On the opposite end, Steve Wiebe is almost the perfect hero. He's a family-focused everyman, a science teacher at a middle school in Redmond, Washington. He is a perfectionist also, but he's quiet and unassuming and sweet natured. Most of his life, he's fallen short.

If this was fiction, it'd be too perfect. Billy Mitchell's precise half-mullet and glinting, swarthy eyes would be cliche. Steve Wiebe's baby face and soft voice would be too obvious...he resembles a pudgy Luke Skywalker, for pete's sake. That these two remarkably cookie cutter characters would battle so passionately for a prize only one of them could hold would be an unfathomable coincidence. If this was fiction, critics would mock it mercilessly for being simple and contrived.

But it's real.

King of Kong (Fistful of Quarters) is a miraculously crafted documentary, a story of good versus evil, of the individual against the established power, of overcoming unbeatable odds. It turns and swerves with the best thrillers. And it's all about the video game "Donkey Kong".

Documentaries illuminating a bizarrely obsessive subculture have become a subgenre in and of themselves. The list is endless, and can range from fear-instilling ("Jesus Camp") to hilarious ("American Movie"). These documentaries have even spun off other subgenres: Christopher Guest figured actors could make a similar style of film in much less time, and the mockumentary was born. Instead of a documentary following the Westminster Dog Show, we've got the wildly entertaining "Best in Show".

King of Kong could've focused on the nerdiness of early video game culture...these are, after all, grown men who've spent their lives mastering Pac-Man or Asteroids. Instead of derision, director Seth Gordon goes much deeper, and the resulting tale is epic in its singular focus: Wiebe fights for "Donkey Kong"'s highest score while Mitchell connives and maneuvers to keep the glory he's held for 20 years.

In Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, Seth Gordon struck gold, the sort of tale every filmmaker wants to tell. King of Kong's most frequent criticism has been that the story must've been manipulated by the directors. It's possible some tension was built in the editing room but it's apparent (especially from Mitchell's interview with The Onion's AV Club) Gordon didn't need to twist the facts much.

King of Kong is a textbook example of great storytelling, evidence violence and sex aren't necessary to keep a viewer glued to the seat. If real life was more like this, we wouldn't need fiction.

That's not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about how we view a masterpiece like this. I won't give away specific storylines, but I suggest you see the film before reading further.

Many critics claim Daniel Plainview (played with blistering ferocity by Daniel Day-Lewis) is an allegory for the Bush administration, or Big Oil. This is because they want Daniel Plainview to represent these things.

The showing I saw, the audience seemed to want the film to be a diatribe against the Church, viewing Eli Sunday's charismatic preacher as all the crazy Christians they've heard about, the sort of Christians you and I might stammer out apologies for. This bothered me, because they seemed to think Eli Sunday was a more evil character than Daniel Plainview. The last scene, fortunately, may have turned them on their ear.

I, initially, wanted the film to be about the lust for power and greed, directed at the type of person prone to that sort of thing. This is because I know a few of those types of people, and I want them to be wrong.

Later, I thought about how "There Will Be Blood" is sort of like taking Ayn Rand's ode to egoism, "The Fountainhead", and actually factoring in the Fall of Man. This was because I had a conversation about "The Fountainhead" an hour before we watched the film.

The best and most comprehensive analysis I've read, which you can find here, discusses the themes of fatherhood (a recurring theme in Paul Thomas Anderson films) and of man's desire to be God.

"There Will Be Blood" might be, at least to some extent, about all these things.

But what strikes me now is how a great piece of art is about whatever we want it to be about, whatever backs up our worldview.

Post-modern Christians, this site especially, have a habit of finding the Christian elements in every bit of secular art. We find every "Christ-figure" and redemptive theme in whatever we hear and see. Often those themes are really there, whether the artist intends it or not. Often, our perspective as Christians allows us insight into themes and meanings other people can't get.

Sometimes, though, we might be telling ourselves a lie. Sometimes we just want to point out the good points, smearing over what we see as bad. Sometimes we read the Bible this way, and sometimes we treat God like our jack-in-the-box.

"There Will Be Blood" does not end with redemption or joy or any discernible presence of God.

If there's a criticism, it's that the ending wasn't bleak enough. It's an amazing film.

The result is the priceless and charming Juno, a movie that proves the film industry can still make movies frighteningly fresh and endearing.

In Juno, the 20-year-old Canadian actress Ellen Page plays the witty, smart and pregnant teenager Juno MacGuff, named after the Roman goddess of marriage. The movie first introduces Juno with a sarcastic and seemingly disconcerting attitude towards motherhood that is seat-shifting uncomfortable. But her sarcasm is quickly coupled with surprising maturity and an enchanting child-likeness. Juno quickly becomes a memorable character that is respected not only for her quick banter but also her emotional depth. Page's capture and delivery of a difficult and multifaceted character is dead-on and proves she is one of Hollywood's newest arrivals here to stay.

The film opens with Juno swigging a giant bottle of Sunny D and retaking a pregnancy test in a local convenience store. After the third test, her smart-mouth lands her in a mockable dialogue with the store's clerk, played by Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the television sitcom The Office), who delivers a short, but always enjoyable performance. He assures Juno that her "eggo is preggo" and Juno strides out of the store, both demanding and delighting moviegoers' attention on her ten month excursion of teenage pregnancy in which she refuses to be another pregnant teen who is the blunt joke of misfortune and disapproval.

