LBTM: Meet the Steeles

We cut to Chicago, a series of fades beginning with an aerial shot of downtown and ending in the interior of the Steele's suburban bathroom, where Rayford is looking at himself in the mirror.

The soundtrack blares the title song, "Left Behind," by Bryan Duncan, which is worth mention here since it's a near-perfect introduction to the frustrating Mr. Duncan: great pipes, capably derivative but dated musical style, insipid lyrics. This song, recorded in 2000, is not intentionally retro or an effort to revive the musical styles of the late '80s and early '90s. It's just that it seems to have taken the CCM folks 10 years to get around to ripping off New Jack Swing.

They do that thing where the external soundtrack morphs into an internal soundtrack and we hear Duncan's voice sounding tinnier and staticky. The music is apparently coming from Chloe's room. So even though at this point in the story she's a worldly, unsaved intellectual, she's already developed a taste for listening to bad contemporary Christian music on an AM clock radio.

Cut to CamCam on the TeeVee. That's our Buck sitting at a news anchor's desk reporting for GNN (the Global News Network here substituting for Global Weekly). Buck the anchor is poorly lit and sickly pale in a wrinkled suit, slumping over the news desk like a pre-makeover Albert Brooks in Broadcast News. His report, though, marks a constructive compression and correction of the novel. Here the Israeli Miracle has been moved closer in time, so that it occurs just days before the Event. He also mumbles something about speculation that Israel may have used some kind of top-secret "laser defense." That's a flimsy bit of phlebotinum, but it's enough to suggest that here people might view Israel's miraculous-seeming defense as a non-miraculous event without having to be the kind of deliberately obtuse and willfully truth-denying idiots that the novel repeatedly suggests all non-RTCs must be.

As Cam-Cam's report plays on the television, we see Chloe and her little brother wrestling over the remote as part of a perfunctory Meet the Family scene. Mom says some mommish things and Dad says some daddish things.

Throughout this off-the-shelf conversation the filmmakers want us to see the division that runs through the Steele family. On the one side are Irene and Raymie, who are cheerful born-again RTCs. And on the other side are Rayford and Chloe, who are played by legitimate actors.

For several seconds here I liked the idea that we would be getting to see the Steele family pre-Event and intact, but that response didn't survive our actually meeting Irene and Raymie. It's no wonder that Rayford and Chloe are both packing their bags, eager to get out of the house.

Irene seems fragile and nervously birdlike, like at any moment she could burst into tears or fly into a violent rage. She reminds me of one of those Catherine O'Hara characters in a Christopher Guest movie. Watching her desperately hanging all those balloons and streamers you get the feeling that she has a secret drawer filled with dozens of prescription bottles.

Raymie is much worse. Nearly every negative stereotype attached to the phrase "child actor" is on display here. He's mugging on every line such that, regardless of the actual words he's speaking, every sentence seems to be "Aren't I adorably smark-alecky?"

This ruins what might otherwise have been the first half-decent joke in the film. His dad promises to bring back a souvenir from London and the kid asks for "one of those long, pointy sticks that they put heads on" (the script seems to confuse Buckingham Palace with the Tower of London, but let that pass). "Where does he get this stuff from?" Rayford asks. The punchline is "Sunday school," but the kid delivers this line in such an intrusively hammy fashion that all we can hear him saying is "Look at me! Aren't I the cutest?" and the joke falls flat.

Bad child actors, it seems to me, make a convincing case for the doctrine of original sin. Or at least a convincing case against the idea of childish innocence. I tend to like the idea of an "age of accountability," but as I watch this kid greedily wrestling for the spotlight I start to think that maybe some kids ought to be among those left behind. I don't remember feeling any particular dislike for Raymie while reading the book, but this kid sets my teeth on edge.

By contrast, while reading the book I found Rayford Steele almost impossible to like, ever, even a little bit. He is, from the first sentence to the final page, just about the least sympathetic protagonist I have ever encountered. But here, remarkably, I've already begun to like Rayford.

Brad Johnson inhabits Rayford Steele and sets out to make the character human. He's not getting any help from the dialogue or the plot, but he seems determined to make Rayford believable, to provide some kind of emotional logic for why he is who he is and why he does what he does. It's jarring how different this makes him from the perversely inhuman cartoon in the novel.

