I don’t generally talk about religion or my personal life here on the blog. In fact, I work pretty hard to keep it light and fluffy. This post will be a break in that policy. If you’re looking for humor or a (hopefully) good film review, I recommend you come back tomorrow. I break this policy because I must speak out about the travesty of justice that was perpetrated yesterday in Fort Worth, Texas at the United Methodist Church (UMC) General Conference (GC).

On April 30, 2008, the UMC voted again to exclude gay people from full inclusion in the church. We are not permitted to serve in positions of ordained leadership. We are told that we are “incompatible with Christian teaching”. We are told that people should refrain from discriminating against us, but in the next breath we are told that a pastor may discriminate against us. In short, our ’sin’ is too great for the UMC to handle.

There had been hope that we could at least get the UMC to recognize that there is disagreement in the church on these issues, but thanks to some deft maneuvering by Rev. Eddie Fox and Bishop Timothy Whittaker, the proposal that would have allowed for that never even saw open debate, let alone a full vote. Good work, gentlemen!

I’ve been trying to figure out what else to say, but Sue Laurie has posted a marvelous letter that says what I wanted to and more. I’m only excerpting it here, so please click through to read the full text.

We witness in good faith. We are confident in our place, but it is confusing to learn and re-learn that the voters do not care about us as people or as Christians and they do not care that they wound the Church.

They do not care. It is beyond our comprehension. As we hear eloquent speeches based in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we cannot stop ourselves from feeling hope. As we hear gay-bashing speeches or “kinder, gentler” bigotry in coded language, we cannot believe that those weak, hateful positions will prevail.

Then, we lose. We lose the vote. We lose our place as clergy and now as lay people. We lose confidence in our leaders. We are instantly invisible as delegates are invited by the leaders to do some stretching exercises.

When I was in seminary, “friends” advised that things weren’t so bad for gay folks. “Just don’t tell them you are gay.” “You cannot expect change in our lifetime.” I was advised not to push for equality. Find a way to survive without opening yourself for mistreatment.

Then to wash their hands of the mess, they would say, “don’t martyr yourself”.

What is that? All I can do is try to be a faithful disciple. I have benefited from so many who have gone before me. If other people beat me up, that is their sin, not mine.

As I struggle to make sense of the situation, I rest on the little encouraging news that has come out of the GC. The Judicial Council (think Supreme Court) is going from a 6-3 conservative majority to a 2-7 conservative minority. Hopefully that means that the next time a Joey Heath is shown the door, the Judicial Council won’t high-five the pastor who held it open.

Secondly, the vote on several of the measures at this GC was close. Gay marriage went down (surprising no one) with a 66% majority, and a whopping 40% of the delegates apparently think that homophobia is A-OK, but language declaring that pastors “. . . are to faithfully receive all persons who are willing to affirm our vows of membership” was defeated by only 1% and the addition of gays to current equal rights language in the Book of Discipline was defeated by less than 5%. This is encouraging news indeed. Maybe at the next GC in 2012 we’ll be able to make more headway.

But the greatest piece of encouraging news is that this General Conference doesn’t speak for everybody in the United Methodist Church. When I came out in 2007, I was moved beyond measure by the kindness, understanding, and grace shown to me by my friends within my church and, more importantly, my pastor. He was and continues to be a source of support and inspiration.

A final note in a far-too-long post: When this news hit the wire last night, I was busy at my church helping prepare a kids drama program for this Sunday. I missed the news I’d been losing sleep over because I was busy doing the work of the church. There just has to be a sermon in there somewhere.

A note before we start: More than with recently reviewed films, I feel I must point out that all of the pictures within this and most posts since mid-March link to larger images showing the entire screenshot. Usually (but not always) I just shrink the 1.85:1 image to a smaller version, but a different aspect ratio was used in older films. I’ve kept the correct 4:3 ratio for the larger images, but for design reasons have trimmed the smaller images to my standard 1.85:1 ratio. (Actually, a 1.37:1 ratio would have been more correct for the larger images, but I’m lazy and 4:3 is close and easier to figure. Seriously, click the pictures. The zoom effect is wicked awesome.)

I’ve been reviewing fairly recent movies lately, so I decided last week that it was time to finally watch the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane. That this directly follows The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is a bit jarring, but what the heck. Let’s give it a whirl.

Citizen Kane is often referenced as indisputably the best film ever made. While I think that may be a bit of an overstatement, it’s damn good. Technically speaking, it’s a marvel. There’s an air of daring innovation and creativity that we don’t see nearly enough today. I’m not going to be able to touch on all of the greatness in this space, nor am I able. Instead, I’ll look at the bits that interested me and leave the rest for the experts.

The circular structure of the story is captivating to me. Within the first five minutes of the film, we know who Charles Foster Kane is, how he came into money, how he lived, who he married, why he divorced, and how he died. It gets the bare facts out of the way so we can focus the next couple of hours on finding out the sordid details of Kane’s life and what made him tick.

Held together ostensibly by the mystery of Kane’s last word, the story follows a generic reporter, often obscured by shadow, as he visits the important people from Kane’s life and learns of their time with Kane through a series of non-sequential flashbacks. Kane’s dirt-poor mother (above, Agnes Moorehead in her first film role) came suddenly into money and signed her son away to be cared for by the bank. This seems harsh and unthinkable, but Welles uses a simple closeup and, later, one line inform us that Mrs. Kane’s reasons were pure.