The audience soon meets the father, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera from the summer blockbuster Superbad), whose dorkish presence is exemplified through his long, lanky legs descending from tiny yellow running shorts, and a tank top that further reveals his lankiness. Though Bleeker is Juno's best friend, he is strangely absent during much of the movie's important parts, but his situation (being dumped by Juno and a less-than-understanding mother who resembles an old hobbit) allows him to remain in the audience's approval.

After Juno is emotionally unable to "procure a hasty abortion," she decides to brave the future months as a "cautionary whale" and give her child to the Loring Family (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a Kodak-ready suburban couple who are surprisingly complex. Throughout the film the Lorings evolve from a Gap and Lexus poster couple to dynamic characters emitting powerful dialogue full of hidden love and sludge.

J. K. Simmons and Allison Janney both give extraordinary performances as Juno's parents. The flawed but loving characters created by first-time screen writer Diablo Cody, echo the depth of Cody's other primary caricatures.

With its variety of one-line wisecracks, jarring banter, and emotional depth, Juno has become a triumph for its first-time screenwriter (Cody) and director, Jason Reitman, who emerged from the shadow of his famous director father, Ivan Reitman, with Thank You For Smoking. The triumph of Juno, however, lies heavily in Cody's ability to create convincingly real dialogues and characters.

Juno is a warm and whole-hearted movie willing to embrace the American dilemma of teen pregnancy without judgment, and with vibrant realism and empathy. The movie refuses to shake fists from the soapbox and instead provides a sanctuary for humor and a handful of tear-jerking moments--all of them reminding us the human condition can be startling, but also charming, engaging, and finally, irresistible.

Published in 1995 as a work of fantasy for children, The Golden Compass was showered with awards and received glowing reviews from critics. It has since then achieved enormous popularity with both children and adults, and generated much discussion in academic and popular circles.

The Church, as portrayed in the books, is feverishly seeking a solution to the age-old problem of sin. (Wait a second...) Adults are covered in the evidence of Original Sin--and it continuously pours down on them in the form of Dust. The solution? Church authorities establish a research station far-north to conduct secret experiments on innocent children captured off the streets specifically for the purpose. Of course, the children must have their animal-formed souls ("daemons") cut away by a modified guillotine, leaving them to die hundreds of miles away from family.

Luckily, 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua is ready to take a stand for the good, true and beautiful by banding with witches, armored polar bears, a Texan, and a few good-natured people Lyra encounters in her adventures.

Lyra and her pals save the children--and, later in the His Dark Materials trilogy--save their own world and ours from the abusive source of all of our problems by killing the Authority. That's right--they kill God.

I love re-reading Susan Wise Bauer's essay on Pullman's trilogy ("Letter from London," published in the May/June 2005 issue of Books and Culture). Honestly, there were a few moments during the film when I thought I would explode. I did survive; knowing more "rehashing of popularized gnosticism plus quantum mechanics" was on the way.

I have my concerns about the story, but I also have my concerns about the church.

Probably the most frightening thing about His Dark Materials--and the greatest threat the series really poses to Christianity--lies in how skillfully Pullman captures our reputation. We are called to free the captives, heal the broken, and love the unloved--yet how many times have we actually tried living our faith? How many times have we been more concerned about gaining power than reaching out to the powerless? Considering the wrongs committed in the name of Christ, much of the book is almost believable.

Every belief system has been abused, right? Well, any human attempt at self-improvement will fail. We can't rid ourselves of Dust--that's the point. Christ lived and died and rose again because we're desperately wicked. We don't have all the answers, either--and we need to live in conversation and community. This postmodern age calls for a fresh invasion of hope and life.

The best response is to live and breathe what Christ really said--showing love without hypocrisy. I thank God most Christ-followers are unlike Pullman's Magisterium. If you see the movie or read the book, amuse yourself with hypothetical questions and bizarre characters.

Be forewarned: The Golden Compass will make you think seriously about what it means to have faith while living in a postmodern world.

After all, nothing thought-provoking is harmless.

Ask Jose or Nina, and I think they would both agree with Williams. Jose was once a striking young soccer player with a trophy girlfriend and a bright professional future. Now we find Jose working as a chef in his brother's restaurant, and in flashbacks throughout the movie we learn how a single tragic mistake took him from the stadium to the kitchen. Nina is a young single woman who is a waitress in the same restaurant. Or at least she was, since she is fired on the day we meet her, the same day she learns she is pregnant.

By fate and an act of spontaneity on the part of Jose, the two spend a day together in New York. As morning becomes noonday, giving way to evening and then night, we follow the happenstance couple from the subway to the beach and get to know both of them as they are getting to know each other. Each is living in a personal hell from which it seemed there was no escape until this day when they are brought together. We learn how Jose's mistake haunts him--how he lost his passion for the beautiful game and why he never drove his car again. We learn how a 12-year-old Nina lost her father and then lost her mother to the grief in the following years.

The movie speaks to us because it reflects our own experiences. Life is a minefield of pain and problems, and--try as we might to avoid them, we still step on many and are maimed so badly we cannot continue to walk. Yet there is no escape by avoiding the mines, only by redemption afterwards, like a surgery that gives us feet to walk on again. This is the redemption that we find in Bella. This is exactly what Jose and Nina find when they learn to care deeply about someone other than themselves.

