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| 5/24 |
| 2004/2/23-24 [Reference/Religion] UID:12368 Activity:high |
2/23 New Yorker review of Passion of Christ - note that this is a _film_
review people.
http://newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040301crci_cinema
\_ "This is the most violent film I have ever seen." Roger Ebert
\_ is this really a review or more Gibson bashing?
\_ Its a film review. Inherently its one viewer's opinion.
\_ Hi, I recommend this site for a realistic perspective:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ThePassionoftheChrist-1129941
\_ So it's basically Sunday church for the Kill Bill crowd, yes?
How tempting.
\_ Kill Jesus. Vol 1.
\_ With an exclusive soundtrack featuring hit songs by your
\_ No, it's not a review. He complains that Gibson isn't showing the
good bits of Jesus' ministry, but that was never the scope of the
movie. It's like criticizing the Lord of the Rings for not showing
The Hobbit.
\_ must...supresss...rage...about...portrayal of Faramir's character.
\_ That's a legitimate criticism of the movie though. You
thought the adaptation of the character wasn't good, and the
changes in the movie from the events of the book change the
character. Gibson is only covering the last day of Jesus'
mortal life. He's *not* trying to cover the Sermon on the
Mount.
\_ nerd, you'll get over it. the rest of us can't even identify
the character.
\_ Yes, I'm a nerd. Nerds pick apart those movies like
crazy, and even though many of us like them, we get
pissed about some pretty little details. Those books
are pretty important to nerds, but not as important as the
bible is to christians. If they react the way nerds did
to the LOTR movies, that's probably a good sign actually.
Also, the reason you can't remember who Faramir is is that
they left out or ruined all of his character development
in the movie--that's the point.
\_ I can't identify most of the others either. It was
mostly a bunch of white guys in beards smacking the
bad guys with swords. To say that LOTR isn't quite as
\_ *laugh* are you _still_ recovering from abuse in
highschool? you're old enough to buy a girl if
that's what you need. if you pay her enough you
can even get her to tell all your friends she's
your girlfriend and not an oakland corner hooker.
mostly a bunch of white guys in beards smacking the
bad guys with swords. To say that LOTR isn't quite as
important to you as the bible is to Christians doesn't
paint you in the positive light you think it does.
important to you as the bible is to Christians doesn't
paint you in the positive light you think it does.
\_ Not being able to identify with something and calling
someone a nerd for being able to doesn't make them
nerds, it makes you an idiot. A hostile idiot to
boot, the kind that used to roam high school
playgrounds. You didn't grow up either, like most
of hostile high school idiots did. Sign your name,
idiot, I want to mock you some more in person.
-- ilyas
\_ woah! you had a playground at your highschool?
That rules.
drawn between TPOTC and Korn....
\_ Writing credits goes to...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0323689
favorite Christian rock band, Faith + 1!
\_ No, it's not a review. He complains that Gibson isn't showing the
good bits of Jesus' ministry, but that was never the scope of the
movie. It's like criticizing the Lord of the Rings for not showing
The Hobbit.
\_ Poor comparison. LOTR had a coherent plot. TPOTC keys on the
imagery of the blood sacrifice (the climax only). What's the
point? Nice people get killed every day by jerks.
\_ The point is to present the sacrifice as written. The context
drawn between TPOTC and Michael Moorcock's Arioch....
is the Gospels. Read them for the backstory, if you don't
know it already. The point is to look at this and say, "He
did this for us. Wow."
\_ I prefer this version of Jesus's life:
http://somethingpositive.net/sp03042002.shtml
\_ interesting contrasts between salon's review soundbites
(http://www.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2004/02/24/tues and
rotten tomatoes' (link above).
\_ 'The depictions in "The Passion," one of the cruellest movies in
the history of the cinema, are akin to the bloody Pop
representation of Jesus found in, say, a roadside shrine in
Mexico, where the addition of an Aztec sacrificial flourish makes
the passion a little more passionate.'
Now _that's_ an evocative review.
\_ Mm, mm, good! Blood for the Blood God!
\_ Hehehehe, we laugh, but there are tremendous parallels to be
drawn between TPOTC and Korn....