Johnson is a far better actor than Jerry Jenkins is a writer. That doesn't just mean that he conveys Rayford more fully or accurately than Jenkins is able to, but that he conveys Rayford differently. Casting a capable actor here means that the Rayford Steele in the movie is a different character entirely than the Rayford Steele in the book. This is a Good Thing.

I suspect that there's a bit of method-acting subtext to the scene that follows, the conversation between Rayford and Chloe in the driveway. Chloe admits that Irene drives her crazy too and that she can't stand her mom's church friends either, but she pleads with her father to at least humor them and pretend to be nice.

I imagine that an almost-identical conversation may have occurred between Janaya Stephens and Brad Johnson, probably in the smoking area off to the side of the set for this movie. "They're not my favorite people either," Chloe/Janaya says, "but we should at least pretend to take an interest." Rayford/Brad seems to think that's a lot to ask. He wishes her good luck and heads off to work. He's got a paycheck to earn and he's going to earn it.

As Rayford drives off, the soundtrack blares Bob Carlisle's "After All (Rayford's Song)" -- a maudlin, oversung and overproduced piece of CCM-dreck awkwardly tacked onto the scene. The filmmakers' inability to integrate the "hit songs" written for the movie's soundtrack with the movie itself will become a recurring motif in LBTM.

Suddenly, rat-a-tat, "GNN Studios, New York" and Buck Williams is purposefully striding out of an elevator, being hailed by his adoring coworkers, when his cellphone rings.

"Buck, Dirk Burton. I know who's behind those planes falling out of the sky. ... Not on an open line. ... Meet me at the usual spot."

Now this is interesting. Dirk is a quite different character here than he is in the book. He's been conveniently and sensibly transplanted to New York, but more than that he seems to have been changed from nervous whistleblower to full-blown schizophrenic. Jack Langedijk -- a sort of poor man's Hank Azaria -- plays Dirk as a man tormented by voices and haunting half-glimpses of a massive conspiracy.

This makes movie-Dirk a lot more fun than novel-Dirk, but it's a curious choice for the filmmakers. It's an admission of sorts that their beliefs about the future seem similar to the ramblings of an unstable conspiracy theorist who imagines nefarious connections he's unable to defend. It's like an admission that their beliefs are indistinguishable from madness.

That could be an astute starting point if they were really interested in convincing the rest of us that their premillennial dispensationalist Bible-prophecy-seminar vision of the future is true. "You might think I'm crazy," was, not coincidentally, the first line of the title song from the soundtrack that we just heard a moment ago, and that's not a bad first line when you're describing your belief in something that might, in fact, make others think you're crazy. But the next step ought to be to say, "Let me prove to you that this crazy-sounding thing is actually true, and therefore not crazy to believe."

That's where I expected this truth-telling-madman take on Dirk Burton to lead us. But that doesn't happen with Dirk. He may have stumbled onto the truth, but apparently he believes it for the wrong reasons. He believes it because of some disk full of evidence he downloaded off of Cothran's computer. That doesn't seem to count. Apparently it only counts if you believe the truth because you read it in the Scofield Reference Bible and you chose to accept it without evidence.

The lyrics to "Left Behind" don't say, "You might think I'm crazy ... but it's really true." What they say, rather, is "You might think I'm crazy but ... I've made up my mind." Those two things aren't actually mutually exclusive, though, are they?

Ironically, CamCam's problem in this scene is that he hasn't made up his mind. Confronted with Langedijk's manic and unhinged Dirk Burton, he just doesn't know what to do. Or rather he never decides what to do.

CamCam, like the script for this scene, can't seem to decide whether Dirk is mentally ill or just in need of some sleep and a couple days off. He can't seem to decide whether he rushed off to see Dirk because he was looking for a legitimate story tip or because his old friend sounded like he was off his meds again and in need of help. CamCam could probably have played this scene either way, but he needed to decide one or the other and to stick with it with as much conviction as Langedijk brings here.

I don't believe, as Kirk Cameron does, that the book of Revelation presents a check list of future events preordained by God. I do believe, however, that the book of Revelation contains some excellent advice on acting that Cameron needs to learn:

"Thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot."

