Word: spider
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What's the biblical import of, say, Spider-Man? "Peter Parker gives us all a chance to be heroic," says Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic, a Baptist-affiliated church in Los Angeles. "The problem is, we keep looking for radioactive spiders, but really it's God who changes us." What's the big idea behind The Village, according to the website movieministry.com "Perfect love drives out fear." Behind The Notebook? "God can step in where science cannot." And, gulp, Anchorman? "What is love?" If your minister floated those notions recently, it may be because movieministry.com provides homilies for Sunday sermons...
...Bookended by a 40-ish Andy in the present day, the bulk of "The Death Ray" flashes back to the mid seventies when Andy attended high school and first found his powers. Like Spider-Man's alter ego Peter Parker, Andy's immediate family are all dead so he lives with an elderly relative, his grandpa, "Pappy." Unlike Peter Parker, though, he doesn't even have enough personality as a nerd to register with anyone except Louis, a whiny, hostile ego maniac ("Meeting me was the best thing that ever happened to you") with a shaggy, Prince Valiant-style...
...Things begin to change when, in a subversive twist on the spider bite, Andy discovers he gains superior strength after smoking cigarettes. "It was like my entire body got a giant boner," he says. Naturally he takes this newfound energy to the schoolyard where he pounds Stoob, a mullet-headed jock that Louis has inadvisably provoked. Would you really have done any different...
Doffing an ill-fitting outfit not unlike the gawky, scrawny look of Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man, Andy, assisted by Louis, goes around looking for trouble. But unlike traditional superheroes who mete out righteous justice against inarguable criminals foisting their evil on the world, Andy lives in a more realistic world of pettiness and personal issues. So Andy and Louis are left to manufacture debatable opportunities for justice, like leaving a wallet on the street and waiting for someone to pick it up and try to keep the money. "What good is having a friend with super strength...
...producer, and Walter Salles (Central Station) is the director. And Ju-on, Japan's top fright franchise (with four episodes) since The Ring, gets its Hollywood remake in October, with the original films' auteur, Takashi Shimizu, calling the shots and Sarah Michelle Gellar starring for producer Sam (Spider-Man) Raimi...