Harry Potter stuff: New blog examines books from Christian perspective, plus AWESOME Potter artwork!

Our dear friend Jenna Olwin out in Washington state has just started a new blog called A Church in Godric's Hollow. It promises to be quite an enlightening read because Jenna is delving into the Christian aspects of the Harry Potter books.

And it was because of Jenna's new blog that I discovered artdungeon.net. This is quite simply the most beautiful art based on the Harry Potter books that I've seen. It's absolutely breathtaking how Marta, the young artist behind the site, has captured the soul and essence of so many scenes and characters from the J.K. Rowling's books. Want an example? Okay, this one is my favorite so far, but do not peek unless you have read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

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THE PRINCESS BRIDE is 20 years old today

It was on September 25th, 1987 that Rob Reiner's movie The Princess Bride was released.

It was more than 14 years later before I saw it for the first time! I drove out to my sister's place in Sylva (about an hour west of Asheville) on New Years Eve in 2001 to hook up with her and Lisa so we could ring in 2002 together. Well that night while waiting for midnight Anita popped The Princess Bride in her DVD player.

To this day I still can't believe that I went so long without seeing this awesome movie! It's the kind of demented humor that I've always gone for. I don't even have an absolute favorite scene, they're all so good! But for some reason the part where Prince Humperdinck cranks up the torture machine full-blast has always made me giggle in a very wrong way. And then later on when Fezzik is doing the "Dread Pirate Roberts" thing: that always cracks me up. I loved that one so much that a month or so later I turned it into a "Star Wars Captioning" at TheForce.net (I couldn't help it, Andre the Giant looked too much like the Emperor in that scene :-).

Lisa's parents gave me the DVD of The Princess Bride as a gift this past Christmas. I may watch it again today just to celebrate.

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TRANSFORMERS 2 has a release date!

Superhero Hype! is reporting that Paramount has set a release date for Transformers 2: June 29, 2009.

Which is rather fast for a follow-up to a successful blockbuster movie. No doubt the threat of a writers strike this coming spring had something to do with it. I hope they're not rushing things. But then I think of Spider-Man 2 and how that is widely held to have been better than the original, and how it came out 2 years following Spider-Man. Besides, word is that the producers of Transformers have already sketched-out where this story is going for at least two more movies. And Transformers started filming a year before it was released and it turned out okay: with the foundation already set for much of the pre-production work, they'll probably be able to get to work on this fairly quickly.

By the way, the CD of Steve Jablonksy's score from Transformers comes out two weeks from tomorrow. And a week after that is when Transformers comes out on DVD. Take a wild guess which one I'm looking forward to having more :-)

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My Show Planet: A site for Christian filmmakers and musicians

Rory McIlvain, a filmmaker in California, sent me word tonight about My Show Planet, a YouTube-ish site for Christian independent filmmakers and musicians to showcase their work. The site is still in its very early stages, but I think it shows quite a lot of promise. Here's wishing Rory all the best in this new endeavor and I'll definitely be visiting on a regular basis (and will try to contribute something too :-).

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Halo 3 comes out at midnight tonight

Unfortunately I don't have an Xbox 360 to play it on even if I bought it. Might be getting one come Christmas though (now that it's been out for about 2 years I guess I can trust the technology :-) and then I'll play Halo 3. And the Xbox 360 version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. And maybe Gears of War which a lot of people tell me is a very good game.

In the meantime I'm gonna replay the original Halo and Halo 2. Especially Halo 2. I'm still confused as heck about the ending to that game.

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What's brewing at KWerky Productions?

It's been awhile since anything's been reported here regarding KWerky Productions, the filmmaking outfit started by "Weird" Ed and me. Unfortunately events during most of the past year really took away from a lot of productive time and energy. Now that all of that is over with, it's time to turn our attention to more creative efforts.

It's funny: for over a year now I've been involved in fighting one battle after another. The thing with Viacom/YouTube was just the most recent of those. With all of them having been fought (and amazingly enough won for the most part) I'm finally looking forward to struggling for things I want to do, not necessarily because I have to do them...

Keys, our feature-length project, is still on. Obviously we weren't able to film it in the timeframe that I was hoping for. Oddly enough that may have helped things when it came time to shoot it. And it's given me time to do more research, tighten-down some elements, etc.

By the way, it turns out that there's another movie called Keys. Interestingly enough, like ours this one seems to involve a lot of music too. Here's the website for that Keys and after visiting it and seeing the trailer, I am really interested in seeing it because it looks very good.

