I was channel surfing recently when I happened to stumble across a broadcast on GOD TV.  The conference was entitled, "Starting the Year Off Right" hosted by Chuck Pierce.  The title intrigued me, so I decided to arrest my trigger happy thumb for a moment.  During this time of year (for the past 3 years), I have been celebrating my "new year".  Yes, I know you are thinking "Duh, Malissa.  New Year's celebration is typically Dec 31 to Jan 1 not August!!!"  Intuitively, I know that our calendar reflects that Jan 1 is the official start of the year.  However, my spirit has beckoned me to reflect and expect renewal to take place in August.  So for the past three years, August has been my time to reflect and cast vision for my next year/my next season.  In the spirit, the number 8 symbolizes rebirth and renewal.  August is the eighth month of the year.  So when God challenged me to declare my new year in August it seemed appropriate.  But I digress.  As I watched Mr. Pierce, the principles and revelation that was shared and the prophetic utterances that came forth resonated with my spirit.  We are in a transitional period in life and we must be prepared for the new season that is burgeoning on the horizon. 

After watching the telecast, I googled Mr. Pierce and found his website www.glory-of-zion.org.  In a letter posted on his site, he shares the vision God gave him regarding a 10 day Midnight prayer and encourages the people of God to join him during this season of transition. (I have included excerpts of the letter below)

According to the Jewish calendar, the New Year - Rosh Hashana - begins 29 September 2008, Year 5769.  In the days leading up to the new year, the Jewish people would spend their time in reflection and atonement for their sins.

Excerpt from Wikipedia entry on Rosh Hashana

Preceding month [before Rosh Hashana]

The Yamim Noraim are preceded by the month of Elul, during which Jews are supposed to begin a self-examination and repentance, a process that culminates in the ten days of the Yamim Noraim known as beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with the holiday of Yom Kippur.

The shofar is blown in traditional communities every morning for the entire month of Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah. The sound of the shofar is intended to awaken the listener from his or her "slumber" and alert them to the coming judgment.^[10] Orthodox and some Conservative Jewish communities do not blow the shofar on Shabbat.^[11]

In the period leading up to the Yamim Noraim (Hebrew, "days of awe") penitential prayers, called selichot, are recited.

Isn't it just like God!  Now follow me because right now I am finally seeing the light.  Remember earlier I stated that the spirit led me to begin celebrating my new year in August.  Well, let's talk this thing through.  We are called the righteousness of God.  We are new creations in Him.  According to the word, we are also heirs to the promise through Abraham.  So as an heir I am entitled to all the promises that God gave to Abraham and his seed.  In order to receive the promises of God, we must have an understanding of what those promises are and how we go about obtaining them.  When I think about how the spirit led me to spend August as reflection, little did I know that He was aligning me with my Jewish brethren.  Spending time with God, seeking His face, repenting for my missteps and asking God to do a new thing in me are the same actions that our Jewish brethren are engaged in during the month leading to Rosh Hashana.  HALLELUJAH to God!  The Holy Spirit has been aligning me so that I can better understand Him!  Pardon me for my praise break, but this revelation is wonderful! 

The time is now to prepare for our new seasons.  Join me as I participate in the 10 Day Midnight Prayer.  Meditate on the scripture and expect God to perform all that He has planned for your life.

Blessed and Highly Favored,

Malissa

Praying at the Midnight Watch!
Recently, I heard the Lord say, "The Midnight Hour is where your victory lies!"  In the word of God, midnight could represent the concept of intense darkness or even gloom. However, MIDNIGHT usually meant halfway between dark and the breaking of the light or the middle-point of the night before the light could break through.  I believe that is where we are in our lives. When I look at the USA, I believe this describes the time we are living in.

Over the next month, until the Head of the Year gathering begins on September 25, we are going to be answering His call to watch in the Midnight Hour.  In my book, Reordering Your Day, we are reminded of Psalm 119:62 which says, "At midnight I will rise to give thanks to You, because of Your righteous judgments".  This is a time in the Body of Christ when we need the Lord to deal with our enemies that are trying to keep us from entering into His perfect plan for our life, family, city, state and nation.  The midnight hour was a time for thanksgiving and of visitation. Additionally, this was an hour when the Lord began to prepare His people to receive many acts of change in the earth.  This is also a key time for a redemptive shift to occur in your life.  The midnight hour was the time that the children of Israel broke through to their great deliverance. (At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, creating their release out of captivity.)  This is a great time of pressing through. Midnight is the time for us to praise and press the enemy and arrest His movement.

If you are feeling the call to join with us at Glory of Zion, whether alone in your home or with others, please let Anne Tate know by email. Write annet@gloryofzion.org and tell us the nights you will be watching.  We would also like to know if you are gathering others to pray with you in your home. Please include this information when you email.  We believe this is a very key time to pray strategically and will be praying for you as you pray.

10 DAY PRAYER FOCUS

Day 1: Read Exodus 11:4, 12:29.  Moses said, "Thus saith the LORD, ‘About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt'...And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle." This last confrontation caused a release from captivity and set God's covenant people on a path of deliverance from captivity. Listen carefully during this time to hear your Freedom Decree!  Declare that you will go into your new!

Day 2 Read Judges 16:3. "And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of a hill that is before Hebron." This is a time of gaining supernatural strength to press through.  There are some things that need to tumble down. Ask the Lord for the strength to push.

Day 3: Read Ruth 3 and 4. "And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet." Ask the Lord for redemptive strategies so that losses can be recovered and your future secured! Find your new place of submission.

Day 4: Read 1 Kings 3, especially verses 16-28. "And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom." Ask for wisdom. Wisdom is given liberally. The Spirit of God will speak what you need to know to make a decision in your difficult situation. He will divide asunder soul and spirit. Memorize Hebrews 4:12!

Day 5: Read Matthew 25:1-13. "And at midnight there was a cry made, ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him.'" Are you prepared? Have you trimmed away what would prevent you from going into the new? Are you ready to advance quickly and gain momentum as you go?

Day 6:  Read Mark 13, especially verses 32-35. "Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning!"  Ask the Lord to fully define the places that He is calling you to watch. To watch is an act of peering into the horizon so you can guard what God has given you as your portion.  To watch can cause a restraint to be set in place so the enemy cannot cross that boundary. Declare the Lord to set new boundaries for you. Ask Him to watch or restrain you mouth and speech this time, so you are only speaking faith!

Day 7: Read Luke 11, especially verses 5-8.  "And he said unto them, ‘Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves.'"  Prayer is based on sonship, not friendship. God never sleeps or slumbers and is always there to meet you. He is generous and patient. Persistence brings blessing. If you have to persist with a friend, just think of our Father who is always ready to meet your needs. Persist and receive revelation of the supply that is there waiting for you.

Day 8: Read Acts 16:16-31. "And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them." Praise Him. Praise Him. Watch the changes begin. Shackles that have been holding you will let go. Others around you will change. A new day of salvation for many will begin.

Day 9: Read Acts 20, especially verse 7. "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight."  Take communion. Listen carefully during this hour. Expect the Lord to do a miracle on your behalf!