At the Toronto Film Festival last year this small-budget film took the People's Choice Award because it's a film about us. Bella could be about our family or the families in our neighborhood. The way Jose's family alternates speaking Spanish and English in the same conversation reminds me of a family that lives down the street. Nina could be the single girl that lives in the apartment next to me. The New York backdrop is one shared by eight million others, yet this movie could be set in any other American city. The movie's message is communicated strongly because we can relate to the characters. It is almost like we are one of them.

Bella shares our grief and our joy, and shows us the bridge from the former to the latter. The conclusion of the movie is surprising, and not a ''happily ever after'' ending. And yet, we know as it ends that everything is all right, not because everything will be perfect, but because as long as mistakes are made, redemption can follow.

I suppose I ought to insert the disclaimer here - these Wednesday night
meetings are really an off-shoot of our church body, known as care groups,
not really a fan club. Doctrinally, we are all opposed to idol-worship in
any form.

Nearly everyone who attends our group is an educator. Several are coaches.
All are parents of kids much younger than mine. These are people who've
passed state boards on how to manage children, yet, when it comes to raising
up their own brood, they struggle.

Aaron is an identical triplet. He recalls in excruciating detail the day he
and his brothers jumped off the roof of their home after their father
implored them to never do such a thing. Or the time they tracked orange
paint all over their mama's new cream-colored carpet. And there was that day
the three boys lined up at the upstairs window and held a contest to see
whose stream would hit the curb first.

When Aaron considers all the ways in which he put his parents through the
wringer, he cringes at his own lack of parental patience. He doesn't know
what to do when his young son shrugs his shoulders, and throws up his hands
in protest whenever he's given an instruction.

My four kids can tell you I was hardly Mother of the Year when it came to
the patience department. I was, after all, the daughter of an Army Sergeant.
My children were taught to have a healthy respect for the chain of command
approach to life. Yet, the things that I used to agonize over when my kids
where young, make me laugh now. If I were to find three boys whizzing out
the window today, I'd probably try to rig up something to see if I could
out-stream 'em.

The biggest fear of most parents is that their kids are going to turn out
exactly the way they did. They are traumatized by the memory of the hell
they put their own parents through. They think the worst thing that can
happen is to have a mimic for a child.

They are wrong. That's not the worse thing that can happen to a family. The
most awful events occur when a child rejects nearly everything they've been
taught and, dismissing their parents for fools, swear to never be anything
like them, ever.

I was reminded of that while reading Jon Krakauer's compelling book, Into
the Wild. It's the story of Chris McCandless, a headstrong young man who, in
a fit of righteous indignation, declared his parents hypocrites, then,
hitch-hiked his way to a disastrous Alaskan adventure. Sean Penn has turned
Krakauer's book into a movie that's debuting soon.

Krakauer, an Oregon native and literary giant of mythological proportions,
compares his own ill-tempered youthful willfulness with that of
McCandless's. The distinction being that Krakauer lived to see the error of his thinking
and McCandless didn't:

"I had been granted unusual freedom and responsibility at an early age, for
which I should have been grateful in the extreme, but I wasn't. Instead I
felt oppressed by the old man's expectations . I was consumed by a blinding
rage. The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was
beyond my power to forgive."

Two decades passed before Krakauer realized his rage at his father had
subsided:

"I came to understand that I had baffled and infuriated my father at least
as much as he had baffled and infuriated me. I saw that I had been selfish
and unbending and a giant pain in the ass. He'd built a bridge of privilege
for me, a hand-paved trestle to the good life, and I repaid him by chopping
it down and crapping on the wreckage."

Sadly, by the time Krakauer gained some perspective, his father was in
ill-health. Many of us go merrily about our days, assuming that the time
will come when we'll be able to correct the wrongs we've done, or those done
to us. We wallow around in the slop of righteous indignation and stubbornly
refuse to make apologies owed, until it's way too late.

I've heard people say that all they want for their children is to be happy.
Not me. I want more than that. I want them to discover the Tolstoy truth
that McCandless underscored in the days leading to his death: "I have lived
through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A
quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to
people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it
done for them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest,
nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of
happiness."

Since McCandless's untimely death, hundred of fans have made the trek to the
Stampede Trail outside Healy, Alaska to pay their respects to the iconic
adventurer. Tragically, the youth wasted away without ever knowing that
Walt and Billie McCandless, the parents he neglected, were among his most
devoted fans.

Dissent was verboten.

A quiet, calculative man in his late 40s or early 50s, Weisler is the genuine deal, a firm believer in his country's socialism - which tended to look a lot like communism - and who looks with suspicion at all GDR citizens, even his own students. At the request of Tukur, a superior and former Stasi school classmate, Weisler is assigned to undertake surveillance upon Georg Dreyman (Sebastien Koch), a famous writer whose work has never been thought politically subversive. Nonetheless, Dreyman is a writer and associates with other artists. To the Stasi mind, that is reason enough.

With quick and calculated ease, the Stasi bug the apartment where Dreyman lives with his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), and soon Weisler is sitting at his desk in the lonely attic space atop the apartment complex with his headphones hooked into the audio equipment, taking notes on anything that might be of interest to the State.

As Weisler monitors the couples' lives, he discovers Christa-Marie has a secret that not only poses a problem for herself and Dreyman, but also - with nudging by Tukur for personal motives - a problem for Party Chairman Hemp, a thick man resembling a mix between troll and boar, and who could indeed be the personification of communism, bureaucracy and corruption.

