My review of Christopher Nolan’s latest take on Batman, The Dark Knight can be read here. The brief summary is that I liked it. A lot.

I posted my review of Pixar’s latest film, Wall-E over on my arts blog. You can read it here.

Because I’ve posted about the movie here, I’ll point you to my review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull over on my arts blog.

Matt Barber sent me this GigaOM interview with director Brad Bird regarding how he engenders a creative environment. He sounds like a fascinating manager. Bird has made some of the most original and multifaceted films in the past ten years. He doesn’t receive the attention he deserves and I think that’s because his films are animated, as if that medium is somehow deficient compared to live-action movies. But Bird’s three films, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, are testaments to his imagination and skill at inspiring people under his leadership to express their creativity. Here are a couple of their exchanges.

The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation?

Brad Bird: Involved people make for better innovation… Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.

The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team?

Brad Bird: I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person… I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together…

What would it look like in churches if we employed similar ideas? It might be chaotic, but there is certainly something beautiful in Bird’s sense of we are stronger together than as individuals.

There has been some good discussion and debate. I thought I’d take a moment to lighten things up since it’s Friday. Over on my arts blog, I wrote about some promising developments in the film version of The Hobbit. Not the least of which is the opportunity to see Ian McKellen as Gandalf again. Here is a fantastic clip from the show Extras where he explains his acting method, using his portrayal as Gandalf as an example.

Over on the arts blog, I created a companion piece to the post on movies that others loved but didn’t evoke similar reactions in me. The new post concerns movies others seem to despise but I like quite a bit.

Seriously. A Pulitzer.

A Special Citation to Bob Dylan for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.

It’s kind of strange considering he didn’t release new material in 2007, but way to go Bob!

Over on my arts blog, I have a post about movies that a lot of people loved, but I didn’t like or about which I just said, “Meh.” I’m sure I listed some of your favorites.

I already posted the following commentary over on my blog about the arts, The Space Between the Arts, but since it deals directly with matters of faith as well, I thought I would offer it here as well.

A simple warning: this, like most of my commentaries will discuss specifics about the work of art, meaning the commentary will contain spoilers.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson creates an incredible dance between his characters and the audience. Without using voiceovers or soliloquies, we feel characters’ emotions whether they are emotions we would want to understand or not. Take, for example, in Magnolia, when the uber-misogynist Frank T. J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) stonewalls the reporter (April Grace) for confronting him with his true history, we understand and feel his frustration all the while remaining disgusted with the vileness of his work and his lies. Like all great filmmakers, Anderson also has the ability to change our perspectives so that when we leave the theater, we look at the world a bit differently.

I have seen his latest work of wonder, There Will Be Blood, twice now and I cannot get this movie out of my head. There Will Be Blood takes a hard look at the amorality of frontier capitalism embodied in the terrifying character Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis in one of the great performances on film). Daniel protects his fabricated image enough to ingratiate himself to the people who own the land on which he wants to drill for oil. Because he inhabits nearly every scene of the film, we can view the bleak landscape through Daniel’s eyes that sees the “ocean of oil” underneath his feet. Daniel is percipient but horribly selfish. He sees through people to procure the best deal he can, often and perhaps intentionally at the other person’s expense. In an uncharacteristically candid moment, Daniel has the following exchange with Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor), the man posing as his brother:

Daniel: Are you an angry man, Henry?
Henry: About what?
Daniel: Are you envious? Do you get envious?
Henry: I don’t think so. No.
Daniel: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
Henry: That part of me is gone—working and not succeeding—all my failures has left me. I just don’t care.
Daniel: Well, if it’s in me, it’s in you. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.
Henry: What will you do about your boy?
Daniel: I don’t know. Maybe it will change. Does your sound come back to you? I don’t know. Maybe no one knows that. A doctor might not know that.
Henry: Where is his mother?
Daniel: I don’t want to talk about those things. I see the worst in people. I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry. To have you here gives me a second breath. I can’t keep doing this on my own with these people.

Here’s the announcement of the “something new” I mentioned in my last post. (Sorry Eddy, my post didn’t mean only one thing).

I have a new blog. I’m still going to write on this blog. Lately I’ve written a lot of reviews and have enjoyed the process, but I don’t want The Space Between My Ears to be just a blog about reviews. So I started another blog for my reviews and commentary on the arts: The Space Between the Arts. I’ve put up all the reviews I’ve written this year as well as a couple of new pieces. It will be less personal and more focused than this blog. Might I suggest starting with my reviews of Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 or the magical film Once?

The new blog does have an RSS feed and you can also subscribe to it there or by using this link.