Bullitt (1968) is known primarily for its famous San Francisco car chase sequence a little more than mid-way through the film.  Even though it’s been copied a thousand times, it’s still a great piece of cinema.  But in watching Bullitt the other night, what stood out more was the way director Peter Yates and Steve McQueen approached realism with the entire film.  For instance, the operating scene in the ER used real doctors, real nurses, and was radically different from the fast-talking silliness of the modern-day show ER.  It was hushed, through, business-like: and came off with an authenticity that gave a very different feel to the scene.  It was this authenticity that makes Bullitt less a crime film and more an exploration into McQueen’s character as a cop dealing with reality. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently purchased the Paavo Berglund edition of all of Jean Sibelius’ symphonies and tone poems.  (You can buy the 8 CDs here.  It is a great deal.)  I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the symphonies and they are really magnificent.  Sibelius wrote at the early part of the 20th-century, but eschewed a lot of the new musical trends going on in the rest of Europe (he was Finnish).  Rather, his music has beautiful, sweeping and magnificent structures to it that are at times heroic, at times hymnnic, at times hushed.

It is the structure of his symphonies that intrigues me.  I located a book by Lionel Pike entitled Beethoven, Sibelius, and the ‘Profound Logic’ that explores the internal, sometimes subliminal, structures inside his symphonies that make them unified and whole to the listener.  (Apparently Sibelius was having a discussion with Gustav Mahler about the symphonic form and mentioned he liked it because of its ‘profound logic.’)  The book explores the musicological structures in Beethoven’s music as a basis for the symphonic form, then uses that as a way to look into Sibelius’ symphonic works.

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I am an inveterate fan of Peter Drucker.  I think God gave him one of the extraordinary minds of the 20th-century and that his contribution to the world has not yet been truly calculated.  He was a self-designated “social ecologist,” which is a much more accurate descriptive than that of “management guru” or even “father of modern management” that most people today like to apply to him.  What fascinates me about Drucker was his ability to sum up the necessary structures in business and organizational life in such an efficient way.  I think that most books on business and management written after him are simply footnotes to something he said with greater succinctness and clarity.

If you have not yet read any Drucker, then a good place to start is “The Essential Drucker”.  It is a excellent summary of some of his best writing, and a great introduction to his world.  He was a Christian humanist at heart, and his belief as to how organizations should function is one that takes into account the various realities of Chrisitan theology and helps apply them to the everyday life of man.  Although his writing is not overtly theological, it is well-informed by a Christian worldview.  His emphasis on the individual, on meaning, and on service should not be underestimated.  It is these things that are the backbone of any Christian society.  Drucker was just extremely smart in arguing they should exist in any good society, thereby pushing forward a Christian view of work perhaps more effectively than anyone else in the 20th-century.

A few months ago, I was asked by smallgroups.com to write a short article on using videos to teach which they published in their e-newsletter.  Since it was never added to our site, I thought I’d post it here:

My first memory of watching a video in church was in youth group.  It was the early 1980’s when VHS was still new so I must have been in 5th or 6th grade. The video was a movie about the rapture – its name momentarily escapes me – and I remember two particular things about it.

First, the image didn’t look that great. To my young eye (already well-trained by countless hours of watching TV) it seemed a bit unprofessional.  As a result, I remember thinking the film seemed a touch melodramatic.  Whether or not this particular instance influenced my ultimate views on eschatology, I honestly can’t say: but it did register in my mind as a touch embarrassing.

The second thing I remember was  a scene where a young, unbelieving teenager comes into the kitchen looking for her mother and sees a broken glass with spilled milk (or something like that) all over the kitchen floor and she realizes the rapture has happened and she didn’t get taken so she just stands there and screams.  I recall all of us 5th and 6th graders sitting there in hushed silence, a bit stunned, not wanting to end up like that screaming girl.

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We’ve had a number of people ask us for versions of our trailers that they can use to advertise MP in their churches or classes.  We now have them available for free download by clicking here.  You can get them in DVD or HD quality in both Quicktime or WMV format.

When my wife and I started watching The Graduate last night - she had never seen it before - she reminded me that in 1967, right after the film was released, Dustin Hoffman had met one of my wife’s mother’s friends on an airplane and asked her out on a date.  (The friend happened to be modeling for the Ford Agency at the time, so you can understand the quick invite.)   They came from the airport to her New York apartment and he helped carry in her bags.  My wife’s mother was most impressed when she met him.  Nothing ever came of it, but it is a nice reminder of the intersection some actors and films have with the real world.

Of all the late 60’s films, The Graduate maintains the iconic status it had when it first opened.

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We are pleased to announce that KOORONG is now selling Modern Parables in Australia and New Zealand. We’ve had a lot of orders from Australia and New Zealand, and have hated that our customers had to pay so much international shipping.  It is now possible to purchase our Group Study DVD Box set, Study Books, and the first four individual DVDs from KOORONG.com or in KOORONG stores.  We’re pleased to have started this partnership with them and look forward to them serving our Australian and New Zealand customers much more closely than we ever could.

We finished our iPod Giveaway yesterday, loaded all the entries into a random number generator, then pressed the button.  The lucky number was 626 and belonged to Don Gale of Cordova, Tennessee.  (It is also, by the way, the same number of pieces Mozart wrote in his lifetime.)  We’ll be sending Don an iPod Nano 4GB with all our films loaded onto it.

Our Blogger contest ended yesterday as well, and we tabulated all the numbers.  The results showed us that rockstarwannabee.com was the winning site.  We’ll be sending out an Apple TV 40GB loaded with all our films to that happy blogger.

If it’s any consolation to those of you who didn’t win, I’ve never won anything like this either.  But here’s what I can to do.  For the next week, you can go to modernparable.com and use the code IWIN at checkout to receive 10% off any of the items in our online store (with the exception of digital downloads).  For a brief second, perhaps, you too can feel like a winner. 

Modern Parables is releasing all its parable studies on single DVDs. The first two titles in the series (Hidden Treasure and Samaritan) are now available here. The other four will be available in late May and mid-July.

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If you are interested in digging deeper into the parables and the Kingdom of God, there is a wealth of great books available to you. Modern Parables is now offering a number of these books on our site.

Titles include…

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