Day 10: Read Acts 27, especially verse 27. "But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country." Some of you are like Paul, in a stormy boat trip. You might even think that you should not be where you are. The Lord is going to pull you through this tumultuous time. Stand firm and watch Him get you to the next place. You might lose that boat, but you will find your footing again!

Receive a New Breath of Life!
I am declaring that every depressing or oppressing situation in your life will change in the next few days. Do not lean on your own understanding, but trust the Lord to do something very unusual on your behalf. Our emotions are usually provoked, confused, and even vexed due to the lack of the Glory in our surrounding atmosphere. "Arise, shine your light has come. Arise from the oppression and oppression that has held you down. Rise to new life." (paraphrased Isaiah 60:1) Ask Holy Spirit to come into your atmosphere. Lay down your right to be right. Submit and watch the power to resist come upon your life. Cry out for the Spirit of God to come and fill your surroundings. Breathe deeply His Glory as He neutralizes the spiritual forces that are contending for your joy!

Change environments. Go for a walk and see something that you have missed in your near vicinity. Let the Presence of the Lord reveal the power of the small thing that He is working on your life. Walk, breathe, pray and decree!  Open your window and declare that new opportunities are forming before you. Watch your emotions realign. You will see your circumstances more clearly when you just get out of one setting and see from a different perspective.  Taste and see that the Lord is good. He is very near to you, closer than you know. He understands why the others around you cannot see the same as you see.  Let His multi-faceted wisdom encompass your life. Declare that His blood barrier has been established between you and the demonic forces that are upsetting and removing the peace He has for your spirit man to enjoy!

 Anger Opens the Door for Demonization!
Watch at midnight and set a guard over your mouth and heart! Watch after your heart. Many words are stirring and lots of emotions are flying around in the Body of Christ. You could feel anger over the way others are reacting to you. If we do not process the emotion of anger correctly, we will receive that anger into our heart and the spirit of anger will dwell in our soulish realm and vex our spirit. Few benefits are reaped in becoming angry at others. If one does experience this emotion, there has been established a time frame by the Spirit of God to properly address and release this emotion from the Body. Becoming angry and not interacting with the Spirit of God will harm to your health and make you feel miserable. When anger is expressed in a wrong way, the person you are angry with usually pays less attention to what you are saying than if you'd have said it tactfully and patiently.

I am declaring that you have a quiet, calm spirit. I declare you will perceive every situation with wisdom. "In quietness and confidence will be your strength!"

Blessings,
Chuck D. Pierce

Amsterdam won the Booker Prize, and I usually find myself lukewarm with Booker Prize recipients. I didn't even finish The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif, and it's a rare book that I don't finish. I liked it at first, but I just got bored and didn't care what happened in the end.

Saresh kept asking me if I liked Amsterdam. I'm still not sure. I didn't not like it - parts of it have grown on me with time. I told him the plot revolved around the moral decisions of two late middle-aged guys, which isn't normally of interest to me, but I was interested enough to keep reading. I did finish it, so that's a plus. The main characters kind of reminded me of the movie Grumpy Old Men, but with left-wing intellectuals. I liked the movie more than I liked this book.

If you're going to read it, don't read the Publisher's Weekly review on Amazon because it gives away too many elements of the plot. I found out these things as I read and in retrospect, I liked it better that way. I would have been less motivated to keep reading had I know what was going to happen. However, if you've already read it or aren't going to, I agree with PW's evaluation. I thought the ending was a stretch. I understand why McEwan ended it that way, but it was implausible at best, which irked me after having invested time in reading the whole novel (which actually was rather short, so I can't complain too much).

The best part for me was when Clive, the composer, goes on a hike for inspiration. I was genuinely shocked during this part - it was very real and very wicked... wicked good and wicked bad.

For some reason, I felt compelled to purchase Atonement. I'll let you know how that goes. I haven't started it yet because I placed it on the bottom of my "to read" pile. It was a contender for the Booker Prize, but didn't win, so it's got that going for it.

Let us bless His Holy Name. Let us dance before Him with a joyful heart. How beautiful is the body that it was created to reproduce, speak, see and do. Praise Him in the heavens, praise Him in the valleys, blessed is His Holy name. At any given moment He appears and suddenly you feel yourself born again. Like springs of water cascading from the mountain top to the burst that flows within. Although you may grow tired and weary, HASHEM redeems. He restores. He cradles you in the palm of His hand. He was, He is and He will always be. Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. [I am/will be what I am/will be]

God speaks and it is done. Isaiah 55: 10 -11 - For just as the rain and the snow descend from heaven and will not return there, rather it waters the earth and causes it to produce and sprout, and gives seed to the sower and food to the eater, so shall be My word that emanates from my mouth, it will not return to Me unfulfilled unless it will have accomplished what I desired and brought success where I sent it. Amen Amen

God the true doer of the Word. He visions, He speaks, He divides and He gives all things a name. This is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is my God. HASHEM desires the heart of the righteous and He acts. Before the first word in supplication is drawn, the doors to the sanctuary are open. He is righteous and there is no other. He draws people to the Land of trust, the valley where one humbles herself. It is when we see the burning bush and we turn to take hold of. It is then that He answers. It is then that we find favor in His eyes. He is not like man who says one thing today and tomorrow he has forgotten. No, that is not my God. That is not the way He does things. 

He is merciful even when one does not merit a single breath, moment or day. When all else has filled He is there to redeem, to pull up, to extinguish the flames that taunt your existence. He is, He was and He will always be. Blessed be His Holy Name. His Kingdom is forever and ever. 

In the Words of Rashi: If a teacher of Torah is authentic, he will bring water to the thirsty; but if he is not, students have to search for themselves until they find it.

I pray that this enlightens each and everyone who reads this. Blessed be the One who formed the mouth.

Shalom and abundant joy. 

During this, I feel we reached an important milestone in our relationship - the first time he has ever seen me cry. And to make it even more embarrassing, the film I cried at was Hook. Yes, the Robin Williams adaptation of Peter Pan. Could I be any more desperately pathetic?

It was the bit at the end, when Toodles gets his marbles back. I sat through Atonement without batting an eyelid, but put me in front of a happy ending with an elderly, senile person, and I'm hysterical. I can't help it. Age is just so sad. You can imagine the state I was in after I watched The Notebook.

Atonement was actually good - better than I expected, since I am naturally pre-disposed to hate any film starring Keira Knightley. I can't help but hate her - she's just so much prettier than me. But I managed to overcome my debilitating envy and actually enjoy the film - I'd even go so far as to recommend it.

However, my favourite film of the night has got to be Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. I mean, on the surface, it's fairly awful - the visual aspects and special effects border on cheesyness, but then, it came out in 1992, so concessions must be made. Winona Ryder is adorable - I love her. She must be nearing forty now, but I don't think she'll ever look any older than 25. A young 25. With HUGE eyes. But what really made the experience of watching it worthwhile was Gary Oldman as Dracula.

That man is sexy as fuck. Especially as Dracula.

...Only young Dracula, though.

