The best films of 2006 so far...

Here are the good ones, worth the trip to the theater or DVD store or Netflix queue should the release date permit:

Little Miss Sunshine: The film to beat in 2006. It's got the greatest opening shot and the best ending scene since 2004's Napoleon Dynamite.

Brick: Rian Johnson's dark and gritty little indie-film-noir-flick starring Joseph-Gordon Levitt (who's on a role with movies and chilling/committed performances) trying to piece a dead-girlfriend-drug puzzle together with the help of his screwed up high school peers.

Bubble: Steven Soderburgh produced this ultra-low budget, reality film (meaning, it's as close to real life as you could get) about a trio of bored factory workers who find themselves mixed up in a murder in a small town and its almost creepy the way it feels like this could happen to anyone. Best scene in the film: the prison conversation. The staging of this scene, the set design, the direction...all of it, pitch-perfect.

World Trade Center: I know this is supposed to be an inspiring film---and it is, don't get me wrong---but I didn't know some things about this story and about the number of survivors who actually survived from after the rubble and it actually depressed me more than it inspired me. But even still, it reminded me of the power of hope---especially when this hope is being liften up with the words of another.

John Tucker Must DieOkay, maybe "best" doesn't apply here at all but nevertheless, this movie is almost exactly what it's trying to be: a teen comedy with a little bite and a little revenge/sassy/sweetness in a summer filled with movies made to blow you up. The first half hour of this film, unlaughable, but as the movie goes along, three characters make this high school romp worth the trip to the end (even though we all know how it's going to end). And although the moral of the story is preachy, it's oddly encouraging to be reminded from a movie as shallow this, the value of telling the truth. Too bad John Tucker never learned this. But then again, something is not exactly right with the screenplay or direction when the character your supposed to hate actually ends up being the most interesting, most engaging, most charming, most endearing and most likeable one of them all. Maybe "WICKED" was right: it's all about pop-u-lar. (Come to think of it, maybe this movie has no plae being on my list at all. But I guess if I had to include a stupid summer movie you thought would be god-awful but wasn't, this would be the one) It's a far far cry from MEAN GIRLS though. Let's be clear on that for sure.

Am I missing some here? Is that all? :/

Chinese Stars

I love the night skies in America. Or at least, in Richland, Michigan that is.

I love the way the stars drop down to the dark horizons and then explode the more and more you tilt your head up towards the twinling. I love the way the misty clouds sift their way through the blackness that is night, sometimes almost unrecognizable to the unobserving eye. And I admire the stars---just as they are---and nothing more. They don't pretend to be anything else. They simply, shine and shine.

And they embody beauty---pure beauty from a human perspective---even though we learn from science class what these tiny fire nightlights are really made up of. And whenever I find myself running beneath them, whenever I find myself looking up longer than I've been looking straight ahead, I can't help but feel at peace. I can't help but think of peace. Why do stars do this to me? Why do I always remember my Taylor years and the Upland night skies the moment I catch a glimpse of the heavens at night?

One night a few months ago while in a tiny village deep in the farming fields of Shandong, China, I experienced an eyefull one night when the sky was bombarded with stars, nearly bursting at the seams of the heavens. It was a cosmological miracle, and my eye heart could not believe my eyes. And then, my heart gave away one breath. I stumbled to try and take it all in, wanting to not leave anything out of my own mind and memory. I didn't want to forget by morning what a night this had been because I now realize and am learning day-by-day that every morning, every new day is simply another chance to get it right. To---before you lay your head down on the pillow that night---see beauty, and meditate on it and admire it and totally be filled in awe of it. And this type of admiration is connected to love, which is connected to God, which is connected to every one of us whether we believe it or not. And on that night in this tiny, tiny Chinese village, my friend looked over at me and wondered what I was looking at. And for once in my life, I didn't feel the need to answer.

I simply stared up and off into the distance, my eyes glowing reflections of millions of rays of beaming light. And on that night, I felt happy. The kind of happiness that touches on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, humility and self-control. And this, I've come to realize, is one of the millions of ways we feeble humans worship the Trinity (the Sun, the Moon, the Stars). The three total, perfect, whole lights that run through every fiber humanity comes to experience. The lights that no person, in their entire life, can possibly do (or live) without. They are three, but they are one.

The Spirit Within

"We all go a little mad sometimes," says Norman Bates in the film PSYCHO. The same could be said for us Christians.

For one, I'll never understand how simply being with other Christians can somehow internally irritate me. I mean, I guess I understand how "theologically" this happens but I still find it hard to swallow practically. It just doesn't make sense.

Why am I irritated by those I love the most so easily? On this note, I can empathetic with Oscar Wilde when he wrote, "I always want to know everything about my new friends and nothing about my old ones." But then, on the other hand, there are those few friends in which I still (day by day) deeply desire to know more. They are the ones (of course) that are far away and so perhaps if they all lived next door to me they would cease to be interesting anymore.

I don't know about that, but maybe.

Anyway you look at it, it's almost impossible to always figure out the spirit within. The one you always seem to question. The spirit that tells you to love yourself and be unhappy with yourself all before you go to bed at night. How can you discern which is right? Of course unhappiness with yourself in a "good guilt" kind of way is essential for the maturing Christian. But then again, I think of Brennan Manning and how he goes around preaching and preaching and preaching about how "self-hatred" is the biggest hurdle for the gospel to overcome. Not wars. Not genocide. Not gay marriage. Not abortion clinics being erected on every corner. No, the scariest moment for him is when he meets a Christian who doesn't really believe God loves him/her. And every day I keep living and living, I am constantly forgetting the idea that "God loves me" or rather, "God likes me." Part of this is because the enemy is trying to tell me I am unloveable and part of the reason is because I really am, in pure human terms, unloveable (by worldly standards at least). I will never measure up, so why do I try?

I try because I believe in love I guess. Because I believe that grace and mercy is better than judgment and criticism. I try because I want to believe that at the end of the day, the person that has loved the most has won rather than believing its the person with the most money in his/her pockets. I try because it hurts more to try to love than it does to not love at all, and in some sick way, I find that to be more fulfilling, more important, more eternal. Loving people is hard. Yes. And most of the time if I have the choice to talk to an old friend of my parents' or try and make new ones in a very short amount of time, I simply want to throw in the towel and say, "the hell with it." But one day out of the month, a light comes on. A click finally clicks. And the spirit within is finally awakened from its dead, cold, unlove-filled sleep.

And then my eyes are open.