Midnight with Dwarves in Barrels

Posted on December 12, 2013 by awtraughber

It’s that time of year again: time to get in line for a midnight showing from the land of Tolkien-and-Jackson.  It’s been twelve years since that first midnight movie in Dallas.  Time flies, as Gollum or Bilbo might guess.

And so tonight it’s Bilbo and the dwarves in barrels.  I’m not sure why, but it’s one of my favorite images from The Hobbit.  There are lots of details of the story that I’ve mostly forgotten, but that image is strong.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Peter Jackson handles it.  I’m also quite excited that reviews for The Desolation of Smaug are quite good, especially when compared to An Unexpected Journey.

The denizens of Sesame Street recently got into a Tolkien mood.  Check out “The Lord of the Crumbs” below.  It’s got some nice moments, some quality nods to LOTR.  And its’s got a decent lesson-learned, too.

One of these days I’m going to have to research the fine line between Sesame Street and the Muppets.  Glad they both have a nice sense of humor and parody.

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Klosterman’s Generational Erosion

Posted on December 11, 2013 by awtraughber

One of my most enjoyable reads this summer (amidst a few apocalyptic novels) was Chuck Klosterman’s I Wear the Black Hat.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book, as it was all about villains and villainy in almost every area of life.  Klosterman is an easy read for me, though not because of any inherent simplicity.  Something about his mixture of the personal and the cultural makes for a smooth, challenging, and ultimately enriching read.

Last week Klosterman contributed to Grantand’s “The Big Little Things of 2013” series with a rumination on Eminem and his unexpected interview with Brent Musberger on ESPN.  Both subjects are outside my areas of deep interest, yet Klosterman is able to make a brilliantly understated connection between family, technology, music, and culture.  Best sentence of the article?  Commenting on the rapper’s frank and almost dismissive answer about his most recent album, Klosterman surmises:

He’s trying to build a weird bridge to somewhere reasonable.

“Aren’t we all?” I asked myself as soon as I had read it.  What’s probably true for Eminem is true for me and you and Brent Musberger, too.  And that has both everything and nothing to do with the “generation gap” mentioned in the article’s title.

I’d encourage you to take a moment and read the article in full here.  It’s great writing, thoughtful and instructive in a way you don’t often find.  He’s correct, I believe.  Differences because of age still exist, but the strange spell of technology is creating an even weirder dynamic most of us are accidentally missing.

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Revisiting the Day of the Doctor

Posted on December 10, 2013 by awtraughber

Deeciding on one “best moment” from The Day of the Doctor is a difficult task.  Mix in getting to see the episode in 3-D at the theater, and the choice gets even more difficult.  Pre-show slides recounting the Doctor’s 50-year history.  Strax introducing theater etiquette.  Tennant and Smith bringing the screen to 3-D with their sonic screwdrivers.  The TARDIS-eye view of London.  The beauty of 3-D paintings.  The story of the Time-War finally told.  Rose.  The finding of a better solution.   A special mini-documentary at the end of the evening.   Every bit brilliant moment, but every bit was almost lead-in, build-up to a conversation and a change in direction that sets Christmas (and the Christmas episode) up perfectly for something sad and special.

Hard to believe that the BBC posted the following two clips online, but they have.  They catch the turn perfectly: a look at the best of the past and a turn towards a better and even bigger future. Allons-y indeed!

Home, indeed.  And the long way, for sure.  What a journey it has been.

The Day of the Doctor is available online as well as on DVD and Blu-Ray starting today.

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Two Years a Sherlock-less London?

Posted on December 9, 2013 by awtraughber

Rarely, if ever, do you actually get to pick up where you left off.

What’s true of life in general also seems to be part of the message of this next round of adventures for Sherlock and Watson.  The BBC just released a “full” trailer for the show’s third season, which drops in the UK a few days before it drops in the States.

There are links to an interactive version of the trailer, too.  I started watching it but decided I didn’t want the biggest mystery since the Smoke Monster to be ruined for me.  I look forward to the explanation of the two-year gap almost as much as I look forward to hearing about how Sherlock survived his final fall.

Sherlock series three premieres on January 14, 2014 on PBS. (And you can catch the show’s leads in the next Hobbit movie, which premieres this weekend.)

