According to Citizen-Times.com, a newspaper Web site in Ashville, North Carolina, Wilson was having lunch with his wife, Mary Helen, at Black Mountain when he was stricken. His wife drove him to an urgent care center, where he died from an apparent heart attack.

According to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Wilson, 82, was recovering from the effects of a stroke two years ago. “Ruth and I have lost one of the closest friends we ever had,” Graham said in a prepared statement. “He was a companion on most of the trips I have taken since 1962 all over the world.

“We prayed, laughed and wept on hundreds of occasions. I feel his loss very deeply, but I know where he is. He is in the presence of Jesus, and that’s where he longed to be most of his life. Even though he had retired, he will be greatly missed by hundreds of people in our organization. He was a great and wonderful friend to me and my family. Our love and hearts go out to his family—his wife Mary Helen, his son Jim, his daughter Sally, and their wonderful families. He loved them dearly. They will miss him the most.”

In an interview with Christianity Today, songleader Cliff Barrows said Wilson’s “great gift was to identify, to sympathize, and to minister to people who were such a vital part of our organization. I met him as a freshman in college in 1940, and he was very warm and personal to me as a freshman.”

Barrows said Wilson thrived in a team-based approach to ministry. “Life is not a solo existence. Effective work in evangelism is not a solo ministry. It is a team of people whose hearts God has knit together. I’ve been with him for 56 years. We still feel that same bond of oneness and support.

“He had a great gift as an evangelist, but he gave that up for what he felt was a higher responsibility when Billy asked him to travel with him.”

Wilson was an ordained Southern Baptist minister. He graduated from college in 1941 with an A.B. degree in religion followed by graduate work at the University of Alabama. He served as pastor of Baptist churches in Alabama and Georgia before becoming vice president of Youth for Christ International.

From 1948 through 1951, Wilson was vice president of Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, while Billy Graham was president of the institution. Wilson, as an evangelist, preached through the United States and many foreign countries before becoming an associate evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m., May 28, 2001 at the First Baptist Church of Swannanoa, North Carolina.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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An obituary appeared Friday morning on the Web site of the Ashville, North Carolina, Citizen-Times.

Stories and memories of T. W. Wilson are included in A Prophet with Honor, William Martin’s 1991 biography of Billy Graham, and in Graham’s 1997 autobiography Just as I Am.

Hot from the Oven

And you’ll also be hard pressed to find a decent review of Pearl Harbor.

A few critics in the religious media seem to think the movie is worth seeing. Preview‘s anonymous critic calls it “An inspiring and patriotic production.” Most critics, though, were offended by the way the film turns a very serious, tragic, and sickening event into an entertaining “good time.” The Dove Foundation‘s Holly McClure disagrees: “The incredible script by Randall Wallace, gorgeous scenery, wonderful period costumes, stirring musical score by Hans Zimmer and incredible cast make this a spectacular ode to American history that simply shouldn’t be missed by anyone. It is the first serious Oscar contender this year.”

The war scenes certainly made an impression on the critic at Christian Spotlight on the Movies: “Amazing special effects and plenty of time spent on this really make it work. And oh, the tragedy that war brings. Up close and personal we see hundreds of charred and shattered bodies, some in the water and others on land. Once the attack is over and we survey the damage, the sadness is gripping. War really is hell.”

But a discerning viewer will demand more than realistic warfare onscreen—Is all of this spectacle edifying in some way? Is there any redeeming value to this storytelling? Tom Neven of Focus on the Family poses the question this way: “Do the overall historical messages of courage, loyalty and sacrifice fully compensate? No. Swim carefully in this harbor. Entertainment Zeros are lurking.” The Vancouver Courier‘s Peter T. Chattaway writes that Bay “is a fidgety, impatient director, who cut his teeth making music videos and commercials aimed at an audience of short attention spans, and he doesn’t seem interested in letting a scene unfold at a slow or natural pace if there’s a way to give the audience an extra jolt.” He concludes: “It’s no wonder the posters for this film are modeled after wartime propaganda. This is the sort of movie that makes going to war look cool.”

