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29th
May
2006
Well I saw the movie the other night and it was not the best. I imagine if I had never read the book and hadn’t heard all the hype and just saw this for the first time on DVD I’d probably say it was not a bad thriller, albeit with some heretical elements to it. But after all the hype this movie was quite a let down. It just didn’t have anywhere near the level of suspense and “edge of your seat” factor that made the book so hard to put down. And some of the mysteries like the identity of the “Teacher” were handled so sloppily as to be very obvious even to people who’d never read the book (like Jennifer). As for the more controversial elements surrounding Mary Magdalene and Jesus, they were watered down so much as to be a big “so what?” - the pagan and “sacred feminine” aspects were virtually ignored so as to make the whole figure of Mary and the threat to the established church a much less coherent theme. Of course there were still several blatant historical untruths including the parts about Constantine, the Council of Nicea, and the Gnostic gospels. (for more resources on all that see my previous post and in particular Mark O’Brien’s entry and the article by N.T. Wright) Overall the movie was okay, but it could have been a lot better. Perhaps the mediocrity of this movie will help speed the inevitable dying down of all the fuss and controversy.
Categories : Movies |
29th
May
2006
Amazon.com: The Secret Message of Jesus : Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything: Books: Brian McLaren
I thought I’d post some brief thoughts on this book, which I finished about a week ago. Now I’m usually a big fan of McLaren’s work. Though I don’t always necessarily agree with what he says, I generally find his books to be both gracious and thought provoking, which I’d imagine is what Brian would want. Certainly those who jump to condemn him are not catching the spirit of humility and questioning with which he writes. Looking at the Amazon reviews for this book you can see the usual diverse spread of ratings, evenly split between the scathing 1 and 0 star reviews (many of who I suspect have not even read the book, or who read it with their minds already made up) and the gushing 4 and 5 star reviews (some of whom may be reading with their minds made up as well, but which usually represent more fair appraisals, at least in my opinion).
Anyway for some reason I just couldn’t get into this book as well as McLaren’s previous efforts. Maybe it was just that my head was not in the right place, but it just didn’t grab me in the same way as the New Kind of Christian trilogy for example. There was nothing I really disagreed with or found controversial (though no doubt others will find plenty of meat for their condemnation), and there was plenty of stuff I found myself nodding in agreeance with, but overall it just didn’t have a strong impact on me. It didn’t seem to flow as naturally as Brian’s other books, but once again that might be more due to where I was at than any inherent flaw in the book itself.
Overall it’s not a bad book, and I need to give it another chance with a re-reading at some point in the future, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the inspiring manifesto that it was hyped up to be. For a much better recent exposition of the heart of Christianity, I would recommend N. T. Wright’s Simply Christian, which I personally found to me not only more powerful and profound in it’s message, but more readable. Wright’s book is destined to be a classic, whereas there’s not much new in McLaren’s latest that hasn’t been said better elsewhere. I’m still a McLaren fan, but this is not his best work.
Categories : Christianity, books |
29th
May
2006
For some reason I seem to have bad luck with clock radios. After a period of time something always seems to go wrong with them, either the alarm or the clock or the music fails in some way. Anyway I hope my luck is going to change with my latest purchase, which I picked up on Saturday at Target
- it’s a Jensen iPod clock radio. As well as a standard digital AM/FM alarm clock this baby is a charging docking station for my iPod, which means I can choose to wake to whatever tunes I like in the morning. I could even wake to a Podcast if I wanted to - maybe I should start the day with the Daily Breakfast (although that would annoy two people - Jennifer at 5:30am and Owen on the way to school. He loves listening to the podcast and just today was asking “What’s Father Roderick talking about now?”)
Anyway it comes with a remote control which allows you to work all the functions of the radio, as well as Play/Pause and skipping tracks on the iPod itself. The speakers are quite good for such a small unit and the sound is very listenable, unlike most clock radios I’ve ever owned. Even at higher volumes it still sounds good, which has already provided the soundtrack to some heavy duty dancing on the bed by the kids. Perhaps the only negatives about it are that it doesn’t have dual alarms (which I’ve found to be quite useful in the past) and the clock is not very clear from across the room. Oh, and it only lets you “snooze” 3 times in a row, which may turn out to be a little inconvenient on these cold winter mornings. But overall, I’m very happy with it so far.
Categories : Personal, iPod |