This weeks Torah Parashah focuses on the blessing and the curse. The blessing of living long in the good land and the curse that comes from disobedience. Like the story of Eden where Adam and Eve were tossed out because of disobedience (rather it was God's plan or not) so too does it go for the land East of the Yarden. The Hand of God upon us is a good thing, it is our protection. It is when He removes His covering that we are turned over for persecution from a nation we do not know and a language unfamiliar. 

Re'eh means to see. To see is to acknowledge, to grab hold of. It is to be aware. So it goes. Deuteronomy 11: 26 - 32 - See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing; that you hearken to the commandments of HASHEM , your God, that I command you today. And the curse: if you do not hearken to the commandments of HASHEM, your God, and you stray from the path that I command you today, to follow gods of others, that you did not know. It shall be when HASHEM, your God, brings you to the Land to which you come, to posses it, then you shall deliver the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, far, in the direction of the sunset, in the land of the Canaanite, that dwells in the plain, far from Gilgal, near the plains of Moreh? for you are crossing the Jordan to come and possess the Land that HASHEM, your God, gives you; you shall possess it and you shall settle in it. You shall be careful to perform all the decrees and the ordinances that I present before you today. 

The bible often speaks about bodies of water, wilderness and dry places. When Abram was called out from his home land he traveled across dry land. When Moshe escaped Egypt he fled across dry land. However when God takes us to a new level He parts bodies of water. When man is immersed in water he is to come out a new man. From the land of slavery to the land of promise bodies of water are crossed. When we come out of, we ascend. Its always ascend. To come out of Egypt it is to ascend to a more spiritual place. A place of new heights. We are no longer in the old but in the new. So it is.

Deuteronomy 12: 1 - 3 - These are the decrees and the ordinances that you shall observe to perform in the Land that HASHEM, the God of your forefathers, has given you, to possess it, all the days that you live in the Land. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations that you shall possess worshiped their gods: on the high mountains and on the hills, and under every leafy tree. You shall break apart their alters; you shall smash their pillars; and their sacred trees shall you burn in the fire; their carved images shall you cut down; and you shall obliterate their names from that place. 

You should know that the only living God is a jealous God and He won't settle for anything less. We are called to be a nation of Kings and Priests. A king is never in lack and a priest ministers to the people. So why have we gone astray? Jerusalem If I forget thee may my right hand fail me. In a world with a population of six billion people it is no small task to separate oneself. With pagan holidays, morality lacking radio, movies and television shoes how is one truly expected to be set apart. 

Deuteronomy 12: 28 - 31 - Safeguard and hearken to all these words that I command you, in order that it will be well with you and your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the eyes of HASHEM, your God. When HASHEM, your God, will cut down the nations, to which you come to take possession from them, before you, and you will take possession from them and settle in their land, beware for yourself lest you be attracted after them after they have been destroyed  before you, and lest you seek out their gods, saying, "How did these nations worship their gods, and even I will do the same." You shall not do so to HASHEM, your God, for everything that is an abomination of HASHEM, that He hates, have they done to their gods; for even their sons and their daughters have they burned in the fire of their gods. 

Deuteronomy is known as Mishnah Torah. The entire book of Deuteronomy is spoken to the b'nei Israel by the mouth Moses in the twelfth month of the fortieth year. Moses is reiterating lessons and trials since their departure from Egypt. He's warning of the temptations that lie ahead, as well as the penalties for disobedience. 

We are not to mention the name of God in just anyplace we choose nor are we to eat sanctified meat and offerings where He has not established His Name. There is no longer a temple that we can travel to so that we can offer up our first fruits. Moses commands the children of Israel that once they cross over into the land that God had promised to us through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob we could no longer build alters where ever we chose. For those of us who do not live in Jerusalem, we have no choice but to do what it is we do. During the periods in which the first and second Temples were erected, every man would bring his offering to the alter to be inspected by the priests and as long as the offering was without blemish (sheep, goat) the offering was accepted. What comes to mind is the story of Cain and Able. Able offered up his very best and therefore it was accepted where Cain's was not.

God says that my people flatter Me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me.

How glorious it will be when Messiah returns and the glory of Jerusalem will be restored. Times have changed and the world for the most part has become a landfill. It is a dog eat dog world. People are persecuted because they don't go along with just any dictator. Yeshua said that we would be murdered and those with our blood on their hands will think their doing God a favor. So it is.

Deuteronomy 13: 1 - 5 - The entire word that I command you, that shall you observe to do; you shall not add to it and you shall not subtract from it. If there should stand up in your midst a prophet or a dreamer of a dream, and he will produce to you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes about, of which he produce to you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes about, of which he spoke to you, saying, "Let us follow gods of others that you did not know and we shall worship them!" - do not hearken to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of a dream, for HASHEM, your God is testing you to know whether you love HASHEM, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul. HASHEM, your God, shall you follow and Him shall you fear; His commandments shall you observe and to His voice shall you hearken; Him shall you serve and to Him shall you cleave. Amen And Amen.

Yeshua also spoke about false prophets and said that there will be many who will come in his name.

Be wise in your studies and know it well.

From the mouth of Rashi, "If a teacher is authentic he will bring water to the students, if not the students must search it out for themselves." 

Shalom and abundant joy.

In February, English novelist Ian McEwan visited Hong Kong in the wake of the Oscar success of the movie "Atonement", based on his novel of the same name. Gary Pollard had a chance to talk to him, and you can see our edited clip of that interview here.

The interview was much longer than we were able to show. Here, for fans of McEwan, is the full transcript.

Ian McEwan's first book, "First Love, Last Rites" was a collection of stories, mostly about sex and death, that earned him the nickname "Ian Macabre". For him, such short stories were a way to find his feet as a writer.

"First Love, Last Rites" won him the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. He was given the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for "The Child in Time"; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has, several times, been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. He won it in 1998 for "Amsterdam". His novel "Atonement", recently filmed by British director Joe Wright, received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel "Saturday" and his latest work  "On Chesil Beach" was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards.

Like many of his books, "On Chesil Beach" is built around misunderstandings and the potential destructiveness of sexuality.

Gary Pollard
Sexuality often seems to appear as a destructive or disruptive element in your work.

Ian McEwan
I don't know about destructive, but I think it is an area of human interaction fraught with difficulty and underpinned by delight. So there is this polarity, very tempting to the writer, I think.

You can find in a sexual relationship not just sex, but all possibility of misunderstanding and of moments of togetherness. I think that the territory is so vast because it encompasses both the tragic elements of misunderstanding and the heavenly elements in what we sense is possible, that if we could fully understand, we could fully reach a concord. And because misunderstanding is fraught too with comedy, I've found it an irresistible topic over the years.

Gary Pollard
In "Enduring Love" you presented a kind of "stalking" pathology with a character suffering from "De Clerambault Syndrome". There seems to be some doubt as to whether you made this up or whether it actually existed.

Ian McEwan
Yes it does exist. De Clerambault is a French psychologist. He worked for the Paris police. He was a forensic psychologist. He blew his brains out in front of a mirror so he was clearly not a very stable sort of guy. And he identified a syndrome where one person falls in love with another in an obsessive way and is convinced that it's the other person that started it all off, is the one who is actually initiating the affair. And the affair, of course, just exists in the psychic reality of their own minds.