In light of knowing that there's another movie sharing the same title as ours, I'd considered changing the title of the one we're doing. But I think it's going to be okay. The word "Keys" is something that's quite important to the story and there's really nothing else appropriate that would work. Besides, lots of different movies share the same title (no not remakes!) and that's okay. In the end there will be one Keys made by Christopher Babers and another Keys made by Christopher Knight and his will be excellent and mine will be... strange :-)

Seriously though, we wish Babers well and we look forward to seeing his Keys!

Apart from that, there are no less than two projects we're working on. One of them is already shot and all that needs to be done is to put it together. And there's an interesting idea that I'm playing around with for a short film, that in some ways would be like Schrodinger's Bedroom, although it would be much more serious and I would have plenty of time to work on it (compared to Schrodinger's Bedroom which was rushed from conception to completion in less than a month).

And then there is another project. Chad Austin is the one who came up with the idea for it and when he told me about it on Friday night (after we saw Transformers in IMAX) my brain started reeling with possibilities. This is something that we're going to be working on over the next few months and it's not only going to involve filmmaking, but some other stuff too that I think will turn out to be good for personal growth. This one is going to be absolutely hilarious!

So that's what's happening right now on the KWerky Productions front. And that's probably the last time for awhile that I'll be able to say anything about what we're doing. Because I'm seriously thinking of blogging for another few weeks and then take some time off from The Knight Shift, so that I can focus on those efforts... and other things also. But now ya know what's sorta in the pot :-)

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Music from Doom on a piano

Another awesome YouTube find (actually Doomworld gets credit for the discovery). It's a video of a guy playing a lot of the theme music from Doom on his piano! This was worth posting just for his rendition of E1M1 (to this day the most pounding/driven theme from a video game I've ever heard).

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Marcel Marceau has passed away

World-famous mime Marcel Marceau has died at the age of 84.

What an amazing life he lived! I'm just now discovering that he fought in the French resistance during World War II and that he helped many Jewish children flee to safety in Switzerland. Then Marceau became a translator for General Patton liberation army. After the war he studied drama and that's how he wound up discovering and perfecting the art of pantomime.

I saw him on TV bunches of times over the years (think the first time I ever saw him was on an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood) but ironically the performance that most comes to mind whenever I hear his name was his brief appearance in Mel Brooks' 1976 comedy Silent Movie. Marceau had the only line that's actually spoke aloud in the entire movie: he says "Non!" (so far as I know this was Marceau's only spoken word in a major performance).

Hope it'll be awhile before I have to post another one of these. They seem to be all too frequent lately...

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TRANSFORMERS 2 coming the summer of 2009! Plus: My wish-list for the sequel

According to Michael Bay's blog, he and Steven Spielberg have scheduled the summer of 2009 for the release of Transformers 2.

Sweet!

'Course we knew this was going to happen anyway, but it looks like we'll be seeing them giant battlin' robots a year earlier than previously expected.

And since every other fan of Transformers has already said what they want in the sequel, here's my personal list of things I'm hoping that this second Transformers movie will have:

- More Transformers!
The first movie was a great setup for the series and introduction to the concept. I think that's why the number of Transformers that we saw was relatively limited. The next chapter should be able to expand the cast of both Autobots and Decepticons significantly.

- Give the Transformers more screen time
A lot of people complained about how much of Transformers was focused on the humans, compared to how much was focused on the Transformers themselves. The 2007 movie was a lot about how we as Earthlings come to know about the Transformers and their war. Part 2 should provide more opportunity to explore the Transformers themselves.

- Steve Jablonsky once again composing the score
Like you thought that I of all people would not mention that one :-P

- A more world-wide conflict
Let's see the Decepticons wreck havoc all over the globe. So we'll need a way for the Autobots to reach all of those trouble spots (maybe that aircraft carrier Transformer we've heard that Bay wants to put in the sequel?).

- Bring on the Dinobots!
You read it here first: Grimlock will be the big hero of the 2009 summer movie season. Maybe early in the movie we'll get to see five Autobot protoforms crashing on Jurassic Park...

- Other well-known voices for the Transformers
Say it with me: "Christopher Lloyd is Wheeljack." Obviously Peter Cullen should return (as should Hugo Weaving, if they bring back Megatron somehow). I also think that Frank Welker should be offered a role too, in honor of all the work that he did for the original cartoon. But there's great potential for a lot of famous voices to help bring the Transformers to life. How about... Mark Hamill as Thundercracker?

