I am grateful to have a pope who does not remind me of Emperor Palpatine. This does not exhaust my hopes for the papacy, but we're off to a good start.
The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, now Pope Francis, has been a ray of sunshine since his elevation in March. His charm, humility, generosity and respect even for gays and atheists, have made him far more appealing than the authoritarian medievalist he replaced. Let's remember that his organization used to burn heretics at the stake. What kind of Catholic leader says, "Who am I to judge?" This one, it turns out.
On the other hand, LGBT people and others have reason to be skeptical. The new pope's considerable pastoral gifts do not erase the Catholic Church's long history of obscurantism, its assaults on intellectual freedom and science, its subordination of women, its anti-gay slanders, its facilitation and cover-up of child rape, its attacks on the use of condoms to prevent AIDS, or its dogma that "outside the church there is no salvation," which fueled great oppression and bloodshed. Redemption requires more than smiles and soothing words.
But let us not be as peremptory as the Grand Inquisitor. Francis is new on the job, and deserves a chance to make his mark. Last week he gave an extraordinary interview to Antonio Spadaro S.J., editor of Italy's La Civiltà Cattolica, for America magazine. Consider several illustrative quotes:
"All the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief. … When the dialogue among the people and the bishops and the pope goes down this road and is genuine, then it is assisted by the Holy Spirit."
"God in creation has set us free: It is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person."
"God is always a surprise, so you never know where and how you will find him."
"Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal 'security,' those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists – they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies."
"The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. Uncertainty is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation."
That the Bishop of Rome should embrace this "conservatism of doubt," as Andrew Sullivan describes it, is a stark departure from his immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. They fought to dismantle the legacy of Vatican II, which represented an opening of the church to the modern world.
The first Jesuit pope is making a good deal of trouble for the bullies in his midst, saying of abortion, gay marriage and contraception, "It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time." It is revealing that some of the anti-gay obsessives he implicitly skewers, like Maggie Gallagher and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, gamely applaud as if that were just what they wanted to hear.
This pope's less imperial and more community-driven approach could bear fruit down the road. Some liberals are dismissive because he covers his right flank and did not instantly issue five revolutionary encyclicals. But past wrongs should not blind us to new opportunities. Francis talks about a collective journey. We should offer our blessings to those prepared to walk with this pontiff who has exchanged the so-called Prada loafers for the shoes of the fisherman.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist. He can be reached at rrosendall@starpower.net.
...moreThere's no such thing as an unpredictable sports movie. Once in a while, a surprising one might pop up, but the rhythms of the story largely remain the same. An athlete pushes himself to succeed, stumbles, pushes himself beyond every conceivable limit, and then -- you guessed it -- succeeds. That success need not be a victory or championship. It could be a lesson learned, a promise kept, or a love rekindled. The point is: Any great sports movie is great in spite of this pattern. It can't change. It's a permanent formula for the genre. Any great sports movie, in other words, is great because it's not just about a sport.
Rush is one of these movies. A fully torqued biopic based on the '70s rivalry between Formula One drivers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), it marks an exciting turn for Ron Howard, a director known for cranking out faux-falutin dramas like Cinderella Man and Apollo 13. With Rush, however, Howard has accomplished something rare and unexpected — he's made a fun, exciting action movie that also has quite a few smart things to say about its subject.
It certainly helps that the story behind Rush does most of the heavy lifting — with a bit of Hollywood embellishment, of course. Hemsworth's Hunt is a rakish skirt-chaser, who wins races because he's irresponsible enough to risk life and limb in his "little coffin" of a racecar. "The closer you are to death," he explains, "the more alive you feel." Brühl's Lauda is the polar opposite: a careful, cautious driver who relies on his knowledge and dedication to win. There's a 20 percent chance he'll die every time he gets onto the track, he says. He refuses to let that risk jump even a percentage point higher. As the two men work their way up the racing circuits, eventually reaching the echelon of Formula One, their rivalry festers from personal distaste into an aggressive sort of motivation. Hunt wants to beat Lauda. Lauda wants to be Hunt. They're the two best drivers in the world. Predictable story, right?