I came across references to it in a couple of newspapers and filed them away, thinking that would be a very interesting little motor for a plot. But I forgot about it for several years, and then it fell into exactly what I needed in the book I was writing.

At the end of this novel, having read so many books of psychiatry and papers on "De Clerambault's Syndrome", I thought: "I can't let it go. I've now learned this language. I'm going to write a paper in this, a psychiatric case study". And I really described the whole novel again in those terms. So I stuck it at the end of the novel in the appendix. It caused something of a stir because before the novel was published, I submitted the paper to a very well known psychological journal. As soon as I posted it off, I regretted it.

Gary Pollard
As a practitioner of the English novel, do you sometimes find the English literary scene a bit too precious and insular, a bit narrow in scale? Some American novelists still seem more willing to take on the world.

Ian McEwan
One of the reason I admire American novels in the second half of the 20th century is precisely because of their formal ambitions. They really did continue to pursue the notion of the Dickensian "totality" novel. And among my favourite writers are John Updike and Philip Roth.

I sense, really, a generation of writers largely untouched by the literary modernism that swept through Europe, and which rather limited the ways in which people are approaching the novel. Can we measure up to this? I don't know. The world is getting harder to describe.

Gary Pollard
Is that it? Has the world become too complex to grasp in a single work? Was it easier for Renaissance artists because things were simpler?

Ian McEwan
Perhaps it's just an illusion that the world is getting harder to describe, and if we were plunged into the mid 19th century Europe we'd find it just as teeming and contradictory. I think some writers offer us a standing challenge, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Dickens. We have to measure up and that's all there is to it.

On the other hand, there are so many great miniaturists around. Among my favourites is Tobias Wolf. I think he is a superb American writer, and in a nutshell can make a whole universe.

Gary Pollard
There is this notion that our attention spans have become too short for complex, all encompassing, works.

Ian McEwan
I am again sceptical about that. I think our attention span is a biological matter, not a cultural one. Wallace Stevens said all writers believe that they are living at the end of their imagination. There is a great temptation to think that we live past a golden age. There is something rather defeatist about that.

I don't see it. I don't feel it. I think writers will come along in future generations who will find readers who will have the attention span. If our attention span were diminishing we wouldn't be able to build the extraordinary machines that we do. We are capable of extraordinary feats of engineering.

Gary Pollard
You've had your books such as "Enduring Love", "Atonement", and "The Comfort of Strangers" adapted into film. You've adapted other people's works like Timothy Mo's "Sour Sweet" into film. And you've written original screenplays like "The Ploughman's Lunch". What's your perception of the relationship between movies and books?

Ian McEwan
I have to say my prejudice is that movies are the inferior form. They can't give you that marvellous interior quality of the novel. I think also of the novel in terms of its visual power. On the other hand, there is the immediacy of movies, and they are not very demanding, and we sit and they happen to us.

I'm always interested in how one particular novel becomes a movie. In fact when I was 20 years old, I applied to do research on that very subject. Thank God I was turned down and I got engulfed in writing, and write fiction instead.

It's always a difficult process when it's your own novel. It's best not to do your own stuff. It's best to hand it to someone else, because it's a fairly destructive and limited process, writing a screenplay. Timothy Mo's book is probably about 100,000 words. My screenplay of it was probably 18,000 words. A lot has to vanish, and finally you are down to just what people say and do. You cannot give the sense of the inside of the fine print of consciousness.

That said, I love nothing better than a movie set. I love the controlled panic of it. I love that sense of collaboration, even though it might lead to spectacular betrayals and upsets. And I love the expertise on the movie set too. And the fact that there is a ticking clock of money that defines the day. And for that I think I got involved with the movies, just to burst out of solitude for a while and then of course I creep back to it rather gratefully.

Gary Pollard
You began by writing short stories. Was that a way of building your confidence for taking on a larger work?

Ian McEwan
I was very uncertain about myself and what I wanted, and ended up writing these strange dark psychopathological stories. I didn't know where the hell it came from. Perhaps there is a certain element of attention-grabbing in them too. There is a reckless pessimism that I probably could not really endorse or subscribe to now. And it took me a while to really find my whole voice or feet, or that part of the body through which on speaks or hears. And in fact even my first two novels are really extended short stories, so I was a slower learner in this.

Gary Pollard
Where does a novel come from for you? Do you begin with a theme or a scene?

Ian McEwan
It varies enormously for me. I sometimes have to start writing to find out what it is. Sometimes it's just characters. A novel I'm just starting now is simply emanating from a sense of a person. At other times it might be a newspaper cutting, as for "De Clerambault Syndrome". It can come from an external source: an anecdote, a piece of gossip, a newspaper cutting, that could trigger the whole thing.

Once I get going, I then find I'm connecting things I thought were separated, I thought there were three different ideas for a book, and then I realised actually they all belong to each other. At some level just below the threshold of consciousness, something is knitting itself together. Of course the discovery of that is very satisfying.

Gary Pollard
Do you regard yourself as a formalist? Or do you want the form to be transparent?

Ian McEwan
I do think of the novel in architectural terms. I do like them to have shape. But I think the shape is very much driven by the content, not the other way round. I like a sense of structure within which the reader can feel secure, in which there is a sort of controlling sense of things.

But at the same time novels are always messy, slightly baggy, capricious things. They should have an air of felt life about them. You should always prepare when you lay down your schemes for them to be upended or distorted somewhat. I'm not sure that life, observed life, can be neatly poured into the form imposed. But still it should be there as a background force.

Gary Pollard
Are there novels that you read and think: "I wish I'd done that"?

Ian McEwan
Oh yes, a lot! I suppose that top of my list will be John Updike. I don't and can't write the way he does. I love his sentences, the little twists in them, his sceptical intelligence, his marvellous visual sense. It's not for nothing that he's such a good writer on painting. He's also a great writer about sex. And there's a real sense too of massive change, the sociological novel. It gives a real sense of a society moving through it, a slow evolution. There's the sheer ambitiousness of his novels. Hugely impressive.

Saul Bellow too. Again many English writers admire Bellow rather more than American readers and writers do, but there's something very democratic about it. I don't think could come from a pen of an English writer. There's a sense of classlessness, a sense of being in the street, the bar, the speakeasy as it were, and yet also with those able to do the deep-sea thinking: the professors, the intellectuals, who always find themselves a little disoriented in what he calls the moronic inferno of American life. So there are two.

Roth's sexual comedy too I admire enormously, and I would love to be able to do. In fact, I tried to emulate it in a rather timid way in short stories when I was just starting.

Gary Pollard
We've been hearing for decades, if not centuries, that the novel is dead. Nobel prize-winner Doris Lessing repeated the idea most recently. Or is the demise of the novel exaggerated?

Ian McEwan
People have been talking about the end of the novel, certainly throughout my entire adult life, and it hasn't died. I don't share that pessimism about it. I think we will always need some account of the fine print of consciousness. We won't get it from movies: that sense of what's it like to be someone else and to be someone else through time, and which the novel is particularly good at. I think the novel is also very good at fixing the individual in relation to his or her immediate society and to larger society. I think also the aesthetic pleasure of good prose will never desert us.

