Pam and I watched Will Smith’s latest July 4 blockbuster, “Hancock,” this weekend. It was a pleasant surprise. Very good. Knowing Hancock was a superhero, I expected some villainous superhero to come along to do climactic battle with Hancock. That never happened. The movie was actually all about the back-story, and that made it very interesting. Good job, Hollywood, for actually pulling some punches in order to present a satisfying story.

Saw “Prince Caspian” today, the second Narnia movie. This one was a lot more serious, gritty, violent. Not so much a children’s movie, though there was nothing graphic. I really liked it. The religious themes were much more subtle, even obscure. Certainly nothing like the blatant spiritual subtext in “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Even now, based on this movie, I’m not sure what spiritual points C. S. Lewis was making, so I’m wondering how true the book is to the movie or how hard they tried to incorporate his religious themes. But hey–it was a good movie. And when Aslan finally appeared, I about had tears in my eyes.

Pam and I watched “Once” tonight. Wow, what a charming movie! Mostly a modern musical, set on the streets of an English city. Probably 60% music.

• No villain. In fact, no unlikable characters, period.
• No conflict.
• No denouemont. There’s a word I haven’t used since creative writing class.
• Parents, but not the typical disapproving parents (always a cheap source of plot conflict).
• No professional actors.

A story without conflict? Is that really possible? Yep.

My brother, Rick, told me to see “Once,” and added, “You can thank me later.” Well Rick: thanks.

Watched Beowolf Sunday night. Didn’t really care for it. Don’t know why they did that cartoonish effect. I guess the director had a “vision” for that, but it was a stupid vision.

I’m enjoying “Combat!”, the TV show from the 60s (which I grew up watching). Very good stories. We’re on the fourth disk of season 1.

Pam and I saw “The Bourne Ultimatum” on Saturday. It was quite a thrill ride, like the first two movies. Only the first movie made any pretense about being based on the book by the same name. “The Bourne Identity” blew me away when I read it–my first Ludlum book. “Supremacy” and “Ultimatum” were good, too, but have no relation to the movies. But no problem–I loved the movies. It’s like getting six plots for the price of three titles (or maybe five-and-a-half plots).

In lots of American-made thrillers, the “villain” is the CIA or some other secret government entity trying to hoodwink the American people or do nasty things in the name of patriotism. That’s the general idea, anyway. Such was the case with “Ultimatum.” And I got to thinking about how this must play overseas. Foreigners continually see American movies in which we depict our own government as secretive and insidious. Have foreigners come to believe that this must be reality? Well, it seems that they DO believe this, whether or not Hollywood is to blame.

We saw previews for “Rendition,” a movie (with Meryl Streep as a villainous spy honcho!) based on our government’s practice of sending people to other countries (Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia) to be tortured, if we think they have some information that might be useful to us. They don’t have to be actual terrorists, which was the threshhold before Bush took office–just people who we THINK know something that might help us catch actual bad guys. It’s a shameful, disgusting practice which has resulted in people dying under torture and innocent people being whisked away. And I’m continually amazed that so many Americans (always Republicans! usually FoxNews fans!) defend the practice. There’s no way in the world Jesus would defend it. But what does He know? Jesus is so naive.

Anyway, that’s a movie I’m going to see, too. And people around the world will see it. At this point, it’s probably just more of the same–evil American secret agency doing things which aren’t supposed to be reached by sunlight.