The Fall and Decline of Tim Burton; More on a Conflict of Visions

1. Welcome SOB reader Dallas! Feel free to leave a comment.
2. Alice in Wonderland was a disappointment (Although it was nice to get out). All the character were dumped on us artificially in the beginning of the movie with little introduction and little development. the plot was dumped on us too, not that there was much of one, or that the movement from place to place was explained in any compelling way. I mostly liked Alice, but I got the sense that she was talking to herself most of the time. Part of the fault likes with CGI characters, who didn't interact with each other like they were actually there. 
3. Aside from a good story to tell, good pacing, and appropriate music, I think one of the key elements to good story telling in movies is showing us character reaction. Remember the scene in Goonies when the kids see the ship for the first time and they are completely amazed? According to the special features, that was the first time they had seen the ship. Watching their reaction is more interesting than looking at the ship. I think that that is one of the main problem with Wonderland: very few reaction shots, or the reaction does not match the spectacle. Part of this is because of CGI. The actor doesn't know what he is reacting to, and that's a particularly big problem for CGI created characters, where interaction is key to believability.
4. Another problem with CGI is a spin on the uncanny valley hypothesis. No matter how real the CGI looks, there is always something that looks a bit fake, and, thus, it, more often than not distracts rather than enhances the experience. CGI should be used very subtlety, like in Where the Wild Things Are (which suffers from other, unrelated problems). But maybe Avatar disproves this theory.
5. Seems to me Tim Burton has lost his way. Consider his most recent movies:
1. Batman Returns--hard to watch.
2. Planet of the Apes--ugh
3. Big Fish--a solid movie
4. Corpse Bride--disappointing compare to Nightmare before Christmas
5. Sweeney Todd--this could damage my thesis because it could be good, but I haven't seen it.
6. Alice in Wonderland--see above.
6. 4 of 5 are disappointments.
7. Do you think church lessons are primarily for faith-building or primarily for learning? Here's the dilemma I face (you can read some of my thoughts on this topic here). I'll have to teach a lesson and the lesson manual is about 2 pages worth of material, most of which is very, very familiar. Obviously there's got to be a lot of discussion to teach an hour lesson based on that little material. I, therefore, primarily focus my efforts on thinking of good questions to facilitate discussion. About the second or third time through, I usually have some questions I think will prompt a good discussion. But the problem with these questions is that they tend to lead to speculative or ambiguous gospel areas. They also tend to challenge truisms we've accepted in the church. Sometimes discussions in these gray areas aren't necessarily the most faith promoting. So would you ask the question, or what criteria would you use to make that decision? I know this is kind of a hard question to answer in the abstract. (I'll put may partially formed thoughts in the comments later).
8. I for one welcome our new bureaucratic health care overlords!
9. Do you think that being a better writer makes you a worse speaker? I don't think I'm any great writer. But I do think I've become a better writer, and I think it's come at the prices of speaking confidently. My theory is that good writing comes from an economy of words and clarify of thought, that requires a lot of reflection and rewriting. It's very hard to do those on the fly. Also, when you write a lot, and get used to that precision, it's hard be less precise, even when speaking. The one exception might be when you are speaking about something you write or think about so frequently that the thoughts are already predigested into ready-made phrases and sentences.
10. Can't think of anything to write about politics now guys. I can't think of anything original to say about the health care bill (not that it would be truly original anyway). I was going to write about David Frum's Waterloo post and his subsequent split with AEI, but I suspect no one cares.
11. Here's the quote from A Conflict of Visions that I couldn't find for the last blog post:

12. Because of conflicting visions of how much knowledge a given individual can have, and how effective that knowledge can be in deciding complex social issues, the two visions attach widely differing importance to sincerity and fidelity. Where the wise and conscientious individual is conceived to be competent to shape socially beneficial outcomes directly, then his sincerity and dedication to the common good are crucial. Godwin's whole purpose was to strengthen the individual's "sincerity, fortitude and justice." The "importance of general sincerity" was a recurring theme in Godwin, and has remained so over the centuries among others with the unconstrained vision. Sincerity tends to "liberate," according to Godwin, and to "bring every other virtue in its train." While conceding that everything is insincere at some time or other, Godwin nevertheless urged " a general and unalterable sincerity" as a powerful, ideal, capable of producing profound social benefits.

    
    

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    Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries' "real" reasons, which must be "unmasked." Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied to reference's to those adversaries' "blindness," "prejudice," or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversarial be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complicated that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken--and dangerously so. They "may do the work of things without being the worst of men," according to Burke.