catholic church Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When I first heard that a film was being made of The Golden Compass, the first novel in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy -- and that it was being adapted as a family film -- I thought to myself, "Hmmm ... I wonder how they're going to pull THAT off." Then I heard the planned release date -- just in time for Christmas, 2007 -- and then I sat back and waited for the inevitable storm of controversy that would start swirling as soon as Christian groups got wind of the film and its storyline.

The other day, Fox had this story about Christian groups claiming The Golden Compass is a "stealth atheism campaign" aimed at children, which starts out, "A children's fantasy film that stars Nicole Kidman and features a little girl on a quest to kill God has some Christian groups upset over what they believe is a ploy to promote atheism to kids." The story goes on to note that New Line has taken most of the "godless" elements out of the film and that the studio has made a film that focuses on the "entertaining fantasy" elements of the story.

The opener of the Fox article is annoyingly misleading right off the bat; The Golden Compass is not a story about a little girl on a quest to kill God, it's about a little girl, Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards in the film), on a quest to find her friend, who's been kidnapped by Mrs. Coulter (played by Kidman in the film). Lyra is never on a quest to kill God, she's on a quest to find out why children are disappearing, and in the process she becomes involved with a plot concerning her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) and Mrs. Coulter, and a mysterious substance called "dust" that may or may not have something to do with sin.

The plot involves (in the books at least) one side (the Church) trying to rid the world of sin by committing atrocious acts against children, while the other side, headed up by Lord Asriel, which is trying to stop them, are not clearly the "good guys" either. Unless someone has substantially changed the plot for the film to something that is certainly not in the book (and I doubt that, given that New Line would like this film to be marketable), saying this story is about a little girl trying to kill God is both misleading and irresponsible.

Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...


INDIE FILM GRAB BAG

• Atom Egoyan will start shooting on his newest film, Adoration, this fall -- his first since 2005's Where the Truth Lies.
• Cinematical Indie Seven: Documentaries worth catching on DVD ...
• Deliver Us From Evil director Amy Berg (pictured) talks to Cinematical Indie about the $660 million payout by the Catholic Church to victims of clergy sexual abuse, and how she feels about Cardinal Roger Mahony's "apology" to the victims.

FEST NEWS

• Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Fest announces its lineup, which includes some retro films (Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark). It's Michael Moore's fest, so it's a given that there are plenty of social-issue films, but there will also be other fest fare like Waitress, Paprika and The King of Kong.
• Heading to a slightly more exotic locale, news from the Thessaloniki Film Festival is that the fest will be honoring one of Monika's fave directors, John Sayles, with a "Golden Alexander." The fest will also screen the European premiere of Sayle's latest film, Honeydripper (Monika wrote earlier this month about Honeydripper being selected for Toronto ... busy year for Sayles.
• The Middle East International Film Festival, announced at Cannes earlier this year, has a Festival Director: film fest veteran Jon Fitzgerald, who helped launch Slamdance and has worked for AFI and, well, lots of other fests. The fest will be held in October in Abu Dhabi, and the main site of the fest is the truly stunning Emirates Palace. Seems like the organizers of the fest intend to make it a major business-oriented fest with lots of deal-making going on ... it will be interesting to see how Fitzgerald grows the fest, and if it eventually becomes a key fest for dealmakers -- kind of like the Toronto or Sundance of the Middle East. Interesting ...
• The AFI Dallas Film Fest has announced its call for entries for 2008, the second year of the fest, so get your films submitted.
• Cinematical Indie gears up for our coverage of the major fall film fests, Telluride, Toronto and Venice.

DEALS and DISTRIBUTION

• Just when we got all excited about the July 20 release of one of our fave flicks from Toronto last year, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, things got curiouser and curiouser, culminating with the announcement that -- too bad, so sad -- we're going to have to wait until 2008 for the film's official release now. Wha --? Poor Mandy -- first, she didn't get a freaking poster until two weeks before her release date, then she got dumped by the Weinsteins' Dimension and acquired by Senator Entertainment. But never fear, the Brothers Weinstein have a positive spin on the bizarre dumping of the film, saying that Senator will give Mandy a wider release than they had planned for her, and Senator already owned her German rights anyhow ... and there's less competition in the film's new release slot (and, just maybe, the horror genre will recover from the dreadful opening of Captivity by then -- though Elisha Cuthbert's career may not). Ah, Mandy. The guys dying to see the film will just have to wait a while longer ... but I guess as long as a girl is trading up, it's all good.
• Speaking of the Weinstein boys, The Weinstein Company (TWC) also acquired Benny Chan's Invisible Target ... and Peter Martin ponders whether this one might head straight to DVD ...
• Here! Films picks up Tribeca player Fat Girls, while First Run (finally, it's about time someone did) acquires one of my own fave Sundance flicks, For the Bible Tells Me So.