Comments

[Michele my bell-flower]

Hurray for LB Fridays!!

[Michele my bell-flower]

watching the clip, haven't read the post yet, but here are some initial reactions:

When I first saw Rayford, I thought he was John Travolta!

Why does Raymie talk like he's speaking on the inhalation instead of the exhalation?

"Sunday School"?? ROFL!!!

When most people say "me, too" in reply to "I love you" it usually sounds like they mean "I love you, too" rather than "Yeah, I love me, too, because I'm totally AWESOME!"

I like Chloe & am dreading what they're going to do to her as the film progresses.

Why do people never say "good-bye" to end phone calls in movies? Is that normal? Am I the only one who says "good-bye"??

"tracts of land" -- made me think of Monty Python, curiously enough

Does that woman in the newsroom STILL have ashes on her head?!?!?

[aunursa]

I don't remember feeling any particular dislike for Raymie while reading the book, but this kid sets my teeth on edge.

Part of that may be due to the fact that Raymie did not really say or do much of anything in the book.

[hapax]

Oh, thank goodness. I was wondering if there was something wrong with me for my reaction to Rayford Steele in this clip. Yeah, he came off as a jerk, but as a comprehensible human-sized jerk, rather than the alien monstrosity that appears in the books.

And I couldn't help but get a Reverend Jim (from "Taxi") vibe from Dirk that made him rather likeable. I did wonder at the "usual place" they chose for their assignation, though. Wouldn't an outdoor cafe, or a park bench, or something like that be a lot less conspicuous, not to mention more accessible and easy to escape from if things when wrong? I've never seen a setting that screamed "Conspiracy Room!" more.

[SchrodingersDuck]

So, what's Buck supposed to do with that disc? It's not a standard storage format. My guess is that is all an elaborate practical joke - the "disc" is actually a magnet. Buck, being the tool he is, will put it in the floppy disc drive of his computer and 'tragically' lose his Pulitzer Prize worthy article "Why the Attacks on Israel were a little bit like the Great Wall of China".

And also, what does Todd-Cothran have to do with aeroplanes exploding, anyway? God was the one who blew them up. What incriminating evidence could Cothran have? Perhaps he is very, very loosely connected to their dispatch (he knows Stonagal, who knows Nicky, who knows the presidents of Russia and Ethiopia), but he has nothing to do with them "falling out of the sky". And why is Dirk apparently accusing TC and Stonagal of trying to blow up their own farms? I get the feeling even the scriptwriters got so tired of the stupid thriller subplot that they skimmed over it once, then wrote something somewhat better (no conventions of evil international bankers meeting Jewish leaders to discuss the one world currency at least) but completely at odds with the rest of the story.

[Michele my bell-flower]

@ hapax: And I couldn't help but get a Reverend Jim (from "Taxi") vibe from Dirk that made him rather likeable.

YES! I was wondering who he reminded me of!

(oh, and: "Whaaaaaaat dooooooes aaaaa yeeeeelloooooow liiiiiiight meeeeeeeean?")

I did wonder at the "usual place" they chose for their assignation, though. Wouldn't an outdoor cafe, or a park bench, or something like that be a lot less conspicuous, not to mention more accessible and easy to escape from if things when wrong? I've never seen a setting that screamed "Conspiracy Room!" more.

I thought the same thing. Who pics abandoned warehouses for this type of thing? Is there anything MORE suspicious than that?

[Dan]

back in the day when I attended a Christian Liberal Arts College, Brian Duncan made regular appearances in chapel or on Friday nights. I was always disappointed for the same reasons: powerful pipes, but dated even then - even when he was at the top of his form. He is that stereotypical artists that so many within the family like - just wild enough to be "entertaining" but always safely inside the box so as not to offend the more sensible among us.

[Jos]

We cut to Chicago, a series of fades beginning with an aerial shot of downtown and ending in the interior of the Steele's suburban bathroom, where Rayford is looking at himself in the mirror.

You have to hand to the film - they manage to accurately sum up Rayford's character at the very beginning of his very first scene.

Well... book!Rayford anyway.

[damnedyankee]

Part of that may be due to the fact that Raymie did not really say or do much of anything in the book.

