The Bride!

Last night I traveled an hour in each direction to see either this movie or EPiC (Baz Luhrman's documentary/concert film about Elvis) and at the moment of stepping up to the cashier, I plumped for this movie, primarily because it had an earlier showtime. Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed this loose adaptation of Bride of Frankenstein, featuring presumptive soon-to-be Oscar winner for best actress Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) in the title role and Christian Bale as a Frankenstein's Monster who comes to Chicago sometime in the 1930s to ask a reanimator, played by Annette Bening, to jump-start a dead woman for him because he is perishing of loneliness. The corpse they happen to dig up is that of Ida, a mobster's moll who was possessed by the ghost of Mary Shelley when she took a fatal tumble down a flight of stairs, but the Bride doesn't remember any of that. She comes to vivid, shocking life, engaging in scandalous behavior, leading "Frank" on an interstate crime spree, and you know, trying to live out Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's dictum that "well-behaved women seldom make history."

It's a take on Bride of Frankenstein that takes its departure from the idea of Shelley as a woman of revolutionary talent who was robbed of her opportunity to push her mother's feminist ideology by her own early death from brain cancer. The ghost, manifesting through Ida/the Bride (sometimes going as Penny) in fits of British-accented literary wordplay, wants to get the story out so badly that it costs the girl her life. Kind of. She was also, kind of, rubbed out by the gangsters she ran with, including a revolting fellow named Lupino who collects the tongues of people he had silenced and who, in one scene, blithely shoots one of his stooges between the eyes, wipes a splash of blood off his cheek, and carries on eating lunch entirely undisturbed. But now, as the Bride, she has become the more flamboyant half of a cross-country murder spree duo, trailed by a none-too-diligent detective (Peter Sarsgaard) and his sharp-as-a-tack secretary (Penélope Cruz), who have spotted a pattern: The killings go wherever movies starring a certain smiling crooner and dancer (played in a bunch of movies-within-the-movie by Jake Gyllenhaal) are playing. Because, as you know, Frankenstein's monster is a big fan of musical comedy. Joking aside, there's a tender spot here that furnishes one of the film's tragic themes.

So, enough synopsis. Trust me, the paragraphs above don't come close to doing justice to this movie's storyline. It's just a taster of an astoundingly weird movie. It's definitely an original, if you'll pardon the contradiction with the plain fact that it's adapted from previous work. It's so unlike what I am accustomed to seeing at the movies that I frankly couldn't tell while I was seeing it, and still don't know, whether I liked it or not. It's either a brilliant movie despite significant flaws or a disaster with flashes of brilliance in it. Frank and the Bride each reveal facets of themesleves that touch me deeply, striking right to the heart. They also do some awful things and get involved in some icky scenes, at both ends of the high-low class spectrum. They can't seem to stop making horrific mistakes, bringing to mind the proverb, "No matter where you go, there you are." But they keep doing surprising things, too, like ... well, let's get to that in ...

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The monster couple crashes a tuxedos-and-champagne affair while dodging cops in New York City. Frank finds himself standing before Ronnie Reed, the movie star he is not very ambiguously in love with, declaring his feelings and experiencing soul-crushing rejection. In one scene, the movie shows its full range of tone, from the monster's heartbreaking vulnerability to an outrageous "brain attack" dance in which the reanimated couple leads a ballroom full of unwilling participants before concluding in a tense, armed standoff with police and a violent escape. (2) Frank tells the Bride the story of how he proposed to her. He's lying, of course. But it's the lie she desperately wants to hear because she has no memory of her life before "the accident." Her need is so touching, and his lies are so clever and entertaining, that you can almost but not quite dismiss the niggling note of doom that buzzes through the scene. (3) In a later scene that forms a matching pair with No. 2, Frank admits the truth to the Bride and actually proposes marriage to her in a moment that brings the tragedy of their romance to a shattering height.

It's a strange, strange movie. A lot of it is improbable to the point of absurdity. Some of it comes close to feeling like a hallucination. It has a fat streak of revolutionary feminist wish-fulfillment running through it (the "brain attack" spreads, you know), turning the corner into an alternate history where anything can happen and you just have to live with it. The monsters become the latest rage. The movies become a lifeline for a creature who, on one hand, has apparently lived for over a century and, on the other hand, really seems capable of dying of loneliness. It has Annette Bening playing a genius who can only be talked into violating every covenant of scientific ethics by the appeal, "I thought you were a mad scientist." It has Jake G. as an actor who, upon hearing that his cheerful screen persona saved a man from oblivion, laughs it off with a cruel put-down. It has a heavily accented Penélope Cruz as a character whose name, Myrna Malloy, is perhaps the most preposterous thing said aloud during the entire film. And all kinds of other stuff the surprise of which I wouldn't spoil for all the world. Still not sure whether I think it's a good movie or a bad movie, it's definitely a movie I'll be thinking about for some time to come.

