Comic Con on Kings

Peter Chattaway has done a piece on NBC's Kings at the recent Comic Con convention in San Diego. Pick of pile is a video of the leading cast and crew discussing the pilot. He also links to Tara Bennett's interview with series creator Michael Green and a piece by Liz Shannon Miller.

Digory Page - Born 1st Aug'08

I do try not to post personal items on this blog, but I thought this was a worthy exception. Digory James Page was born this morning (1st August 2008) at 11:50 am weighing in at 8lb 6oz. Mother and baby are both doing well (considering what they've just been through) and Nina (pictured below) is suitably excited. I was impressed that he managed to come smack bang in the middle of the day is was meant to come and that he was being born during the eclipse.I'm on leave now for 4 weeks and so blogging might be a bit erratic, but there are still a few items I'm hoping to post so please stay tuned. Meanwhile here's a photo of the two of us about 30 minutes after she was born.

Podcast: Jesus (1979)

There's a bit of a danger that my podcasts might be becoming bimonthly rather than monthly at the moment. In fact this month's nearly didn't happen either as my son is due to be born tomorrow! However, hopefully I'll be able to get back on track now.

Anyway, July's entry is up. This month it's Jesus (1979) aka The Jesus Film. I've also got a new (to me) laptop this month and am still perfecting the settings. It seems that it's better quality but a little too quiet, but I'd be interested to hear from listeners whether that is, indeed, the case.

The Passion Coming to DVD

Region: 2 (PAL)

Number of discs: 2

Classification: 15

Studio: Acorn Media

Release Date: Oct 2008

Run Time: 180 minutes

Mark Goodacre has the news that The Passion is coming to DVD in October. However, it's a bit unclear what the actual release date will be. Amazon lists it as 20th October whilst the BBC Shop has the date given a fortnight earlier on the 6th. Given the confusion over this back in April, and that the Bible Society have been promising their own version in late summer, it's anyone's guess. My hunch is that the BBC may be reserving the right to have exclusive sales for the first two weeks, but who knows.

There's no news on what, if any, extra features will be included, but given the wealth of material that was released in the run up to this programme's broadcast, it would be strange if some of it didn't make it's way onto disc. Mind you, I said the same about The Nativity Story and almost 2 years on we're still waiting.

Mark Pirro on The God Complex

Following on from Friday's post on The God Complex I've been in contact with the film's director Mark Pirro. The conversation has been fairly interesting and he kindly agreed to let me post some of it up here.

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Page: How far through production are you and how do your films tend to get released?
Pirro: We have been shooting this for almost a year. We plan on a 2009 release. This is my 8th feature film and they usually go directly to cable or DVD in the U.S. and sometimes go theatrical overseas. Every film has a different release pattern. Sometimes I license them to a distributor, other times I self-distribute. We live in an internet age and distribution is not as big a deal these days. Our last film played midnights in a theatre in Hollywood before going on to DVD sales.

Page: Are you aware of The Real Old Testament? I guess they have a similar approach to you, although they managed to get Ted from Scrubs
Pirro: I hadn't heard of The Real Old Testament, although I am aware of Harold Ramis' upcoming film, Year One. I guess this will be the era of religious parodies.

Page: I’ve mentioned Year One a few times, but I’m not sure it will really deliver. I suspect it’s probably too mainstream to take too many risks, and, for me, that tends to be where things get interesting.
Pirro: My concern about "Year One," is that it is produced by Judd Apatow, who has made 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, Knocked Up, etc. He's not afraid to push the envelope when it comes to aggressive humor. Neither are we. Although I know he won't take his comedy as far out as we are, but I think his film will be more cutting edge than most of mainstream America is used to. And since we're both using the bible as our original source material, I know some of our obvious jokes, character flaws, and impossible situations will cross paths (I was a little nervous about Evan Almighty for the same reasons). Unfortunately, that's the film business.Page:I’ve not watched many (if any) of Apatow’s movies, but from what I’ve heard whilst they tend to push things in certain areas, their values are also marked by a certain conservatism, e.g. Christianity Today noted that Knocked Up was "crass" but also considered it "pro-life".
Pirro: Like everything else in Christianity, it's completely subject to interpretation. There is an 'anti-life' bias in the film as well. It just depends on who's watching it what what they bring to the table. Same thing with 40 Year Old Virgin. I believe Apatow, like myself, is the kind of filmmaker that likes to entertain, without necessarily giving messages. If people take away a certain message, that's fine, but I don't believe that's the initial intent of the filmmaker.

