Paul O'Donnell: August 2007 Archives

Some Britons may have come to regret their queen-bashing, flower-tossing, and mile-long queues to sign her "Book of Remembrance," but for many, Peter Singer points out in a recent column, Diana has become something akin to a saint.

"Some had a 'Diana room' in their homes, filled with memorabilia of the princess," he writes of Diana fans he encountered at the opening of the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in London in 2004. "Their lives, it seemed, now revolved around a woman who had been dead for seven years." From the near mythic rumors about the circumstances of her death to sculptures portraying her as the Virgin Mary, Diana worship, says Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, "as absurd as any cult."

Absurd, maybe, but the canonization of Diana goes on.

Back when the problems of the pop-tart phenoms were mostly restricted to their over-revealing fashion choices, my then Beliefnet colleague and now co-blogger Ellen Leventry and I had the same question for every new outrage: "Where's her mother?" Britney, Christina Aguilera, even Mariah of the old days--they all have parents, right? Isn't their job, or at least their desire, to make sure their children don't embarrass themselves?

You have to admire Billy Bob Thornton's consistency. A dozen years ago, when he was up for an Oscar for his self-directed performance in "Sling Blade," he told the Washington Post, "I think religion is a good thing. The problem is people who take it into their own hands and use it for their own purpose." Back then he was talking about "guys that wear white shoes and have their own TV shows." Today, he's singing, on a new album, about religious fanatics bent on getting to heaven who "believe that whoever they have to stomp on to get there is fine." The album, called "Beautiful Door," is Thornton's fourth--his second with his band from his pre-Hollywood days in Arkansas, Tres Hombres--and critics are calling it his most ambitious. "It’s a collection of stories about life and living and death and dying and how important both are," he told Austin (Texas) Daze recently. He sings from the point of view of a person left behind by a suicide, and protests war in three songs, "Beautiful Door" among them.

The beautiful door of the title refers to a portal to heaven. "Each religion has their magical door that you walk through and you get all these rewards for it," Thornton says. "People... think the way to get there is by shutting out everybody else. My way is the right way and I get to go through this magical door to eternity." A lot of rockers have developed an interest in religion as the topic has heated up. Thornton's willingness to say his piece about it has stayed the same. It's the world that's changed.

I ought to know not to judge a flick by its trailer. It's the cheap pick-up line, the carnival barker, the radio hit that makes you think the whole album is pop schlock. And so, when I saw the trailer for "In Her Shoes," starring Toni Collette, Shirley McLaine and Cameron Diaz--a daffy, bouncy Diaz, trying on lots of shoes--on a plane, "fair warning," I thought, and pulled down my shade and went to sleep.

Then, after seeing Toni Collette in "Little Miss Sunshine," I decided--as I sometimes do when a performance knocks my socks off--that I had to see everything she's done. Which meant swallowing my medicine and renting "In Her Shoes," which turns out to have nothing to do with shoes. Instead it's about how a love lost can skew our ability to love anyone else.

Christian rock insiders have found a lot to criticize about the second volume of Third Day's retrospective, "Chronology"---it omits some of the southern rockers' hits in favor of covers and to some, comes off more adult contemporary that Christian Skynard. But in many ways Volume Two perfectly sums up this group that takes its rock, but not itself, too seriously.

"I want to be a rock star, but I don't have what it takes," sings lead vocalist Mac Powell in this album's reprise of their hit "Rock Star." In an industry that pumps out one impetuously sincere, but blow-dried, act after another, Third Day, as the Chronology set shows, has both serious chops and a comfortable self-awareness. Shoving aside their own top sellers to include a few covers only seems to back up this sense of ease with their success.

Mark Oppenheimer, writing in The Washington Post, suggests Germany's ban on Scientologists (including Tom Cruise) is an overreaction, and one we're all a little guilty of. He says it's Scientology's similarities to mainstream religion that embarrasses us, not it's strangeness....

In yesterday's Slate, Erik Davis (whose own site TechGnosis sits at the corner of sci-fi fantasy and visionary spirituality) has a review of "Frisbee," the soundtrack to last year's Emmy-winning documentary on founding Jesus Freak Larry Frisbee. Davis is enthusiastic...

Did the double whammy of the latest Harry Potter movie ("Order of the Phoenix") and the last Harry Potter book being released in the same 10-day span crush Christian opposition to J.K. Rowling's wizardry? With the final installment of the...