazen.

We would like Romney to take his case for support from Evangelicals to the heart of thoughtful, young future Evangelical leaders. We would ask Hugh Hewitt, if he agrees, to host the event. Romney can say what he pleases as long as the Torrey chums are allowed to ask questions.

If Romney cannot sell the Socratically trained Torrey students, he has no hope to persuade West Virginia. In another era, a different son of Massachusetts made his case in front of a “hostile” crowd for consideration as President. John F. Kennedy made a great case and won that election. I believe this is Romney’s chance to make such a speech.

Will Romney come?

Without even saying “Aaar,” I shall jump into all things pirate-y and return to my thoughts on Britain and France formed from my trip last month. . . hang in there with me and I promise to mention Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and the movie.

Just visiting Walter Scott’s magnificent home at Abbotsford can change your life.

Scott loved the past, built a house that celebrated it, but was also a man of the future. His ability to make a living writing novels was one sign of a changing world. Scott understood that the job of a true conservative was to save that which could be saved from the old world he loved, while embracing the best of that which was coming. He must honor the past, live in the present, and have no fear of the future.

Scott did not fear the future, because he knew that he could keep many of the comforts of the past. He also understood the Providence of God, as a good Presbyterian, and that all change was in His hands.

A reactionary harms the very things he loves and is no true friend of the Old Ways. By trying to give them life past their time, he makes them undead and ugly. If the family will not bury the dead, then it will fall to those without love of the old ways to do so. They will do so in revolutions and make ugliness, destroying even things not yet ready to die. In this way, much will be lost that should have been saved and that which should have been lost will not be given an honorable burial.

Tsardom refused to change in the way Scott (and others) convinced English aristocrats to change and so unhallowed hands were laid on it and Russia herself was lost, perhaps beyond hope of recovery.

This progressive conservative spirit is found in “The Pirate.” In this book, which when finished with this article you should tab to Amazon and order, Scott shows the appeal of the pirate. Women swoon, at first, and strong men admire, though only from afar. Soon the moral wickedness of the pirate destroys all those around him. His appeal is great, but like dark magic or social revolutions it gives good only superficially and soon destroys those who love it.
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Tonight the face of the coming Bolshevik regime in Russia was made clear. Tonight Lenin gave the order to butcher Nicholas Romanov and his family in a basement in Siberia.

Gentle young women and the hemophiliac Russian heir were killed with bullets and bayonets for no good political reason beyond a belief in the power of terror.
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Teacher had me stand on a stage and chant with scores of other students about the enviromental crisis that was about to end Western civilization. Only a pop-eyed optimist could imagine that raw materials would even exist, let alone cars, in the twenty-first century.

We live in an age where cynics have convinced us that it is better to be a pessimist than an optimist. I see no evidence that pessimists are right more often than optimists, but the tragic viewpoint has received the cultural blessing of being serious.

When I was in government school as a kid, I was told that we would be less well off than our parents, that religion was decreasing in public life, and that the future belonged to the Soviet Union. Even gas is still much cheaper than the doom sayers told me it would be in the nuclear winter in which my best option for food might be my neighbor.

I did not believe the “wise teachers” then. . . and I don’t believe the pundits now.

When it comes to America, pessimists are almost never right. So what if ten great things that could happen do happen?

In foreign affairs, five:

What if Iraq becomes a functional democracy?
What if Israel defeats the Iranian backed terrorists in their present assault?
What if their defeat at the hands of Israel brings down the Iranian regime?
What if we find Bin Laden?
What if the Beloved Tyrant of North Korea dies around the same time as Castro and both are replaced by better states?

In national affairs:

What if rising oil prices renews faith in safe nuclear and clean coal power, we start using them, and stop being energy importers?
What if the rising tide of religious children grow up to be the professors of the next generation?
What if African-Americans get tired of their votes in general elections being used by secularists to support gay marriage?
What if the economy, over the course of any decade, keeps growing and the poor become less poor?
What if the Bush court returns abortion and many other divisive social issues to the states where they belong?

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Thank you so much good friends for having us here today. Thank for you for the chance to say a few words and honor you. You are worthy of honor having done what was right and having come to this place a man and woman with whole souls. . . thoughtful, passionate, and active.