But Weisler encounters a problem of his own, of his own making. As he listens in on Dreyman and Christa-Marie, he slowly enters their world, their love. He listens to their music, hears their conversations, their intimacies. In a poignant moment, when the two are in bed, with Dreyman holding Christa-Maria after she has had an ugly and painfully intimate experience with the Party, Weisler sits at his desk, solitarily listening to the two lovers in their silence, his body arched and curled around an imaginary Christa-Marie of his own.

But Weisler is not easily won over, for his past - his passion - is for the State; the GDR is his weltanschauung. And he also gets increasingly pressured to find evidence of Dreyman's dissent by Tukur, who himself is pressured by Hempf.

Hagan Boganski's cinematography smoothly sets the mood of the film, with somber and cool tones, bordering on the cold, that softly connote the oppressive nature of life under Party rule. It is this oppression that finally drives Dreyman, previously an artist innocuous to the State, to write something truly subversive that expresses the bleakness of the GDR. He does this with the aid of fellow artists in his own apartment, which he believes is clear of any surveillance.

As Dreyman struggles with printed dissent, Weisler struggles with an inner kind. On at least one occasion he comes to the brink of turning in damning evidence of Dreyman's subversive writing, but he holds back. Doe he not love the State? He does, but he also has an interest in the couple, for he envies a life like theirs, a life of love, which is contrasted against his, where he returns home to an empty apartment and the only love he knows is via a prostitute. In fact, he roots for the couple, even trying to stop Christa-Maria from making bad personal decisions.

This quiet film is, above all, a deeply personal one. Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck manages to weave a story that showcases the inner strength and inner weakness that is man. His script is tight and well-ordered and his directing unobtrusive: no shaky hand-held camera or soaring crane shots; no extremely over- or under- exposed film stock; no MTV-edited sequences. The film has a voice that is firm and solid. No frills or bags of tricks are needed to hold the viewer's attention.

Gedeck, Koch and Mühe give moving performances as all three of their characters struggle against contradicting impulses and confront personal fears and desires. Risks are taken, people are interrogated, sacrifices are made. And not everyone triumphs.

Muhe, above all, delivers a salient portrayal of the determined yet conflicted Weisler. Perhaps his inspiration was the fact that he himself was the target of Stasi surveillance when he was an actor in East Berlin. Sadly, Muhe died last July of cancer, though he leaves behind a performance, as well as a film, worth viewing again and again.

"The Lives of Others" was released on DVD on August 21st.

Two minutes later we see a very different side of John Peterson - or Farmer John, as he is referred to in this documentary, as well as on the cover of his cookbook (subtitle: "The Real Dirt on Vegtables"). He is driving his tractor wearing a feather boa and a dress; a naked woman dances in the field behind him. In another scene, Peterson sits astride his tractor sporting a bowler hat and smoking a cigar. Still later, he gambols about the fields with a lover and a vintage VW beetle, all three dressed as bumblebees. The yeoman farmer is not gone, just obscured by his love for "glitz, glitter, and glamour."

John Peterson runs Angelic Organics, a community-supported farm in Caledonia, in Boone County, 80 miles northwest of Chicago. Under the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, investors buy "shares" of the harvest, in exchange for which they receive regular shipments (usually once a week) of fresh-picked fruits and vegetables. According to Local Harvest, an organization that connects consumers to local producers, the CSA model can be traced back thirty years to Japan where it was called "teikei," which translates into "putting the farmers' face on food." The first CSA in the United States was probably Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts. But even if Community Supported Agriculture didn't originate in Caledonia, its growing popularity owes much to the success of Angelic Organics and the charisma and surpassing eccentricity of its founder.

The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a fascinating portrait on this unlikely champion for rural America. John is the last in a line of Peterson men who have been tending this land since before the Great Depression. John inherited the farm while he was still in high school, after his father died from diabetes. He attended tiny Beloit College, just eight miles from the farm (he often rushed home between classes to milk the cows). In school, he attracted to himself creative types, who were no doubt drawn to John's easy synthesis of artistic sensibility and country charm. This was the late 1960s and John's farm soon became a kind of commune for hippies, philosophers, painters, writers, and filmmakers. What they all seemed to have in common was a dream of an agrarian idyll, worthy of the Romantics, where they could simultaneously pursue art and agriculture.

The neighbors were suspicious of John and his friends. When the farm crisis of the early 1980s hit the Peterson farm early, suddenly, and hard, many, including some family members, blamed John. (More than a few of these farmers would lose their own land in the years to come - an unwelcome irony.) After a decade of industriousness and growth, he was on the brink of bankruptcy. He owed half a million dollars to friends, banks, and a loan shark. "Debt financed my dreams, then my nightmare," Peterson says in the documentary, which he wrote and narrates. In 1982, John was forced to sell nearly everything he owned. In poignant footage from the auction, which Real Dirt director Taggart Siegel earlier turned into a black-and-white short film called "Bitter Harvest" (1984), Peterson looks on as his neighbors try to outbid each other for his land and equipment. By auction's end, the Peterson farm, which had once stretched across 360 acres, was reduced to just twenty-two. His friends scattered. For several years, deeply depressed, John did not farm. He slept and sorted through the remains of his life. He traveled to Mexico, reading and writing through his pain.