Hoppers

Last night I broke a three-week streak of not seeing any movies because nothing was playing that interested me. I went to see this new Disney-Pixar animated feature, and despite coming away feeling as if clubbed over the head by environmentalist propaganda, I really enjoyed the movie. Everyone I've mentioned it to assumes, from the title, that it's about bunnies. Actually, it's called "Hoppers" because of a hand-wavy gadget that allows a group of scientists to "hop" their minds into a robot designed to fool wildlife into carrying on with their business, the better to study said business. They've got one that looks like a bird, a bunny one to be sure, but the one that main character Mabel hijacks resembles a beaver.

Mabel, an undergrad at Beaverton University, has grown up taking solace from the diverse wildlife that inhabits the glade near her late grandma's house. Now the town's greedy Mayor Jerry wants to route a ring road right through the glade, and nobody seems to care enough to help Mabel stop him. Apparently the only option left is to get the animals, that have mysteriously moved away from the glade, to move back before the bulldozers arrive. So, Mabel takes drastic measures, running off in robot beaver form to infiltrate the animal community and try to sway the mammal king, also a beaver, to help her save the glade. Her meddling in animal politics leads to one disaster after another, and despite her lofty ends, her means are pretty questionable. Pretty soon, Mabel, King George and a handful of his most faithful followers are on the run, with other classes of animals out to get them and, particularly, to "squish" Jerry in order to stop the bypass being built. Ironically, Mabel finds herself having to protect humans from rampaging wildlife, all to restore the balance that she (and Jerry, don't forget) have knocked akilter.

It's a fun thrill ride, with lots of laughs, some emotional beats that hit hard, and flawed characters who make mistakes and grow from them, get knocked down and pick themselves up again, lose battles and keep fighting, hurt each other and forgive each other, and engage in meaningful discussion about such beliefs as whether or not everyone is basically good. It's got lots of action and outrageous imagery, including a gigantic shark that goes aerial – if you have to ask, just see the movie – as well as an evil insect that "hops" its mind into a robotic human body as part of a dastardly plan to turn the tables on mankind. There are triumphs and defeats and an ascending sequence of gosh-wow spectacle. Friendships overcoming communication barriers and differences of worldview. Chases. Rescues. And never a dull moment.

The voice cast includes Saturday Night Live alums Bobby Moynihan as George the beaver, Melissa Villaseñor as Ellen the bear, Vanessa Bayer as Diane the shark and Ego Nwodim as the fish queen, Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as Mayor Jerry, Kathy Najimy (Sister Act) as Professor "Sam," the brains behind hopping; Dave Franco (Now You See Me) as Titus the insect king, the unrelated Eduardo Franco (Stranger Things) as a stoner beaver named Loaf, Meryl Streep as the insect queen (Titus's mother), and Joe Spano (Hill Street Blues) as the old man Mabel spends a day with while trying to get signatures on a petition.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Mabel (in beaver form) and friends ride along with a terrified Mayor Jerry during a car chase with Dr. Sam and her grad students, who are trying to get their robot back, while Diane the shark attacks from overhead. "You will feel a biting sensation, followed by death..." (2) The council of the animal monarchs meets, and Mabel does not do as George instructs and let him do the talking. The disaster is terrifying and hilarious! (3) Mabel befriends Ellen and Loaf – actually by offending them when she prevents the bear from eating the beaver. Naturally, this violates the pond rules, particularly "If you have to eat, eat." Mabel: "Sorry. Go ahead and eat him, then." Ellen: "I can't now. You've made it weird."

Revelations

Love, Lies & Hocus Pocus: Revelations
by Lydia Sherrer
Recommended Ages: 12+

In this second book of "The Lily Singer Adventures," Atlanta, Georgia-based wizard Lily performs the ultimate act of rebellion against her mother and her mentor, who have both withheld knowledge from her – knowledge about her magical heritage. How? By going and finding out for herself, to her great cost. Were it not for a cat familiar who has suddenly picked up the ability to speak (or rather, Lily has learned to understand his meows), and a certain ne'er-do-well male witch (not that witches e'er do well, generally speaking), Lily might lose her very self.