So although the form of delivery might change - now people are talking about these electronic books that you can carry around with 500 novels inside, or you can download novels from the internet - although the forms of delivery will be technologically different, I think the impulse to read remains. I think we are very nosy as a species. We are very gossipy. Novels are a form of higher gossip. They take us into other lives. I feel on the whole, it will survive.

Another reason it will survive is we are going through so much change: the way we live, the way we connect with each other. Again, technology is driving the change. We also have a lot of conflict. Again the novels are a good medium for describing conflict. So I think it's going to be around a good while yet.

With Rosh Hashanah quickly approaching we must gather together our words and straighten up. That wonderful evening beginning at sundown Jews and all those who understand what's expected of them will gather together. It is now the head of the year, not the beginning of months. As you well may Know it is a time of repentance. The morrow of the first day we will head down to our local rivers and streams and cast our sins into the depths. Like the sacrifices in the Temple one must have knowledge of his actions. She shall know why she is here. Repenting is not simply tossing bread crumbs into the stream of life, but it is acknowledgment  of sin rather it be gossip or idolatry. During the ten days of repentance we take the time to get in touch with all those we might have done wrong, no matter how small or big. We ask to be forgiven. The same goes for you and I. It is our duty to forgive and forget. The first day of repentance (Rosh Hashanah) is a joyful day with the commanded sounding of the Shofar. There is fellowship, reading of scripture and the delightful taste of apples and honey. 

Above all this Rosh Hashanah kicks off our fall with a cluster of holy days and festivals. Rosh Hashanah is also a commanded holy day. A day of no regular work. It is a annual Sabbath to be observed for all generations. How wonderful it would be if all nations would recognize the days in which God has granted us and not the pagan festivals of man. 

Walk correctly before Me all the days of your life says the Lord Thy God. 

The class receiving the most excitement from me this semester is a study of Judaism.  We are reading Jewish convert and scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel’s masterpiece God In Search of Man, and I’ll be throwing out money quotes and thoughts from class throughout this semester.

This first quote is one I’ve asked many times, although it often gets turned around to “Is an act sin because it is not in the character of God, or is it not in the character of God.”  The heart of the question asks for a definition of “good” and “evil/sin,” which is easier said than done.

“Plato’s Euthyphro raised an issue which, in various forms, was often debated in Christian and Mohammedan scholasticism, namely: do the gods love the good because it is good or is it good because the gods love it?  Such a problem could only arise when the gods and the good were regarded as two different entities, and where it was take for granted that the gods do not always act according to the highest standards of goodness and justice.  To inquire [about this] would be just as meaningless as to inquire: is a particular point within the circle called the center due to its equidistance from the periphery or is its equidistance from the periphery due to its being the center?  The dichotomy of the holy and the good is alien to the spirit of the great prophets.  To their thinking, the righteousness of God is inseparable from His being.”  (God In Search of Man, p. 17)

I would insist Christianity probably caught this non-Jewish distinction fairly on, and it has had considerable affect on beliefs.  Consider the common understanding of Jesus’ purpose, namely that a good God wanted to do a good thing (redeem us), but was prohibited from doing so by the injustice (a bad thing) that would be created by unmediated forgiveness.  So in the middle ages, a believe in Christianity arose that God needed to have Jesus die as a sacrifice so that He could both forgive and be just.

Judaism does not see sacrifice in such mechanistic, cause-and-effect terms, because the good that God desires (redemption) comes naturally from Him, without any need to satisfy other dissonant parts of His character.

I would also point out that the belief that God sacrificed Jesus to satisfy His good desire and His justice must necessarily see justice and goodness as wholly separate entities to begin with in order to even have this belief.  This alone is understandably precarious.

1. Anotement

Staring-Keira Knightly, and James McAvoy

Based on the novel my Ian McEwan, Atonement is about a thirteen year old writer named Briony Tallis acuses Robbie Turner, the servent of the Tallis', of raping her sister Cecilia Tallis. Little does she know that Robbie didn't rape Cecilia and Robbie is sent to join the war.

Rating: I love this movie. You have to watch it more then once to actually understand it fully and read the book. I thinking the acting in this movie is really good, but i dont think it should be rated R. Maybe 14A because there's just a lot of swearing and there is that sex scean but you dont really see anything. I give this movie 4.5 out of 5.

2. White Chicks

Staring- Shawn Wayne, Marlon Waynes

White Chicks is about two FBI agents (Kevin and Marcus Copland) who are sent out to "babysit" the two Wilson sisters. While driving home they get in an accident. The Wilson sisters demand to stay in the hotel but in order to keep their job the Copland brothers disguise themself as the sisters.

Rating- I love this movie too. Its so funny and i like to watch it when im mad or when i cant sleep at night. I give this movie a rating of 4 out of 5.

"It [sin] will be dealt with...either on the cross or in hell."

I believe that we often forget that these are our only two options for God's dealing with sin. Often times, with ourselves and/or others, we want to see justice and punishment take place for wrong doings. However, we do not want this person to go to hell (or ourselves for that matter). But do we understand that all sin is either dealt with by the substitutionary atonement of Christ upon the cross, or it falls back on me and will be dealt with in hell. These are the only two options that we have. If we just want justice upon ourselves or others, we are wanting hell. For that is the only way we get justice placed upon us. But if we want justice in terms of righteousness, we must throw ourselves upon the cross of Christ. We must pray for others to throw themselves upon the cross of Christ. For there is no medium between these two options.

--------------------------------------

This is one of the "hot button" issues in the debate between reformed and non-reformed believers.

Reformed (Calvinistic) brothers believe in a particular (or limited) atonement. They say Jesus died on the cross to save only the Elect.  That He accomplished His intended task which was to save the Elect.  They cite verses like Matthew 1:21 to make this point.  It says "She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." [emphasis added] This position says that only the Elect will have the opportunity to be saved and that all the Elect will be saved because this was the intention from the beginning.

Non-reformed (Arminian) brothers believe in a universal atonement.  They say that Jesus died for every and all men but that the atonement is only effectual on those who knowingly and willingly accept it.  This position basically says that everybody will have an opportunity to accept the call to salvation but only some will do so.  They cite verses like John 3:16 to make this point.  It says "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." [emphasis added]  This position says that people must agree to accept the gift of the atonement before it is applied to them.  Basically it says that Jesus died only to make salvation possible for all people.

This was a very brief description of the two alternatives.  Much longer posts could be written about both positions but that is not my purpose here.  I have a simple purpose:  to get you to share what your position you hold and why.  So here is the question:  DID JESUS DIE TO SAVE HIS PEOPLE OR TO MAKE SALVATION POSSIBLE FOR ALL PEOPLE?  DO YOU BELIEVE IN UNIVERSAL OR PARTICULAR ATONEMENT?  WHY?  PLEASE GIVE YOUR REASONS (WHATEVER THEY MAY BE).