- A MASSIVE air battle between human military and the flying Decepticons
One of the best - and scariest - scenes in Transformers was toward the end of the movie, when Starscream was "playing" with the Air Force jets. He kept switching back and forth from his F-22 Raptor mode to his biped form as he tore the human fighters out of the sky. I would love to see another fight like that, only this time between the Air Force and Starscream leading an entire squadron of airborne Decepticons. Remember the air battles in Independence Day? Imagine something of that scale in a Transformers movie.

- Getting to see Transformer spacecraft
I can accept how Optimus and his crew arrived on Earth... but how are they going to get off of it? They gotta have a ship orbiting somewhere and the literature has established that anyway.

- Keep emphasizing the otherworldly nature of the Transformers
The 2007 movie in my opinion was the finest continuity of the Transformers franchise, in that for the first time it established the Transformers as a distinctly alien race. Things like the Decepticons doing their "roll call" in their native language were really nice touches. We should see more of that.

- No more references to "masturbation" or other lewd "humor"!
That one line was the worst part of the 2007 Transformers movie, for so many reasons. It wasn't needed. At all. Hopefully this will remain the one low point of the movie series.

- Arcee
Yes, chalk me up as one of the fans who want to see her make an appearance. We know that Arcee was planned at one point to be in the first movie, that there were CGI models made of her even. A female Transformer would be quite an intriguing addition to the film franchise.

- No "mass-shifting"!
Yes, I know that there is a massive demand for Soundwave and I would like to see him too. But in the movies he should be handled realistically. Having a 30-foot robot shrink down into a portable cassette player may be allowed to slide in the comics or cartoons, but it's going to be hard to believe in a live-action movie.

- Likewise, caution with the "gestalts"
They're gonna appear sometime or another 'cuz they're too popular: the "combiners". They're the "special teams" of Transformers that merge into larger robots. But have you ever thought about how ridiculous some of those would be in real life? I mean, Menasor would have tiny arms and legs compared to the rest of his body: whoever heard of a Transformer with a glandular problem? But I think if the producers are careful, a live-action gestalt could work fine.

What else should we like to see in Transformers 2? :-)

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Dude follows EVERY rule in the Bible for one year

A man named A.J. Jacobs has spent a full year following all of the rules and commandments of the Bible. What was that like?

After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book "The Know-It-All," he figured he had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered, as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse and asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery. Jacobs spent the year carrying around a stapled list of the more than 700 rules and prohibitions identified in the Good Book, and also consulted with religious leaders and spent time with the Amish, Hassidic Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hit here for the rest of the story. Thanks to Kevin Bussey for the find!

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We saw TRANSFORMERS in glorious IMAX at the Exploris!

Yesterday was the premiere of Transformers in the IMAX format. The allure of watching the Autobots and Decepticons hash it out on what I call "the big-a$$ screen" was too much to pass up, so on Tuesday Lisa and I ordered our tickets for last night's 7 p.m. show at the IMAX Theater at Exploris in downtown Raleigh.

But this really is the kind of thing best shared with friends too. So Chad Austin also got him a ticket and we got in touch with Eric Wilson, a really good friend of ours who I hadn't seen in like 15 years. He drove a few hours to Raleigh and we all hooked up at Chad's place about 5 minutes from the Exploris. After a quick bite at the Armadillo Grill, we headed over to the theater.

The best part of going to see Transformers last night, without a doubt, was getting to see Eric's reaction to watching an IMAX movie for the first time in his life. The moment we entered the theater his eyes got as big as saucers when he saw that mammoth screen: it's been a way long time since I've seen utter astonishment like that. And then before a movie starts there's this little presentation that shows off the Exploris IMAX's capabilities, including the 12,000 watts of speakers. As Eric put it, "It's like being at a KISS concert!" I found myself turning to look at Eric quite a bit during the movie and there wasn't a time that he didn't look blown-away by the spectacle of it all. It almost seemed too much, for all of us: Chad said something about how overwhelming the screen was with all that action going on.

Transformers is the kind of movie that screams for the IMAX treatment. It's big, bright and loud! Easily the most 'splosive-sounding IMAX movie that I've ever heard. From the opening scene where we watch the Allspark majestically float through space as Optimus narrates over it, you know this is going to be a massive thing for both eyes and ears to behold. And then a few minutes later we see Blackout's attack on the Air Force base in Qatar and it's never looked so good: the IMAX image is so huge, you see every nuance of Blackout's movement as he works his way across the grounds of the base. That's one of the best things about the IMAX release, we all agreed: you really can make out details better than you can in the regular release.