John returned to his farm and then so did some of his friends. Almost immediately, rumors began to circulate - whispers of orgies, drugs, murder, and Satan-worship. Local kids called the Peterson place "Devil Farm." John Edwards, the local sheriff, encouraged the talk of Satanism. He never had proof but he could read livestock like tea leaves. "If it is devil worship, so be it," he says in the film. Just so long as it doesn't "mess with the cattle." (Peterson and Siegel later asked Edwards what he considered "devil worship." In a moment not included in this film - I'm holding out for the DVD special features - Edwards answered, "Reading the Bible backwards.") When one of the buildings on John's property, a meditation lodge he built in his college days, burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances, John left once again for Mexico. This time he was gone for only a year. "My quest was coming to an end," he says. "My farm was calling me home."

Back in Illinois, he started Angelic Organics. When the farm had been 360 acres, the Petersons had planted just four crops; now, at less than five percent of its original size, John planted thirty crops. Spurning chemicals, he weeded the fields by hand. The farm was hit by plagues and pests. ("We had every kind of scourge the Bible mentioned, and then some.") More than once, John wanted to quit, but he kept farming because his eighty-year old mother, who ran the farm's roadside stand, needed something to do. In time, the farm turned a corner. It became sustainable. As the number of shareholders grew, so did the farm. John was able to lease back some of the old spread that had been sold at auction. Angelic Organics started a Learning Center to provide programming for inner-city and low-income youth. The Learning Center also features a rotation of classes on urban beekeeping, cheesemaking, soapmaking, gardening, and vegetarian cooking. The farm now has an army of interns and staff - many of whom are drawn by the same ideals as the hippies of the 1970s.

Angelic Organics operates under the principles of "biodynamics." First developed by the German-Austrian esoteric Rudolf Steiner (the founder of Waldorf education), biodynamics sees a farm as a unified "living organism" made up of billions of individual organisms. Soil health is given the highest priority. When deciding what and when to plant, John takes into consideration the unique "personalities and rhythms" of each crop. The method, which is controversial and sometimes derided as "New Agey" or akin to alchemy, has proven successful on John's farm. At the height of the season, Angelic Organics daily harvests about two tons of vegetables that are delivered to more than 1,200 shareholders. Subscribers, many from Chicago, commonly refer to Angelic Organics as "our farm" - a remarkable statement in an age in which Americans are increasingly reliant on large and impersonal corporations for their food.

At the center of Angelic Organics - and at the center of the film - is the farmer-artist whose life has become a performance piece. Peterson draws the spotlight to himself, and in so doing he calls attention to the thousands of anonymous farmers who lose their land every year - to banks, "Big Ag", and urban sprawl. The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a strange and lovely documentary, equal parts sad and hopeful, hilarious one minute and heartbreaking the next. Boas and bumblebee costumes notwithstanding, Real Dirt never devolves into a vanity exercise. It is the story of the downfall of the family farm and, perhaps, the collapse of civil society. It is also about one possible solution (in my opinion, a quite good one): the community-supported farm. It is an American story and the ending is unknown. Maybe Farmer John is on to something. Maybe now is the time for dramatic displays.

It wasn't just that HBO permits profanity, violence and strong sexual content, because those things alone make for awful story-telling (case in point: most of the shows on FX). It was that HBO, through their drama, was able to tell stories of real humanity. The key to HBO's success is not that they push the limits of what should be shown on television, but that their stories offer hope and community in a world where TV is nearly entirely devoid of these values. HBO is not afraid to show viewers a sprawling cast of characters, and those characters are rarely all good or all evil.

But I've said many of these things before. I want this article to focus on one particular iconic principle of HBO dramas: the evolution of the HBO Original Series opening credit sequence.

Looking through these videos, I was struck at how much the imagery of each is imprinted on the pop culture psyche. I've never watched much of "Six Feet Under" or "Sex in the City", but both sequences featured images immediately familiar to me, like the tree in the field and Carrie Bradshaw's bus advertisement.

Let's start with the most well-known of the opening sequences.

Most "Sopranos" devotees could run through these scenes in their head. Songwriter Scott Miller once sang, "It used to be pretty on the Eastern Shore/Now it's more New York down to Baltimore", and it's hard to argue from the grainy footage and the curling smoke from Tony's cigar. This early version features a haunting shot of the World Trade Center, which was removed from the sequence post-9/11. From the first moments, it is evident just how alone Tony is in a cold world. I especially love the transition toward the end as the neighborhoods get nicer, and Tony finally arrives home, the look on his face says it all.

Most HBO credits run over a minute, and "Sex and the City"'s is mercifully short. There's only so much Sarah Jessica Parker mugging I can take. It's not the worst credit roll on HBO, however...we'll get to that later.

Pay special attention to the :24 mark. Is it possible "Sex in the City" paved the way for "Blue Like Jazz"?

I do appreciate the freeze frame at the end, though.

Once you get past the obvious morbidity, it's alarming to see how "Six Feet Under"'s sequence influenced "Desperate Housewives" with its choice of music. The hallmark of opening sequences are their promise of things to come, a dose of the familiar to remind you why you love this show to begin with. Even though I'm not familiar with the show, there are so many gorgeous images, from the quickly spun gurney wheel to the animated tree at the end, going through the seasons.

"The Wire" is notable for changing its opening credits every season, with varying footage and the same theme song performed by different artists, from the Blind Boys of Alabama to the Neville Brothers to Baltimore teenagers DoMaJe. My favorite version so far is the above sequence, during season 2, performed by Tom Waits.

The sequence is rougher and more traditional in its format, but the alarming imagery strikes the very heart of the show, including closeups of surveillance equipment and crime scene evidence. Throughout the first three seasons, my favorite clip of a security camera cracked by a thrown rock remains constant.