Ephesians 5

31″Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Our culture both loathes and loves mysteries. On the one hand, we want the Big Things to be clear and without danger of being confusing. We count on science to clear up confusions and prove that there are not monsters under our beds so that we can sleep easily at night. In another age, children were taught to pray, “If I should die before I wake. . .” In this age, we convince ourselves that if we just follow the instructions of Big Medicine such an outcome, if not impossible, is so unlikely as not to merit much worry.

The problem with the nice and tidy universe of scientism is that it is at war with personality and love. Predictable behavior is by its very nature not human behavior. If I know what is going to happen tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, life becomes very dull. So our culture tries to have it both ways and re-introduce mystery at the fuzzy edges of science or in our entertainment. We are glad that there are no real Pirates in the Caribbean, since that would interrupt our cruise, but love pretending that Blackbeard was just an ill tempered Johnny Depp. We need a Savior, have gotten rid of the real one’s job by worshipping at the Church of Scientism, but then try to bring him back in our Comic Book Movies. They are not real saviors, but we can pretend for the two hours or so that the film lasts and try to find meaning.

Is mystery possible in a world where the highest mountain can be conquered by the rich, the Titanic has been found, and Loch Ness appears empty?

The message of Saint Paul in this passage reminds us that it can still be found and in fact is before us this evening in the marriage of Alisa and Joshua. The mystery that our hearts crave was never really about the unexplored regions on nineteenth century maps. It was always about a desire for the Other . . . for something that could be bigger than we are and help surmount our isolation.

For the universe presented by scientism, which reduces everything to its parts, is cold. It is a universe where every man and woman is alone. Against that, Christianity rejects the solution, so appealing to the secularist, of irrational mystery. Instead, we accept true science, reason, and find mystery in the nature of love. Our mystery is found in our rejection of the completeness of scientific explanation and the demand that Intellect which houses Goodness, Truth, and Beauty also be explained. This is splendid and endlessly fascinating. . . much more so than any image or any tale.

Just as a star is not what is made of, that hot glowing ball of gas of our textbooks, so persons are not the sum of their parts. There is more to Joshua than a list of his attributes and there is more to Alisa than can be found in any detailed listing of her many virtues.

Alisa and Joshua are humans which means that they move beyond what can be described using only reductive techniques. They are persons created in the Divine Image. As such there is no end to the surprises that each contain, as their parents and friends already know.

However, when a man and a woman, as different as two humans can be, reach out to fellowship with each other in the intimacy of marriage something even greater happens. The mystery begins and they become locked into a full expression of that Divine Image. As head, Joshua leads Alisa toward a profound union of two souls. As his completion, his created end, Alisa in her act of unmerited condescension, her submission that echoes Christ’s own, makes Joshua’s leadership meaningful.

Joshua, I charge you to remember that no image, no flickering picture on any cave wall, can capture what is being given to you. There is no way to reduce the glory and the meaning of a soul giving herself to you in order to allow you to do whatever it is that God has called the both of you to do. If you lead without making Alisa your earthly glory, then you blaspheme. You destroy the mysterious moving image, a movie indeed, of Christ and His Church that is designed to draw all men to faith.

Alisa, I charge you to recollect that your full completion is only found in Christ, your highest head. Any thing you give to Joshua is given at His command and as practice for the greater joy to come. Love will come easy to you, but do not forget to honor. Do not let words substitute for the reality of the hard work of sacrificial love. If his words are clumsy, remember Joshua’s deeds and honor all you can honor.

Today those of us who witness this act of union see the mystery that explains the entire cosmos. We see two becoming one just as one a starlit night we see the multitude of stars becoming one in the great Dance of the Universe. We see the meaning of sexuality, the glory of the union that will come, to produce the third and new thing, children in their Image and even more in His Image, that are the future of Christendom. We see the meaning, the mystery, the glory of a Love that does not just move the heavens and the furthest stars, but moves Joshua to take Alisa as his bride. For those of us who know them know this: there is more greatness in one look from Alisa than in all the starlight that has ever brightened the paths of men and there is more of the Divine in one word from Joshua than in all the songs of nature.

