Listen to church bells ringing "Space Oddity"

This may be the most amazing tribute to David Bowie that has been done in the past few days: Dom Tower, the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, built in 1382 and with bells dating back to 1505, tolling out "Space Oddity".



I've grown ever more fascinated with Bowie since it was announced that he had passed. Having listened to his final album and watched the last two videos he made ("Blackstar" and especially "Lazarus"), one most certainly gets the sense that Bowie was not only fully aware of his mortality, but that he was accepting it with a mighty grace.  I can't help but think that there is also a sublime acknowledgement toward God in some of the lyrics and images, and that Bowie was surrendering to that.

When I posted about his passing a few days ago, I wrote that perhaps the most amazing thing of David Bowie was how he was not afraid to grow and change as he grew older.  That went for him as a showman.  But even more importantly, it went for him as a man.  The David Bowie of 2016 was not the David Bowie of 1976, and he never pretended to be.

There is a good philosophy in there somewhere.

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Finale of Marco van Bergen's new film NORMALSVILLE

Fellow filmmaker and good friend of this blog Marco van Bergen want's y'all to know that he's put the final scene of his new film Normalsville up for your viewing pleasure. Here 'tis!

For more of the wonderfully wacked work of Marco and his crew, visit the website of Route 64 Vintage!

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Miep Gies, protector of Anne Frank's family, has passed away

The second bestselling nonfiction book of all time - surpassed only by the Bible - owes its publication to this fine lady...

Miep Gies and her husband Jan were the Dutch couple who hid Otto Frank and his family in an Amsterdam office building's secluded annex from 1942 to 1944. For more than two years, Miep and Jan Gies smuggled food and other provisions to the Franks and other Jews, protecting them as they could from the Nazi regime that was controlling the Netherlands.

In August of 1944 (not long after the invasion of Normandy) the Gestapo discovered the hiding place and captured everyone. Not long afterward Miep Gies was allowed to return and while there she gathered up numerous personal belongings in hopes of returning them. Scattered on the floor were pages of Anne Frank's diary. In 1947 it was published and became a worldwide sensation for all time.

For her heroism, Miep Gies was decorated by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and declared a "Righteous Gentile" by the Israeli government.

Miep Gies, last surviving protector of Anne Frank and her family, passed away yesterday at the age of 100.

If only more people had the courage of this woman, this would be a far better world.

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Review of Marco van Bergen's ZERO HOUR!

Something I've been saying for awhile: the next revolution in film-making won't be in Hollywood. It'll be coming from out of the hinterlands. There is something really wonderful happening across the world, my friends: a new breed of filmmaker, and I'm seeing them as young as 12 all the way up to their 50s and 60s. People armed with the new technology of cheap digital filmmaking who are doing incredible things around their hometowns and down in their basements... which are more often than not rigged-up with makeshift greenscreens. Regular people, no longer content to watch the magic on the big screen, are now telling themselves "I could do that, I can do that. Maybe I will do that!"

Marco van Bergen is one of those people. A mid-teen filmmaker in the Netherlands, van Bergen just finished his new movie Zero Hour. This past week I was honored to be granted the opportunity to give it a looksee.

Zero Hour is about a tidal wave that hits a research facility on an island, and how the survivors frantically fight to survive. That this sounds much like Poseidon is bolstered by how some footage from that movie (along with clips from Titanic and other major motion pictures) is used in van Bergen's film. But don't let that fool you: Zero Hour is defined by its own cinematography (and by a largely original score by German composer Ralf Wienrich, which won a whole slew of awards at a major competition in Amsterdam a few days ago). There are some terrific shots that van Bergen and his crew pulled off, including a number of great special effects. Yet Zero Hour doesn't make the mistake that many other productions on this scale fall to the temptation of doing: making the effects supersede the story and the characters. Indeed, the scene that stands out in my mind from Zero Hour is an escape through the ventilation system: there was a much greater sense of claustrophobia and dark humor in that part than I would have expected from an older, more experienced filmmaker.

I couldn't help but think while watching Zero Hour that I was being blessed to witness the early efforts of a very talented group of young people, that I've no doubt we are going to be hearing quite a lot of good from in the years to come. Heck, if I was a bigtime studio exec, I'd throw Marco and his crew a couple million dollars and really turn them loose!

If you want to find out more about Zero Hour, check out the movie's official website. Oh yeah, and there will be a soundtrack CD of the film's score coming out soon, too! If that were only true of some other movies...

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