Let wonder replace worry

Juno

Nicole and I finally got around to seeing Juno tonight and we both really loved it. I have heard from several people that every youth minister should see this movie and I have to agree. The whole movie could be used as a discussion starter. The characters, dialog, and acting were all great. The best line of the movie is from Juno's step-mom:

"Someone’s going to get a special blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation”?

If I were faced with a pregnancy in my ministry tomorrow, I hope I would summon the same grace, while clearly shocked and unhappy, deal with the reality of a pregnant teenager in a pragmatic, supportive and loving manner.

The tag-line describes the movie perfectly: "A comedy about growing up ... and the bumps along the way."

Say goodbye to Blockbuster

Nicole and I don't watch many movies. We might go to the theater every 3 months or so, and probably rent something from Blockbuster just as seldom.

Well, according to cnet, blockbuster's days are numbered.

All of those years of charging their customers insanely high late fees is catching up with them.

Just like the music industry (who have taken to suing their customers) blockbuster was put into a position where they were forced to change or die. With Netflix, On Demand, and the ability to download, there is never a reason to "go get a movie" anymore.

Makes me think about the church. About how we can be so resistant to change. I wonder how often this is to our own demise? A couple of weeks ago, someone in my church brought up the idea of changing our Sunday morning service schedule. The conversation was a short one and nothing has changed. Now, I am not even saying that we need to change, but the fact that the idea is barely considered should be troubling.

Blockbuster expects people to come to them when so many other outlets are bringing the same content to the people. Unfortunately, this same stubbornness can be found in many churches.

Wild Hogs on iTunes

Nicole and I finally saw Wild Hogs. We had not planned to see it this week. It is still a challenge to find at Blockbuster and we were not sure we wanted to pay the extra money to buy the movie. So, for $5 more than renting the movie and $5 less than buying the DVD, I purchased a copy from the iTunes music store.

While we have bought plenty of music and TV shows from iTunes, this was the first movie. It was almost too convenient. To decide on an impulse that you would like to watch a movie and to then have what could turn into a complete library of movies at your fingertips really will change the way we watch movies in this country.

The movie file was understandably huge. About 1.2gb. We have a pretty fast cable connection and the download time was about 20 minutes. The church is on a much slower DSL connection and I am sure it would have taken well over 1 hour to download the movie. So in the time it took us to make our pizza, we had the movie downloaded in iTunes, transfered to my iPod, and plugged into the TV.

As far as the movie goes, I loved the first half. It was a cross between Summer Vacation and Road Race.  The second half of the movie got wrapped up in a predictable, silly, and sometimes boring plot line that I did not care for. Nicole loved the whole movie though, so it could be just me.

I had always thought that buying movies off iTunes was not worth the money when you could but the DVD copy with features for just a couple more dollars. However, this experience was a good one and I'd consider buying another movie this way sometime.

Amazing Grace: The Movie

"There are only two things of which I am sure: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior."
-John Newton (From the movie Amazing Grace)

Wow. Seriously, go see this movie. What am amazing and inspirational story. Great writing, great acting, very engaging.

It is the story of William Wilberforce and his fight to end the slave trade in the British Empire. His pastor, John Newton, wrote Amazing Grace after he was involved in the slave trade for many years.

I took the high school group to the mall today this morning just after service. We made it there in time to have lunch and get to the movie that started at 1:20. I was a little worried about a couple of the guys not liking the movie, or deciding beforehand they were not going to like it. But, even they admitted it was a "pretty good" movie.

Once it was over, I let them know that slavery is not a thing of the past. Zach Hunter is a 15 years old kid who decided he was going to do something about this modern day slave trade. I pointed the students to his myspace page, letting them know there are things they can do.

After the movie, we spent some time hanging out in the mall. Here is a picture of some of us playing in the Apple Store:

To finish the day off, I bought (or the church bought) pizza for everyone.

It was a great day. Everyone had a blast, and it is such an easy thing to do on a Sunday afternoon. Not only was it easy, but I know that the day had a huge impact on everyone who went.

Amazing Grace

Just after servie tomorrow, I am taking the hugh school students to the mall so we can watch Amazing Grace.

It will be a fun afternoon, I am looking forward to it.

Facing the Giants

Nicole and I went to see "Facing the Giants" this weekend.  This movie was made by a baptist church in Georgia who used an all volunteer cast and had a $100,000 budget.  Considering that, they did a pretty good job.  It is the story of a Christian high school football coach whose team has had several losing seasons and his job seems to be in jeopardy.  By the end of the movie, this is all transformed and even though it is very predictable, it still tells a story that will make you smile.

