Steve the Owl's Blog

I am an admitted film geek. I didn’t watch movies very much when I was younger, preferring the nature of TV. While I still love TV, I have definitely found that I can devour movies and TV box sets through the power of DVD.

How It Started

I am someone who has never been quick to adopt new technology. (For example, I bought cassettes as recently as 2002, and I always seemed to get a new video game console about a year before the newer model came out.) Perhaps part of this is the idea of never knowing which one will catch on. After all, BetaMax and LaserDisc were both considered to be technically superior to VHS, but neither was able to knock VHS off the top of the movie heap. That, and I just never saw the point of paying a premium price when what I currently have is just as good.

However, my jump from VHS to DVD actually came in 2003. I had just gotten activated and my college career was on hold until my tour of duty in Iraq was done. I had paid $20 in raffle tickets for a drawing for a DVD player at school. To my great surprise, I was the big winner. However, I could not use the DVD player until I got home, so I let my parents use it until then.

When we were overseas, we were able to get fairly decent access to technology considering our circumstances, and every tent had at least one DVD player in it. While I personally did not see the need to buy another one to add to the pile, I always told the people who had the DVD players there that they would be free to use any DVD’s I bought from the PX.

A Change in Perspective

In the desert, you have nothing but time on your hands. I used this time to finish reading a lot of books, but my speed reading abilities meant that I would go through books pretty quickly, and I would always have to go to the PX or wait for books my parents mailed me from so I could get more. (In time, I unlearned speed reading, but not deliberately, so I relearned this skill after I returned from Iraq and resumed academics.)

Because we had nothing but time on our hands, we would often watch the deleted scenes. Then, there were other times when I would find myself watching all kinds of DVD extras, such as commentaries, making-of documentaries, and other features that any DVD lover knows by heart.

The realization of the change in shift came to me in November. One of the movies that I saw in the PX that day was the DVD for the director’s cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I am not a big Trekkie (I don’t say this to insult Trekkies, just to be descriptive.), as I have only seen two or three of the movies, and about half a dozen episodes (all versions combined). When I first saw this movie a year and a half before, the big things that I remembered about the movie at the time were the slow pace and Lt. Ilia. Normally, this would be enough to steer me away, but I noticed that the movie had hours and hours of special features. Because of this, I was more appreciative of the pace and bought the movie.

The Value of Special Features

I don’t have a desire to be a film director, but I have found the features very fascinating, and some of the best have taught me a lot about the art and skill of making movies. Sometimes, I miss the metaphor, or something in the background, and it is interesting to learn about everything that went into the effort and onto the screen. While I don’t go to the theater much (the last movie I saw in the theater was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), I have found that the special features are one of the things that I look forward to the most when I buy a DVD, whether of a movie, or a TV box set.

In your business, what are your unlikely sources of education? I would love to hear from you. If you enjoyed this, please share it with your friends.

One of the things that has fascinated me the most about questions of faith is the group of people who have tried to profit off of the subculture of that faith. When I discuss the “Christian subculture,” I do not mean this as a commentary on whether or not Christianity is an assumed belief in America, or whether or not people who buy movies and shop at businesses explicitly labeled as “Christian” is a sign of sincerity of belief, simply examining the question of those who make a subculture around Christianity.

Christian Subculture Gone Mainstream?

Part of the reason for the rise of Christian subculture was the mainstream success of two major Hollywood movies in the middle of the last decade: The Passion of the Christ (2004) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005). With the success of these movies, there were efforts to find other movies that would cash in on this market that they felt had been underserved.

Because of this, there have been several movies with Christian themes with a much wider release than the typical release for such boutique studios as Cloud Ten Pictures. These movies include The Second Chance (2006) and Fireproof (2008). These are two movies that seem to approach the Christian subculture in a very different way.

Perhaps the movie that seems to fall into the biggest stereotypes regarding “Christian stereotypes” is Fireproof. It stars Kirk Cameron, who may be best known for his days as a teen actor on Growing Pains who started doing more and more movies with religious themes in the late 1990′s. This movie follows a firefighter captain (Caleb Holt) whose marriage is slipping away. On his father’s advice, Caleb decides to follow “The Love Dare,” a 40-day challenge to save his marriage. Midway through the movie, Caleb has a born-again moment where he converts to Christianity, and he continues with The Love Dare, despite the fact that it does not seem to work.

The Second Chance stars Michael W. Smith, a gospel musician in his first acting role, as Ethan Jenkins, the son of a pastor of an affluent suburban church that partners with an inner-city church. Because the board of trustees does not like his brash style, so they send him to the inner-city church, Second Chance, on an internship of sorts with the streetwise pastor.

