Just finished Revolutionary Road and I want to punch myself in the face.  Horrible movie.  Made me feel like crap. 

Can’t believe I held back my Top Ten Movie list so I could give it a shot.  Will definitely land on this years worst.

The acting was great, however…but I don’t care.  Give me Dude, where’s my car?  and a happy ending over the way I feel right now.

This is pretty hard to order.  Feel free to critique and to add some movies you think I may have forgotten.  There are probably quite a few that should be here that just didn’t come to mind as I was putting it together.

2.  Braveheart

4.  Shawshank Redemption
5.  Crash
6.  Les Miserables

8.  Maverick
9.  Last of the Mohicans
10.  Stranger than Fiction
11.  Seven
12.  Schindlers List
13.  Life is Beautiful
14.  Princess Bride
15.  Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
16.  Life as a House
17.  Donnie Darko

19.  The Princess Bride
20.  12 Angry Men
21.  Tombstone
22.  Goodfellas
23.  The Count of Monte Cristo

25.  Snatch
26.  Finding Neverland
27.  Gone Baby Gone
28.  Keeping the Faith
29.  Juno
30.  Saving Private Ryan


33.  Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
34.  American History X
35.  Bruce Almighty
36.  Boondock Saints
37.  Gattaca
38.  Interview with a Vampire
39.  Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

41.  Ferris Buellers Day Off
42.  Signs
43.  Enemy at the Gates
44.  Magnolia
45.  Garden State

47.  Dumb and Dumber
48.  Cinderella Man
49.  Cloverfield
50.  Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
51.  Office Space
52.  Vanilla Sky
53.  Gladiator
54.  A Few Good Men

56.  Elizabethtown
57.  Sleepers
58.  Mystery, Alaska
59.  Dead Poets Society
60.  Pulp Fiction
61.  The Lion King
62.  Empire Records
63.  Walk the Line
64.  Field Of Dreams
65.  Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade
66.  Once
67.  Trainspotting
68.  Apollo 13
69.  A Time to Kill
70.  Big Fish

We are only TWO SHORT MONTHS away from my annual “Top 10 Movies of the year”.  Yep, I do my list in May because no ones list comes out in May and anyone who is jonesing for a top 10 movie list has to come to me!  (Insert villian laugh here)

You can check out my past winners below

06-07

07-08

I just realized I need to edit my Top 70 to make room for some of these new winners.  Look for that soon!

If you have any suggestions for movies I need to see in the next two months before I post my top 10 be sure to comment here to let me know!

Going to East Coast Wings and to see Slumdog Millionare with Kristan tonight. Can’t wait! I have been wanting to see this movie for a while…and East Coast is always awesome!

Tomorrow concludes our Parables series. We are finishing up with what has to be the most confusing parable in the Bible: The Unjust Steward (Luke 16). It’s amazing how many differing opinions there are on this passage.

I’ve got mine, and I can’t wait to share it!

I just overheard a reporter say that Lindsey Lohan told her that she won’t know what to do when the time comes that she wakes up in the morning and they (the paparazzi) aren’t outside waiting to take a picture.  The reporters take on the comment was that Lohan was saying that her publicity validated her existence. 

That really sucks.  People’s opinions of celebrities change more than doctor’s opinions on whether or not eggs are good for you.  On any given day Lohan (and probably many others) allows herself to be defined by the papers written by writers not good enough to write about something important. 

I just read a good blogabout pastoring.  McCollum is absolutely right!  It’s amazing how quickly I can fall into the trap of evaluating myself by the response of the people I am called to minister to.  I feel like I let people down a lot.  Thank God that the occasional criticisms, outright attacks, or even my internal struggle to make everyone like me doesn’t define my existence. 

In the movie City Slickers, the character Curly reveals to Mitch (Billy Crystal) the secret of life.  A character more comfortable in his own skin has never existed (he ate bacon for every meal…you cant do that).  Curly tells the insecure Mitch that the secret of life is…his finger…no, its “one thing”.  He says, “When you figure out what that is, give your whole life to it”.  Through the rest of the movie (and an unbearable sequel) Mitch allows himself to be defined not by his job, age, or emotions…but by the “one thing”, which for him is his pet cow Norman.  You get the point.

This is the tagline for the most recent installment in the Die Hard series with hero, John McLane.  I know it’s like 6 months old, but I just now read the yahoo summary.  Growing up I loved the Die Hard movies.  As an eight year old I watched the 1st one over and over like my buddy Caleb watches Finding Nemo. 

Yippie Kay Yay!

I think what draws the audiance to McLane is how he sucks at just about every part of life except killing bad guys and ticking off his superior officer.  Marriage, parenting, and interpersonal relationships all come difficult to him.  McLane is an everyman.  An everyman capable of single-handedly ending international terrorism…but an everyman just the same. 