They are in His image today. Alisa stands for us as Joshua stands for Christ. The reminder that even Joshua is not worthy of his role, reminds us of the need for humility. . . which as worldy success comes will be the key for Joshua becoming the man of God he was designed to be. The reminder that Alisa so pure and shining before us will be loved on this very day is reminder of the joy to come. There is a honeymoon coming for each one of this, but a honeymoon without hope of disappointment, ending or sorrow. The image we see today will be made Real and with Joshua and Alisa we too will stand at the Greater Wedding, locked in love with Him whom moves the Heavens and the stars.

She is plainly bright, painfully young, and very earnest about her first book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. The only problem with Michelle Goldberg is that she did her research on the fly, has not bothered to understand the language of the community she is studying, and wildly misunderstood it. Nobody would take someone seriously who did not understand the serious differences between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam. Goldberg makes mistakes nearly as serious. . . constantly conflating Pentecostals with Fundamentalists with extreme Reformed theologians as if the differences did not matter.

She has a thesis and she is sticking to it: American Protestant traditional Christians have created a vile sub-culture that threatens our very way of life. This despite the fact that the three issues she hits on hardest: abortion, forcing religion out of schools (including “creationism”), and gay rights were aggressive secularist changes to our nation in the last thirty years. The “religious right” agenda, outside the fringes, is mostly defensive.

In my father’s lifetime, abortion was illegal in most states, prayer was given in our schools and at football games (though nobody was forced to pray), and nobody considered that a vice could become a civil right. Was this a theocracy? Was the nation of John F. Kennedy in the grip of the Taliban?
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One of the most bizarre anti-war claims is that Sadaam was a secular ruler and could not expect to make peace with the Islamic terrorists and work with them. The Iranian War with Sadaam is cited as proof that the Baath party and Persian theocracy could never work together.

As we now can see hatred of the US and Israel unites all parties amongst the Evil Middle East Regimes.

Read the following from today’s news:

Iran warned its arch-enemy Israel of “unimaginable losses” if it attacks Syria and vowed that it was standing by the Syrian people.

“We hope the Zionist regime does not make the mistake of attacking Syria, because extending the front would definitely make the Zionist regime face unimaginable losses,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

Of course, even our friends, such as they are, in the Middle East are not so reconstructed that they will support Israel’s right of self-defense. This basic irrationality, one of the main road blocks to peace, can be cured. . . as we proved in German reconstruction after World War II, but it will take time. If our friends in Iraq cannot think straight regarding Israel, what about those who make anti-Semite rhetoric their chief international vocabulary?

In the majority of Middle East states hatred of Israel and the US is a deliberate policy of failed states to distract the people from their failures, it flourishes without check.

Does anyone doubt that a Sadaam with millions in Food for Oil money, some old WMD, and tons of conventional weapons would not be helping Islamic terrorists?

You cannot doubt it now since the last Baathist regime in the area is now getting support from the main (non-Arab at that!) theocracy. Religious Iran supports secular Syria and is giving arms and men to the terrorists that are at war with both Israel and the US. Hatred of the US and Israel trumps any other consideration. Aren’t you glad (we know Israel is) that there is not also a mad Sadaam adding armed support?

We are in a global war against terror. This terror comes to us from the Islamic world and is tied to a reading or misreading of the Koran accepted by a large minority of Moslems.

Only one nation has had to face this terror for decades. Only one nation faces immediate extinction and genocide if it prevails. The Middle East has only one democracy, and the United States only one true friend in the region outside of the embryonic state of Iraq and that is Israel.

Israel is not perfect by any means, but Arabs living in Israel can be citizens and vote. The life of a Moslem in Israel is greatly preferable to the lives of most Moslems in nations that are controlled by Moslems.

