took my kids to see zathura saturday night, after leaving disneyland. what a fun story. yes, it’s jumanji in outer space — but it never denies that. lots of great scenes those of us in youth ministry will want to use in teaching, once it comes out on DVD.
tonite, i’m in grand rapids for some meetings at zondervan (our publishing partner). jay, our publisher, and david, our marketing director, and mark yaconelli — author of the upcoming book Contemplative Youth Ministry — are here with me. after dinner with z peeps, mark yac, jay and i went to see shopgirl. i’d read this steve martin novella a few years ago, and really enjoyed its simplicity. the movie was lush. not a complicated story — just a character piece of a young woman in LA (claire daines) finding her way, and looking for reciprocated love. steve martin and jason schwartzman play totally opposite love interests. while the story is great, and reveals our longing for love beyond physical, the beauty of the movie is the way it is shot — with lots of long awkward silences, a slow (but not boring) pace, and acting that goes way beyond dialogue.
I’ve been wondering how Shopgirl compares with Bill Murray’s “Lost in Translation” it sounds like they have some similar themes. Can you make a comparison?
you just made my day! i’m stoked to hear what mark’s take on ‘contemplative youth ministry’ would be.
sorry, jennifer — i’ve wanted to see lost in translation for a long time, but haven’t gotten around to it. can’t make a comparison.
Mark,
You should see it. It sounds like if you liked Shopgirl, you’d like Lost in Translation.
Interesting coincidence. My wife and I went to see Shopgirl tonight. (We usually go on Tuesdays. A local theatre offers $4 tickets with free popcorn. That’s a bargain given most theaters around here are close to $10.)
I really liked the movie. An interesting study of characters – motivations, failings, and relationships. There was just enough quirk without being too outrageous.
It was funny. My wife didn’t like it much. She thought Steve Martin’s acting was wooden. I agreed, but thought that was a positive because he was playing a wooden person! I think she also didn’t like it because his character behaved somewhat despicably, albeit in a sympathetic manner.
SEMI-SPOILER WARNING
Don’t read beyond this paragraph if you don’t want to know anything about the end of the movie. It won’t really give away much plot detail, but it may effect your experience of the movie.
I know it’s not the hippest thing to evaluate a movie based on its compatibility with Christian values, but I don’t claim to be hip. While I loved the movie overall, I hated the very end of the very end.
I was so nicely moved by what I thought was a beautiful and profound insight by Ray (Steve Martin’s character) at the end where he said he was wrong to want only a part of Maribelle (Clare Danes’ character), and not all of her. But then to follow it with that horrible-side-of-existentialism copout/justification that it was “just life” killed the whole thing. Yuck.
Ooops… in the above I should have said “killed the whole moment”. I don’t mean that it killed the whole movie, which I thought was very well done.