Much of the mood of Citizen Kane is built with light and shadow. Above, the reporter gains rare access to Kane’s deceased guardian’s memoirs. Kept under close guard, he is escorted into a darkened room with a shaft of light filtering in through a high window. There are many other examples of mood setting like this, but here it gives a feeling of cold, almost frightening authority as we learn of Kane’s earliest days.

Welles also used some optical illusion to subtly augment the message that audience was being told. For example, right after we watch Mrs. Kane sign papers giving him away, we flash to a parallel scene. Very late in life Kane is forced to give up control of his business. In the middle of that scene Kane walks slowly into the back of what appears to be a room with average height features.

(Click here for Kane in the front of the room. Click here for Kane in the back of the room.)

As his advisors talk about his failure at what had been his focus in life, Kane becomes more and more diminished until he appears to be two feet high. No attention is drawn to the effect. Instead, Welles left it for the viewer to find, either consciously or not. Especially in those days before CGI and extreme visual effects, this illusion is pulled off remarkably.

But that isn’t the only visual effect that Welles used to tell the story of Citizen Kane. One of the more amazing effects cinematographer Gregg Toland’s use of what later became known as Deep Focus. Several times throughout the film, everything on the screen is in focus, from the actor in the very front to the one way in the back. The above picture of Kane in his newsroom is one example of this, but even better is the first picture in this post. The focus is crystal clear on young Mr. Kane in the front, and just as clear on the lettering on the sign in the back (you’ll have to click the picture for that).

It’s an amazing technique, one that forces the audience to decide what to look at in the shot. Welles plays to this requirement of a more involved audience by staging shots so that little cutting is needed. Several scenes are done with remarkable camera work and minimal cutting between shots. Robert Wise, who of course went on to direct many films including The Sound of Music, did a superb job of extending the creativity to the editing of the film.

I’ve gotten to nearly the end of the post and I’ve barely mentioned the story. As I said at the top, the film is really a character study. Kane’s last word is the device used to pull the audience through the film, but by the time we learn Rosebud’s identity, it’s almost irrelevant. The real story has been in beginning to understand the rise and downfall of a complex character.

The wonderful acting in Citizen Kane is surprisingly done by a cast of mostly unknowns. Other than Orson Welles and Agnes Moorehead, none of the principal cast went on to do much else of note. Dorothy Comingore, who played Kane’s second wife, was wonderful in the film (Her performance in the scene pictured above brought to mind Jean Hagan’s Lina Lamont in Singin’ in the Rain.) but apparently was blacklisted in the 1950s and never recovered.

While it’s not my favorite film, Citizen Kane has pushed its way near the top of my list of impeccable films.

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I love SpongeBob. I really, really do. Like, a lot. So much so that I’ve added his name to my spell check dictionary. So much so that I have a Patrick coffee mug that I bought for double retail at King’s Island last year, and I don’t even drink coffee.

So it was with great hesitation that I put The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in my DVD player. The transition from 15-minute TV cartoon to 90-minute cartoon movie with multiple story arcs and everything seemed insurmountable. Ninety minutes later, I was so glad that Stephen Hillenburg and the Nickelodeon people pulled it off.

The first thing they did right was give us situations that were somewhat familiar but expanded enough as to be new. For example, Mr Krabs’s rejection of SpongeBob led not just to the standard mopeyness, but to a big drinking bin– I mean ice cream eating binge with Patrick, complete with a drunken confrontation (above, and by far my favorite scene in the film) the next morning.

At the same time, Plankton (below), along with his computer wife (Karen), begins Plan Z to get the secret Krabby Patty formula and take over the world. It’s a diabolical and complicated scheme that is mind-boggling in its fiendishness, beginning with framing Mr. Krabs for the theft of King Neptune’s crown. SpongeBob’s previously mentioned confrontation with Mr. Krabs leads to a quest for King Neptune’s crown, and he and Patrick hit the road to Shell City.

All the citizens from Bikini Bottom are here, some with teeny tiny roles. I wish Sandy Cheeks and Mrs. Puff had had more than the one line, but it was smart to trim the cast a bit to keep the story focused. (Gary is my favorite, so I was glad he was there even a little bit.) There were several nice guest voices and cameos in the film. Jeffrey Tambor and Scarlett Johansson guest as King Neptune and his daughter Mindy, plus Alec Baldwin as Dennis, Plankton’s hitman.

Somehow I hadn’t heard that David Hasselhoff was in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, so it was a total surprise when he came running down the beach. It’s a great self-effacing performance, though I will say that we got a bit closer to his hairy legs than I ever intended to get. Kudos to Hasselhoff for being willing to poke fun at his image.

I was struck by how well put together The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is, with the storylines crossing over each other several times. Each part addresses SpongeBob’s struggle to be recognized as a man and not a kid, and if you know anything about SpongeBob, you know that that’s an uphill battle.

As I said at the top of the page, it would have been easy to get this wrong. How wonderful that they put some thought into it and turned out a good buddy/road trip movie that actually moves the characters along a little and doesn’t return everybody to square one at the end. It’s true to the source material but breaks them out of their molds a little. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is a great flick, one that I’ll be watching again and again.

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