A film score rooted in hymns

As you've probably heard, the music to the Coen Brothers' True Grit is rooted and based around 19th century hymns. Here's what the composer, Carter Burwell, says about coming up with the film score:

“Ethan and Joel and I had the same idea—a score rooted in 19th-century hymns. The songs Mattie would sing if she had time for such frivolity. Our model was the hymn ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’, composed in 1888 by Anthony Showalter, an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Dalton, Georgia, and used memorably in the film The Night of the Hunter. This, together with other hymns of the period, forms the backbone of the score, which grows from church piano to orchestra as Mattie gets farther and farther from home.”

You can read Burwell's narration through the film scoring process here. Definitely worth the read if you like music (and I'm pretty sure you do).

Put the seminaries out of business!

Sometime last week I came across this quote by Al Mohler in an article from The Gospel Coalition. Our local church is currently trying to do more of its own training of teachers (and potentially pastors), and I thought the quote spoke to a lot of what we're trying to do. It was encouraging at the very least, and a little contrary (in a good way) to our modern way of training pastors.

“My hope is that we can put the [seminary] institution out of business. What I want to see is more godly, biblically grounded, gospel-driven local churches begin to prepare pastors, because it’s in the local church where that should primarily take place.”

~ Al Mohler

Why N.D. Wilson writes children's fiction

N.D. Wilson is becoming one of my favorite authors as of late. He writes essays, fiction, children's fiction, and is currently on the task of writing the screenplay for a film version of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. He is a regular contributor to the Christian publication The Credenda Agenda, where I found this article by him (go here to read it), on writing children's literature. Below are some of my favorite quotes from Wilson's article. And who says adults can't read children's books?

Adults. We are very important, and we need to read important things. Sure, a lot of us read romance novels and humor and pulp fantasy and feel-goodistic schlock, but those aren’t the important people. Important people read deep, thoughtful, ponderous, bitter, empty, foul, and incisive things—the stuff of wonderful fiction.

The assumption [of critics who think children's literature shouldn't be too "real"] is that kids don’t need/can’t handle the truth. They need some time to be happy before they discover how much the world sucks and/or how boring it really is. Lie to the kids now, and they will look back on it fondly later. (Santa anyone?)

I don’t want to lie to kids. Ever. I don’t want to lull them to sleep before the real world wakes them up with a head slap and a wet-willy in the ear sometime during adolescence.

I want to paint a picture of this world that is accurate (if impressionistic), and I don’t want a single young reader to grow up and look back on me as the peddler of sweet youthful falsehoods. I want them to get a world vision that can grow and mature and age with them until, like all exoskeletons, it must be cast aside—not as false, but as a shallow introduction to things even deeper and stranger and more wonderful [...]

It is because I try to write this way that I use so much darkness. Evil is more than a prop. True sacrifice is not a sleight of hand. Laughter in the face of adversity is the first step to profound joy in triumph.

True Grit and Redemption

I went to the movies with my dad on Monday and watched the Coen Brothers' True Grit. I was skeptical when I first heard about this film, being a fan of the original John Wayne version. But the more I heard about it, read a couple of reviews, and watched the trailer multiple times, I couldn't wait to see it. And it didn't disappoint. Follow the links below to 2 articles that analyze the film a lot better than I could. All I have to say is, that I almost couldn't believe how redemptive the movie was, and how an umbrella of true, solid Christian hope colored the entire story. It's no accident that almost all of the film's musical score has parts of the hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" running through it. The soundtrack is definitely worth the purchase, by the way.

2 great articles to read:

Article # 1: A review of the film by Stanley Fish, from the New York Times.

Article # 2: A review by Mike Cosper, at The Gospel Coalition, providing a distinctly Christian, biblical critique of the film.

Notable Reads of 2010

Significant things I read in 2010 (a few more to be added):

1. Why We Love the Church by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck
I really enjoyed this book. In the midst of postmodern dissatisfaction with church and organized religion, these two authors make a really good case for these things, and make an attempt to stir up affections for organized religion. Very encouraging read, and revived my excitement for church on Sundays, Monday night Shepherding Group etc.

2. The Pleasures of God by John Piper
Piper is becoming like an old friend to me as I read more and more of his books. I love the way he thinks through things, and it's really exciting for me to sit down with a Piper book and try to think along with him through Scripture and theology, and life. This book is another deep one by him, that leads you to think about very profound aspects of the person of God. Great stuff. Read the appendices too!

3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
It's my goal to eventually read a lot of Hemingway's books. This goal has been slow in the reaching, but every so often I get back to a Hemingway book. This was the first time I ever read this one, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
I love Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal," so I thought I'd love a novel by him. But I didn't. It really got on my nerves after a while, for reasons I can't completely explain. There were laughs to be had along the way, but overall I thought the story got pretty redundant among other things. Maybe I don't have the constitution for long, drawn-out satire...

5. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Collection of short stories, that influenced Ray Bradbury a ton. So I had to pick it up. Tones of sadness throughout, but a really unique treatment of human beings and their personal struggles. My dad was born and raised in a small Ohio town also, and I grew up listening to his stories; I suppose I have extra fondness for stories set in Ohio. I really liked this one, and I'm sure another reading would yield more goodness.

6. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
This one threw me for a loop. I don't know if I completely get all of what Chesterton is up to in this book, but I'd really like to get back to it again for at least one more read. It's a cool allegory for the problem of evil, among other things.