The lack of flash and pomp is perfectly paired with the show's intricate but deceptively simple storytelling.

Beyond the 1930's film reels, tarot cards and good/evil symbolism, the "Carnivale" credits also paralleled the show's arc, starting hot on a wave of buzz ("Carnivale"'s first episode was the most watched debut in HBO history) before the show's mind-boggling mythology and terrifying content scared viewers away.

It's a beautiful sequence, and you can view an analysis of the symbolism here. Imagery aside, the music over the sequence pushes it to another level, swelling and reeling from clip to tarot card to clip.

David Milch's first entry in the HBO stable begins in a similar style to that of "Six Feet Under", but I love the reliance on water, from the splashing mud of the road through blood running down porcelain, gold pulled from a creek thick with erosion and finally (how can you ignore it?) a woman sliding into a hot bath. The sequence conveys the stark contrasts of life in Deadwood. We can picture whiskey in shot glasses and poker hands, but the filth of the environs is where Milch draws your eye.

The most vapid show on HBO also has the worst opening scene. Supporters claim "Entourage" is a sly, satirical look at life in Hollywood, but I'm prone to wonder if that's a case of looking too hard. For the most part, "Entourage" is fun male fantasy: four friends living the rich and famous lifestyle, and I can't say it's not entertaining.

But everything about this sequence: the song, the lights, the credits...it's all so grating.

With past intros already part of pop culture iconography, "Big Love" may be HBO's crowing achievement, a deceptively simple concept set to one of the greatest songs of all time, the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".

On first viewing, the set around Bill seems oddly low-budget but winning just the same. This season, it hit me: Bill and his wives aren't skating on a pond...they're skating on the Great Salt Lake itself, hot desert to the west and the Wasatch Range to the east. I've also been struck with how pensive the wives seem as they skate in a circle, then the crack separates them. Moments later, they are reunited in a heavenly maze, finally sitting down to dinner in their celestial kingdom.

I'm going to go all conspiracy theory here and ponder aloud if the Hendrickson's will survive the show's existence. "Big Love" is a text-book example of rising tension as more and more conflict is heaped on the polygamist family. Could that tension end in deaths? And why does the ice cracking separate the three wives, but Bill and Barb's section is still intact? You heard it here first!

(I can't mention this sequence without pointing out Margene's face right before the screen fades to white at the end of the heaven scene. For the past 14 times we've watched the show, Mindy has said the same exact line, "Margene looks so pretty there." It may not have needed 13 repeatings, but it is true.)

"John From Cincinnati" is just intriguing enough that I watch every week, even if I'm not exactly anticipating it. If you can handle the yelling and David Milch's fustian (take that, Milch) dialogue, there seems to be a spectacular storyline brewing just under the surface.

Whatever you say about the show, the opening credits are a joy to watch, with Joe Strummer's "Johnny Appleseed" bringing a jubilant but wary jangle over footage of surfing throughout the decades and Californian border town life. The song is perfect credit fodder: "Johnny Appleseed" builds with the clips and is obscure enough to avoid cliche. I can almost picture Milch coming up with the story concepts as this song played in the background.

Opening sequences for HBO comedies aren't typically great (see "Entourage", "Sex and the City" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm", which doesn't have opening credits), but "Flight of the Conchords" has its moments, like when Bret air drums with his spoon and the salt and pepper shakers dance along. Overall, though, the whole Wes Anderson/"Napoleon Dynamite" feel is wearing thin.

I'm not sure who came up with the credit sequence, but show creators and stars Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement have certainly come through in the past. I'll leave you with one final clip, an opening that never made it to HBO, but I kind of wish it had.

Kurosawa boxed set: Criterion has already released almost half of his collection so why not put them all together. Comes with samurai top knot wig and kimono so you can play your very own version of "Mifune! Hai!"

Marvel Movie Missteps: This box set contains every movie ever made featuring Marvel comic books characters, save "Spiderman 1&2" and "X-Men 1&2". Take special note of the commentary track featuring studio executives who attempt to make serious comments on production and only end up laughing. The sound of money burning is audible in the background if you turn up the sound enough. Nick Cage delivers a similarly hilarious, albeit stone-faced commentary on "Ghost Rider" where he details his "friggin' awesome Ghost Rider tattoo" he got to "help me really, you know, get into the role."

"Apocalypse Now: Uncut" - All 694 hours of footage shot by Coppola for the film "Apocalypse Now" available in this 235-disc set. Coppola provides commentary for 492 hours. Of particular interest are his comments on the footage of a
drunken Michael Douglas in his Saigon motel room. Watch Douglas smash his hand for reals! Just like in the movie! Additional supplements include all 16-mm footage shot by Coppola's family, some of which was included in the OOP documentary "Hearts of Darkness", which is also included as a footnote in this epic set, on DVD for the first time. Only five copies of this set are being produced, three of which have been set aside for the Coppola family.

David Lynch Interview Outtakes: A six-disc set of interview outtakes with David Lynch. Comes packaged in an oversized plastic beetle exoskeleton covered in bird excrement. Strangely enough, the outtakes resemble the actual interviews. The supplement disc contains the real interviews.

YouTube -The First Five Years: Criterion teams up with everyone's favorite Internet video source to bring you the most popular videos from the first five years of YouTube.