Which now seems like one of the few good calls L&J made in Left Behind.

And in my Sunday school, we called a pike a pike, dammit!

[jamoche]

"You might think I'm crazy..."

"... all I want is you"

Wow, that was a weird line reading by Raymie on "Sunday School"

Wait, from what Chloe says about the house filling up with "those people", sounds like Raymie's birthday party is going to be filled with RTC-types witnessing to each other. Yeah, thatsounds like every little boy's dream.

I kind of like Dirk. The actor seems to have wandered in from a better movie.

[damnedyankee]

Throughout this off-the-shelf conversation the filmmakers want us to see the division that runs through the Steele family. On the one side are Irene and Raymie, who are cheerful born-again RTCs. And on the other side are Rayford and Chloe, who are played by legitimate actors.

Hee!

[cjmr's husband]

So, what's Buck supposed to do with that disc? It's not a standard storage format.

All shiny, about an inch across -- most likely it's the platter from an iPod hard drive (or would be if this movie had been made a couple years later).

The sort of non-removable disk that is completely ruined by getting a fingerprint on it. Still, I like the spy-watch with removable storage. Even if an SD card is smaller.

[Joshua]

I kind of like Dirk. The actor seems to have wandered in from a better movie.

So, in that sense, LBTM has captured the feel of their source material perfectly...

Also, as in the books, it's weird how such a simple stock character like the Crazy Conspiracy Guy played straight feels like he came from a better movie.

[kodiak]

I liked Raymie's line. Not for the delivery or anything but because it showed that even RTC little boys are going to be little boys obsessing over decapitations and blood and guts wherever and whenever they can. Partly just to try to freak out the adults around them (or squeamish sisters). It lends some credence to the thought that he was saved not because he was good or bad but because he was under the magical age limit.

Rayford seems like a man who actually might divorce his wife, and is trying to keep it together but won't be able to for much longer, which is worlds of improvement over the manipulative user that he was in the books.

The warehouse thing is just odd to me. I mean, old buildings like that? Sound carries in them. Especially when you're freaking out and not pitching your voice low. meeting in a library filled with muffling books sounds like a better idea. Or somewhere you can write out the conversation and then destroy the note (I'm thinking Josh meeting with the deaf pollster in the West Wing destroying the napkin on which he had written something about the President having MS). Large barn-esque building, not my choice...

[Naked Bunny with a Whip]

Hey, I'm in Chicago right now! I wonder if I can see my hotel in the movie. I hope the rapture doesn't happen this weekend. According to LB, that would cause mild, temporary snags in traffic flow for my trip home.

[aunursa]

Which now seems like one of the few good calls L&J made in Left Behind.

They make up for it in the prequels...

In this scene, Irene spyes on her children, who are in Chloe's room.

[Raymie] "I got Jesus in my heart."
[Chloe] "You what?"
"I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart."
Irene stopped, holding her breath.
"Well, that's good, I guess, huh?"
"Course it's good," Raymie said. "What do you think? You got Jesus in your heart?"
Irene had to exhale and made herself dizzy trying to be quiet.
"No, I don't, Raymie. But I'm glad you do."
How sweet, Irene thought. Chloe could have been cold, mean, challenging. She had been so to her little brother more than Irene cared to remember. Was it possible she somehow realized the import of this? Or did she simply not know how to respond?
"You should get Jesus in your heart too, Chloe," Raymie said. "Then He's with you all the time, and when you die you go to heaven."
"That's nice."
"So, will ya?"
"I'll think about it, okay?"
"You ought to think about it soon, because--"
"Don't bug me about it, or I won't think about it, okay?"
"But I'm just worried--"
"Don't worry about me."
"Okay. See ya."

[Joshua]

I kind of like Dirk. The actor seems to have wandered in from a better movie.

So, in that sense, LBTM has captured the feel of their source material perfectly...

Also, as in the books, it's weird how such a simple stock character like the Crazy Conspiracy Guy played straight feels like he came from a better movie. I think it's because, as Fred alludes to, these stock characters exist for the protagonists to play against. Buck's reaction to his Crazy Conspiracy Guy friend really ought to tell us something about Buck himself. But, since Buck barely reacts at all, that's not what happens. And that's why this is such a terrible movie.