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Scribbling Out of the Silence

Posted on December 8, 2013 by awtraughber

This morning’s Gospel reading was from early in the book of Luke, Zechariah nine-months silent after questioning Gabriel’s message of hope for the old man and his barren wife.  Zechariah walked out of the temple mute but making signs with his hands, unable to say a word about he had seen and heard.  I wonder if he assumed that his voice would return as soon as little John left the womb, if he was sad or mad as another silent week passed beyond the boy’s birth.  Elizabeth names the child “John” and the neighbors and relatives push back because no one in the family had been named that before.  So they turn to the mute man, making gestures of their own, futile.  And then, with the scribbling of the words “his name is John” on some at-hand tablet, the priest’s mouth is opened and his tongue is freed and all kinds of praise breaks loose.

I’m no Zechariah, but I have been silent lately.  True: I talk every day in class, have even preached a few times recently.  But I’ve also been experiencing an odd silence in different parts of my life, and I haven’t quite figured out why.  But reading Zechariah’s story this morning nudged me into hoping that some scribbling here and there will help loosen this tongue a bit.  And while I doubt every word will end up as praise, maybe they can at least point to something better.

Advent is about silence and its breaking, about four centuries of hope deferred cracked apart by sentences as simple as an infant’s name declared on ink and parchment. And maybe it’s even a bit about breaking some of the strange silences in our own lives.  I believe that God is good like that.

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Good Night, Who

Posted on November 14, 2013 by awtraughber

And just like that, the 50th Anniversary of the Doctor begins  . . .

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An Even Newer Trailer for The Desolation of Smaug

Posted on November 4, 2013 by awtraughber

I was excited to see a new trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug this past weekend.  Which makes me a little surprised to see yet another trailer debut today.  Then I remembered that tomorrow is the release of the extended version of An Unexpected Journey, so it makes a little more sense.

Strange.  The thing I like most about this trailer and the last is the difference in music.  You don’t get much of the “traditional” LOTR music here.  I think that’s a wise move, especially if it means more new music in the next two movies.  Guess we’ll see soon enough.

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A Hint of New U2 Music

Posted on November 4, 2013 by awtraughber

I didn’t quite know what to think yesterday when the guy on the radio announced that U2’s long-awaited follow-up to No Line on the Horizon would drop the day after Thanksgiving.  How had I missed this news?  A quick internet search yielded news both good and bad.

The bad news is that U2’s next album won’t drop until early next year.  According to this Rolling Stone article, bassist Adam Clayton has acknowledged that the album will have twelve songs and be done by Christmas . . . but that it won’t drop until sometime in the new year.  Clayton adds: “I think it’s a bit of a return to U2 of old, but with the maturity, if you like, of the U2 of the last 10 years. It’s a combination of those two things and it’s a really interesting hybrid.”  So a little while longer for something very good.

The good news is that the band is releasing a new song the day after Thanksgiving as a single with a new version of “Breathe” as a kind of B-side.  And the song, “Ordinary Love,” has actually made its way into the media via the second trailer for the upcoming bio-pic of Nelson Mandela, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.  According to Rolling Stone, the two-song set will be available with “Back to Black Friday” as a limited edition 10″ vinyl record.  You can check that trailer out below.  “Ordinary Love” starts around the halfway mark.

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James K. A. Smith on When “It’s Not Worship”

Posted on October 30, 2013 by awtraughber

James K. A. Smith, author of Desiring the Kingdom, recently released a collection of shorter writings.  Discipleship in the Present Tense includes a number of quality pieces, many of them being good introductions to Smith’s view on culture and its liturgies.  One of my favorite pieces is all about praise and worship.  Praise and worship is a topic that gets many people passionate quickly.  Smith’s “Open Letter to Praise Bands” is a brilliant attempt and being pointed and succinct, calling our attention to at least three times where what happens in a congregation “is not worship.”

The letter is also a great introduction to his concept of cultural liturgies.  You can read the whole letter here.  I think it’s balanced, appropriate, and worth a read.

Discipleship in the Present Tense is available online in paperback or digital here.

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Twenty Years of a Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band

Posted on October 28, 2013 by awtraughber

The folks at Christianity Today just posted an interview with Reed Arvin, the producer of much of the late Rich Mullins’ music.  Turns out that it’s been twenty years since the release of A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band.  You heard me say it before: A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band is one of my all-time favorite albums.  So it’s cool to get an inside peek at things.

The interview gives us a real reminder of how different things were two decades ago, when CCM was at it’s height.  The interviewer asks Arvin some questions I’d like to think that I’d ask myself, including one or two speculative questions.  You can read the Christianity Today version of the interview here.  And you can check out the complete interview here.

One of the best songs from the album is “The Color Green.”  Here’s a recording of the song from 1997.

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