Unquestionably, the Cross of Christ was central in all the Apostles preaching and teaching concerning the forgiveness of sins (e.g., Matt. 20:28; Jn. 1:29; Rom. 3:24-25; 4:25; 1 Cor. 1:18; 2:2; 15:1-4; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 1:4; 3:13; 1 Pet. 2:24a).

Unless the Cross of Christ is kept central, there is no Gospel, no forgiveness of sins and no means of justifying sinners (cf., Rom. 3:25-26; Heb. 9:22).

But, often overlooked in the discussion is another important aspect of Christ’s work, namely His obedience.

To be sure, as Calvin notes, the Scriptures more certainly define the mode of salvation and ascribe it peculiarly and specially to the death of Christ (Institutes, 2:16.5).

"...we must hold fast to this: that no proper sacrifice to God could have been offered unless Christ, disregarding his own feelings, subjected and yielded himself wholly to his Father’s will."

Yet, without Christ’s willing, obedient submission to His Father’s will, His death would have been in vain and justification would be impossible. His willing, voluntary obedience was necessary so that He could offer Himself as a proper sacrifice to God.

Consider the following selections from John Calvin:

“When it is asked then how Christ, by abolishing sin, removed the enmity between God and us, and purchased a righteousness which made him favorable and kind to us, it may be answered generally, that he accomplished this by the whole course of his obedience. This is proved by the testimony of Paul, “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,” (Romans 5:19.) And indeed he elsewhere extends the ground of pardon which exempts from the curse of the law to the whole life of Christ, “When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,” (Galatians 4:4, 5.) Thus even at his baptism he declared that a part of righteousness was fulfilled by his yielding obedience to the command of the Father. In short, from the moment when he assumed the form of a servant, he began, in order to redeem us, to pay the price of deliverance,” (Institutes, 2.16.5).

“In the Confession of Faith, called the Apostles’ Creed, the transition is admirably made from the birth of Christ to his death and resurrection, in which the completion of a perfect salvation consists. Still there is no exclusion of the other part of obedience, which he performed in life. Thus Paul comprehends, from the beginning even to the end, his having assumed the form of a servant, humbled himself, and become obedient to death, even the death of the cross, (Philippians 2:7.) And, indeed, the first step in obedience was his voluntary subjection; for the sacrifice would have been unavailing to justification if not offered spontaneously,” (Institutes, 2:16.5).

“My righteous servant. He shews that Christ justifies us, not only as he is God, but also as he is man; for in our flesh he procured righteousness for us. He does not say, “The Son,” but “My Servant, that we may not only view him as God, but may contemplate his human nature, in which he performed that obedience by which we are acquitted before God. The foundation of our salvation is this, that he offered himself as a sacrifice; and, in like manner, he himself declares, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be holy.” (John xvii. 19.) (“Commentary on Isaiah,” Chap. LIII. 12., p. 129 in Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. VIII).

In our zeal to uphold and contend for the death of Christ, let us also not forget the importance of the obedience of Christ. For, had Christ not lived a perfect, sinless life of obedience, He could not have rendered a perfect atonement for sin on the Cross.

It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that Christ’s obedience, through an unspeakable struggle (Lk. 22:44) was severely tested and proven righteous. Were it not then for the Garden, Calvary would have been in vain.

Thus, Calvin writes,

“…the Gospel history relates that he went forth and met the soldiers [John 18:4], and that before Pilate he did not defend himself, but stood to submit to judgment [Matt. 27:12, 14]. Not, indeed without a struggle; for he had taken upon himself our weaknesses, and in this way the obedience that he had shown to his Father had to be tested! And here was no common evidence of his incomparable love toward us: to wrestle with terrible fear, and amid those cruel torments to cast off all concern for himself that he might provide for us. And we must hold fast to this: that no proper sacrifice to God could have been offered unless Christ, disregarding his own feelings, subjected and yielded himself wholly to his Father’s will. On this point the apostle appropriately quotes this testimony from a Psalm: “It is written of me in the Book of the Law [Heb. 10:7]… ‘that I am to do thy will, O God [Heb. 10:9]. I will it, and thy law is in the midst of my heart’ [Ps. 39:9, Vg]. Then I said, ‘Lo, I come” [Heb. 10:7],” (Institutes, 2.16.5).

Reportage - one can only capture images like this if you are anticipating them.  Preferably with the camera to your eye ready to shoot.

digital raw file 200iso 17mm 1/250 f10 5300k

Reformed (Calvinistic) brothers believe in a particular (or limited) atonement. They say Jesus died on the cross to save only the Elect.  That He accomplished His intended task which was to save the Elect.  They cite verses like Matthew 1:21 to make this point.  It says "She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." [emphasis added] This position says that only the Elect will have the opportunity to be saved and that all the Elect will be saved because this was the intention from the beginning.

Non-reformed (Arminian) brothers believe in a universal atonement.  They say that Jesus died for every and all men but that the atonement is only effectual on those who knowingly and willingly accept it.  This position basically says that everybody will have an opportunity to accept the call to salvation but only some will do so.  They cite verses like John 3:16 to make this point.  It says "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." [emphasis added]  This position says that people must agree to accept the gift of the atonement before it is applied to them.  Basically it says that Jesus died only to make salvation possible for all people.

This was a very brief description of the two alternatives.  Much longer posts could be written about both positions but that is not my purpose here.  I have a simple purpose:  to get you to share what your position you hold and why.  So here is the question:  DID JESUS DIE TO SAVE HIS PEOPLE OR TO MAKE SALVATION POSSIBLE FOR ALL PEOPLE?  DO YOU BELIEVE IN UNIVERSAL OR PARTICULAR ATONEMENT?  WHY?  PLEASE GIVE YOUR REASONS (WHATEVER THEY MAY BE).

 No matter how hard your life is, you don’t deserve your life. The only think that any of us deserve is death. We are sinful, bad people, that deserve death in hell. But if you are a Christian God has chosen you to receive his mercy and grace, and his atoning sacrifice on the cross. He has give you life, freedom, peace that passes understanding, love, joy, hope for tomorrow, he removes our guilt. He has given us more then we could ever of dared to dream of.

 A holy God chose ME. A holy God loves ME. A holy God gave his only son for ME. ME. A dirty, filthy, sinner, without the ability to do right. It doesn’t seem possible. I don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve. No one that has ever lived has deserved God except Jesus. Because we are all born into sin.

 Why would he save us? Because he loves us. I don’t quite know why. I don’t understand that he could love us, even while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8) I don’t understand how he could let his perfect son die a painful death for me. I don’t understand how he could chose a wretch like me. I don’t think I will ever understand. Ever. Because it is just one of those things far beyond the reach of our small finite minds. It is something so mind blowing that I don’t think we can ever truly take hold of it.

 But in our messed up culture people, even those who claim to be Christians, don’t understand this. They don’t understand that they don’t deserve heaven. They don’t understand that the only thing they deserve is death and eternity in hell. I breaks my heart that in our churches religion is so strong. The belief that we can somehow reach up to God or that we can attain heaven by ourselves. Religion is man trying to reach up to God. I am not a religious person. I know I can never reach up to God. I can’t even try. But God reached down to me. He came down and lifted me up when I was dirty and filthy and depraved.