You won’t find any critics unimpressed with the special effects of the film’s 40-minute attack sequence. But David Ansen at Newsweek feels the movie’s dullsville story robs these scenes of their necessary gravity. “Ninety minutes into this massive movie the attack commences, and the spectacular images come hurtling like fireballs [and] go directly to your central nervous system,” he writes. “But Bay isn’t making a movie about war’s horror. It’s more like a roller-coaster ride. Superbly marketed, Pearl Harbor is the very model of a modern blockbuster. Will it matter that almost nothing about its human drama rings true?” Similarly, Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune states, “Unfortunately, pasted around that stunning [action] sequence is a story so clogged with cliches of every description, so overblown, bombastic and agonizingly sentimental that it’s hard to watch it with a straight face.” Robert Wilonsky of New Times Los Angeles says bluntly, “Pearl Harbor’s sound and fury signify nothing but a new kind of war porn.” And Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calls it “a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be because you admire them.” My personal favorite response was also quite brief: “Two of the three longest movies we’ve ever sat through” (Chuck Schwartz of Cranky Critic). Jeffrey Wells at Reel.com, who also panned the film, admitted: “Let’s be frank: A Mormon Tabernacle Choir chorus of lousy reviews wouldn’t stop even the most cynical among us from wanting to see it.”

“Moriarty” at Ain’t It Cool News(where every poster uses a cutesy pseudonym) had an interesting response to the film and its critics: “Is this really what we’ve come to? We are now reviewing films on a sequence by sequence basis, giving them passing grades as long as there’s just a run of stuff we like, even if we have to sit through three hours of genuinely dull drama, poorly written and poorly acted for the most part, to get to it? This is Pearl Harbor, though. This happened. This is something that still matters to many people who are alive. And I think this reduces a tragic, horrible morning to something that’s only degrees away from the Waterworld Stunt Spectacular at Universal Studios.” Moriarty abruptly turned, in mid-review, to criticize his fellow critics, however, who went beyond intelligent criticism to engage in mean-spirited mockery: “This is film criticism? Who does a review like that serve? Is it just a point of pride (pun intended)? Is it just a chance to flex your sarcasm muscle for the amusement of yourself and a handful of other entertainment writers?” In the end, though, he did find one thing to applaud: “The new Fellowship of the Ring trailer helped a lot. It’s a brilliant, magical piece of filmmaking, two minutes, forty-one seconds that convey more emotion and adventure than anything I’ve seen in a theater this year.”

* * *

Families with kids most likely skipped Pearl Harbor this weekend and went to see Shrek instead. The film is a somewhat subversive fairy tale about a reclusive swamp-dwelling ogre who strikes a bargain with an egotistical power-mad lord. In exchange for a little peace and quiet back home, he agrees to rescue an imprisoned princess from a fire-breathing dragon so the conniving king-wannabe can marry her and become king. The movie exuberantly and sarcastically skewers the fairy tale formulas that are Disney’s bread and butter, even as it pulls off some heart-warming and surprisingly meaningful storytelling of its own. It’s also the flashiest animated feature yet from DreamWorks, the studio led by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Most critics are head-over heels about the picture. The U.S. Catholic Conference declares Shrek a “captivating animated film” in which “the sweet but conventional story of self-acceptance reaches new levels of excellence in its animation and a fine cast of voices further bolsters the film’s appeal.” Movieguide calls it “thoroughly enjoyable … a sweet, heartwarming morality tale about learning to love and be loved and looking beyond outward appearances to the inner beauty inside.” Movie Parables‘ Michael Elliott argues, “The secret of the film’s success and audience appeal lies in the casting of its vocal talent, most notably … Eddie Murphy who has never sounded better or funnier.'” Christian Spotlight on the Movies‘ Matthew Rees observes, “While there’s nothing really new or especially deep in the movie’s moral platitudes, they’re still refreshing in today’s self-centered and image-conscious society. And for children who haven’t heard them a hundred times before, they could very well make a lasting impression.”

Some in the religious media are a bit chagrined by the film’s allowance of rather base humor. Preview‘s uncredited reviewer has mixed feelings, claiming “Crude humor and questionable dialogue slightly tarnish the tale.” Crosswalk‘s Phil Boatwright testifies that “much of the material is the opposite of what parents would like their little ones to be learning. First off, sexual innuendoes and double entendres abound. Then, in keeping with today’s filmmakers’ infatuation with flatulence humor, there is also a crudeness associated with the lead character and his pals, including belching in front of others, flatulence jokes, and other forms of toilet humor.” J. Robert Parks of The Phantom Tollbooth is troubled by the constant cross-referencing; it quotes The Matrix, Babe, countless Disney classics, and more. “The references are just meant to flatter the audience,” he writes. “Ha ha, I recognize that character. Ho ho, I catch which movie that comes from. But irony and allusions are poor substitutes for beauty and emotion.”