[Joshua]

Whoops, I thought my first pass at that comment got eaten by the gremlins of the internets... Apparently not. I did want to expand on it like I did in the second rev. anyway, so yeah.

[konrad_arflane]

"When most people say "me, too" in reply to "I love you" it usually sounds like they mean "I love you, too" rather than "Yeah, I love me, too, because I'm totally AWESOME!"

It does? I've never been able to hear that particular exchange without mentally stumbling over its literal meaning.

And if we're going with inappropriate self-absorbed responses to "I love you", I prefer Han Solo's, anyway.

[LeRoc]

I know who's behind those planes falling out of the sky.

That's odd. When I heard Dirk say this, I was thinking about the planes that plummeted onto the O'Hara tarmac, right after the Rapture. Then I realized: no, this is about the planes that exploded above Israel.

This lead me to another thought. In a couple of hours, when a number of people will be missing on Rayford Steele's plane (or any other plane), wouldn't somebody on the plane be thinking back to that other moment when something funny happened to planes? "Oh no, people are missing from the plane. I wonder if the same thing happened when Israel used those strange laser beams on planes to defend itself. Soon, we're going to explode like they did!!!"

Yet, no-one thinks about this. Not in the book, and not in the film.

[cereselle]

Irene Steele wears pants. IRENE STEELE WEARS PANTS. How can the good and holy Saint Irene be caught with both legs in sin?

As for Raymie's Sunday School line, I wonder if the scriptwriter was making a veiled jab at the Old Testament code of ethics. "We praise you, O Lord, for delivering unto us the heads of our enemies so we could put them on pointy sticks, amen."

[Thalia]

*after working 30 hours in the last three days* Didn't I say, that last time, that I would be back? Well, I was wrong. I'm so glad to see LB Friday, but I might not be able to stay awake long enough to read it!!!!

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

jamoche beat me to it. Everyone who now has Cars songs stuck in their heads, come over here where we're playing through the Greatest Hits album on my laptop, K? After that I'm lining up some Duran Duran.

(Oh, Gods. I'm listening to FlashBackRadio.com, which is always quick to remind me that while I will never fall out of love with much of the 80s (cf. Cars, A-ha, Jackson Browne, Talking Heads) there remains that subset of 80s pop music I have no use for. Exhibit A: Frankie Smith's "Double Dutch Bus". I had no idea the interpolated syllables "iz" and "izzle" dated back that far. Dear Gods, it's like pig latin in this song.)

[Michael Cule]

While Dirk's acting is at least energetic (compared with the sluggish non-acting of Our Buck) it is in my estimation the energy of desperation. This is an actor who is given a huge plot dump to deliver and no very coherent sense of character in the writing and just decides to go at it full force in the hope something like a person will emerge. It doesn't.

[SueW]

Rayford looks younger than I pictured him. Buck looks about 15. Chloe looks enough like Irene that they could actually be mother and daughter, which is pretty unusual casting. I can hardly wait for Raymie to get raptured. Dirk is my favorite character so far.

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

I mean, of course, pizzig latizzle.

[JessicaR]

Brad Johnson's performances reminds me of the movie opening today based on the awful, awful Twilight books. Both leads have gone on record on how awful their characters are and how they purposely played against that or did not play non heroic behavior as heroic but rather as the sociopathy or obsession it was. I can see that going on here, the actor has actually given Rayford an inner life. A man who doesn't like or at least isn't very comfortable with himself. And tries to and does care for other people even if he's not the best at expressing it. So at least one miraculous event occured on this film.

[LeRoc]

Wait! I don't get this bathroom thing. Rayford is in the bathroom. Then the camera follows him through the door to his and Irene's bedroom. Then the camera goes back to the same place... the hallway (with Chloe coming out of her bedroom).

Or am I wrong?

[Hawk]

So, is it CamCam or Cam-Cam? I prefer unhyphenated myself.

"This makes movie-Dirk a lot more fun than novel-Dirk, but it's a curious choice for the filmmakers. It's an admission of sorts that their beliefs about the future seem similar to the ramblings of an unstable conspiracy theorist who imagines nefarious connections he's unable to defend. It's like an admission that their beliefs are indistinguishable from madness."