 Using Ezekiel 16 as an example, I was bloody and unwanted, cast out to die. Then he found me and had compassion on me. He took me in his arms and washed be and clothed me. He looked on me with love. Though I didn’t deserve it. Though no one wanted me. Though I was not worthy of the love of anyone. He rescued me.

 Why me? I don’t have an answer. But I thank God every day that he chose me. He didn’t have to. I encourage you all to thank him for it everyday. If you have been saved by him, it is wrong not to thank him. At the risk of repeating myself, God is holy and we could never deserve him. We need to bow our knees and thank the God of earth and sky for rescuing us. We should constantly be amazed. We need to bask in the wonder of the cross. And let everyday reflect that he has saved us.

Love in Christ,

Olivia <><

Sorry if this is explicit.. but I think it's kind of great (nerdy and sexy!) and the library make-out is totally the best part of Atonement.

I recently read Ian McEwan's Atonement for the Ship of Fools Book Club, and then, since it was availble in Tescos for a fiver, I got the DVD and watched that too. So here's your all-in-one multi-purpose Atonement review.

The Book

I really enjoyed the book, well most of the book. It's in four parts and the first four tell the story of Robbie and Cecilia a couple whose fledgling love affair is almost prevented by class, family, war and false accusation of a crime. The final part reveals the fact that the previous three parts were a novel written by Briony, who made the accusation, regretted it and is atoning by writing the story. Only she reveals that she may or may not be telling the truth, part of her atonement may be to tell a better version of the story, one which gives Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending that real life denied them.

Except of course it's all fiction any way so there is no "real life", so it doesn't matter right? As McEwan, speaking through Briony says,

I know there's always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened?

Well yes, and sorry Mr McEwan but I am that kind of reader. But I'll come back to that. Anyway if you want to hear my musings on the ending read my comments on the Ship thread.

As for the parts I enjoyed, the other 90% of the book, let me say a few words about that. The first section was slow to start but very atmospheric, something quite deliberate as we're later told this is one of the flaws in Briony's writing style. It's very clever in the way it switches perspective and moves around in time, without ever being confusing. As someone who'd like to be a better writer I envied McEwan's talent and will go back and look at those parts to learn I suspect.

The second section of the book is Robbie's journey to Dunkirk through a war-torn France. I haven't read a lot of wartime fiction (though I'm aware there is a lot) so perhaps it was that that made me so engrossed in this section. I learnt a lot and like the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan it put me there in that situation and gave you that feeling of how utterly brutal and yet random the sufferings of war can be.

The third section is the story of Briony training to be a nurse and treating some of the victims of that suffering. Again it was the things I learnt, the empathy evoked for the suffering and the sense of Briony's growing up. There's also a very real sense of wanting to know what will happen, how it will play out when, if, Robbie and Cecilia are re-united. This leads up to a riveting scene where Briony meets with them to tell them she's recanting and to make her atonement.

Of course it's this very sense of wanting to know what happened that is frustrated in the final section. Although at the very end there's a cosy call-back to Briony's childhood which if not making up for her ripping the narrative rug from under us, at least leaves a better taste in the mouth.

But the unsatisfying ending is all the harder to take because the rest of the book is so good.

8/10

The Movie

In terms of structure the movie is very faithful to the book. It's beautifully shot, especially the first section, but then almost all period dramas are. I guess once you've got gorgeous locations and wonderfully made period costumes that it seems a shame not to make the most of them, and so the cinematographer is given his head.

My problems start with the middle section, the France section, which in the book was my favourite and in the movie is truncated. That's ok, adaptations have to cut stuff out, but what they removed was most of the tougher stuff, so that sense that the journey was perilous and at any moment you might be killed, or saved, by pure dumb luck wasn't really in the movie. The scene at the beach at Dunkirk, a masterfully shot 4-minute one shot, gave the impression that it was merely that things were a bit disorganised.

I also had a problem with the casting. Keira Knightley does ok, she's as good here as anywhere, and James McAvoy is slightly better but in key moments they fall short of the source material. That killer scene I mentioned earlier, the confrontation with Briony, contains a moment where Robbie becomes enraged and may even harm Briony, and Cecilia brings him back from the edge by force of will, her love and holding him with her eyes. The scene is in the movie but it has none of the sense of physical menace nor the restraining power of Cecilia's love communicated in a look. I watched it and thought, they just didn't nail it.

Perhaps where the movie is most different is the ending. They replace the putting on of Briony's play with a TV interview about the publishing of her book. In doing so Briony tells us exactly what happened. That Robbie and Cecilia both died, unre-united in separate senseless losses of the war. That her atonement was to write them a happier ending and that that's precisely what she did.

Watching this made me realise that whilst I didn't like the ending of the book, I preferred some remaining ambiguity to the certainty of the movie. The movie ending did have at least one thing going for it though, and that was showing Robbie and Cecilia enjoying their happy ending, playing in the surf near their seaside cottage. And leaving them on a happy moment, even a false one, is nice that it otherwise would have been.

6/10

The Buffy Episode

No really.

The discussion around the ending and the nature of storytelling has reminded me of the Buffy episode Normal Again. Naturally I'll be getting to this in the Buffy Re-watch project but since it's season 6 and therefore it'll probably be 2019 before I get to it I'll mention a few thoughts here.

Normal Again is superficially just BtVS's version of a staple plot in genre TV - the alternate reality story where two interpretations of events unfold and the hero is not sure until the end which is real. In this case Buffy is attacked by a demon which infects her with some kind of drug that causes her to hallucinate that she's really in a mental hospital. Her dead mother is alive and visiting with her abandoning father. It's explained that Sunnydale, the monsters, her powers and all her experiences are an imaginary world she's created as a kind of comfort.

It's cleverly done but so far so Star-Trek-did-it-first. What sets apart Normal Again is that it ends the wrong way. There are certain conventions about this kind of episode. One is that you tell it from the hero's point of view until you're ready to reveal which reality is the true one, but Normal Again pretty much sticks with thirdy party pov all the way through. The plot is set up so that Buffy has to choose which reality she wants to live in - if she kills her friends it will "kill" the hallucinatory Sunnydale world and be cured, able to return to her mom and dad. What she actually does is kills the demon and the hospital world disappears.

But the kicker is that it ends, not in Sunnydale, but with Buffy catatonic in her hospital room, the camera pulling back slowly. In TV language that's saying this is the true reality and it (it being the whole series so far) was all a sick girl's imagination.

This made a lot of people angry, as Atonement apparently did also. However I think that given that we know from the consistent point of view and the fact that the show carries on and is in fact about Buffy fighting monsters in Sunnydale, that that final shot is about something else. It's about saying that like Buffy we get to choose which reality we want to live in. We can choose to suspend disbelief and we get the fantasy world of Buffy with all her exciting adventures.

This episode came at a time when there was lots of discontent amongst the fans, a lot of which was around how unrealistic, how untrue to the characters, the show had become. There was also a lot of nitpicking over plot holes and inconsistencies. I always thought of Normal Again as a sly dig at those fans, as an appeal to suspend disbelief again and thereby enjoy the fantasy.