That’s the appeal.  McLane can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound.  No one wonders where McLane gets “those wonderful toys”.  A hero like McLane lets us believe that armed with uzi and a boatload of expletive laden, cheesy, post-”put a bullet in the brain of a bad guy” remarks, we could be just like him.

The world needs heroes. 

If you haven’t seen Life is Beautiful you need to put it on your list!  I began it late last night only to stop about 30 minutes in b/c I knew Kristan would love it.  When she asked me about it I told her it was a romantic comedy.  Today we started it over and I found out it was a romantic comedy WW2 drama.  Seriously, had my years of movie watching with guys experience not taught me how to perfectly choke back tears I would have been letting loose the whole second half!

In case you were wondering…it made the list!  High up too.

About a month ago Hal made a comment that inspired me to figure out my top 70 movies.  How much time has gone into this is not important (not as much as you might think).  Anyway, a big thank you goes out to Hal, Kristan, and Martha (after I got her to stop naming stupid french films) who have all contributed to this list.  Feel free to compliment, critique, or advise on the selections or rankings of my top 70

In order:
1.  Crash
Braveheart
Good Will Hunting
Shawshank Redemption
5.  Usual Suspects
Maverick
Les Miserables
Last of the Mohicans
Stranger than Fiction
10.  Fight Club
Schindler’s List
Seven
Princess Bride
Life as a House
15.  Count of Monte Cristo
Interview with the Vampire
Donnie Darko
Tombstone
Snatch
20.  Finding Neverland
Keeping the Faith
Hotel Rwanda
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Saving Private Ryan
25.  Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy
Men of Honor
Bruce Almighty
Boondock Saints
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
30.  Zoolander
Signs
Enemy at the Gates
Garden State
Memento
35.  Dumb and Dumber
Cinderella Man
Meet Joe Black
Robin Hood: Prince of Theives
Office Space
40.  Vanilla Sky
Gladiator
A Few Good Men
Elizabethtown
Sleepers
45.  V for Vendetta
Mystery, Alaska
Dead Poets Society
Contact
The Lion King
50.  Empire Records
Walk the Line
Field of Dreams
The Mexican
Freedom Writers
55.  Batman
The Sixth Sense
Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade
Apollo 13
A Time to Kill
60.  Big Fish
City Slickers
Gattaca
Rat Race
Brokedown Palace
65.  The Patriot
Magnolia
Romeo and Juliet
Instinct
Devil’s Advocate
70.  Resovior Dogs

Last night I went to see Disturbia with Hal, Cassi, Mladen and Christina.  I made sure to sit between the two couples in the theatre; this made me feel less like the “5th” wheel and more like that little arm rest that drops down in the back seat of older cars.  I can deal with that.

Anyway, Disturbia was actually pretty entertaining.  It was a carbon copy of Rear Window which I really love.  David Morse (The Rock, The Green Mile, and ”that guy” in just about every other movie you’ve ever seen) sells you on the creepiness of the character.  Morse and Lebeouf (Transformers) are really the only two characters you care about.  Thankfully they get most of the screen time.  Besides not particularly caring if anyone else in the movie lives or dies it really is a suspensful flick with more than just cheap scares. 

“Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
                                                                                                           Ferris Bueller

I don’t know if you are noticing, but God is doing some pretty amazing things!  Kristan described the last week as, “surreal”.  Right on its surreal!  God is blowing all our prayer requests out of the water, and my biggest fear is that we will forget to stop, look around, and appreciate whats happening around us.  

Let me celebrate something I see.  One of the biggest challenges new churches seem to face is what I would call ”shrinking vision”.  This was a challenge we faced, and emerged victorious!  I bet it happens to a lot of guys.  We start with a huge vision to change the world, and then for some reason, it becomes “to start a church”.  Thats a world of difference!  My guess (I’m too new at church planting to have “theories” yet) is that somewhere along the lines the freedom to dream big, go all in, or whatever you want to call it is torn down by fear, lack of faith, or some idiot (who has nothing to do with the church) who feels like it matters that he doesn’t believe in what God is calling the new church to do.  Unfortunatly, these things probably contribute more than anything else to the huge failure rate of church plants. 

In another part of Ferris Buellers Day Off the hero (Ferris) has a dream that is being challenged by his faithless girlfriend.  She warns him of going too far (having too big a vision), and the threat of being busted (failure).  His response is the essence of having a big vision in the midst of the negative voices:

“A: You can never go too far. B: If I’m gonna get busted, it is *not* gonna be by a guy like *that*. “