Maybe the filmmakers are aware the writers' beliefs are indistinguishable from madness.

Hmm, reminds me of an Arthur C. Clarke quote. For LB ... "Any sufficiently radical belief is indistinguishable from madness."

[professoryackle]

Not that she's a RTC (yet) but - what's wrong with Chloe having a nosering? Is it against RTC law, or something?

Irene comes across as clingy and needy. For goodness sake, wouldn't a pilot have to go to work, including to London, sometimes?

That spiral staircase would be so tricky to escape by.

Doesn't Dirk keep hold of the lil' disc thingy at this stage? He just gives CamCam the essay, right?

[Bill S]

I wonder if one reason the movie seems like an improvement over the book (not greatest upward leap, but still...) is that most of the people involved in making it don't share the beliefs of the "Left Behind" authors.

[Dymphna]

For what it's worth, Dirk comes off more as manic than as schizophrenic.

concerning noserings - I sport a rather large one that I got in India in 2003. I have noticed that noserings have normalized rather rapidly over the past five years. When I first got it, family and friends showed concern about its effect on my professional appearance. Now it is not even worth mentioning. I wasn't surprised that a movie made in 2000 about a half-RTC family in Illinois would include a comment about noserings on teens being risky.

[Ayulsa]

Long-time lurker, never-time commenter, but now that the wonderful tradition of LB Fridays has risen once more from the ashes (ahem), thought some of you here might get a kick out of this random graphic I cooked up (safe for work).

Hopefully I'll feel confident enough to jump into one of the eminently inspiring debates that occur on this blog on a regular basis, but for now, that is my offering. :)

[Dahne]

[breathy, panting] Meet me at the- usual spot.

Is it me? Am I the pervert?

[Ian]

That kid's acting would not be forgivable if he was five years old. I blame the director.

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

My plan if I ever discover hard evidence of a sweeping world conspiracy.
1) Splash cold water on face.
2) Get a good night's sleep (surprise: movie Buck gives sensible, humane advice). Sedate myself if necessary, but if sedation is necessary consider skipping to step 6.
3) Break up my evidence into small, comprehensible subsections. If I cannot do so, immediately skip to step 6. Hopefully, at least some of these subsections could stand alone as news stories in themselves.
4) Rehearse. I will need to plan how I want to deliver my evidence when speaking to reporters. I should use a tape recorder, and listen to my own delivery. If I cannot speak in a calm, level tone of voice, or if I'm unable to make structurally similar arguments from recording to recording, I should skip to step 6.
5) I should not mention the Global Conspiracy to anyone, not yet. Rather, I should disseminate those standalone subsets of my evidence to various different media outlets, so that some proof of the conspiracy will get out even if I am abruptly murdered by the Men in Black. Anonymous tips should be used wherever a particular subsection of the evidence can be easily confirmed by the reporters I send it to. Where my personal reputation can enhance the credibility of a particular subset of my evidence I should give one or two off-the-record interviews, ideally with a reporter friend. (of course I have reporter friends -- I'm Deep Throat in a badly scripted conspiracy movie!) If my reporter friend says things to the effect of "dude, you feelin' alright?" skip to step 6.
6) Consult psychiatrist. Speak slowly, avoid grandiosity, present data. If she lets me leave the hospital under my own power, I can take it to be confirmed that my evidence for a global conspiracy is extremely strong.
7) Now that she's smelling a story, help my discreet reporter friend connect the dots to see the big picture. Let her get the Pulitzer and hog the spotlight, and hope that the global conspiracy gets shut down before it notices me.
8) 30 years later, leak my identity. Nobel peace prize.

[Boze]

yay! I like that the theme of this day at Slacktivist seems to be "totally obnoxious CCM"

Here's a handy reference guide:

Respectable/Excellent Christian music:
Rich Mullins (dulcimers! unusual opinions! poetry! left-wing politics!)
Todd Agnew
Jars of Clay
Third Day
MercyMe (pianos, man! real depth!)
PfR
Switchfoot

Iffy:
The Newsboys
Michael Card
dctalk

Highly questionable:
Plus One (the original Christian boy band)
Stacie Orrico (shallow, Latino-inspired, appeals to the Shakira "shake your hips" crowd)
Kutless

[Mary]

Everybody hates the Twilight books. Sheesh. I thought they were shallow-but-fun high school romantic comedies with, you know, vampires. I want to see Edward played by a young John Cusack.