I guess the difference is that BtVS managed to do it in a way that didn't make me angry.

In case you're wondering, I'll rate Normal Again when I do a proper review.

O premiado diretor russo Timur Bekmambetov ("Guardiões da Noite") estréia em Hollywood com o suspense de ação "O Procurado", que entra em cartaz em todo o Brasil na sexta-feira.

De cara, conta com um elenco repleto de estrelas, entre elas, Angelina Jolie ("O Preço da Coragem"), Morgan Freeman ("Batman -- O Cavaleiro das Trevas") e James McAvoy ("Desejo e Reparação").

O roteiro parte de uma série de quadrinhos assinada por Mark Millar e J. G. Jones. Nessa história, Bekmambetov encontra uma forma de lidar com seus maneirismos narrativos e truques visuais, quase sempre com pé na fantasia.

O protagonista é Wesley Allan Gibson (McAvoy) que, numa das primeiras cenas, conta que seu pai o abandonou quando tinha apenas sete dias. Ele trabalha como burocrata num emprego chato e vai levando a vida.

O que Wesley não sabe é que seu pai era um assassino profissional que morreu enquanto trabalhava para uma organização misteriosa chamada Fraternidade -- na verdade, uma liga de superassassinos.

Finalmente, Wesley acaba sendo convocado para entrar, ele também, na Fraternidade. Antes de poder pensar em vingar a morte de seu pai, o rapaz precisa passar por um treinamento físico e psíquico.

Para isso, conta com a ajuda de Sloane (Freeman) e de Fox (Angelina), uma personagem durona que faz lembrar sua participação como a matadora de "Sr. e Sra Smith".

O lema da Fraternidade é "matar um, salvar mil". Aos poucos, Wesley se interessa por essa idéia. Além do mais, o personagem parece ter herdado do pai poderes extra-sensoriais que lhe dão vantagens sobre seus inimigos. Porém, quando descobre algumas verdades, o rapaz fica em conflito quanto a sua participação na organização.

"O Procurado" recicla uma série de idéias muito usadas no cinema de ação -- em especial "Matrix" e suas jogadas visuais, e elementos do roteiro de "Clube da Luta".

O personagem de McAvoy, aliás, tem muito a ver com o de Edward Norton naquele filme, um sujeito sem perspectivas na vida que é transformado pela entrada em cena de um personagem de comportamento um tanto estranho, aqui vivido por Angelina Jolie.

Bekmambetov vale-se de todos os clichês possíveis do gênero, tanto no visual, como na narrativa. Quando algumas revelações vêm à tona, nada de novo é descoberto. Praticamente todas as boas idéias presentes no filme são emprestadas de outras obras do gênero.

After all, Paul Thomas Anderson premiered "There Will Be Blood" at Fantastic Fest in Austin, while "Juno" bowed equally discreetly at Telluride, and both of those films nabbed best picture Oscar noms alongside "Atonement." On the other hand, "Juno" made clever use of Europe's less-expensive fests, traveling to Rome, London, Stockholm, Thessaloniki, Gijon and Rotterdam, raising its profile territory by territory. There's nothing the artistic directors of A-list festivals like better than a glossy, classy movie by a big-name auteur, laden with Hollywood stars and bankrolled by a studio willing to pay for a splashy party. But these are frugal times.

With the shuttering or downsizing of Warner Independent, Picturehouse, New Line and Paramount Vantage, the travails of indies such as the Weinstein Co., Sidney Kimmel and David Bergstein's Capitol/ThinkFilm group, and the drying up of private equity investment, it's clear that the U.S. majors are no longer so willing to foot the bill for expensive art movies, even if they do win awards. And that could leave the red carpets of major film festivals looking decidedly threadbare.

Venice is particularly vulnerable because of its exorbitant cost and its date proximity to Toronto and Rome. Aside from Universal, Sony, with "Rachel Getting Married," is the only other studio on the Lido this year -- guaranteeing that Anne Hathaway will be the belle of the ball.

"It's expensive and a little difficult to manage, but we still think there's good value for the right film at Venice," says Sal Ladestro, exec VP of marketing for Sony Pictures Releasing Intl. "We took 'Sleuth' there last year, and it performed incredibly well in Italy, France and Spain, and I think the Venice launch had a lot to do with that. There's nothing like a red-carpet event in Venice if you've got the right stars, but if you don't, it can be difficult." In fact, Italy was the No. 1 territory for "Sleuth" anywhere in the world -- but that's not saying much. On the other hand, "Atonement" fell flat as a pancake in Italy, such is the mercurial impact of a splashy Venice bow.

As one studio exec confides, "Venice doesn't even help much to launch our films in Italy, let alone anywhere else." Take the latest Keira costumer, "The Duchess," backed by Pathe and Par Vantage. Pic was widely expected to show up on the Lido, but instead Pathe has opted for a world premiere in London Sept. 3, followed four days later by a North American bow at Toronto and a trip to the Rome fest in October.

According to Pathe topper Francois Ivernel, "Our Italian distributor, BIM, was willing to have the film in Rome over Venice mainly for timing issues (better time to release the film in October in Italy) and secondarily for costs consideration."

"Venice is ferociously expensive," says PR maven Jonathan Rutter. "That's a factor for a lot of distributors and sales companies. Acquisitions people go more to Toronto, where there are more sidebars and product. What you manage to accomplish at Cannes, and to a lesser extent at Venice, is a great junket, but in Venice the hotels are obscenely expensive and not very good, it costs a fortune to rent interview space, and the service is appalling. Then you've got the cost of boats, because all the really big stars want to stay at the Cipriani."

Increasingly, then, pragmatism rather than prestige is the name of the game when distribs figure their festival strategies. It's no longer about the cachet of getting your film chosen for a Cannes or a Venice, but a cold calculation as to whether the festival works as a cost-effective launchpad for the release.

Source: Variety

Funcionário de um escritório, o contador Wesley (James McVoy) não vive grandes emoções. Acostumado a uma rotina tranqüila e repetitiva, ele recebe com surpresa a novidade de que seu pai era um matador. Ele fica sabendo disso ao ser abordado por Fox (Angelina Jolie) em um bar. A moça revela ao rapaz o passado de sua família, confessando que seu pai era membro de uma fraternidade de assassinos.

Esta informação causa uma reviravolta na vida de Wesley. Ele deixa o pacato dia-a-dia da contabilidade para conhecer os lugares frequentados pela Fraternidade. Lá, ele conhece Sloan (Morgan Freeman), que revela ao jovem que seu pai foi morto em combate. Agora, o objetivo de Sloan é acabar com a vida de Cross, que vive na Europa e foi responsável pela morte do pai do contador. Sem jeito nenhum para ser um assassino, Wesley precisa decidir se aceitará fazer parte do time de justiceiros para cumprir a missão de encontrar o Procurado e acabar com a vida dele.

O longa-metragem marca a estréia do cineasta russo Timur Bekmambetov em Hollywood. O filme é baseado nos quadrinhos de Mark Millar e J.G. Jones e tem orçamento estimado em US$ 75 milhões. As filmagens ocorreram nos Estados Unidos e na República Tcheca.