But most mainstream critics found it in a class with Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and DreamWorks’ own Antz. Newsweek‘s David Ansen asks, exasperated, “Why can’t scripts this smart and economical be written for flesh-and-blood actors?” He calls recent CGI movies “throwbacks to the classical style of Hollywood filmmaking, where the story came first, the stars knew their place, and the movies were made to please the widest possible audience without stooping to the lowest common denominator.” Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times agrees: “All the craft in the world would not have made Shrek work if the story hadn’t been fun.” Entertainment Weekly‘s Lisa Schwarzbaum disagrees: “The technological innovations aren’t what make this feisty movie entertainment so refreshing. Nor is it the story specifics themselves. Shrek lives happily ever after because it’s such a feisty but good natured embrace of the inner ogre in everyone, and such an irreverent smackdown of the Establishment in all its ‘heigh ho’ tyranny.”

Two disgruntled critics—Salon.com‘s Stephanie Zacharek and The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane—expressed dismay at the film’s state-of-the-art animation. Lane summed up their complaint: “I don’t recall firing off indignant letters to Warner Bros. to complain about Wile E. Coyote and his insufficiently detailed snout. All I ever required of Road Runner was a drastic simplicity … and I still want the same thing.” His complaint reaches further: “What the film lacks is the faintest glimmer of charm; the need for fairy tales may be childish, but that is why it is both primitive and permanent, and, however much we rail at Disney for taking our offspring hostage and milking their emotions dry, there is something cynical, perhaps saddening, in DreamWorks’ insistence that children are now too hip to fall for that old game. If the team behind Shrek moves on to a film that questions the existence of Santa Claus, I may sue.”

I think Lane is misjudging the movie. Shrek isn’t laughing at the myths kids believe. It’s lashing out specifically at Disney’s tendency to drain rich, road-tested fairy tales of their integrity. To be fair, Disney’s Toy Story films and last year’s The Emperor’s New Groove are strong exceptions. But other recent sterilized Disney films and straight-to-video sequels have performed the equivalent of plastic surgery on already established stories. Do we really need a sappy sequel to The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Sure, the result might be technically impressive at first glance, but it reeks of artificiality … and worse, of greed. Our kids end up with shiny happy predictable products instead of learning the richness of good storytelling. Shrek‘s plot marches forward, even when songs do occur. It has its own lessons to teach, and while I agree with J. Robert Parks that the film is a little too cocky and crass, I found the choices in the film’s final act to be commendable and, contrary to Anthony Lane’s experience, charming.

Early on in Shrek, when one of the characters prepares to break into a platitude-heavy pop song, the grouchy ogre furiously tells him to shut up, and the story marches on. Kids and grownups alike laughed and applauded appreciatively. For those of us weary of Disney formulas, DreamWorks’ Antz and Shrek are evidence of animation’s exciting future. Disney is like pop music for the masses, clean, cheesy and dreamy; DreamWorks is rock ‘n’ roll, rebellious, rowdy and real. Let’s hope Disney is paying attention.

* * *

Angel Eyes will appeal to fans of tear-jerking love stories and police thrillers, but superstar Jennifer Lopez is the chief attraction. She plays a hot-tempered policewoman intrigued by a soft-spoken stranger named Catch (Jim Caviezel), and as romance ensues they help each other deal with ghosts from their past. Critics were divided on whether the movie is insipid emotionalism or insightful storytelling.

The U.S. Catholic Conference calls it a “tiresome drama”, saying that director Luis Mandoki “unsuccessfully blends thriller and romance genres as perfunctory performances, artificial sentiments and a mechanical script culminate in a forced ending.” Preview‘s review faults its “predictable plot and slow pace,” but notes that themes of forgiveness and healing “provide a strong redemption message to the film.” Movieguide‘s reviewer is pleased that the movie “builds to a redemptive, purifying emotional climax with positive family values.”

Bob Smithouser, Focus on the Family‘s critic, calls the film “little more than a glorified movie-of-the-week” and a “two-hour therapy session” culminating in “a ho-hum revelation that comes as no surprise to the audience.” (He adds, “On a positive note, the public actually sees less of [Lopez] in Angel Eyes than they do on most awards shows.”) Michael Elliott posts that this film is “at best a hit and miss production … providing scenes which will trigger the tear ducts of the more sensitive members of the audience. But the set up of those scenes is often clumsily handled.” He cites implausibilities as a flaw, such as the unlikelihood that Lopez’s character would be drawn to such a freaky stranger. “Catch’s unusual trance-like behavior and demeanor is simply too bizarre for us to believe that a policewoman would be comfortable letting him into her personal life, not to mention her home.”

