My thanks to Bill Roberts for posting this—it’s the trailer for a fan-made movie about Aragorn’s search for Gollum, a chapter in the story of The Lord of the Rings which isn’t told, only recounted briefly by Aragorn. It is, obviously, a low-budget production, but from the trailer, it seems to be an impressive piece of work nevertheless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FnMHgwG9aAo
I’m a big fan of Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, the writer/director behind Finding Nemo and WALL-E; I have tremendous respect for his creative gifts and approach (which he discussed in a fascinating interview last June), and I think he tells great stories well. My lovely wife disagrees with me, but I think WALL-E‘s the better of the two; that’s no putdown to Nemo by any means, it’s just that WALL-E works on so many levels and really connects the intimate story of the two main characters to the epic background story of the human race and the fate of the planet Earth.
Down to Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLICp30BJgA
Did you think that your feet had been bound
By what gravity brings to the ground?
Did you feel you were tricked
By the future you picked?
Well, come on down.
All those rules don’t apply
When you’re high in the sky,
So, come on down . . . come on down.
Chorus:
We’re coming down to the ground—
There’s no better place to go;
We’ve got snow up on the mountains,
We’ve got rivers down below.
We’re coming down to the ground;
We hear the birds sing in the trees,
And the land will be looked after,
We’ll send the seeds out in the breeze.
Did you think you’d escaped from routine
By changing the script and the scene?
Despite all you made of it,
You’re always afraid of the change.
You’ve got a lot on your chest;
Well, you can come as my guest,
So come on down . . . come on down.
Chorus
Like the fish in the ocean,
We felt at home in the sea;
We learned to live off the good land,
Learned to climb up a tree.
Then we got up on two legs,
But we wanted to fly;
When we messed up our homeland,
We set sail for the sky.
Chorus
We’re coming down (down)
Coming down to Earth (down)
Like babies at birth (down)
Coming down to Earth (down to Earth)
We’re gonna find new priorities (down)
These are extraordinary qualities (down)
(Down, down to Earth)
Chorus
Words: Peter Gabriel; music: Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman
©2008 Pixar Music/Wonderland Music Company Inc.
From the movie WALL-E
Three years ago today, Louie Heckert died from injuries suffered when he was attacked by a rogue bull moose. Louie was a long-time member of the congregation I served in Colorado, and he was the most universally beloved man I have ever met. He was the character in chief in a town full of them, but unlike so many of the others, he was a gentle and welcoming man who always seemed to have a good word for everyone he met.
I will never forget telling my oldest daughter, who was then five years old, that he had been hurt and was probably going to die; her face grew sad and solemn, and she said, “I like Mr. Louie. He’s a nice man; he gives me candy.” There are a lot of things people will remember about him, and the candy is certainly one that children of all ages will remember fondly. There are others that stick in my mind as well, like his standard response when I asked him how he was doing: “Can’t complain, and nobody’d listen if I did.” I knew he had to be joking, but he said it as seriously as he ever said anything, with that twinkle in his eye. I wish I’d heard all his stories. I wish I had a good enough memory to recall all the ones I did hear. I’m glad I got the chance to get to know him.
After his death, folks in Grand Lake put a couple videos together, to help raise money to restore his old black Jeep and to advertise the town (something Louie would have considered an honorable tribute, given how much time and effort he put into advertising the town himself). Here’s the longer one, which includes interviews with Gene, John Cook, Steve Cormey, and others:
This video was produced, as far as I can tell, as an ad of sorts for the History Channel’s show on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; it features John Legend’s version of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)”—which is a rare accomplishment: a cover of that song that’s actually good—accompanied by footage and photos of Dr. King and other participants in the civil-rights movement. Ad or otherwise, it’s a worthy tribute.
I was keeping our littlest one happy yesterday afternoon after she woke up, still sick, from her nap; for whatever reason, one way I did that was by playing her a few CCR videos, and I got a couple of their songs stuck in my head.
And the best song ever written about baseball:
This must be seen to be believed . . . and even then, it’s hard.
HT: The Anchoress
remember to pray for our Irish President, Barack O’Bama.
On the list of things it would never have occurred to me could happen—I heard this over the speakers at the grocery store this afternoon:
My old InterVarsity staffworker, Joel Perry, posted this video on Facebook, and it’s so beautiful and meditative that I just had to share it. This is the Bulgarian National Choir singing Otche Nash (“Our Father”), a setting of the Lord’s Prayer by Nikolai Kedrov.
that being a band, incidentally, that U2 admired a great deal, that influenced them and was influenced by them in turn: Big Country. I’ll grant U2 the lyrical edge (especially for their theological depth), but musically I’d take BC over either U2 or Rush.
Remembrance Day
Song of the South
The Storm
In a Big Country
Look Away
The Seer
Heart of the World