July 2007 Archives

Before we get started, let's clear up some misconceptions: Arctic Tale is not the sequel to "An American Tail," so don't look for an appearance by Feivel Mousekewitz. And it's not about penguin migration as narrated by Morgan Freeman. Instead, we get two other animal protagonists, not animated in the comic-drawn sense: Seela, a walrus and Nanu, a polar bear. How does storyteller/narrator Queen Latifah know their names? That’s why she's the Queen.

Since Seela and Nanu are natural enemies, this is no buddy tale of two rascally animals who leave their packs to seek their fortunes together. Instead, we see two young female animals being shepherded through the early stages of life (through adolescence) by their mothers while their arctic environment melts around them. Nanu’s mother raises her and her "unfocused" brother, teaching them to hunt seals through layers of ice and snow. Seela's mother and aunt teach her to climb onto patches of ice and protect her from predators. It is a tale of family, life-and-death issues, and the price of survival.

Both the walrus and the polar bear are all about family: The polar bear in a nuclear, single mother-two kids family that wanders as a group. The walrus is in a great, corpulent Sister Sledge-worthy family. Fathers are absent, and the only male figures in the film are the predatory male polar bear and the wizened old grandpa walrus who smells ice re-forming somewhere in the distance. Otherwise, women are in charge of the action.

I tuned into the encore of F/X's "Damages" premiere last night, hoping for a new slice of great material at the crossroads of faith and culture. I love law shows, and in this one Glenn Close plays Patricia Hewes, founder of the powerful Hewes & Associates litigation firm. Rose Byrne ("28 Weeks Later," "The Dead Girl") plays Ellen Parsons, an ambitious young attorney recruited to the firm (and its competitor) amidst some curiously coincidental circumstances regarding her family and friends.

Other characters were introduced in the pilot--just enough to create some intrigue for the next show (which airs tonight on F/X at 10). Ted Danson’s Arthur Frobisher is the villain (or at least the opponent) who has made a fortune at the expense of his employees. "Damages" is an ongoing serial a la "24," which is a good thing because there wasn't much that was pretty about the first show.

Beliefnet recently interviewed Bishop E. Bernard Jordan, a self-described prophet whose book "The Laws of Thinking: 20 Secrets to Using the Divine Power of Your Mind to Manifest Prosperity" develops the think-and-grow-rich ideas also found in "The Secret." Bishop Jordan believes that God's description of himself in Exodus as "I AM" paves the way for Christians--indeed, all people--to define themselves as what they most want to be.

Jordan says this "I AM" practice worked well for Joseph DJ Run Simmons, a rapper from Run-DMC. According to Jordan, Simmons came to Jordan's church when down on his luck and now is both a minister and the star of an MTV reality show. In part of the interview that was deleted for space reasons, Jordan says the reality show is just the beginning for Rev Run:

Interviewer: Let's say I felt a strong urge to become a movie producer. How would saying "I AM" lead to me making contacts in Hollywood if I didn’t have them?

Did Mister Rogers create a generation of slackers? Fred Rogers spent his life telling kids they were special. By telling children that he liked them, the theory goes, he freed them to like themselves. But a recent column in the Wall St. Journal has taken the host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" to task for giving American kids the sense that they didn't have to try.

"Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were," the column quotes one Rogers revisionist as saying. "He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement." The critique has started an Internet melee.

The fate of a generation is a lot to put on Rogers, and anyway, the parenting American children got away from the television likely had more to do with how they turned out. But the question has some implications for Christians. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian, was only telling children a secular version of what his faith holds: Jesus loves you.