Mainstream critics were also divided. At Salon.com, Andrew O’Hehir testifies that “All that happens is that people cry a lot, or else they make that pensive, twisty face that lets you know that they’re in denial right now but they’re getting ready to cry real soon. Events in Gerald DiPego’s screenplay just sort of unfold slowly and wilt, like the sodden vegetables you’ve forgotten in the bottom drawer of the fridge.” He also faults “the total lack of chemistry between its central couple.” But it sounds like Roger Ebert attended a different movie altogether: “Angel Eyes is a complex, evasive romance involving two people who both want to be inaccessible. [It’s] a cop movie, but its real story doesn’t involve the police, it involves damaged lives and the possibility that love can heal. This is a surprisingly effective film.”

Foreign Feast

Eureka is a Japanese import, showing in limited release. The film begins with a shocking, violent bus hijacking, then jumps forward in time to trace the effects of the violence on the lives of young people who experienced it. Reviews of the film sound like testimonies to religious experiences, loaded with words like “redemptive” and “healing”.

J. Robert Parks of The Phantom Tollbooth is thunderstruck by Shinji Aoyama’s movie. “I urge you to see Eureka,” he writes. “You’ll need the whole afternoon or evening since the film is 220 minutes long, but it’s well worth it.” Parks avoids describing the plot: “Part of the movie’s charm is how its story slowly develops. The film is simply gorgeous to watch.”

Stephen Holden of The New York Times disparages the film’s slow, contemplative pace: “Eureka never comes to life. In pursuing its aesthetic agenda so single-mindedly, the movie leaves the characters behind in the muck.” And Stephen Cole of Canada’s National Post complains about “long, barren sequences where characters stare off into space or wander aimlessly through the frame.” But The Chicago Reader‘s Jonathan Rosenbaum responds specifically to them: “These critics seem to be judging the film by the character-centered, action-driven standards of commercial cinema. Those ‘long, barren sequences’ enrich Eureka as surprisingly powerful and precise articulations of the void within the characters. And as thoroughly Japanese excursions into an open space drained of traditional meanings, they take on a hypnotic, meditative quality of their own.” Rosenbaum calls the film “immensely moving”, describing it as “an action picture, a road movie, a whodunit, and a slasher film … about the immeasurable and lasting damage suffered by those who experience senseless violence.”

“Eureka takes you into another world,” writes Amy Taubin of The Village Voice, “one that at the end of three and a half hours I didn’t want to leave. What’s so extraordinary about Eureka is that it makes one believe that intimate human connections are possible, that empathy is worth struggling for, and that propriety and hipster cynicism alike must fall by the wayside en route to unconditional love.” Writing like a man who has just had an epiphany, Film.com‘s Peter Brunette enthuses, “What Aoyama and his cinematographer, Masaki Tamra, do with light will shake you to the core. If you’re looking for a transformative, redemptive [experience] … at the moment you can’t do any better than go to see this film.” Mr. Showbiz critic Michael Atkinson is similarly affected: “Synopses are useless in evoking films like Eureka—the movie is all about experiencing the time of it, and in the fourth hour, because it is the fourth hour, everything these characters do is weighted with importance and sadness. Every poetic detail pulses with heartbreak. Eureka is a nearly transcendental adventure.”

Table Talk

Next week: Will audiences dance to the tune of Moulin Rouge? Plus, some Film Forum readers share the movies that have most inspired them.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Fuchida grew up loving his native Japan and hating the United States, which treated Asian immigrants harshly in the first half of the twentieth century. Fuchida attended a military academy, joined Japan’s Naval Air Force, and by 1941, with 10,000 flying hours behind him, had established himself as the nation’s top pilot. When Japanese military leaders needed someone to command a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, they chose Fuchida. [Here, you can cut to the movie—it renders the attack pretty faithfully.]

Fuchida’s was the voice that sent his aircraft carrier the message “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!) indicating the success of the surprise mission. Later, he too was surprised when he learned that, of the 70 officers who participated in the raid, he was the only one who returned alive. He had another close call when he was shot down during the battle of Midway in 1942, but despite serious injuries, he survived again.

By 1945 he had attained the position of the Imperial Navy’s Air Operations Officer. On August 6 he was eating breakfast in Nara, Japan, where a new military headquarters was under construction, when he heard about a bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He flew to investigate, then sent a grim report to the Imperial Command.

