Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Dear God


Mohammad, Messenger of God, the film that sparked the Hanafi Muslim Siege in 1977, is being remade. As if it didn't cause enough trouble the first time around. (Its well-intentioned producer-director, Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad, was killed in an Al-Qaeda bombing in 2005.) I'm really not sure the "first film's core messages" really need "renewing" in a much more squeamish time for Islam, when such messages are easily misconstrued or subverted. I'm no chicken when it comes to attending movies with controversial religious themes--I attended a screening of Godard's Hail Mary (1985) three hours after the theater had been cleared for a bomb threat, and braved throngs of protesters to see The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) on opening night in Chicago--but if history is any guide this is one message I'll receive at home, thanks.

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