Everything else in the movie is as magnificent as you can imagine Transformers in IMAX to be: the ground-pounding counter-attack on Scorponok, the "Autobots descent" (maybe the best scene in any movie all summer), and the final battle that goes from Hoover Dam to Mission City. How awesome is Transformers with IMAX-sized sound? Well the entire theater literally vibrated when Megatron awoke and declares "I am... Megatron!"

If you're a fan of Transformers you've probably heard that the IMAX release contains about 2 minutes of extra footage. That's true but none of it involves new material of the Transformers themselves (unless you count the scene where Sam is driving Bumblebee and he picks up his friend Miles just before the lake scene). All of the new footage focus on the humans, but I still enjoyed them. The best of the new stuff is a quick scene where Lennox is trying to persuade the gun-totin' owner of a pawn shop to give him some short-wave radios. A lot of the new material relates to Sector Seven and its long history, like how every President since Hoover - and Simmons names them all usually with their nicknames - has come to look at Megatron. Come to think of it, there's like six new scenes and Simmons is in three of those: curious, that.

Here's Eric, Chad, myself and Lisa (hey, all four of us are bloggers!) with the Transformers stand-up in the lobby of the IMAX Theater at Exploris:

After the show we went to Krispey Kreme for donuts. That's probably going to be worth noting in the months to come as a pretty fun project was conceived in the course of consuming the sweets. So I just wanted to put a marker here for when this thing kind of kicked-off. There'll be more to talk about that come January or so.

So we had a blast last night! And Transformers was definitely worth the drive to watch in IMAX. If there is an IMAX screen fairly close by, by all means do what you can to catch it while it's running: there's no better way to wind down the theatrical run of such a great movie than to see it like this! :-)

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VIDEO: Citizens arrested in D.C. for reading the Constitution

I was going to preface this with some commentary. Then I decided that this is something that would be better for you to watch and decide for yourself whether this is right or wrong.

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MONDAY NIGHT LIVE has a Myspace page

Yes the rumors are true: Monday Night Live now has its own page on Myspace! And it does a really good job of conveying the off-beat personality of Reidsville, North Carolina's premiere television call-in show, too. On the page you'll find a history of the long-running show, hilarious "in-jokes" like references to Commander Ashtar and Tom Wopat and Richard from Danville, pictures of hosts Mark Childrey and Ken Echols (and maybe a few other familiar faces), and even the show's theme music - "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac - playing in the background... along with much more! The only thing missing is that Jaybird isn't on the friends list... but maybe he'll get a Myspace page of his own soon (hurry up Jaybird!).

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Judge OKs "Hitler Youth" buttons to protest school uniforms

A federal judge has ruled that two New Jersey students can continue wearing buttons depicting the Hitler Youth as part of a protest against school uniforms, Fox News is reporting...

U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. sided with the parents of the students, who had been threatened with suspension by the Bayonne school district last fall for wearing the buttons. However, the judge added in his ruling that the boys will not be allowed to distribute the buttons at school.

"I'm very pleased," said Laura DePinto, mother of one of the students. "I think it upholds the most basic of our American rights, which is to protest peacefully."

Citing a 1969 case in Iowa involving students who wore black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War, Greenaway wrote that "a student may not be punished for merely expressing views unless the school has reason to believe that the speech or expression will 'materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school."'

Greenaway's decision "follows the law as we saw it going in," said Karin R. White Morgen, an attorney representing both boys' families. "We believed that it was the Tinker decision that applied," she added, referring to the Iowa case.

The buttons bear the words "no school uniforms" with a slash through them superimposed on a photo of young boys wearing identical shirts and neckerchiefs. There are no swastikas visible on the buttons, but the parties agreed that they depict members of Hitler youth.

Bayonne instituted mandatory uniforms last September for grades K-8, and fifth-grader Michael DePinto wore the button several times before objections were raised in November, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.

In a letter dated Nov. 16, 2006, Janice Lo Re, principal of Public School 14, notified Laura DePinto that her son "will be subject to suspension" for wearing the button in school.

Parents of the other student, Anthony LaRocco, a seventh-grader at the Woodrow Wilson School, received a similar letter from principal Catherine Quinn.

After the suspension threat, the boys' parents filed a federal lawsuit claiming the district stifled the children's First Amendment free speech rights. They also have mounted a legal challenge to the uniform policy.

Neither boy has worn the button since the lawsuit was filed, Morgen said.

District lawyers asserted that the image of the Hitler youth was abhorrent because it conveyed intolerance and racial inequality represented by Nazism.

Thanks to Mark Childrey for the heads-up!