The first few minutes of the film are pretty rough.  Most of the cast had never acted before and it really shows.  Then comes a scene in the movie where the coach blindfolds his star player and has him do the death crawl.   I don't know what it is about that amazing scene, but the movie only gets better from that point.   If you have seen it, you know what I am talking about.

The best thing I read about the movie is that is received a PG rating instead of G because of extreme Christian content.  Whatever that means.  That right there is reason enough to go see it.  The movie is still in theaters nationally.  Check it out.  We should support this church who is impacting the nation from the state of Georgia.

The Last Kiss

We love Zach Braff in Scrubs and Rachel Bilson in The OC, so when Nicole told me she wanted to go see this movie, I said sure.  We really don't go to see many movies, but made time for this one this afternoon.  We were not too impressed.

I will say first though that Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett, and Rachel Bilson were great in this movie.  It was a movie full of emotion and these 3 related those emotions very well.

At 29, Michael (Zach Braff) believes his life is over.  His girlfriend, Jenna (Jacinda Barrett), is pregnant and ready to buy a house. Michael feels trapped, locked into a life plan. So when gorgeous, young Kim (Rachel Bilson) hits on him at a wedding, he manages to let her know he has a girlfriend, but leaves out the part about her having a baby. Of course, he ends up cheating on his girlfriend and then regrets it.

This movie misses the mark by saying there is no such thing as a perfect life or relationship.  The whole thing is based around the idea that men are unwilling to commit to a relationship or accept responsibility in their lives.

I guess my biggest problem with this movie is that I don’t subscribe to such a cynical view of relationships. In one scene, Michael challenges Jenna to name three couples that have been together for more than five years. Of course, she couldn't. However, when that line came up in the film, I immediately thought of tons of people I know that fit into that category.  Is this really true?  Are committed relationships really so hard to come by?  Not where I'm from.  I actually have to think to come up with people who were married less than 5 years. 

Another part that I just couldn't swallow was how much Kim threw herself at Michael. This seemed more like a guys fantasy than real life.

I can't recommend this movie to anyone.  If you were planning on seeing it anyway, go ahead.  I don't think I'd watch it again.  I guess I just don't find cheating cute or funny or ever justified, no matter how sorry you are afterwords.

As far as youth group goes, there is a great conversation between Michael and his girlfriend's Dad at the end of the movie where they talk about love.  He says that any moron can say I love you; but it's what you do to those you say you love that proves what those words mean to you.  The final scene of the movie could also be a powerful illustration in persistence.  I don't know if I'd ever use them though, I would not want them to want to see this movie.

Pirates 2: Dead Man's Chest

Nicole and I left right after church this morning and went down to Seattle to catch this movie.  We have both been pretty excited, but it was really long and kind of boring.  This movie is nothing more than a bridge between the 1st and 3rd movies.  That could be ok, I guess, but nothing really happened the whole movie, and we left with absolutely no sense of satisfaction.

A couple of good things though.  I really liked Johnny Depp.  He really makes he movie and you miss the character when he is not on the screen.  Also, it was filmed beautifully.  It rivals any other movie I have ever seen.

Nicole hated the sea creatures, and I could not understand why the theater was full of little kids.  When I say little, I mean 8 and under.  This is not a kid movie at all.

Bottom line, we loved the first movie, did not care for this one, and I'm sure will be watching the third one on opening weekend.

I actually agree...

Last May, on my birthday actually, Nicole and I went to see Crash.  I blogged about the movie here.

It was the best movie of 2005.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

I just got home from seeing Narnia tonight.  Wow, I really liked this movie.  It was much better than I had expected or hoped.  With a movie this good, you would expect someone to be capitalizing on it.  You would think that over the last 6 months you could not go anywhere without seeing the face of a big lion. 

I say that of course because I have (no kidding here) 14  posters of this picture to the left.  I have gotten 3 boxes of promotional material about this film; which includes at least 500 door hangers.  I have no idea what to do with them.  I hung one on my office door and tried to give the rest away and still have 498.  I have 3 different bible studies based on this film.  Not only that, but I have 5 DVDs of the trailer and other promotional info.  All of this was given to me, a youth minister at an average size church, at no cost.  One box came from the PR firm Disney hired to promote the film to Christians, another from Interlinc, and another from a ministry hoping to gain some ground from this film.  Besides these boxes, I have gotten letters from the denomination, other churches, videos, and even a free Soundtrack of songs based on and inspired from the movie.  I say all of this to say this movie was hyped up pretty big.  My question was would it live up to all of this hype.  I am pretty sure I am going to give away some things you may not want to know if you have not seen it yet, so if you wish to avoid any unintended spoilers, stop reading now.