| SUNDAY: THEOLOGY AND THE MOVIE OPEN RANGE BY DAN BRAKE |  At a weekly meeting with my friend Peter, we were discussing our struggles to work out the Christian faith in our lives - being candid, sharing failures, and frustrations; and, wondering how, in the Bible, two and two can make five. "From the experiential point of view, it only takes grace united with faith to make righteousness? How can that be?"
We discussed Romans-chapters 4 and 5: Consider Abraham, who did not always do"perfect" things, but he somehow "got it" and hoped against hope and was viewed by God as righteous and an example for us to follow.
Now that sounds vaguely familiar ...
Peter(my friend) and I are visual types and we like to discuss the movies we watch.
He started talking about Open Range with Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner. He reminded me about the lead character, Charlie Wade(Kevin Costner), a hired gun turned cowpuncher. Charlie, in his penance and attempt to quiet the demons of violence within, worked for Boss(Robert Duvall) as a very quiet and obedient cattle driver. Charlie could only see in himself a heart of darkness and danger.
But the leading lady, Sue(Annette Bening), saw that Charlie's heart was good and she told him. Her words took a period of time to sink in, but they finally did. Why? Because he had faith in the woman(Annette Benning) he admired.
We are all like Charlie Wade. We think the worst of ourselves and because of that we kick around life in a depressed funk; but, then a heroine comes along and sees us for who we really are and can be.
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| GREAT DVD FOR THE WEEKEND: BEING JULIA: REVIEW BY FOSTER |  Being Julia is a Good, good movie! This is the second movie (Sideways was the first) that has portrayed acting and real life as almost one and the same, at least to the players in the dramas. It is almost like the stage is their setting and the world is the audience or at least a small part of the world that they are inhabiting.
Being Julia stars Annette Bening. Super actress with enormous range from my perspective. I've liked her in everything she's done. My favorite up to now was Open Range with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall. She kind of made the movie in a sense. Open Range, while a typical cowboy movie, was made into a love story with Ms. Bening; she gave Open Range a kind of redemptive purpose.
In Being Julia, Bening is an aging actress who falls for a younger man, an American, who is somewhat of a scam artist. You think she falls for him as it is hard to know where the acting stops and starts. Jeremy Irons, who is always good, plays her husband; and, it is obvious that they have separate and different lives. He's essentially her manager and director.
The best character outside of Ms. Bening to me is her really good friend who is gay and she doesn't know it. He wants to break off their relationship which obviously has not been sexual, but she wants to keep on seeing him. She gives him this speech which is sincere but acting.
In one of the best scenes, when she takes a holiday, he visits her and she's so glad to see him. He takes this opportunity to confess that he is on the "other side" a Seinfeld admission of being on the "other team." Funny! Annette Bening is great. There were a couple of really interesting twists and turns which I'll not share so I won't spoil.
The movie was not totally unlike those on Masterpiece Theater. Every character had depth- a very, very entertaining movie. Four parachutes!!! Dan Foster. |
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| Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name and you are mine. When you walk through the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through the river, the waters will not overtake you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. Isaiah 43:2 |
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