Israel always understood why Sadaam had to go. It was living next to an evil man who wanted WMD in order to conquer the Middle East. He was in a cage, but had millions of dollars and the cage was becoming more weak by the day. They had been bombed by his missiles and watched citizens die agonizing deaths. They stood by at our urging and were waiting for us to finish the job. It had to be done or break this implicit promise and we did it in our best interests, but also to protect a tiny ally from extinction from fanatical foes.
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Right now somewhere on the internet someone is seriously assuring you that if your church does not change its ideas to fit the fashion of the day, it will die. They will have diagrams, charts, and the advantage of youth. . . even if the writer is old. . . for advocating the spirit of the age is much cheaper than botox for church leaders who feel their youth fading.

Of course, ideas can be put in new packages. Liturgy in even the most traditional of churches evolves over time, but a certain sort of person, whether through fuzzy thinking or wickedness, bundles a change of message with a change of form. While the medium can be part of the message, it is not all of it. One can be a trinitarian who believes in sound doctrine in a great many different styles of worship. . . just as I have known heretics who get doctrine by divination of the cultural trends who were as traditional with their liturgy as any nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic.

So let me point out, for the doubter, the utter folly of those who advocate change in content for the sake of change of staying contemporary.

My favorite example at present is May Sinclair, a novelist and feminist, who did her best work in the early twentieth century. Her books are barely readable. . .they are in hack Victorian prose of the sort Trollope or Dickens would have written if they had started imitating Trollope or Dickens, but she has been pulled out of her total and blessed literary obscurity into the ungentle hands of Women’s Studies groups desperate for female authors to read who do not betray the ideology of the Department. The sad truth is that Austen and those Bronte girls are just not very feminist and are very Christian. The fact they wrote some of the best English prose of all time and were women is off set by the disturbingly romantic and traditional ideas in the book.

May Sinclair presents no such problems and requires no strained ideological reads. (”The balls in Austen are coded attacks on social repression.”) Sinclair may not write very well, but she is one of the team. She had some straight forward words for the Church and she pulled no punches.

As a fan of R.A. Torrey, who wrote about the same time, it is instructive to compare the two and what happened to the movements that followed their respective advice. Sinclair’s program for the church can be summed up as: “Make women priests and secularize fast!” Too much religious enthusiasm could lead to madness.

My favorite Sinclair quote has one of her favored characters say:

“I feel very strongly that taking over what you call the secular side is the Church’s one chance for survival. The people will be reconciled to the Church only if they see that the Church is identified with the common life and the common interests. We churchmen can only justify our existence through direct, personal service. Personal service and the increasing secularization of the Church’s outlook. Those are the great things.”

And another (sounding weirdly like Lewis’ Un-man of Perelandra) says:

“If God hasn’t created us, we must create God. . . . Out of ourselves. He is hidden in us as the germ is hidden in the womb. The world’s pain is the pain of labor, of bringing forth God. You see, we’ve got to change the Christian idea of God-made man to the idea of man-made God. God is not the great I AM. He is the great I SHALL BE.”

(A Cure of Souls, 1924)

All that sounds absurd enough now, even to secular ears, but people took it seriously then. Traditional Christians hated the thought, but moderates in their midst believed they had to change or die. At the same time , and I hope Fred Sanders can find some Torrey from 1924, R.A. Torrey was fighting back. He told the church to stick to the old ideas, but he was happy to use modern means of communication to do so.

Torrey preached Paul’s gospel using twentieth century techniques and fought Sinclair’s agenda with all his might. . . helping found the traditionalist reaction to secularism in the church.

What happened? Churches who listened to Torrey are thriving. Churches who listened to Sinclair are dead or dying. Now Sinclairism, the belief that the Church must adopt the ideas of the Academy of the time or die, is back in full cry. One of Sinclair’s favorite tactics was to claim that the real Jesus had gotten lost in a crust of old ideas that had nothing to do with the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We had to strip away those bad old ideas to get to the real Gospel which always amounted to something that (surprise!) was much more acceptable to smart folk of that age!

Sound familiar? I will leave it to the reader to supply his own examples from our own present May Sinclairs. Of course, they will claim to be different. . . and they are different, since intellectual fashion has changed in some areas (though not the obsession with women priests) and they are always highly attuned to fashion.

Amazing fact: one can safely ignore the wisdom of the Sinclairs and survive. In fact, it is the only way to thrive. My goal is to emulate R.A Torrey and preach the Old Time Religion by every means possible.