\_ Writing credits goes to...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0323689 |
| 5/24 |
|
| newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040301crci_cinema Issue of 2004-03-01 Posted 2004-02-23 In The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson shows little interest in celebrating the electric charge of hope and redemption that Jesus Christ brought into the world. He largely ignores Jesus heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism and personal radianceChrist as a paragon of vitality and poetic assertion, as John Updike described Jesus character in his essay The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. De Mille had his version of Jesus life, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese had theirs, and Gibson, of course, is free to skip over the incomparable glories of Jesus temperament and to devote himself, as he does, to Jesus pain and martyrdom in the last twelve hours of his life. As a viewer, I am equally free to say that the movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agonyand to say so without indulging in anti-Christian sentiment Gibsons term for what his critics are spreading. For two hours, with only an occasional pause or gentle flashback, we watch, stupefied, as a handsome, strapping, at times half-naked young man James Caviezel is slowly tortured to death. Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagrely involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus message of love into one of hate. Gibson is guilty of some serious mischief in his handling of these issues. But he may have also committed an aggression against Christian believers. The movie has been hailed as a religious experience by various Catholic and Protestant groups, some of whom, with an ungodly eye to the commercial realities of film distribution, have prepurchased blocks of tickets or rented theatres to insure The Passion a healthy opening weekends business. But how, I wonder, will people become better Christians if they are filled with the guilt, anguish, or loathing that this movie may create in their souls? The Passion opens at night in the Garden of Gethsemanea hushed, misty grotto bathed in a purplish disco light. Softly chanting female voices float on the soundtrack, accompanied by electronic shrieks and thuds. At first, the movie looks like a graveyard horror flick, and then, as Jewish temple guards show up bearing torches, like a faintly tedious art film. Gibson distances the dialogue from us, as if Jesus famous words were only incidental and the visual spectacleGibsons work as a directorwere the real point. Then the beatings begin: Jesus is punched and slapped, struck with chains, trussed, and dangled over a wall. In the middle of the night, a hasty trial gets under way before Caiaphas Mattia Sbragia and other Jewish priests. Caiaphas, a cynical, devious, petty dictator, interrogates Jesus, and then turns him over to the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate Hristo Naumov Shopov, who tries again and again to spare Jesus from the crucifixion that the priests demand. From the movie, we get the impression that the priests are either merely envious of Jesus spiritual power or inherently and inexplicably vicious. And Pilate is not the bloody governor of history even Tiberius paused at his crimes against the Jews but a civilized and humane leader tormented by the burdens of powerhe holds a soulful discussion with his wife on the nature of truth. Gibson and his screenwriter, Benedict Fitzgerald, selected and enhanced incidents from the four Gospels and collated them into a single, surpassingly violent narrativethe scourging, for instance, which is mentioned only in a few phrases in Matthew, Mark, and John, is drawn out to the point of excruciation and beyond. The writer Jon Meacham, in a patient and thorough article in Newsweek , has detailed the many small ways that Gibson disregarded what historians know of the period, with the effect of assigning greater responsibility to the Jews, and less to the Romans, for Jesus death. Meachams central thesis, which is shared by others, is that the priests may have been willing to sacrifice Jesuswhose mass following may have posed a threat to Roman governancein order to deter Pilate from crushing the Jewish community altogether. Its also possible that the temple lite may have wanted to get rid of the leader of a new sect, but only Pilate had the authority to order a crucifixiona very public event that was designed to be a warning to potential rebels. Gibson ignores most of the dismaying political context, as well as the likelihood that the Gospel writers, still under Roman rule, had very practical reasons to downplay the Romans role in the Crucifixion. Its true that when the Roman soldiers, their faces twisted in glee, go to work on Jesus, they seem even more depraved than the Jews. But, as Gibson knows, history rescued the pagans from eternal blameeventually, they came to their senses and saw the light. The Emperor Constantine converted in the early fourth century, and Christianized the empire, and the medieval period saw the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. So the Romans descendants triumphed, while the Jews were cast into darkness and, one might conclude from this movie, deserved what they got. The Passion, in its confused way, confirms the old justifications for persecuting the Jews, and one