[Boze]

More for the Highly Questionable list:
Carman
KJ52 (does a fairly good imitation of Eminem; sings about Eminem)
The guys who sing "Love for My Thugs"
T-Bone (most of his raps are written from the perspective of a fictional persona named T-Bone, or "T-Boney-Bone, Don Corleone." My favorite is the one with the line, "Ain't no high if the Holy Ghost ain't rolled up in it!")
Avalon
Skillet (they sing Christian death-metal, and they have a song called "Kill Me," in which the crucial line goes, "Pick up the nails, cause it's killing ti-ime!...")
By the Tree (more folk-poppy than Skillet, but along the same lines: they have a song called "Shoot Me Down," whose chorus goes, "Should have killed me for the things I've done, shoot me do-own, way down, shoot me down...")
The Imperials
Jump5 (acrobatics, and I imagine a lot of lip-synching)
The Katinas (the Katinas are so wonderfully bad that anyone who hasn't had the experience of hearing their music has missed something vital in life)
World Wide Message Tribe (same as above; I played this for a teacher and she thought it was porn music. Plus, they're British!)
ZOEgirl

[hapax]

Everybody hates the Twilight books. Sheesh. I thought they were shallow-but-fun high school romantic comedies with, you know, vampires.

I don't hate 'em. I thought they were great fun, especially if you read them with Edward as a submissive masochist ("Pleae please punish me! Punish me!") and Bella as a subconsciously cruel dom ("No.")

As I said on another thread, I'm playing Mom to a gaggle of teenaged twihards at the film premiere tonight. I expect it to be on the level of a pretty good Afterschool Special, and light years above the LB movie.

[carovee]

Was anyone else distracted by the fact that Cam Cam seemed to be playing dress up in his father's coat? Just me then?

[cereselle]

Oh, I do like Switchfoot! I'd forgotten I have some of their albums; I'll have to dig them out.

[professoryackle]

@Ayulsa: Cute graphic; v appropriate. If we're talking merchandise, maybe you should send it to L&J ;-)

@Dahne: No it's not just you. I thought similarly.

[Cowboy Diva]

The Imperials, seriously? the vocal group? They're still around?
Man. They were old guys trying to be hip 25 years ago. The a capella stuff was good at the time, but I know I am a sucker for the unaccompanied voice.

[Dan]

"Thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot."

Next up on "Hot or Not," Kirk Cameron as intrepid reporter Bucky McWilliams! But first, these messages from your local Christian retailer. . .

[Jim]

CamCam, like the script for this scene, can't seem to decide whether Dirk is mentally ill or just in need of some sleep and a couple days off. He can't seem to decide whether he rushed off to see Dirk because he was looking for a legitimate story tip or because his old friend sounded like he was off his meds again and in need of help.

That actually reminded me of The X-Files, and seemed like a rare instance of the filmmakers doing something right. Assuming that's what they intended.

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

Over the past few years, I had pictured Chloe as Claire Danes. The actress who plays Chloe is at least a little Claire Danes-ish.

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

Chloe seems to be a high school student in the movie, is that right? She's too immature to be a college student living at home, and she makes it clear that she has school-related work to do.

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

When Rayford said he just got a call and couldn't get out of flying, my immediate thought was that PanCon's pilots must have the world's weakest union and an awful collective bargaining agreement. However, based on what we see in the conversation with Chloe, it seems plausible that he just took the flight because he was trying to get out of the house.

[Boze]

"My plan if I ever discover hard evidence of a sweeping world conspiracy."

Utterly brilliant. You ought to have a blog, my friend. Also, have you seen the movie "Pi"?

[LeRoc]

Some other small things:

We meet Rayford when he's splashing water on his face. I guess he just finished shaving or washing his face. I normally do either of these things before putting a clean shirt on, to avoid getting soap or dirty water on it. But maybe a lot of people do it differently.

