Reel Spirituality

Sundance 2012

Fuller at Sundance 2012!

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Sundance 2012

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Beauty and the Beast

The ugliness that Belle has to learn to look past isn’t just the physical ugliness of the beast. It’s the ugliness that she perceives in living an ordinary life. She has to learn to see the beauty of love even if it means surrendering some of her independence and sense of adventure…

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Fuller Studio plus

Beauty and the Beast

The ugliness that Belle has to learn to look past isn’t just the physical ugliness of the beast. It’s the ugliness that she perceives in living an ordinary life. She has to learn to see the beauty of love even if it means surrendering some of her independence and sense of adventure…

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Depictions of Indian Poverty in World Cinema

India is a vast, complex, and diverse nation. The proposed perpetuators and enders of poverty in India’s films are similarly complex and diverse…

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The Power of Film: Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans taught me to see others through God’s eyes. It helped me to understand that the culture at times needs to be challenged and changed for the better. The team’s unity despite its diversity painted a beautiful picture of what community is really supposed to look like…

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The Way

Lyrically filmed along the pilgrimage route, the movie is on one level about a place, a several hundred mile long foot path for pilgrims. But like all “road trip” movies, it is not the setting or even the plot that carries the weight of the movie. What is of real importance in the movie is what the characters learn en route, their personal pilgrimage toward insight and wholeness as they travel along “The Way.”

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My Favorite Films I (Re)Viewed in 2011

The following ten films are the films I saw in the theater that have most impacted me and helped me love the world better in the previous year. When I entertain a film and allow a film to entertain me, I am trying to do what Jesus did and rub shoulders with the people of earth so that I may love the world better…

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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Besides trying to save the world, Holmes’ motivation for traveling the world in this movie is to save his friendship with Dr. Watson. Faced with the doctor’s marriage, Holmes fears losing his friend…

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Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

So often these days it seems films feature action played out in front of a green screen, and as good as today’s CGI is, it’s not reality, and CGI stunts just lack peril. Ghost Protocol has peril…

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The Muppets

I’ve long been grateful for Jim Henson, for his Muppets and for his graceful search for his “rainbow connection.” In doing so, he approached the joy and happiness we’re all called to. With his weird little camaraderie of puppets, he gave us a clearer picture of what it means to be human than we find in most other places…

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Hugo

Martin Scorsese seems to just really loves movies. Maybe this love stems from this childhood when because of his struggles with asthma, he spent his days in the local cinema instead of playing outside. The imagination of moviemakers awakened young Scorsese to new possibilities, and in Hugo, every character is awakened by the imagination of another…

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Colliding With Melancholia

No matter where the tree comes from, what you hang on its branches, or whether you have to water it or reassemble it, putting up a Christmas tree is a ritual thousands of people perform every day this time of year. Lars von Trier’s new film, Melancholia, asks whether that ritual, or any of the countless other rituals we participate in, has any content—or if it is just an empty pattern of life.

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Rob Johnston Interviewed on CENTERED Radio

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The Power of Film: Into the Wild

Into the Wild creates common language and a common ground for our culture to stand on when speaking about relationships and community. By encountering the story, I learned a reason why freedom should not be the ultimate objective in life…

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J. Edgar

Hoover’s files are full of recordings and correspondences of a sexually scandalous nature. To Hoover, it seems that the most dreadful secrets to keep are those of sexual malfeasance. Hoover felt oppressed by American society because of his sexuality, so he used sexuality to oppress the avatars of his oppressor. Hoover wielded the weapon he knew best, the very weapon wielded against him…

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Kutter Callaway

There Will Be Blood: Music, Mystery, and Milkshakes

At times, it would seem that there are simply no words to describe what music is doing with us, for us, and perhaps even to us. For, in the context of filmgoing, music is not simply meaningful; it is also powerful. It is somehow capable of accessing the inner recesses of our basic humanity. A telling example of film music’s mysterious, meaning-making capacity is found in Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent film, There Will Be Blood…

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Dr. Rob Johnston to be Featured on Satellite Radio Program

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The Power of Film: The Army of the 12 Monkeys

In 1996, I was a blonde haired, blue eyed, Northern California daughter of a banker father and a stay at home mother. Mike, my boyfriend and star football player and I, a dancer with my high school squad, set out on a typical Saturday evening date-night. Not telling my parents goodbye, I hurried out of the house and into Mike’s Mustang. Our movie started in 15 minutes…

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Killing God in French Cinema

What might both the French and American church learn from a children’s movie?

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Popcorn + Prophecy

There may be no artistic medium that more directly engages story than film. And among the film genres, none move their chips more fully onto story than documentary films…

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