somehow doubts that Gibson will make a sequel in which he reminds the audience that in later centuries the Church itself used torture and execution to punish not only Jews but heretics, non-believers, and dissidents. I realize that the mere mention of historical research could exacerbate the awkward breach between medieval and modern minds, between literalist belief and the weighing of empirical evidence. Well, they may have been there, but for decades its been a commonplace of Biblical scholarship that the Gospels were written forty to seventy years after the death of Jesus, and not by the disciples but by nameless Christians using both written and oral sources. Gibson can brush aside the work of scholars and historians because he has a powerful weapon at handthe cinemawith which he can create something greater than argument; The sets, which were built in Italy, where the movie was filmed, are far from perfect, but they convey the beauty of Jerusalems courtyards and archways. Gibson, working with the cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, gives us the ravaged stone face of Calvary, the gray light at the time of the Crucifixion, the leaden pace of the movies spectacular agonies. Felliniesque tormenters gambol and jeer on the sidelines, and, at times, the whirl of figures around Jesus, both hostile and friendly, seems held in place by a kind of magnetic force. The hounding and suicide of the betrayer Judas is accomplished in a few brusque strokes. By contrast with the dispatching of Judas, the lashing and flaying of Jesus goes on forever, prolonged by Gibsons punishing use of slow motion, sometimes with Jesus face in the foreground, so that we can see him writhe and howl. In the climb up to Calvary, Caviezel, one eye swollen shut, his mouth open in agony, collapses repeatedly in slow motion under the weight of the Cross. Then comes the Crucifixion itself, dramatized with a curious fixation on the technical detailsan arm pulled out of its socket, huge nails hammered into hands, with Caviezel jumping after each whack. At that point, I said to myself, Mel Gibson has lost it, and I was reminded of what other writers have pointed outthat Gibson, as an actor, has been beaten, mashed, and disembowelled in many of his movies. His obsession with pain, disguised by religious feelings, has now reached a frightening apotheosis. Mel Gibson is an extremely conservative Catholic who rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican council. But saying that Gibson is sincere doesnt mean he isnt foolish, or worse. But the central tradition of Italian Renaissance painting left Christ relatively unscathed; Gibson instructed Deschanel to make the movie look like the paintings of Caravaggio, but in Caravaggios own Flagellation of Christ the body of Jesus is only slightly marked. Even Goya, who hardly shrank from dismemberment and pain in hi... |
| www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ThePassionoftheChrist-1129941 -> www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ThePassionoftheChrist-1129941/ SYNOPSIS The Passion of The Christ is a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareths life. The film opens in the Garden of Olives Gethsemane where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. MPAA RATING R, for sequences of graphic violence RUNTIME 2 hours, 6 minutes RELEASE COMPANY Newmarket Capital Group GENRE Dramas , Bible Epic , Drama , Death , Betrayal , Period Piece , Gospel OFFICIAL SITE. The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it. COM Irrespective of your religious beliefs, Mel Gibsons brutal depiction of the most renowned story of sacrifice and love is distressing to the very core. Powerful and heart-wrenching, gorgeous to look at, and fascinating to contemplate. All issues of religion aside, those components generally result in a film worth seeing. COM Gibson se concentra em uma passagem que ignora totalmente a compaixo e o amor dois sentimentos preciosos para algum que, de acordo com a Bblia, morreu por nossos pecados. COM It definitely makes the viewer suffer-but its debatable if by itself thats a truly enlightening contribution to ones understanding of Christs message. In fairness to critics whose last name begins with a letter at the end of the alphabet, certain pages are sorted in reverse order, z-a . Certain The Passion of the Christ article data provided by the Movie Review Query Engine . About Critics Submission FAQ Site Map Advertise Contact Linking to RT Licensing Movie List Celebs List Games List Press Releases Legal Disclaimer Privacy 1998-present by Rotten Tomatoes sm . Other marks, names, and titles are property of their respective owners. |
| somethingpositive.net/sp03042002.shtml March 4, 2002. First Comic. Previous Comic. Next Comic. |
| www.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2004/02/24/tues -> www.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2004/02/24/tues/index_np.html Table Talk Spirited Salon forums Barbarians in the aisles: Awful moviegoing experiences. Posts of the week The Well Pioneering members-only discussions Got clutter? NYC: Short fiction NYC: Jonathan Ames lecture Seattle: Personal Essay with Dan Savage NYC: Poetry Lecture Suggest a city or class Best submissions . Here are a few choice voices in the critical crowd: No child should see this movie. Even adults are at risk, Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II. |