News round-up

Dark, religious teen satire wraps in Vancouver

Teen pop singer Mandy Moore was praised by many Christian film critics for her positive portrayal of a Baptist pastor's daughter in A Walk to Remember. Before that, she played a stuck-up girl who torments the heroine in The Princess Diaries. Now, it looks like she may get to combine the two characters in Saved, a satire set in a Baptist high school that recently finished shooting in Vancouver. According to Lynne McNamara, who covers local film production for the Vancouver Sun, Moore plays Hilary Faye, the leader of a group of Christian teens who reject a classmate named Mary (played by The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys' Jena Malone) when Mary becomes pregnant.

McNamara has written several columns on the film since production began in late September, but this week's story, an interview with Vancouver actor Chad Faust, is the first to appear on the Sun's web site. Faust reveals that he and the rest of the film's cast -- which includes former Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin (who plays Moore's wheelchair-bound brother), Welcome to the Dollhouse's Heather Matarazzo (who plays a Hilary Faye wannabe), Almost Famous's Patrick Fugit (who plays "the cool Christian guy"), The Banger Sisters' Eva Amurri (the real-life daughter of Susan Sarandon, who plays the school's only Jewish student) and Hal Hartley regular Martin Donovan (who plays the school's pastor; he also played Jesus a few years ago in Hartley's irreverent apocalyptic comedy The Book of Life) -- attended a Christian rock concert in Langley, an hour's drive or so outside of Vancouver, prior to filming.

Faust tells McNamara he had a great time at the concert, and he says being there helped him to discover his character, who lives with a "deep secret", which Faust declines to disclose. "I see it [the character] like an artichoke," he says. "The shell is slowly being peeled away until you get to the heart, which is the sort of raw place, and I think that's what the character is like. In fact, I think all the characters in this film are like that. I think it's about finding the true beauty, the core of what Christianity or spirituality is all about, and accepting yourself within the strictures that we impose upon our lives."

The film is being produced by R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, who told Variety magazine the show was "like those monster vampire high school kind of movies, only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers." But other people involved in the production have said the film is not quite as slanted as that. Faust says he wasn't sure at first whether the script he read was a spoof or a serious Christian film: "It doesn't hack or promote Christianity, it just offers a more, perhaps, organic perspective as to what it's really about. I think it's quite a beautiful message." And in an earlier article, first-time feature director Brian Dannelly, who wrote the script with Michael Urban as his thesis at the American Film Institute, hinted that the film may be based on his own experiences in Jewish summer camps, a Catholic elementary school, and a Christian high school.

"I'm not sure if I should say this, but I pray every morning, I pray every night, I pray every time I go to the set," Dannelly told McNamara. "I always say Jesus wants this movie made -- it's about a girl who starts off in one place with what she believes in and she has this incident in her life [an unplanned pregnancy] that changes everything. And she loses her faith, and then she finds it. And she finds it in the eyes of her baby. 'Cause when you look at a child, you get it. When you look at a baby, you get it."

More stories about the ex-nun convicted of child abuse:

Former Alberta sect leader jailed for beating children
Lucille Poulin, 78, says she carried out God's will in P.E.I.
Ottawa Citizen, November 8

Nun pays for 'regime of fear, frequent violence'
Jail sentence for beating children surprises observers
Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal, November 8

Earlier: Former nun found guilty of child abuse

Other stories from the past week:

Still children
Most Canadians probably assume that it is illegal for adults to engage in sexual relations with young teenagers. That is the case in the United States, where the age of consent is at least 16 in all states but Hawaii, and as high as 18 in much of the country; in the United Kingdom, where it is 16; and in Australia, where it ranges from 16 to 18. But in Canada, it is perfectly legal for any adult to have sex with a 14- or 15-year-old provided they are not in a relationship of "trust or dependency." Twice this year, politicians have attempted to change this law, but both times they have been rebuffed.
Editorial, National Post, November 7

Loving animals . . . without hating humans
Scully and his bags of nuts occupied the office next to mine when we worked together as White House speechwriters -- but no more. Scully left the president's employ in June to take on a new cause, the cause of his animal friends. He makes his case in a remarkable new book: Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. . . . Scully's critique of Peter Singer is the foundation of his argument: As my very first quotation from him indicates, Scully rejects or at any rate dismisses the concept of animal "rights." His language is the language not of legal rights but of Biblical stewardship, mercifulness and love. He agrees that the whole concept of protection of nature is a human invention. But he replies that it is precisely because man has mastery over nature that he is called -- Scully would say by God -- to be kindly toward it.
David Frum, National Post, November 9

Accused war criminal 'old, frail'
A Roman Catholic priest testified Tuesday that Michael Seifert, a 78-year-old man convicted of murdering 11 people at a Nazi prison camp in Italy now is a frail old man whose memory and comprehension is failing since he fell last May 31.
Vancouver Sun, November 13
Earlier: Accused war criminal is being "persecuted", says priest