So, once again, wizards in Lily's world have an inherited connection to a Source of power, manipulated with runes, charms and incantations in an ancient tongue, while witches like her friend Sebastian have no such ability. Instead, they achieve magical power by making deals with powerful beings like the fae (Sebastian's specialty) or, gulp, demons. One of the demon-summoning kind goes up against the duo in the first part of this novel, which is (once again) structured as two novellas connected by an "interlude." Lily and her wizard mentor have been tasked with protecting an ancient clay tablet on display at a local museum when it's rumored that someone plans to steal it. The rumor comes true when a hired witch summons a greater demon to break through the wizards' protective wards. Luckily, a mysterious Someone has forged a link between Lily and her protective cat, Sir Kipling, and plugged both of them into a supply of power beyond anything she's been prepared to understand.

The interlude finds Sebastian doing some witchy detective work to find out who hired the witch who attempted the museum heist. Unfortunately, Lily isn't ready to hear him when he tells her that he thinks it's the wizard they encountered back in Book 1, who has extended an invitation to learn more about where she (and they) come from. She's so tempted by the possibilities of what she may learn that she won't even listen to her cat's advice, and hares off to the stately home of John Faust LeFay – a name that ought to set off alarm bells in any scholarly mind. Of course he turns out to be the father she hardly remembers, whose very name her mother always refused to speak. Of course he and his social-climbing mother, Ursula, have plans for Lily's future representing a level of control she isn't keen on submitting to. Of course John turns out to be a monster, and falling into his clutches may be a mistake Lily won't be able to unmake. Not without help, at least.

Once again, this adventure points up the dangers of power and the desire for it, of meddling in little-understood forces, of opening pathways to evil and of withholding information that may do good. Lily and Sebastian face some chilling adversaries in this book, and their odds of survival are never lower than when there are misunderstandings between them. Petty jealousies – her over a cute witch he dallies with, him over a handsome FBI agent who takes her on a date. The secrets and silences of Lily's mother and her mentor, who happens to be Sebastian's highly disapproving aunt, don't help. And of course, her hard-headedness becomes a danger of its own, when even her cat is talking sense at her and she won't listen. What it leads to is a threat that isn't resolved at the end of this book, but only postponed – a threat that hangs over not only Lily but the entire world of "mundanes," or unmagical muggles like you and me. It's a thought to make one shiver, and perhaps hasten to curl up with a cozy cup of tea and the third book in this series, Allies.

Besides about eight books in this series (plus novellas, short stories and whatnot), Lydia Sherrer is the Kentucky-based, cat-loving author of the novel Accidental Witch and the short story Ashes of Hope and co-author with John Ringo of the "TransDimensional Hunter" quartet.

554. Exhortation to Parents of the Baptized

Bring your babes to Christ, believers,
Nor withhold them from His face:
For they are the prime receivers
Of His sorely needed grace.

To be saved, dear sisters, brothers,
We must be just such as they:
Helpless, needy, nursed on others
Hour by hour and day by day.

See! Our sin, a death-shroud weaving,
Threads its way back to the womb;
While baptism, to Jesus cleaving,
Plaits new life upon our loom.

In Christ's death your child is resting;
Death becomes a holy sleep,
And Christ's Easter life comes, wresting
Them from hell and Satan's keep.

Now you have your dear child given
Unto God, His own to be,
Heir with Christ of earth and heaven,
From sin's sovereignty set free.

You receive them back as stewards,
Henceforth only yours in trust.
Nurse them therefore on His true words
And return a yield robust.

Oh, take care! Be wise and humble,
Guiding them upon their way.
Woe if any make them stumble,
Leading Jesus' lambs astray!

Oh, take care! The way is narrow
Where their steps the Lord would train;
Satan meanwhile nocks his arrow,
Menacing with might and main.

Watch and pray with love unsparing,
Parents of the Lord's baptized,
Every hour and day preparing
To commend them back to Christ:

Arming them from love of sinning,
Nurturing them on His word,
Their baptism but beginning
Life eternal with the Lord.

Tune: FREUEN WIR UNS ALL IN EIN, Michael Weisse, †1534. It was a tune for "Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding" in Lutheran Book of Worship and Lutheran Worship. Art: Baptismal font in the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, Texas, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

553. Hymn for Help in Spiritual Battle

The tune I have in mind for this hymn is OLD 124TH – not the "abbr." version that we Lutherans often pair with the hymn "Draw near and take the body of the Lord," but the original, unexpurgated version with five melodic phrases; see Service Book & Hymnal 348 ("Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways") and 601 ("Praise ye the Lord, ye servants of the Lord") and Lutheran Book of Worship 376 ("Your kingdom come! O Father, hear our prayer").