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TRANSFORMERS score: Decepticons theme chanting revealed (it's a medieval hymn!)

There's just nineteen days left before the CD of Steve Jablonsky's Transformers score comes out, which a lot of us have been looking forward to since the movie came out. Well, Marco van Bergen has discovered something about the soundtrack. Remember the unearthly chanting that's in a lot of the music for the Decepticons, like when Frenzy is hacking the computer and during the "roll call" scene? Marco and I talked about it and comparisons to John Williams's "Duel of the Fates" from the Star Wars Episode I soundtrack came up. The chorals in "Duel of the Fates" were a Sanskrit translation of an ancient Welsh poem called "Battle of the Trees". So might Jablonsky have done something similar with the Decepticons music?

Well, Marco did some asking-around in the right places and here's what he found out:

I was wondering for a longer time now what the great lyrics in the "Decepticons theme" mean, and today, I found out: The Decepticons theme is influenced by the world famous Dies Irae. Jablonsky mixed it up, and uhm, well now you have a meaningless pot of words:

Low-voice-chant:
Tuba, mirum, Tuba, spargens
Tremor, David, mirum, ante

Chant which gets louder throughout:
Totum totum totum totum David
Totum spargens totum david
Totum quarens, sedisti totum

(I wasn't able to understand the rest of it.)

If ya would translate it, it would be something like this:

Trumpet, casts, Trumpet wondrous
Horror, David, Casts, before

Contained, contained, contained contained David
Contained wondrous contained David
Contained seeking, hope contained

So, it's all kinda nonsense (although the real Dies Irae has a biblical meaning behind it).

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Dies Irae. From the opening paragraph:

Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath") is a famous thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano. It is often judged to be the best medieval Latin poem, differing from classical Latin by its accentual (non-quantitative) stress and its rhymed lines. The meter is trochaic. The poem describes the day of judgment, the last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.

I can sorta see why this particular hymn might have wound up being "adapted" for the Decepticons theme: just the translation of the lyrics sound dark, foreboding, unearthly...

What a neat find! Thanks Marco! :-)

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Tonight's Drudge Report illustrates a messed-up America

There's so much wrong with this picture that I don't even know where to begin...

There is nothing respectable about Hillary Clinton. There is nothing respectable about Dick Cheney either. They're both power-mad and completely bereft of any real sense of service or humility.

That the Drudge Report believes this is worthy of a screaming headline - complete with Darth Vader graphic - might make it even more ridiculous, if it weren't so altogether tragic.

This country is plagued with rabid Democrats, reprobate Republicans, and rubbish enablers in the bigtime press. And with damned few exceptions, not one of the whole sorry lot has any real clue as to what's actually going on in this world or how they're screwing things up for the rest of us. They are absolutely worthless and it's an insult to our intelligence that we should even be expected to care about these people.

To paraphrase that Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Ark: "Shoot them... shoot them all!"

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TOWN BANS NEW CHURCHES: Reidsville City Council forbids new congregations in downtown area

Earlier tonight on WGSR, Richard Moore appeared with Charles Roark and was (among other things) talking about this week's meeting of the Reidsville City Council. And Richard reported on something that I couldn't believe that I was hearing, so I e-mailed Richard and he confirmed it...

Reidsville City Council has voted to ban new churches from the downtown area.

Here is what Richard told me...

"Current churches can continue to operate, but no new churches will be allowed in the Central Business District. It was put into law today with a 5-2 vote. I think John Gentry and George Rucker voted against it."

Richard also tells me that the Reidsville City Council did not debate whether or not this measure to ban churches was constitutional, but the council did discuss the constitutionality of banning pit bulls.

Only in Reidsville.

Let's review the First Amendment of the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It's a pretty sad thing but one way or another, it's occurred to me that as of today every right delineated by the First Amendment has come under attack or otherwise curtailment by public officials in Rockingham County in the past several months. We've had elected officials describe WGSR as "bad for the community" (Ron Price on the school board), sue people for organizing petition drives (Ron Price, again), eliminate free speech in a public hearing (Reidsville City Council's silencing Richard Moore in April). And now with this act, Reidsville City Council is prohibiting both the exercise of religion and the right to peacably assemble.

It could also be noted that beyond simple prohibition, that the City of Reidsville is now acting as a regulatory agency over religious activity.

There may be more to report about this later. I'll post it when it comes across the desk this way. In the meantime, as crazy as it sounds: Reidsville, North Carolina is one town in America that has banned new churches from appearing in its downtown area.

Parse that as you will.

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