RUSH
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brühl, Olivia Wilde Rated R 123 minutes Opens Friday Area theaters Yes — and it's very well done. Rush sticks to a simple distillation of Hunt and Lauda's rivalry, mining it for worthwhile questions about the risks and rewards of such a dangerous sport. (Howard never shies away from showing the carnage of the era's auto racing, so the weak-stomached should be prepared to look away at a moment's notice.) What does Hunt want to accomplish? Why does Lauda even race? A lesser movie would skirt these ideas, and it's a small miracle that Rush spends enough time off the racetrack to consider them. That's the happy accident of a director like Ron Howard making a movie like this one. His workmanlike approach to filmmaking doesn't lend itself to racing scenes — he never seems to settle on a place for his camera, burying it inside an engine as often as it's drifting toward the stands — yet his style works wonders on the dueling philosophies of each man.
With Howard at his back, screenwriter Peter Morgan fills out scene after scene of high-adrenaline, heart-racing… conversations. The races are almost an afterthought to Morgan, who focuses on Hunt and Lauda's dueling philosophies as the movie's beating heart. That's the surprise of Rush — after a grisly turn of events that throws the entire rivalry into sharp relief, it's clear that this is not a movie about auto racing. It's a movie about the men who are crazy enough to race them.
...moreJose Ortiz never forgot an experience he had over a decade ago at New York's Queens Museum of Art.
"You follow all the rules and you don't touch and you don't do this and that," Ortiz explains. "And then to go into a room where you actually were encouraged to touch the works of art, and to play with it and move around. It's like we were outlaws with the art."
So Ortiz decided to recreate the experience, essentially an Andy Warhol inflatables installation, at Artisphere. As the Arlington arts complex's executive director, Ortiz has arranged with Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum to host in its Terrace Gallery a free, temporary installation of Warhol's Silver Clouds. "We have about 150 of these very large, rectangular Mylar pillows inflated with helium and air," Ortiz says. "They're floating at different heights in the room. And certainly as people go in there, they set them in motion by touching them and pushing them."
Developed with researchers at Bell Labs, Warhol first installed Silver Clouds at a New York art gallery in 1966. "At the time it was a really groundbreaking intersection between art and technology," Ortiz says. It also stands out from the more common work by the late Warhol. "We've had our share of retrospectives and exhibitions in this area of his really familiar work -- portraits or silkscreens or Brillo boxes," he says. "Silver Clouds introduces another side of Andy Warhol to our audiences."
It also offers Artisphere a chance to show contemporary artists using new technology in their work. "We have a series of installations throughout the building that are inspired by or nod to Andy Warhol," Ortiz says, including three "generative video portraits" by Sergio Albiac. Other related activities include a performance by Dance Exchange on Friday, Oct. 11, among the "clouds," in a nod to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which did that at the first installation back in the 1960s. On other Fridays during the run Artisphere will play "Vapor Forms," a 28-minute electronica "soundscape" that Jakub Alexander created specifically for the installation.
And then a week before the installation ends, on Saturday, Oct. 12, Artisphere throws a Warhol-inspired affair, "Night of 1,000 Andys Dance Party," featuring comedian Andrew Bucket and eclectic music from DJ Baby Alcatraz, MarchFourth Marching Band and Javelin.
Says Ortiz, "We're encouraging people to wear turtlenecks and wigs."
Silver Clouds runs through Oct. 20. Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. Call 703-875-1100 or visit artisphere.com.
...moreUkrainian and Russian activists took to the streets to protest their respective countries' antigay laws.
The former president and first lady attended the wedding of friends in Maine this weekend.
Voting in the 2013 Glam Awards (don’t call them the Glammy’s!) has begun, and you just have to click here to cast your vote if you work in the New York Nightlife industry. You’ll need a code to vote in most categories, so just contact Glam coordinator Cherry Jubilee if you work in the industry […]
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On Sunday night, Julia Louis-Dreyfeus won the Academy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for “Veep,â€and Julia mocked her character on the show with co-star Tony Hale (who had won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series earlier in the night while accepting her award. You can watch the video here: As […]
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.The first two polls released in New York City’s race for Mayor show Democrat Bill de Blasio with a commanding lead over his Republican contender Joe Lhota. The Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll conducted for WNBC and the Wall Street Journal, released earlier in the week, put de Blasio at 65 percent and showed […]
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I don’t talk a lot about my family but I think it’s time for you all to meet them. Mind you, I have more than one. Now-a-days you kinda have to just to remain sane and balanced. I’m just saying that if you have people that are so special and important to your life that […]
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Bill de Blasio officially became the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City this week as Bill Thompson conceded the race eliminating any chance of a run-off election. Thompson finished second to de Blasio in the November 3rd primary, but it was debatable as to whether or not de Blassio earned the 40 percent […]
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