Thanks to my expanding knowledge of CSS I was able to do a complete site redesign in just a few hours. Just as simple as a new mock-up in Photoshop, slicing and dicing, and then working a bit of CSS magic and voila!

So the Oscars are about to begin and I’m going to post who I’m rooting for in each category. Later I’ll put in bold those whom I rooted for that actually took home an oscar!

Actor in a Leading Role
Forest Whitaker
The Last King Of Scotland

Actor in a Supporting Role
Djimon Hounsou
Blood Diamond

Actress in a Leading Role
I am lame and have not seen any of the nominated films!

Actress in a Supporting Role
Adriana Barraza
Babel

Animated Feature Film
I’ve only seen Monster House, which I really liked but can’t say I’m rooting for it over the others.

Art Direction
Eugenio Caballero (Art Direction); Pilar Revuelta (Set Decoration)
Pan’s Labyrinth

Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki
Children Of Men

Costume Design
Again… I’m lame.

Directing
Martin Scorsese
The Departed

Documentary Feature
An Inconvenient Truth

Documentary Short
I’m super lame.

Film Editing
Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise
Babel

Foriegn Language Film
Pan’s Labyrinth

Makeup
David Martí and Montse Ribé
Pan’s Labyrinth

Music (Score)
Javier Navarrete
Pan’s Labyrinth

Music (Song)
“I Need to Wake Up” Music and Lyric by Melissa Etheridge
An Inconvieniet Truth

Best Picture
Letters From Iwo Jima

Short Film (Animated)
I’m super-duper lame.

Short Film (Live Action)
Super super super lame.

Sound Editing
Christopher Boyes and George Watters II
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Sound Mixing
Paul Massey, Christopher Boyes and Lee Orloff
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Visual Effects
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall
Children of Men

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Guillermo Arriaga
Babel

So 7 of the 18 I was hoping for hit Oscar gold!

Last weekend I convinced some friends to join me watching Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Letters from Iwo Jima. Letters is a companion film to Eastwood’s earlier film from this year, Flags of Our Fathers, which I’ve yet to see. Each film takes a look at the same battle over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima from a different side, Flags from the American perspective and Letters from the Japanese.

Letters may indeed be a compelling war movie, a Japanese tear-jerker in the genre of Saving Private Ryan but I think most would agree that this film has a much more profound message. What Letters does such an excellent job of doing is showing just how much we Americans have in common with the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima. Their fears and dreams are the same as ours, their pride is as honorable and as blinding as our own. Letters gives almost no real face time to any Americans in the film with the exception of one kid from Oklahoma who is captured by the Japanese. We completely empathize with the Japanese. We root for them, even against our “own” army. In Letters the Americans are a scary invading force and its the Japanese who’s story we’ve entered into. A few characters in the film are also able to enter into the stories of their enemies and it gives them profound compassion in the midst of blind hatred and violence. The three Japanese soldiers and one American soldier who step out of their own national story which narrates the enemy as nothing more than a savage, subhuman creature to be destroyed are able to see that their enemies are indeed their brothers. It is this connection that paints the entire film and its violence as foolish, ignorant and unnecessary.

Having seen all the other best picture noms (with the exception of The Queen) I don’t see any way this film doesn’t grab picture of the year… unless Scorsese gets the nod as a recognition of his life’s work. But put Departed up against Letters and I think Letters is hands down a better film.

As the graphic design business picks up and is becoming more and more viable as an actual legitimate source of income, I’m devoting more time to learning more advanced techniques like CSS and the like. I’ll soon be (re)designing and (re)launching my freelance graphic design site (currently here).

But I need your help coming up with a great name for my new and budding company. If you often find yourself thinking “that would be a great band name!” then I’d love for you to put that same creativity towards helping me come up with a name for my design co. Some guidelines… it should be something that I can depict graphically, it should be brief.

So to the winner will go an iPod shuffle (color is your choice of course!). Be sure to give me your email address along with your name idea. I won’t give out any iPods to “anonymous.”

[Update: Brandon McDonald won the Shuffle.
The name will be Red Coyote Studio.]

From Mark Oestreicher

There’s a great discussion going on over at KC Armstrong’s blog Easily A Muse. What started out as a book review has become a conversation about the emerging church and the character of postmodernism and modernism from a Christian point of view.

Oddly enough there were large portions of this movie that reminded me of The Last King of Scotland. DiCaprio plays a cop who goes undercover and gets deep into the mafia while Damon plays the opposite, a made man who has infiltrated the Boston police. It is DiCaprio’s character, Billy Costigan and his relationship with Frank Costello played by Jack Nicholson that reminded me so much of Last King. Being in a very close relationship with an unstable, diabolical and powerful man but pretending the entire time, hoping not to be found out. The stress is intense. Unlike Last King, The Departed makes no attempt whatsoever at giving you a redemptive resolution. In this world of crooked cops and mafia bosses murder and betrayal is on par for the course and a happy resolution to this film would have seemed out of place, even though we long for it the whole time.

