Michael Kress: August 2007 Archives

We here at Idol Chatter can fulminate all we want about media coverage of Owen Wilson's suicide attempt, but Therese Borchard over at Beyond Blue, a blog all about mental health, can actually speak to how we can process and understand this sad news. Check out her post here. The most instructive part of her comments, to me, was this:

"What triggered it?" is everyone’s first question, a query that has always annoyed me. As if his break-up with Kate Hudson was the rationale behind his slashed left wrist and stomach full of pills. Such justification is our way of staying out of it, of segregating ourselves from those who can’t handle messy breakups. By assigning pain to a specific event or circumstance, we can hypothetically remain immune to that hopelessness inherit to a suicide attempt. Because we’re not dating Kate Hudson. And if we were, surely a breakup wouldn't take us to that pathetic place.

Many of us cheered when NBC renewed "Friday Night Lights" for a second season. The primetime high school football drama is heavy on great acting, inspirational and real storylines, and great characters. But before settling into the bleachers (or your sofa) for season two, check out the Panthers' debut season DVD. And check out these two videos about the show:

Life, Faith, Football



The Women of 'Friday Night Lights'

To read Idol Chatter's complete 'FNL' coverage, click here.

Sometimes, arguing about a movie or TV show becomes a debate over some aspect of faith, society, and life. So much for dismissing entertainment as "just a movie/TV show" that is inherently lacking in larger meaning. The best debates on Idol Chatter take just this route, and there's a fascinating one happening in response to my (largely negative) review of "September Dawn," a movie dramatizing the 1857 Mountain Meadow Massacre, when a group of Mormons killed 120 innocent settlers passing through Utah. A man named John D. Lee was the leader of the Mormon murderers and the only person tried--and put to death--for the crime.

The discussion has veered into an exploration of Mormon history and the nature of fanaticism. You can read it all here, but one comment in particular is worth drawing extra attention to.

A group of religious fanatics led by a bloodthirsty leader who preaches the violence of "blood atonement" ruthlessly murders a group of peaceful travelers. This, in a sentence, is the plot of "September Dawn", starring Jon Voight and opening Aug. 24. The year is 1857, the date is Sept. 11, and the killers are Mormons massacring a wagon train of families heading West to California. It's a tragedy that became known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the darkest moments in Mormon history, whose details remain shrouded in mystery. Now it's the subject of a film that, sadly, fails on two fronts: as history and as a movie.

The movie purports to answer one lingering historical question: Was the massacre the work of a renegade group acting on their own, or were they acting on orders from on high--specifically, orders from Brigham Young, the Mormon leader and Utah governor?

In the real world, there's no scholarly consensus on this question, since the evidence is mostly circumstantial and conjectural. Most historians seem to think Young wasn't involved, but others make a case that he ordered the bloodshed. (There's a great overview of the debate here.)

But no need to get into nuances, at least not in this movie.

The Brigham Young of "September Dawn" is shown railing against the "Gentiles"--non-Mormons--and approving the massacre plan. He is depicted as a vengeful, violent leader, but then again, the movie depicts all Mormons as hateful and violent, save one romantic soul who falls in mad, passionate love-at-first-sight with a young woman from the wagon train. The film focuses on their Romeo and Juliet romance, which provides some of the cheesiest and unintentionally laughable moments in a movie full of them.

B-B-B-Bad to the Bone.

Rebel truth-seekers vs. complacent status-quo defenders. Free thinkers vs. conformist mind controllers. A fight for good vs. evil, a struggle for the soul of a people. All set to the strains of George Thorogood's early-80s rebel anthem.

Who are these high-minded rebels, and who are these anti-progress thought suppressers? Partisans vs. Nazis? Revolutionaries vs. Red Coats? Not this movie. In "Expelled," it's Intelligent Design adherents vs. the Darwinist scientific establishment--or make that, the Darwinist American establishment.

B-B-B-Bad to the Bone.

Not set for release until February, the buzz campaign has already started for this unabashedly Michael-Moore-style, in-your-face documentary. Narrated by Ben Stein--best known for giving his money away and slowly repeating the name "Bueller" from the front of a classroom to hilarious effect--"Expelled" aims to expose the stifling of debate in this country about the origins of life and make the case for the validity of Intelligent Design.

Yesterday, I attended a presentation to drum up advance support for the film. It was led by Paul Lauer--a Christian marketing maven best known for helping make "Passion of the Christ" the blockbuster it was--and one of the film's co-producers, a man identified only as Logan, who bore a striking resemblance to Ned Flanders incarnate, albeit tanner (and, being a huge Flanders fan, I mean that as a compliment). The purpose was to win over Christians influential in their communities, to make this a must-see, a film to which they'll preach about, gab about, and bring their friends, family, churches, non-Christian friends, etc. etc.

Watch a video clip from "The 11th Hour," a new documentary narrated and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio about the environmental crisis--and what we can do about it: Click to Watch the Video...

Part "March of the Penguins," part "Inconvenient Truth," "Arctic Tale" is a new documentary, narrated by Queen Latifah and produced by the National Geographic Society. We've got three video clips from the movie: She Could Drown Practicing For the Seal...

These days, it seems, memorable Jewish television characters are scarce. But it wasn't always so. So without further ado, here is one yid's (that's me) Top 10 Jewish TV Characters: 1) Herschel Pinkus Yerucham Krustofski, "The Simpsons": He may be...