Steven Greydanus (a faithful Catholic) has a review of Broke back Mountain on his Decentfilms site.. As things go, it is rather a pleasant surprise; he declares the work to be non-polemical and a work of art, rather than mere agitprop. It portrays opposing views respectfully rather than turning them into caricatures. Surprisingly there is no nudity in the homosexual sex scenes. Overall the film is more nuanced than other films such as The Magdalene Sisters. It's still largely objectionable, however.
Media Issues: December 2005 Archives
Those who are tired of the cavalcade of bad news have a new ally: HappyNews.com, which publishes only good news.
I'm a bit cynical — I think that regardless of what they say, people are more drawn to bad news than to good news. Kind of like how traffic will slow down to see an accident.
I did see some good news in the regular news wires today: a pregnant skydiver and her unborn child both survived a plunge into a parking lot when both parachutes failed. God must have been watching out for this person because I can't imagine how a pregnant woman can hit a parking lot at 50 mph and have er baby survive (much less her).
Anyway if you find good news sufficiently engaging to subsist on it, give HappyNews.com a try.
Well, sorta. The debut weekend of of Narnia ($67.1 million) beat the debut weekends of the first two LOTR films ($47.2 million and $67 million, respectively). Of course, Narnia is riding on their coattails (I believe the technical term is "drafting"). But I am pleased to see it do so well, not so much against LOTR in particular, but because there is some Christian values sneaking into the national consciousness at a massive rate.
If you're interested, Broke back appears to have opened in five theaters, taking in half a million, but I'd argue you can't extrapolate that out to the whole country. I wonder what their strategy is in limiting it to five theaters; maybe they want to try to stoke demand for it.
The Chronicles of Narnia open this weekend with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Watch it!
Will it be as big as LOTR? Watch and decide for yourself. I hear good things about it, that it is faithful to the books and doesn't excise a lot of Christian imagery.
