Wow. Let me tell you this movie was a real surprise!  I thought I would be walking into something rather simple and lame.  I thought it was going to be advertising for Nappa.  What I found was a really quaint histo-drama on a very special unique time for California and for America.  It was kind of like Seabiscuit without the national pride.  Now that I think of it that doesn’t surprise me.  It is a movie about selfish people trying to make a difference without knowing how.  It is typical of how California thinks of itself in terms of the country it is part of.  The fact that on their site they compare this moment with the moon landing and 1980 hockey win seems a bit of a non-sequitor.  But I digress from my thoughts on the film.

So this film was pretty amazing in one spectacular detail.  I have been researching to see how true the facts are but have found squat, so I will just go with it an hope that it is based on real events.

Spoilers follow:  as in total spoilers:

So as I walked out of the theatre I felt way better than I should and as David Wilcox would say “I was bugged for metaphorical reasons.”

You see I had just saw something really beautiful and didn’t know why it was beautiful.  It wasn’t until 2 days later that it struck me.  Christ was the entire focus of this film he was the driving story the reason these people were in community and he taught them about love life and how to be better human beings. He even was a perfect creation that died and rose again in this film.  And it was because it was perfect that it HAD to die and rise again.

Now by no means am I saying that this is a Christian Film, I would never condemn a film like that. :)  what I think is that these filmmakers knew the power of Christ imagery and of the story that so much of the world is familiar with that it became their story.  I am sure a lot of it was coincidence or just playing on tradition western storytelling, but it is there.

Ill be short with the explanation then let you play with it a bit on your own.

The grapes and wine are Christ.  OK for all you sacramentals out there you say “Of course Marshall!” I hope so beacuse this movie mad me want to take communion ASAP.  so the one quote about wine from Galileo “Wine is sunlight held together by water” is ever so meaningful. That image Christiologicaly is very cool.

If Christ is the wine in this story some things need to be there.  Well the wine is brought into the world by the unequipped and unprepared.  People society would never imagine a savior coming from.  It should be prophesied.  It should polarize people.  It should die. it should rise again. and finally it should save people’s lives because of the death and rebirth.

In the film the wine does all these things and more.  it even goes through a 3 day death and rebirth.  AND durring its death it is still sweet and beautiful.  In fact the reason for its necessary death is its perfection. and it literaly saves a “nation.”

I am Nate Marshall.  I was raised all over the country and have settled for the time being in the Bay Area.  I have found that one thing that has always impressed me since my childhood was the incredible power of the visual medium.  From design in toys to films to typography and what the words actual say, I have been fascinated by it all.  Visuals drive me to think harder and to act every day of my life.  This isn’t to say that I am a slave to media but you could safely say that I am often consuming media to learn more about this strange diverse beautiful and horrible world that we all live in and share.

I am a Teacher by profession currently though I will always be a student, I believe, in some fashion.  I trained to be a film producer in college @ Biola University.  My passion was to create films.  I particularly wanted to create animated films because of the freedoms involved and the relatively low cost.  The other reason I liked animation was that the smaller teams of creative individuals allows for a community to be developed and I always dreamed of living a life as an “Imagineer.”

I teach now though, and it is a perfect job in so many ways.  I teach many different classes at the private school that allows me such creative and personal freedom to teach great classes.  I offer a Intro to Video Class (how to hold a camera and point it at something interesting), Art of Filmmaking (creating the interesting image and learning from the masters how to say something Good, True and Beautiful), Applied Filmmaking (creating and distributing high quality content), Screenwriting I teach this with my wife Lindsay (How to tell a story and not look like an amateur so you can eventually put your script in the hands of people who matter).  We also have two other classes that I co-teach with other excellent facilitators and educators, Acting for Film is taught by our Theatre Department head and we offer a daily live news broadcast to the entire school.  I  co-teach this class with our Radio Dept. head.  we offer this news class so that we can live webcast school events and sports as well as provide the daily news to the student body.

My future is teaching for the foreseeable future as well as screenwriting with my wife.  We have been writing together for 5 years and have a great time doing it!  It is something that we love to do together and it keeps our marriage strong because we work together as a family and we work together creatively and academically.  That kind of bond is more valuable than anything I have ever experienced.

So this blog will be about the media, but really mostly about cinema.  I want to begin a tradition of reviewing movies in a new context.  I want to explore movies in the context of their value and their contribution of an age-old conversation on art, communication and other topic raised in the specific films.  because of this you wont expect to see many reviews of films here on the lower brow film of the week.  and you will have to be sure to expand your repertoire of films.

I want to encourage you as well to get involved reading and commenting on these films.  There is no real reason to talk to the air when we write and the only way that we can truly appreciate the films that are created is to discuss and try to better understand them.  So I call on you to challenge me and others in the goal of making us all better film viewers but essentially better people in the process.  People who understand just a small bit better the world that we live in and the world that we all share together.

Our future is together and our future is bright.  Let’s gather and speak of things that have value and create a new comunity of souls that understand the value of the visual word