The Key Ingredient

Perhaps the biggest difference between these two movies is the quality. I think that the key difference is that one focused on being a good movie first and foremost while the other wanted to be a good Christian movie first and foremost. The cruel irony is that this approach means that the movie that wanted to be a good movie became the one that presented the message in a better way. The surprising thing is that the musician turned out to be the far better actor. In Fireproof, the scenes where anger is supposed to be convey end up being unintentionally funny. While it may be unfair to Cameron, it is still difficult for me to see Mikey Seaver as an authority figure in some of the scenes where Caleb interacts with the other firefighters. Size may be part of it, but it seems like there is a presence that is missing. Even more vexing is the fact that there are several times where the married couple are supposed to be in tears, but they just can’t pull it off, but somehow the director managed to coax tears out of them in the climactic scene, which only made me wonder why he couldn’t do it with the others.

While Michael W. Smith may not be experienced, he displayed a full range of emotion, and he had an impeccable sense of dramatic timing. The Second Chance is a movie that may make some Christians squirm because of its PG-13 rating (for language, some violence, and drug references), but it is a movie that was much more honest to real life. While you may want the marriage to succeed in Fireproof, you will feel an emotional connection to the characters in The Second Chance as they try to save their church and be a beacon to a troubled community.

The reason why The Ten Commandments (1956) was the highest-grossing movie of the 1950′s and Ben-Hur (1959) won 11 Oscars is not because America was more moral at the time, but because these movies were excellent movies and they were focused on telling a great story. I know that I have seen many “Christian” businesses that were sub-par if not corrupt. This is not necessarily an endorsement of the two major successes I mentioned above (I liked The Chronicles of Narnia, but not The Passion of the Christ, preferring The Gospel of John, which came out the year before.) Businesses like Chick-Fil-A succeed not because they are Christian businesses, but because they are good businesses. This is something that everyone should remember when they consider their faith and their business.

As a veteran, one of the most difficult times of the year is Memorial Day. It is a day when I remember those who died, and there is still a part of me, a little more than six years after I made it home from my war (I was in the WV Army National Guard from 2000-06, and activated for the Iraq War from Feb. 2003-Apr. 2004, with 11 1/2 months of that time in theater.) that wonders why I made it home and thousands of others never will. So, I am usually more reflective on the last Monday in May. This year, I picked up my copy of Jarhead from my shelf, and watched it again.

Hurry Up and Wait

Everyone who has been in the military, regardless of branch of service or location, knows that the common adage in the military is “Hurry up and wait.” This is because of the fact that, well, big battles are relatively rare, and most of the time is spent in a holding pattern of some sorts. (I am reminded of one time when we kept going to a rifle range in Ft. Bragg that was getting postponed, and we ultimately got so bored that we started kicking around a pop bottle that someone found in the back of the truck.) Most military movies that I have seen seem to focus on two things: basic training and combat.

However, what makes Jarhead a truly unique movie is that it is told from the perspective of someone who had a low-key experience in the first Gulf War. While I was Army and not Marines (so grunt would have been the name for me), I know that boredom is a constant companion in war, although when I think of the alternative, I tend not to complain too much.

Relieving the Boredom

While the head knows that boredom is not necessarily a bad thing, it also wants to relieve the boredom. Unlike the first Gulf War, we tended to have a lot more amenities from home, but there was still a question of what to do with your (ample) free time. I do remember some people having contests similar to the scorpion contest in the movie, and I remember the way that so many people were on edge at one point or another in the 351 days we spent in theater. I don’t remember anyone going as far as Swoff did in the movie, but I remember that my weird act of defiance was writing the lyrics to “Bored and Extremely Dangerous” on the wall when we left Tallil (near Nasariyah). I also remember reconsidering my opinion on Star Trek: The Motion Picture and I decided to buy the director’s cut because there were so many special features.

War Experience without Combat

Like a lot of people who go to war, I never saw combat. My platoon did have one firefight, but based on the assigment, we needed to keep one person back to guard the base. Because I was the shortest one, and because there was a lot of overhead lifting, I was told that I would be the sergeant of the guard instead. (I have never been more glad to be 5’5 in all my life.) For people like me, Jarhead is one of the best war movies at explaining the war for those who never see combat. It is not a very action-packed movie, especially by war movie standards, but it was unflinchingly honest in its portrayal of life for those who have to hurry up and wait, ultimately for nothing. It also pointed out that not everyone who goes to war agrees with the cause, but that the real reason for going is one of duty. Lastly, look out for the Vietnam veteran who gets on the bus in one of the most poingant moments of the movie.