Disc 1: Unforgettable Lip-Syncs with introduction by Gary "Numa Numa" Brolsma

Disc 2: Vlogging It Up with introduction by The Wine Kone, whose video "Hotness Prevails/Worst Video Ever" is featured on the disc.

Disc 3: Pirates, Ninjas, and Emos-A feature length documentary on what helped YouTube get its start.

Disc 4: In Memoriam: A disc that is completely blank, included in honor of the videos that corporations were too greedy to allow to be viewed on the Internet.

Coen Bros. First Nine Films: The Coen brothers aren't known for being big on DVD features. Their first nine movies are all contemporary classics, yet the DVDs are all relegated to unrestored, single-disc editions. Come on Joel and Ethan! In leiu of fan complaint, the Coens were kidnapped and held at gunpoint to record a commentary and perform some retrospective interviews. Unfortunately for Criterion and movie fans everywhere, the will of Joel and Ethan was much stronger than that of the interviewers. After seven consecutive viewings of "Blood Simple", the Coens had yet to utter more than a raspy chuckle and "Can I have a cigarette?" The set is, however, worth the price for restored versions of all the films and the portion of an interview where Joel calls wife Frances McDormand to tell her he's going to be late for dinner.

Lewis-Clark State College Commencement 2006: This is my college graduation ceremony. Commentary by me on how bored I was, why I shouldn't have worn khakis and flip-flops under my gown. Supplements include interviews with my mom, who gushes with embarassing stories of my chicken pox and bed-wetting, my wife, who thinks that a commentary is "stupid" and tells of my getting fired after two months at a lighting store after graduation, and professors, who talk about my smart aleck comments and frequent absences my senoir year. Also includes The Complete Works of Will Thompson, an exhaustive compendium of all my video work. from unwatchable student films to almost watchable commercials for local TV. Completely restored in high-definition digital video.

"Our greatest strength" he said, is that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights."

Now, I grew up conservative, but I've grown into just enough of a liberal to twitch at words like "better" when dealing with the subject of cultures and nations. The President and his coterie might call this moral cowardice. The thing is, I would probably agree, but it took a film like The Road to Guantanamo to reveal to me just how crucial moral confidence is, because the debacle of Gauntanamo is itself a result not of confidence but, indeed, of cowardice.

The film is part documentary, part drama. Through interviews and reenactments, it relates the story of the "Tipton Three," a trio of British-Pakistani young men who visited Pakistan in 2001 to find one of their number a wife. During their time there, they took a trip to Afghanistan to see if they could help the people there who would be affected by the American bombings. Strangers in a strange land, they become entangled with a confusing stream of people flowing into and out of Afghan cities, until they are arrested by Northern Alliance fighters, who take their valuables and their passports. They are then turned over, without documents, to the Americans, and they will spend two years being tortured in Kandahar and Guantanamo prisons before they are finally released with neither an explanation nor an apology.

Let me make sure this is clear: three free citizens of the United Kingdom were detained, abused, and denied council, due process, or any contact with the outside world, for two years, before being released without comment.

The film rightly takes an aggressively critical view of the Americans' behavior, but it is worth mentioning that in doing so it glosses over certain mitigating circumstances on the part of the American soldiers. For one, their prisoners had no documentation, and were given to them with a group of others who were captured, after a recent combat, with various armaments in their possession. The Americans certainly had reason to be cautious.

But they had no right to be tyrants.

The only distinction the film portrays between the three's treatment at the hands of the rather mercenary Northern Alliance and at those of the Americans is that the Americans had more paperwork. And, then, as an American, I felt much more ashamed of the Americans' behavior. From their first contact with an American officer the three young men were assumed guilty of association with either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. When it was learned they were from Britain, they were immediately insulted and called traitors. Having abandoned the basic and fundamental presumption of innocence, the Americans could only institute an increasingly absurd drama of ignorance and fear.

The film itself doesn't make a clear case for fear underlying abuse and torture, but it presents evidence enough in its integrity to the three men's stories. The guards do not permit the prisoners to speak, to pray, to walk around in their cells. When they wish to interrogate one of them, the others must huddle in one end of the yard while one of their number is made to lie face-down in the dirt near the gate so three guards can pounce on him, bind him, and lead him into a small, dark and humid room where he will be held at gunpoint, yelled at, falsely accused and beaten for telling the truth. True power does not act so. True power - moral power - is confident in itself, is graceful and benevolent because it believes in itself. It does not need to demean its enemy - especially when it does not have proof that it has an enemy. And it certainly does not need to make up lies in order to extract dubious confessions.

What is the logic here? You assume a man is guilty of fighting with Al-Qaeda, so you sit him down and say, "You are associated with Al-Qaeda." The man says, No. You beat him and repeat yourself, "We know you are associated with Al-Qaeda." He repeats himself: No. You beat him repeatedly. Repeat. When he denies the charge, you think he is lying - he is therefore a liar. If he affirms the charge, you also know he is a liar, because you know you made up the evidence. Well, you thought he was probably a liar beforehand, so now you know...about as much as you already knew - only you've stained your soul by striking a man under your protection.

Among other tortures, one man has his wrists and ankles bound to a hook in the floor so that he had to crouch for hours in a small, sterile room while they flashed strobe lights at him and played bad heavy metal music at an oppressive volume. When he at last broke down and confessed to being a "fighter," they were not satisfied with his confession, and insisted he further confess to being Al-Qaeda.