As a side note, Mark Wahlberg has been nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor… not to take anything away from Wahlberg or his performance, I am afterall becoming a bigger fan of his work every year… but seriously? His role in the Departed is so small, I think he’s on screen for 10 minutes max and we don’t get much from him other than a smart-ass angry cop, its not really a breakthrough performance or something we haven’t seen from him already. Okay… I’ve just seen way better work from Wahlberg, what about DiCaprio for his portryal of Costigan (or would he be the main actor?)? Anyway that just caught me a bit off guard.

Last night I went to a movie alone, as has become my habit of late, and one that I don’t really mind. Going alone often allows for much more reflection and immersion in a film. Needless to say though, I will be glad to go to movies with Kara again! The movie I went to see was The Last King of Scotland in which Forrest Whitaker plays the terrifying and somewhat charming Idi Amin, the brutal president of Uganda during most of the 1970’s. While Amin is the gravity of the film, all plots and figures being drawn into his world, we observe him mainly through the life of a young Scottish doctor named Nicholas Garrigan. The young Scotsman is as charming as Amin himself and they quickly become friends.

When Garrigan is drawn into Amin’s world however, he looses sight of the real Uganda. It isn’t until its almost too late that Garrigan realizes what and who Amin really is. What ensues is a terrifying and claustrophobic tale of Garrigan trying to stay alive by appeasing Amin and simultaneously trying to get the heck out of Uganda. Scary. And more scary than your average horror movie because of the reality of it all. This horror tale doesn’t have radio-active desert zombies bent on killing, it’s about the insane insecurity of a man with a lot of power.

I’ve been meaning to blog about Pan’s Labyrinth for a while now. I first saw it back in January when Kara was in town. I was expecting it to be great, I’d heard so much good stuff about it before going, and I wasn’t disappointed. Pan’s Labyrinth was everything that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wasn’t… frighteningly dark, sinister, subtler in its allegory and definitely not for kids. Pan’s Labyrinth is brutally violent early on in order to convince us of the ruthlessness of the antagonist. Later in the film more scenes could have shown even more violence but mercifully don’t.

For those of you who were confused like me, Pan is the name of a Faun. Not this particular faun, but a faun. In Spain where the film was made it was named Faun’s Labyrinth. Okay, now that aside… Pan’s Labyrinth begins with an “incarnation” of sorts. The king of the underworld’s daughter escapes to go live among us land-dwelling people, but as a consequence she dies a mortal’s death like us. But the King waits for her soul to return one day in another body. The rest of the story takes place in WWII Spain where fascists are fighting off guerrillas in the forest. Ofelia, a young girl is the stepdaughter of a fascist general (Yet another movie about children living in a broken world). She encounters a faun at the bottom of a spiral staircase in the center of a giant labyrinth behind the fascist stronghold.

The faun gives Ofelia several tasks to complete before the moon is full. The first, Rusty pointed out (perhaps soon in blog form), could be an allegory of capitalism. The second is retrieving something from behind a tiny door with a key from her first mission. She retrieves a knife from the door and gets into some trouble on the way back. The last mission requires that she get her newborn baby brother and meet the faun at the labyrinth. When shes does so he tells her that the knife is to draw blood from her brother. Well if the faun wasn’t sketchy enough the entire film now it’s obvious… he, like almost everyone else in Ofelia’s life is rotten. She refuses and just as she does her fascist stepfather stumbles upon her, snatches his son back and promptly kills Ofelia. She lies at the mouth of the staircase in the center of the labyrinth, blood running out of her nose. This is the scene that opened the film. Just as it seems like this movie is going to end one long train wreck of violence and cruelty Ofelia opens her eyes in paradise. Her father, the king of the underworld welcomes her home and the faun tells her that she passed the final test. She chose to shed her own blood rather than that of an innocent.

Obvious Christ-figure metaphor aside, what I find even more fascinating is Ofelia’s resurrection and how it completely (re)narrates the tone of the film. What was once macabre is now a celebration. What was once a tragedy is now a comedy (in the Greek sense). Her resurrection bears witness to a deeper reality. Her fascist stepfather has no real power, his violence is in vain a mere illusion of power.

I have recently been hearing a LOT about Tony Dungy’s faith. When I say a LOT, I don’t mean in content but in frequency. This usually happens when anyone on a Super Bowl winning team goes to church or prays or if they’ve just read “Wild at Heart.”
(Seriously. Jon Kitna read “Wild at Heart” during his “comeback” with the Bengals a few years ago and Christians went nuts over him)

We Christians go batty when celebrities turn out to be Christians… or if Celebrities have even read a Christian book. Why? Does this mean for instance that the Colts are a Christian team? Does this mean that good Christians can’t root for their own godless football teams because Tony Dungy prays? Woe to me and my heathen Broncos! No, I don’t think its about that. We hear about these celebrity Christians because like most Americans, Christians are obsessed with celebrity. We bow at the cult of celebrity with the rest of our VH1 viewing countrymen.