Page: My (hugely uninformed) hunch is that Year One will have its gross out factor, but won’t actually do much to challenge the morality in the original stories.
Pirro: If Apatow, like Harold Ramis - the director - think the way I believe they do, this will be a no holes barred outright satire. I know that our film's segments will cross paths. There are obvious crossovers with Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Noah and the ark and there's only so much 'original' humor one can pull from the mythology without being redundant. My fear is exactly 'how much' of the humor will be similar? For that, we'll just have to wait and see. At least I don't think they'll be touching the Jesus story, so we may have that over them.
Page: Your picture of dead animals and people after the flood (above) challenges and subverts the idea that these stories are about a God of love.
Pirro: Well, basically we take the more or less better known stories in the Bible and relay them with a more logical and satirical approach. We analyze the stories with what I call the 'square circle' syndrome. A square circle is an impossibility as defined by what constitutes a square and what constitutes a circle. One can't be the other. The god of our movie falls into that category (as one might argue is also true with the Biblical God). A being that knows everything can not be angered, surprised, vengeful, maniacal, jealous or imperfect. Those are all human traits. The God of the Bible is all that and so is the god of our movie. So in our film, our god - who is angry, vengeful, maniacal, jealous and imperfect - always tries to get things right to impress his girlfriend, but through the course of events and not very well thought out plans, things always go awry. He is always arguing with his girlfriend about how he knows all, and she argues back that if he knows all, he would have known that the first go around (before Noah) would have been a failure. He would have known that Adam and Eve would disobey him. He would have known that Abraham would be willing to sacrifice his son. His reply to her is, "Hey, don't question me." I'm god, I know all. She then socks him in the mouth and says, "Why didn't you duck?" Another point in the film she (being the voice of reason) asks why he lets people he loves suffer? He replies, "I'm God, it's what I do."
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I think that gives a fairly good idea of how this film will pan out. I imagine that many would find this offensive were they to somehow stumble across it, but I'd also hope that it will challenge others to re-think their approach to the Old Testament Stories. I don't subscribe to the view that the brutality of these stories discounts the possibility of a loving God. However, I do think that until you've been realised just how horrific they are in places you've never really read them and thus are unlikely to have truly considered precisely how God reveals himself through them. It would be nice if interpreting the Bible was as simple as "God said it. I believe it. That settles it", but if we truly believe in a God of love then, in Pirro's words, such a simple approach just gives us a 'square circle'.

I'm Xerxes. No, I'm Xerxes

As regular readers will know, I've been looking a bit at the book of Esther recently as background to the course I run, Through the Bible in Five and a Half Years. The session actually ran last Monday, but one of the things we discussed was different portrayals of King Xerxes. So I was interested to stumble across deebeedee's post of various film images of the Persian Emperor, contrasted with his image in the Bas-relief.

One of the points I made was that it's notable how filmmakers completely re-work Xerxes' image depending on how his role fits with their plot. So perhaps the most controversial depiction of him is in 300 where on top of the movie's hyperbolic visualisations he also plays the leading villain. Note how strongly this contrasts with his ultra-sweet portrayal in One Night With the King where not only is Xerxes a sensitive lover, but he is also played by a former member of a boy band (Luke Goss) - see images at deebeedee.

The two images in this post are also of Xerxes. The one below is from the Bible Collection's Esther (1999) where the character is, again, a sensitive man, but also frequently behaves like a petulant child. Here's there's an undercurrent that Esther is there not only to save the Jews, but also to save their king from himself. The image at the top of this post is Richard Egan's turn as Xerxes in Esther and the King (1960). Here he is also portrayed sympathetically, although it's interesting that this film has him as heroic and charismatic rather than a sensitive 'new man'. Both of these later films also follow the Bible's lead of calling him Ahasuerus, which does, of course, raise the possibility, that they are not actually depictions of Xerxes, but of another king entirely.

Of course varying portrayals of Xerxes based on ideology is nothing new. I've heard it said that the feast which Queen Vashti refused to attend in Esther 1 was a celebration of the Persian's victory in the Greco-Persian wars (which, in fact, they lost). It's also worth pointing out that none of the portrayals of Xerxes thus far have used an actor who was close to being ethnically Persian. In fact, Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro, who played him in 300, is the only non-Caucasian to have taken the role so far.

The God Complex

I just came across the website for The God Complex - an irreverent comedy that "takes the silliest stories from the Bible and makes them...well...just a little sillier". Although it's still in production there are a number of stills and several clips available to view. If you're bothered by bad language then these probably aren't the clips for you.

It looks like the film mainly focusses on Genesis, though it also promises footage from today "where Jesus walks among us disguised as a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper", and whilst it prides itself on being low budget there's at least one nifty special effect. All in all it looks like it will have a lot in common with The Real Old Testament.

I'm going to contact the filmmakers to see if I can get more information, and I'll report back if so.