They took each of them, one by one, and said, "Your two friends both testified that you're Al-Qaeda." This was a lie, and everyone knew it. And each of the three had the moral courage to deny not only the charge but the testimony: "They never said that. You are making that up."

They were shown blurry photos and videos and told they could be clearly seen in the crowd of protesters. One of them pointed out that, by the date of the video, he could not be in it since he was still in England - a fact, he pointed out, that they well-knew since they had a record of some trouble he'd had with the police. No, said his upright, liberty-loving American interrogator, I can see you right there.

Is this the civilization the Middle East is supposed to desire more than the one it has? Is this the great cultural value system we have taken upon ourselves to export to distant lands? Is this the behavior of a free, enlightened, democratic citizenship?

No. This is the behavior of people afraid of what they didn't even know could hurt them. This is the behavior of people more concerned with their own safety than with their human dignity.

Even at the time I first read McCain's article, there was something intrinsically sensible about it. Not just because of the practical concerns of the intelligence and reputation objections, but because of the values objection. If we're to make any sense of our duties toward other nations, we must understand and affirm the values at the heart of our own system. And, in fact, we must believe they are the best values out there. If they are not, why should we settle for them? Why shouldn't we fight for something different, or emigrate to a nation whose values we do share?

These questions hit home for me during a recent discussion with a class of freshmen whom I teach college composition. We were discussing some readings on Islam, Christianity and democracy, and a student asked whether religious people ought to compromise their values in order to live in a society, or if the structure of that society ought to change to incorporate them. This is the basic question of pluralism and multiculturalism: who takes precedence, the individual or society? It was my pedagogical commitment to interfere as little as possible with the course of the discussion this day, so I chose not to suggest that this was a false dichotomy, that in reality things are far more complicated and therefore far more plausible. Instead, I allowed other students to chime in, and most gave the predictable answer: that values are subjective and private, and therefore society should change to accept the values of its members.

Eventually I had to stick my professorial wrench in their postmodernist gears. Are there not, I asked, universal values? We have both secular and Muslim sources here who say there are. Is there not a point at which you say, No, I cannot accept your belief and cannot allow you to practice it because it is harmful to society? Some people value killing those who disagree with them - should society change for them? If someone pressed you to affirm what you believe, what would you say? Where would you stand? At what point would you say, No further - I must stand here?

Silence.

At last, one of my little liberals chimed in again, and she had the courage to admit that she didn't know what she thought, that she had a hard time saying there are some values that are always true. I know how she feels. That kind of language, the language of universals, often implies also the language of absolutes, of certainty; it approaches the language of the very people violence we reject and recoil at. Our awareness of our historical condition, of the contingency of so much we believe, is the inheritance of liberalism. We want proofs before we act; we want to be satisfied that we know "enough" before we commit to something. But, as John Henry Newman once said, "Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith."

When one of the sharpest minds of the 19th century talks about assumptions that are faith, we can be sure he doesn't mean blind faith, ignorant faith. In fact, it just was his searching for the foundations of knowledge that led him to faith, for he saw that Reason, if it is truly rigorous, and honest to itself in its rigor, will never be satisfied. Rather, at some point we say, "I do not know the sun will rise tomorrow, I do not know I will not fall down the stairs and break my neck before even I begin today, and I do not know that one whit of what I do will last beyond my doing it, but I will go out nonetheless and face the task of living."

To affirm that all persons are created equal, and deserve equal dignity before the law; to affirm that all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--this is not also to say I will then go out and make all people likewise affirm these values. But it is to say that the burden of proof is on the person who says that some lives are dispensable or even deserve to be destroyed. It is to say that the burden of proof is on the person who says it is better to hold my fellow man prisoner because I am afraid of him than it is to release him because I have no evidence against him. On the person who says that allegiances must be total and absolute, and that disagreements are best solved by exterminating those who dissent.

As I was describing all this to my wife later that night, I felt a sadness for my students--not because they did not have a moral center on which to act, but because they did, but had been trained to fear expressing it, to mistrust it as a foundation for public actions. It is as though their souls have been enchained, I said, and told they can only come out at night, lest they hurt someone else's feelings. It is the great power and the great social value of films like The Road to Guantanamo that they grab the soul in its captivity to false principles and stretch its chains to the point of breaking, if only we will take the last step ourselves--and decide it is worth the risk.

Michael Cera is best known as George-Michael, the naive son of Michael Bluth on FOX's legendary "Arrested Development". George-Michael was a scene-stealer on a show full of scene-stealers (I'd rank him just behind Will Arnett's GOB as the show's best character).

Because of Cera's youthful innocence (he was born in 1988 in Brampton, Ontario, for pete's sake), it was sometimes difficult to tell if his brilliance on the show was due to great directing or, best case scenario, Cera was just a perfect fit for the role.

Both are gross underestimations.

Michael Cera is the next comedy god, a baby-faced wunderkind, a prodigy. A boy wonder, if you will.

Substantial evidence #1: Impossible is the Opposite of Possible

This is Cera's first step away from his awkward typecasting on "AD". His self-help guru is spot on, but the joke sometimes veers into the obvious, with scenes of Cera lifting light weights going a bit too on-the-nose. His tale of learning to play the guitar, punctuated with the punch line of rubbing it in the face of his mother is outstanding.

But the video wasn't enough to fully realize Cera's skill, because the premise was just reversing the George-Michael character we expect.

Substantial evidence #2: Michael Cera gets fired from "Knocked Up" (NSFW)