On the same day, an American P.O.W. named Jacob DeShazer felt moved by the Holy Spirit to pray for peace. DeShazer had been in captivity since 1942, when, as a member of Doolittle’s Raiders, he dropped bombs near Tokyo and then was forced to parachute into China. While imprisoned, first in Nanjing and later in Beijing, DeShazer had become a Christian. He found his heart softened toward his Japanese captors. After being liberated, DeShazer wrote a widely distributed essay, “I Was a Prisoner of the Japanese,” detailing his experiences of capture, conversion, and forgiveness.

Fuchida and DeShazer met in 1950. DeShazer had returned to Japan in 1948 as a missionary. Fuchida had read DeShazer’s testimony, bought a Bible, and converted from Buddhism to Christianity. DeShazer had recently finished a 40-day fast for revival in Japan when Fuchida came to his home and introduced himself. DeShazer welcomed the new convert and encouraged him to be baptized. While DeShazer continued to plant churches throughout Japan, Fuchida became an evangelist, spreading a message of peace and forgiveness in his native country and throughout Asian-American communities.

Fuchida died 25 years ago, on May 30, 1976. Like dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, who wished his legacy to be one of peace rather than destruction, Fuchida wanted the message of his changed heart to supersede the memory of his infamous attack. He wrote, “That morning [December 7] … I lifted the curtain of warfare by dispatching that cursed order, and I put my whole effort into the war that followed. … [But] after buying and reading the Bible, my mind was strongly impressed and captivated. I think I can say today without hesitation that God’s grace has been set upon me.”

Elesha Coffman is associate editor of Christian History.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Fuchida’s conversion testimony, “From Pearl Harbor to Calvary,” is reprinted on the Christian History site as well.

DeShazer’s story, “From Bombs to Something More Powerful,” appeared in our sister publication Christian Reader in 1997.

Other sites with information on Fuchida include: Richard Rongstad’s obituary collection, Ralph Chambers’ Harvest Time newsletters at Dorna’s Lighthouse, and one of syndicated columnist Howard Kleinberg‘s pieces from last December.

For more on Pearl Harbor, both the movie and the event, Coffman recommends The History Channel‘s site and a joint online project between MSNBC and Newsweek.

Fuchida wroteMidway: The Battle That Doomed Japan. Gordon Prange’s biography of Fuchida is called God’s Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor.

Two weeks ago, Christianity Today‘s Books & Culture Corner examined John Gregory Dunne’s assertion that Americans got what they deserved at Pearl Harbor.

National Geographic‘s site has a fancy multimedia Pearl Harbor area.

In addition to the usual film fare, the Pearl Harbor movie site has survivor stories and more history about December 7, 1941.

With a few exceptions the movie was not reviewed well by either mainstream or Christian critics, as Christianity Today‘s Film Forum noted Thursday.

BlueJacket.com offers a history piece on “What the Pearl Harbor Chaplains Were Doing.”

Here’s a live Webcam of what’s going on at Pearl Harbor right now.

Christian History Corner appears every Friday at ChristianityToday.com. Previous Christian History Corners include:

Rivers of Life | In Africa, survival depends on open waterways. Missionary explorer David Livingstone believed that salvation did, too. (May 25, 2001)

Intro to the Inklings | C.S. Lewis’s intellect was stimulated at one of the most fascinating extracurricular clubs ever. (May 18, 2001)

How Not to Read Dante | You probably missed the point of The Divine Comedy in high school. (May 11, 2001)

If My People Will Pray | The U.S. National Day of Prayer Turns 50, but its origins are much older. (May 4, 2001)

Mutiny and Redemption | The rarely told story of new life after the destruction of the H.M.S. Bounty. (Apr. 27, 2001)

Book Notes | New and noteworthy releases on church history that deserve recognition. (Apr. 20, 2001)

A Primer on Paul | The History Channel uses Holy Saturday not to discuss Jesus, but the apostle who spread his message. (Apr. 12, 2001)

Image Is Everything | The Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist statues is only the latest controversy over the Second Commandment. (Apr. 6, 2001)

Christian Education for All | The first Sunday schools provide a positive example of government partnerships with faith-based organizations.(Mar. 23, 2001)

The Sport of Saints? | Forget St. Pat’s. It’s time for March Madness, baby! (And yes, it’s Christian.) (Mar. 16, 2001)

Digging in China | Christianity in the world’s most populous country may be a lot older than anybody imagined. (Mar. 9, 2001)

Food for the Soul? | Lenten traditions range from fowl-turned-fish to pretzels. (Mar. 2, 2001)