INDIES ONLINE AND ON DVD

• Robert Bresson's first film, Les Anges du Péché, finally gets a DVD release, but you have to buy it from a French website.
• Willy Wiggins reinvents The Outlaw Son.
• Peter Martin writes up the latest indie DVD releases, including his top pick-of-the-week, Avenue Montaigne.

A couple days ago, Cardinal Roger Mahony, bishop of the Los Angeles diocese, made a public apology to the over 500 victims of alleged sexual abuse by priests he was in charge of, and announced a $660 million payout to the victims. While Father Oliver O'Grady, the priest profiled in the documentary Deliver Us From Evil, was not one of the priests this specific settlement dealt with, the film, directed by Amy Berg, has played a crucial role in bringing the issue to light and drawing the attention of the district attorney's office to Mahony.

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart played a brief clip of Mahony's apology, in which he said he was sorry to "anyone who might have been offended ... " Offended, as Stewart noted, hardly seems the right word to use when you are supposedly apologizing to people who were sexually molested as children by priests under your charge. I emailed Berg this morning about the payout, her film's impact on the case, and Mahony's apology, and this is what she had to say (Berg's response in its entirety is after the jump ... ):

Lionsgate has acquired domestic distrib rights to Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil, a documentary about a pedophile Catholic priest whose crimes were concealed by the Church for 30 years. I saw the trailer for this film shortly before the Los Angeles Film Festival, where it made its world premiere and scored the top doc prize, and it was heavy stuff for this ex-Catholic schoolgirl. The film is told from the perspectives of both victim and perpetrator, and if watching Ollie O'Grady, the jolly ex-priest with white hair and twinkling blue eyes, smile while describing how he finds young children in their underwear "arousing" doesn't turn your stomach, well, you're made of stronger stuff than I am.

Particulary wrenching is an interview with the parents of one of the victims, who was just five years old when O'Grady raped her. That the Catholic Church knew about O'Grady's crimes, and yet covered them up for years, moving him around from parish to parish where he could prey on fresh victims, is beyond reprehensible, and Berg's camera bravely shows the tragic effects of the cover-up.

Pic comes on the heels of Kirby Dick's Twist of Faith, another riveting doc about pedophilila in the Catholic church, which focused on the trauma of a now-grown victim who is re-traumatized when the priest who abused him years before moves into his neighborhood. Twist of Faith showed at Sundance in 2005 and was nominated for an Oscar later that year.

Deliver Us From Evil is slated for a Fall 2006 release.

The New York Times has a piece up about how Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei has PR wheels in overdrive trying to distance itself from the upcoming film The Da Vinci Code. The book (and film) features a psychotic albino monk named Silas (played by Paul Bettany)  who is affiliated with Opus Dei, and depicts the secretive group as a powerful cult. According to the Times piece, Opus Dei leaders even contacted Sony Pictures last year, asking that any mention of the group be removed from the film, to no avail.

Opus Dei's website has an entire section devoted to The Da Vinci Code, which answers a number of issues presented in the book as factual. For instance, the Opus Dei site declaims the existence of a monastic order within the group, refutes any suggestion that it is a cult, and denies having any wealth or power to speak of (well, except for that $2.8 billion in assets and power positions in the Vatican).  

It's not all bad news for Opus Dei, though. The group has had significant publicity from the book and film (and isn't it true there's no such thing as bad publicity?), and the interest spurred by The Da Vinci Code has paved the way for Doubleday to publish an upcoming book, The Way, a collection of writings by the group's founder, Father Josemaría Escrivá, who was canonized for sainthood in 2002.

[ via Under a Neon Sign at Indiewire.com ]