Send help, O Lord! Lend me Your angel guard!
Dark are the days; the battle presses hard.
See what weak knees, what furrowed brow and pale
I bring to bear; what lies in me must fail,
My camp encircled and my forces frail.

Guard, Lord, my mind, so often led astray
With thoughts that reason's harlotry betray!
For what seems right unto my mortal eye
So often Your clear precept would deny—
Yet Your word lives, gives life, and cannot lie.

Guard, Lord, my heart, that with the world conspires
To see me seared by vain and rash desires!
Lest in this life and after I should burn,
Take out this cold, dead stone, that in return,
For that which pleases You I warmly yearn.

Guard, Lord, my feet that feel Your way's sharp stones;
My hands, against which earth its thistle hones;
My eyes, grown weak from watching in this night;
My ears from voices rather loud than right;
My tongue from telling tales against Your light.

Send holy angels, Lord, to guard with speed
From unseen foes more numerous indeed,
More deadly than my mind and sense perceive!
Oh, help my unbelief! Let me believe
That of Your strength, O Christ, I may receive!

552. SS. Simon & Jude

The feast of Saints Simon and Jude is Oct. 28, with readings from Jeremiah 26:1-16, 1 Peter 1:3-9 and John 15:12-21 (verses 12-16 optional). As characters in the Bible, they're good candidates for being relegated to half a saint's day each. Scipture doesn't say much about them.

Luke twice calls Simon Zēlōtēs or "the zealot" (Luke 6 and Acts 1). Matthew 10 and Mark 3 instead use the term Kananitēs, which the King James Bible mistranslates as "Canaanite" (which is a completely unrelated word, Hananaios, in Greek). The New King James Version corrects this to Cananite (with one less a), meaning he's from the town of Cana in Galilee. Other translations vary betwee Canaanite, Canaanean and "the zealot." However, Liddell & Scott say Kananitēs is the Syriac equivalent of the Greek Zēlōtēs (there's a related Hebrew word), so apparently "zealot" is correct. As for Zēlōtēs, they give "a rival, zealous imitator" as the first definition, and "a zealot" as the second. So either he's a famously zealous disciple of Christ, or a member of a certain political party known as the Zealots (possibly an anachronism), or just a local guy and that's what Scripture remembers about him. Scholarly opinions vary. Also, some say he may have been Simon the brother of Jesus (it would be odd if the gospels never mentioned this), or perhaps Simon of Jerusalem, the bishop who succeeded James. The only Simons he obviously isn't are Simon Peter, Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7) and Simon the sorcerer (Acts 9).

Then there's the matter of Jude, which is even more confusing. The apostle celebrated here is clearly not Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus and suicided. He is probably the "Judas, not Iscariot," mentioned as one of the 12 during Jesus' valedictory sermon in John 14, who actually gets a line: "Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?" (Jesus' answer: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.") Also, Luke (in Luke 6 and Acts 1) enumerates a "Judas the son of James," in addition to Judas Iscariot (the son of Simon), in his lists of the apostles. Instead of Jude or Judas, the apostolic list in Mark 3 mentions a Thaddaeus, and Matthew 10 inserts a Lebbaeus whose surname is Thaddaeus (shortened to just Thaddaeus in the Alexandrian textual tradition), so an obvious hypothesis is that the Jude celebrated in this feast is also known as (Lebbaeus) Thaddeus. Also, he could be the Judas, or Jude, listed as one of Jesus' brothers along with James, Joses and Simon in Matthew 13 and Mark 6, and the author of the epistle of Jude who styles himself the brother (not son) of James.

There are various traditions about what these apostles did after the Pentecost of Acts 2 and how, where and when they were martyred, but let's stay out of the weeds and get right to the hymn – the last in this planned series of "Heroes of the Faith" hymns. I do have a tune in mind this time: the Swedish melody GAA NU HEN OG GRAV MIN GRAV. ART: SS. Simon and Jude, detail from the 14th-century Santa Croce altarpiece by Ugolino di Nerio, public domain.

Blest are they whom men revile;
So the world despised their Master.
Lord, Your church, this little while,
Pines for a prophetic pastor
Who, in season wet or dry,
Pours Your counsel from on high.

Send, Lord, send them to reprove
When on error's road we stumble,
Rising early, lest You move
All our vanities to humble!
May we hear their voice! For why
Shall we curse Your name and die?

Having warned, let them convey
Your abundant, free forgiveness!
Bend our stiff necks to obey,
Lord, their cross-imprinted witness!
Let their zeal on us impress
Your desire to heal and bless!