When Rayford closes the hatch on the car boot, Chloe's fingers are scarily close. I have seen this scene a couple of times now, and everytime I fear (or secretly hope?) that her fingers will get caught in between. Am I the only one?

[Jessica]

Lots of catch up comments:
“That's a flimsy bit of phlebotinum, but it's enough to suggest that here people might view Israel's miraculous-seeming defense as a non-miraculous event without having to be the kind of deliberately obtuse and willfully truth-denying idiots that the novel repeatedly suggests all non-RTCs must be.
This makes movie-Dirk a lot more fun than novel-Dirk, but it's a curious choice for the filmmakers. It's an admission of sorts that their beliefs about the future seem similar to the ramblings of an unstable conspiracy theorist who imagines nefarious connections he's unable to defend. It's like an admission that their beliefs are indistinguishable from madness.”

I have a theory. The film-makers, by making the choices they did, were able to improve upon the source material. In this way, it’s sort of like meta-Chloe or meta-Hattie shining through despite Jenkins’ best attempts at keeping the women subdued. Ergo, I present meta-Jenkins. Meta-Jenkins is composed of all the filmmakers, actors, crew, etc. that worked on LBTM. They were able, as a team, to let something like the humanity of Rayford shine through despite the horrible source material they had to work with.

Michelle wrote:
Why do people never say "good-bye" to end phone calls in movies? Is that normal? Am I the only one who says "good-bye"??

I agree. I always have the hardest time getting off the phone, especially with my parents. There’s always, well, I’ll let you go now. Okay, bye. Love you. Love you too. Bye. Bye. Bye. It’s like we’re fighting to see who gets the last word.

I kind of like Dirk. The actor seems to have wandered in from a better movie.

LOL

Ayulsa—
That had me LOL. Very nice.

Oh, and what is it with the Twilight books? I’ve not exactly been living under a rock, so I have heard of them, I know it’s about boy-vampire meetings girl-non-vampire, and they fall in love, but that’s about it. I hear some people rave over the books, but the general consensus among slacktivites (and vixens) is that the books are horrible. Considering that the opinions I’ve seen aired about Christopher Paolini’s work are accurate, I’m inclined to give benefit of doubt to the slacktivist community. Still, I would appreciate some elaboration. Is Twilight as bad, for example, as Left Behind? Well, that’s just a stupid question, but still, how bad is it?

[Headless Unicorn Guy]

...a near-perfect introduction to the frustrating Mr. Duncan: great pipes, capably derivative but dated musical style, insipid lyrics. This song, recorded in 2000, is not intentionally retro or an effort to revive the musical styles of the late '80s and early '90s. It's just that it seems to have taken the CCM folks 10 years to get around to ripping off New Jack Swing.

Well, I've heard it observed that you can tell when something has gotten passe because it's only after it jumps the shark that the Christian knockoffs hit the shelves.

I liked Raymie's line. Not for the delivery or anything but because it showed that even RTC little boys are going to be little boys obsessing over decapitations and blood and guts wherever and whenever they can. Partly just to try to freak out the adults around them (or squeamish sisters). -- Kodiak

When you're ten years old and male, ANYTHING gross or disgusting is fascinating and funny.
BART SIMPSON RULES!

Brad Johnson's performances reminds me of the movie opening today based on the awful, awful Twilight books. -- JessicaR

Morning drive-time radio yesterday mentioned the sparkly-emo-vampire-with-spine-snapping-vamp-sex movie. The morning drive-time host has two daughters -- 13-year-old twins -- and said "They're in the Twilight Zone and trying to drag me in."

Apparently if you're young and female (or old and single and female), you're making goo-goo eyes over Twilight. Anti-Shurtugal LJ compares it to Eragon, except emo-vampy-chick-lit.

[JessicaR]

It's similar to Left Behind in that the author doesn't seem to realize her leads are kinda, sorta completely terrible people, and that no one in the series behaves like a normal human being. Or if they're not human follows any consistent pattern of behavior. And there is the notorious final book in the series, Breaking Dawn, which features the main Vampire biting his and Bella's super mutant vampire death baby out of her uterus so she won't be killed by it. And no, I did not make that up. Google Cleolinda and Twilight for her hilarious recaps of the series.