What is it about Christians going batty for Celebrities becoming (or turning out to be) Christians? Evangelicals spend a lot of time and energy maligning Hollywood and celebrities but as soon as one of them turns out to be “one of us,” then all criticism is laid aside and we get them a book deal and tv time as soon as evangelically possible. It seems to me that the reasons throngs of people are obsessed with celebrities are the same reasons that Christians are also obsessed with Christian-celebrities. Celebrities are people used to live out vicarious fantasy lives. Why do so many people care about who Paris Hilton is dating? Because in some way or another her dating life is either a vicarious way for them to be in a relationship or is a false promise that they can one day also be that famous, that adored and that rich. We fawn over celebrities not so much based on their merit as much as the hope that one day we too can be like them.

This is a problem for Christians because our Lord did not come to show us 7 highly-effective habits for our best life now! He revealed the upside-down Kingdom of God where the poor and marginalized are first class citizens and the rich and famous are last. While the “saints” of popular culture tell us that we can be anything we want to if we just work hard enough, or are shocking enough or have the right body, Jesus tells us that we can be his disciples if we are willing to give all that up. Jesus’ message is in direct competition with the celebrity-message.

The problem is that we are a people so shaped by celebrity we tend to buy into the unspoken assumptions that come along with it. We start to think that “successful” people are famous, rich and beautiful. We define success by how high one can climb on the social ladder. Celebrities obviously fit this model of success. So when a Christian becomes a celebrity or better yet, when an already-Celebrity becomes a Christian, in some kind of round-about way it legitimizes our own faith. “See, Christians can be successful too! We’re also cool and famous!”

One of the many problems with holding up the image of a celebrity Christian is that we rarely examine the content of their faith and certainly don’t hold them to much of any standard. It is not their theology or lived out practice that makes them a good example, it is their status as a celebrity. We Evangelicals particularly fall into this trap because we think that celebrity Christians are automatically great evangelists based on their fame alone. Walk into any Christia… I mean Family Christian Bookstore and see how many celebrity Christian books you find on the shelves. Chuck Norris, Kurt Warner, Stephen Baldwin, Joe Gibbs just to name a few. And why? Because we think we can harness the power that comes with the cult of celebrity (and I mean cult in the most literal sense) for evangelistic good. It’s a nice idea, but it’s wrong. As Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message.” If we think we can take the cult of celebrity with it idolatrous tenancies and preoccupation with wealth and fame and just plug Christians into that model and still be true to the gospel we’re sadly deceived. Instead we will produce a “gospel” that will be overly spiritual (to the point of being gnostic) and reinforce our own desire for wealth, fame and influence.

This is the same kind of mentality that says to youth pastors, first reach out to the “cool” kids because where they go, the rest will follow. The problem with this is of course that it’s counter to what Jesus taught us! He tells us to reach out to the least of these, the unpopular, the uncool, the nerds, the kids who don’t bathe as often as they should because the Kingdom of God looks like these! The “good news” is not that unpopular kids or unemployed adults can become Christian and then climb the social ladder to the places where Tony Dungy and Chuck Norris reside. The gospel is that even when the world says you’re unsuccessful, lame, oppressed, poor that Jesus meets you there… Jesus lives there and that the Kingdom of God is not like this world. The first shall be last in his Kingdom and the last shall be first! The gospel says that it is more honorable to hang out with dying people who can’t help you network, who won’t ever write you a good reference than it is to win the super bowl.

When we don’t examine their theology or lived out practices beyond statements like “George Bush goes to a study on the book ‘The Prayer of Jabez’ every month,” we get what we deserve, a Christianity more concerned with celebrity than with discipleship. The above quote is enough for a great deal of Christians to believe that Bush is a Christian in the exact same way they are a Christian, that he is concerned with discipleship and becoming more and more like Christ every day but going to a Prayer of Jabez study does not a disciple make! Now, I’m trying really hard not to say “George Bush is not a Christian.” I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that if we really think he is a Christian and are going to hold him up as an example for other Christians we’d better know more of his story than “he read the Prayer of Jabez.”

“It is through your kneeling and holding hands that they shall know you are my people.”
- Jesus?

It is this same rush to claim someone as our own that results in Enlightenment-deists who denied the divinity of Christ, like Thomas Jefferson and other “founding fathers” to be held up as Evangelical heroes. Few bother to examine what they actually believed and lived, it’s enough for us that Jefferson mentioned a “higher power” once and we’re happy to claim him as our own.

Maybe our “Christian celebrities” should be people like Shane Claiborne and f="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa" target="_blank">Mother Teresa rather than already-celebrities who happen to be Christian. Christian Saints are witnesses to us that following Jesus into the dumps, to the margins of society is what the Kingdom is all about. Christian martyrs are witnesses to us that we too can one day resist living on the world’s terms, that we can live in the way of Jesus even if it means we will be killed for doing so.

So is it nice that Tony Dungy is a Christian? Sure. But Tony Dungy and You and I are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ and that journey does not end in celebrity. It is not a journey of “climbing the ladder” but it is a journey of humility, of faithfulness to God in the way of Jesus. So all of us Christians, Tony Dungy included, need to keep our eyes fixed on the example of the Saints, of the martyrs and most importantly of our Lord, and not that of celebrity-Christians.