The Brother's Grimm cast includes Matt Damon, Heath Ledger and Jonathon Pryce, all directed by Terry Gilliam --- and I wish it were rare that this much talent was wasted this badly.
From the previews, it looks quite good --- a comedy with the Brother's Grimm being con artists pretending to rid the world supernatural evil, until they run across the real thing and have to deal with it.
It does have its moments, though mainly dramatic ones. For the most part, however, it just doesn't come together. For one, the entire element of France vs Germany, especially including Jonathan Pryce's character and underlings would improve the movie by not being in it. It's a ludicrous bit of farce apparently included to give the characters motivation to go into the forest, but just made me want to leave the theater every time that thread of the story was onscreen. If you want the evil king and minions to drive the plot, go back and watch the Princess Bride again to see how to do it.
The special effects are as good as one would expect these days...mostly. The wolf jerkily bounds about like something out of the 50's, and there was one early forest scene where they forgot to remove some of the wires. The trees are the high point here --- when they move, they really look alive. One more thing to thank the Lord of the Rings for, I suspect.
As expected, they throw in elements of many of the popular fairy tales, but more as throw away gags than key elements of the story.
Finally, at the end there is a scene that at first glance is stupidly homophobic. The action itself isn't so much so when you think about what the characters are doing and who they are, but when you think about why it's even in the movie in the first place (to shock the mostly straight audience), you realize that your first impression was right. Not that such situations can't be funny, it's just that in this case, it's sole purpose is to play up and reinforce the "ick factor" that two guys might actually kiss, however unromantically or justified in the situation. It is simply inexcusable today.
I confess, I'm not that big a fan of Terry Gilliam's farces, and his fans will probably be happier with this movie than I was, but I am a big fan of Matt, Heath and Jonathon, and it's really sad to see them in a movie this disappointing.
In the beginning...there wasn't a beginning. A "beginning" implies there was a "before", and when you're talking about the universe, that's just silly. It just is. It may do some weird cyclic stuff, but if it "started" then where did it come from? What's the point of creating some other mystical metaverse to spawn it, because then you just have to ask where *that* came from. Even more so with the silly notion of "Intelligent Design": if we can't evolve from natural processes, then how did a creator come to be? There's just always been an omniscient being? It makes a lot more sense to believe that stuff just is, and as chaotic processes do their thing, order comes and goes. We're in a certain stage of order now, but things will run down. How the order comes back might be a good question --- it obviously came once, so it's logical to believe that it'll come again.
In the meantime, while it's an interesting discussion, it really has little relevance to how we should live our lives. It's far outside the scope of not only our lives, but our civilization's lives. The point of a doctrine describing how one ought to live one's life is to arrange for that life to be as good as it can be. The Free Church believes that when everyone has the opportunity to decide for themselves what "good" is, then "goodness" is maximized, which seems like an obvious fundamental goal. With that in mind, it's clear that when it comes to the conflicts of interest that naturally arise whenever people interact, the proper approach is to minimize the negative impact each has on the other, while maximizing the positive impact. The followon articles will provide examples...