Send a Simon or a Jude,
Though we might prefer a Peter
As our fleshly aims intrude
And o'er pride's abyss we teeter.
An imperishable prize
Set before our fickle eyes!

Send to us, and through us call,
Men to lead Your dearly boughten
To the joy reserved for all
Whom You have again begotten
Since You raised up Christ, our Head,
As the Firstborn from the dead.

551. St. James of Jerusalem

This is the third St. James on the Lutheran Service Book's calendar of Feasts and Festivals, scheduled for Oct. 23 with lessons from Acts 15:12-22a (just love that "a"), James 1:1-12 and Matthew 13:54-58. Yes, this is the James who wrote the Epistle of James, and while various Bible interpreters are not in full agreement on this, our saints' days calendar seems to support the notion that James the Less (a.k.a. James the son of Alphaeus) and James the Great (a.k.a. James the son of Zebedee) are distinct invidividuals from this James, whom Paul calls "the Lord's brother" in Galatians 1. A James is also listed along with Joses (or Joseph), Simon and Judas as brothers of Jesus in Matthew 13 and Mark 6. Jude, author of the epistle by that name, identifies himself as the "brother of James."

Without naming James in particular, John 2 tells us Jesus' mother and brothers traveled with Him and His disciples from Cana to Capernaum. (I've often wondered whether the wedding at Cana was a family affair.) Matthew 12, Mark 3 and Luke 8 all describe a scene in which Jesus' mother and brothers ask to see Him. Matthew 13 and Mark 6 both relate an occasion when the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus' teaching because they knew his parents, brothers and sisters. John 7 tells us that at that point, Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him. However, by Acts 1, Jesus' brothers and His mother are among the disciples united in prayer and supplication after Jesus' ascension into heaven.

I think James the Lord's brother is the James to whom the angel sent Peter after springing him from prison ("Go and tell these things to James and the brethren," Acts 12:17 – 15 verses after James the brother of John was reported as killed). This was the James who pronounced the opinion of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 in response to Peter's appeal for Gentile Christians. This James is the one named as chief among the elders, to whom Paul reported about his ministry in Acts 21. James is here shown exerting authority over Paul and being deeply engaged with the concerns of Jewish Christians.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus, after His resurrection, appeared to James, and I think that's a reference to this James. In Galatians 1, Paul also reports meeting with James shortly after his conversion; while this was still in James-the-brother-of-John's lifetime, the way he's singled out suggests to me that he's this other James. In Galatians 2, Paul describes "James, Cephas (i.e. Peter) and John" as pillars of the church in a way that suggests that James (not John's brother, who would be dead before the scene here described) had priority over the other two. Writing of himself, James only describes himself as "a bondservant of Jesus Christ."

Early Christian writers give this James the sobriquet "the Just" and claim he was the first bishop of Jerusalem. Eusebius notes that the hero trio of Peter, James and John submitted to this James rather than contend for primacy, seemingly taking to heart Jesus' admonition against jockeying for headship. Another surname for him is Adelphotheos, or "brother of God" – cf. the Byzantine Liturgy of St. James. As I've mentioned before, my speculation on this (and while I'm not alone on it, that's what it is) makes James, Jude and the others Jesus' half-siblings on Joseph's side, i.e. from a wife before Mary. Without proof either way, it's as likely as the notion that Mary had more babies after Jesus but with the advantage that it's consistent with many pious Christians' belief that Mary was "ever virgin." And also, it explains the whole "woman, behold your son" thing at the foot of Jesus' cross (John 19): since, if she had four sons of her own besides Jesus, Mary would have no need for John to provide for her.

So far, my introductory yak about the hymn below, which after all, and like most of these "Heroes of the Faith" hymns, is more textual than topical. Still, it doesn't hurt to set the atmosphere and spotlight some potential themes. And now, for the next-to-last hymn in this section. ART: A Russian icon of James the Just, public domain.

Count it as joy, dear brethren, when your faith is tried;
For we know by such testing patience is supplied,
And when its work is finished, you will be complete;
Your God will freely furnish all that you entreat.

Ask what you will, believing, and in no wise doubt,
Lest like the storm-blown breakers you be tossed about.
Exult not in your riches but in lowliness;
Endure temptation, and the crown of life possess.

Now in Christ's holy body God has made you one,
Blood kin and co-heirs with His dear, incarnate Son;
And whether Jew or Gentile, as His brother said,
You live in Him, both slain and risen from the dead.

Live, therefore, as befits the brethren of the Lord,
Though not by works or rituals are we restored:
Our only righteousness pours forth from Him who died,
The glory His whereby we shall be glorified.