So you are doing a book of your pieces? You talked about doing a book ages ago. What's it going to be called?

When you say self-published, do you mean we won't be able to buy it on amazon? Or are you publishing it as an ebook that one can buy for a kindle?

Part of the impetus behind my comment about great movies being on the border between art and popular was this. I have taught some courses with titles like 'theology and film.' And I've done a lot more courses in which I used movies. I have made enormous efforts to get the students to look at the movie as a *film* that is for instance to notice how its shot, the pace, the background music and so on. I thought it could not be a serious course unless I got the students to observe the cinematography of the movies. I never succeeded at all. I talked to someeone else, who did a jointly course on 'Theology and Film' at Aberdeen after I left. He said it drove his co-teachers crazy that the students would not go beyond seeing the movie as a story that happened to be filmed.

The other day, I decided that when I teach 'theology and film' again, I'm going to chillax on the seeing movies as movies concern. Because how often do you hear someone come out of a cinema and say, 'that movie had great wide shots'? From my experience with students, people instinctively view movies as stories which happen to be filmed. So maybe they are right.

It seems to be that the heart of the difference between art movies and popular movies is that the art movies are more interested in cinematography than in story. And I don't think one can make a *great* movie with no concern for narrative dynamism.

So that's why I say a great movie should be on the borderline, usually.

I still say usually. It;s not an invariable law. There may be exceptions.

More later, but quickly: by "self-published" I just mean there's no publishing house involved. It's just me, publishing it at my own expense. Vanity publishing, as it used to be called, though electronic and print-on-demand publishing have made it somewhat more respectable. It will be available in both electronic and paper form. If I can ever get it done...

I think it's ok that people in general are not conscious of the cinematic art in a movie, and just respond to it as a story, without thinking about how much the cinematography etc. have to do with their reactions. Maybe not so ok for your students, who ought to be interested in looking a little more closely. But basically not a bad thing.

I think one either has to give up on it or not teach theology and cinema. So far, I've abandoned the course on theology and cinema, but I still use a lot of movies in courses that are about other things. Because the use of the movies in the other courses is so successful I began to wonder the other day if I was right to make visual response an absolute sticking point.

I'm talking about, I can't get them to think at all about shots or frames or colour vs. black and white, or sound tracks. It's not that they are stupid. At Aberdeen, yes, they were stupid. But these students here are very bright.

Oddly, in What is a Person, I got more papers noticing that the film is a film than in any 'film and theology' class.

Having taught high school English lit for a number of years, I think you can say the same thing of readers that you can say of moviegoers. There are loads of readers who read exclusively for plot: these are the folks who gobble up mysteries or thrillers or romances at rate of two or three a week. Not much attention is paid to character dev., descriptive prose, etc. I think that this sort of reader translates to the type of moviegoer that Grumpy describes.

On the other hand, there is the minority that pays attention to language, character, etc., and will read more "literary" fiction, as opposed to mere page-turners with lower quality writing. These readers are probably more likely to enjoy artsy films.

This of course does not mean that there are no literary novels that are page-turners, or that there are no artistic films that are also exciting and dramatic.

I'm wondering now whether colour, shadow, framing, panning, angle, etc. can be related to theology very usefully.

Would it have any *theological* relevance that there was "realistic" background noise, or a close-up, at a given point?

But it mostly reminds me of trying to get students to notice things like format, paper (or parchment), watermarks, type, bookbinders' signatures, chain-links, etc. (let alone things like narrative perspective, or pacing, or any of the techniques of content).

Could you give an example?

Fair enough. But how does lighting or montage impact on theology?

So I've often heard. But let's say I have translations of Nathan's exchange with David read to me aloud, viva voce; recorded on to vinyl by a famous actor; recorded on to magnetic tape by a pair of unknown actors; handwritten in a school notebook; handwritten on parchment; printed on parchment in blackletter; printed on paper in blackletter; printed on rag paper in roman type; printed on wood-pulp paper in roman type; printed from a dot-matrix printer in a Geneva font; scrolling across my computer screen in Times New Roman; or read to me by Siri. I'm struggling to see how the different media actually do make it a different message.

Add in all the variations of film-making (light, camera-angle, focus, sets, costumes, make-up, etc.) and I can see how the artistic achievement would change, but not the theological import.

I can't say I really do either Maclin, but there was a scene in The Passion of the Christ, where Jesus is being accused of blasphemy by the High priest. Until I saw it on film and particularly the expression on the face of Cavaziel (sp?) I really hadn't realised the extraordinary irony of a man calling God blasphemous and just how that must have ripped God's heart apart.

Sorry guys I'm not on it. Today I took my cat to the vet, possibly for the penultimate time, coaxed the last of 17 chapters of a Festschrift out of an overworked priest, sent the Festschrift to the publisher, and tried to pack to go to NYC then Hungary, whilst said cat lay on the pile of clothes I just recovered from the dry cleaner.

Hungary's always nice.

Some people I know here are in the same situation with their much-loved cat. My sympathy.

"worst floods of all time". That is severe.

Had a similar thing with one of our cats several years ago. It was sad to see, though I was not nearly as attached to her as you are to yours, and anyway she was something like 22 years old.

Oh, I thought maybe Amsterdam was a stop on your way to Budapest. Which probably doesn't make sense, but that's what I assumed. It did cross my mind that your stay in NYC was awfully brief.

How old is he?

The cat feeder is feeding him rotisserie chicken and he's nibbling.

I wouldn't have left, even if I lost several thousand dollars in airfares and pissed a lot of people off, if I didn't trust the cat carer. She is going in twice a day and trying to make sure he eats something. We are waiting to see what the vet says to do next. He seems to want to eat but to struggle to chew. Both of us have seen this and can't reconcile it with the vet finding no problem in his teeth. The American vets seem to love doing 'blood work' which = taking a blood test. But none of his blood tests including the one they did this week end, have shown anything.

Until about November I was using a vet who was very expensive and very into 'preemptive' medicine. It seemed to mean that whenever I went in for one thing they found something else, and I ended up paying 700 dollars when I thought it was going to 200 dollars. I finally lost trust in them and moved to a cheaper less preemptive vet after Christmas. But the first, extortionistic, vet *does* know more about his health over the past two years. So I am tempted to go to them for a second opinion. I am waiting to see what the x rays from the second vet, due today, have to tell us. If they say he has cancer, then the problem is 'solved'. But if they say nothing we still have a problem about why he is not eating and losing weight, and in that case I may go for a second opinion to the first vet.

We walked along the Danube today and the flooding was not too untoward.

The clinic that the vet that found our dog's problem was part of tends toward that extortionist/preemptive direction, too. They keep wanting us to pay $200 to have our dogs' teeth cleaned, and making us feel guilty when we don't. Hmm, could plain old teeth problems be Pius's trouble? I suppose not. It would have to be awfully bad to prevent him from eating.

They say they can see 'something' from the x ray but don't know what it is and they need an ultrascan.

I meant that you should use this one. Sorry it should have been "with" instead of "and."

Anyway, it's one of my favorites. I printed it out and gave it to my son and his wife before their wedding.

AMDG

Gee Grumpy, you've had your cat a long time. You have my sympathy. I was bereft when my 14yo dog died. I hope Pius hangs in there for a while yet. Great name he has too!