Are we all simply cogs in the wheels of history, simply tourists passing bewilderingly through modern life, out of place players in a post-modern drama we’ll never really understand? Or is there something distinctly human, magnificent, and special about each of us that makes us more than products of our times?
If Jesus’ resurrection was both an assurance of his triumph over death and an ushering in of a new movement of shalom, that’s completely counter-cultural to a pop-art understanding of what it means to have new life after death. When figures come back from the dead in our contemporary stories, they generally do so to seek revenge…
Neville Kiser is a much applauded screenwriter in UCLA’s screenwriting program and a Brehm Center alumni. Listen in as Brehm Center Associate Director Nate Risdon talks with him about how he discerned his calling as a screenwriter.
How is it that we as viewers could also so disengaged from this tragedy, so “amoral” you might say? Did we even know it was going on? Recall an opening scene where a television journalist shows the hotel manager footage of a massacre he has shot blocks from the hotel. The journalist says, “If people see this footage, they’ll say, ‘Oh my God, that’s terrible,’ and they’ll go on eating their dinners.” And in fact, that is what we did…
Poverty, mercy, justice, and the movies.
I didn’t begin loving Vertigo until I was in high school. I think I was 17 or 18 before I actually understood even the basic foundation of the plot – that Madeline and Judy really are the same person. Looking back, I think what appealed to me was the idea of the Ideal Woman that so permeates this film…
So called “Christ-figures” permeate cinema, but ought we to so heavily one particular type of Christ figure over others? Listen in to hear our thoughts.
Because we are people with a confounding inconsistent preference for both the concrete and the abstract in stories, or a blend of the two, the best that modern day storytellers, that is the filmmakers, can hope for is that the audience will suspend disbelief, enter the story and actively seek to make meaning from what they have seen and heard…
While Spielberg and Lucas were wildly successful in creating one of cinema’s most loved heroes, I think they failed to create another version of James Bond. But they failed in the best possible way, because they created a character with real emotions who genuinely learns and grows as he is shaped by his adventures…
Cast your vote on which film better depicts Christian political enegagement – A Man For All Seasons or Footloose.
Ultimately, though, just as the marimba leitmotiv signifies the characters’ aesthetic impulses, the transformation of this leitmotiv signifies a reorientation of their basic understanding concerning the good, the true, and ultimately, the beautiful…
The movie seems appropriate for grade-school-age children who have been adopted cross-culturally and who are starting to have questions about their culture of origin, their place in their current culture, and the relationship between the two. The movie could be used as a way to begin a series of discussions with a child about culture, both the culture of their birth family and the culture of their new family…
Journey with us through time as we talk about adolescents as depicted in Back to the Future and The 400 Blows.
In a previous post, I wrote abut how my goal is to point to the beauty that I see in the world. One walks out of Looper thinking, “Wow. That was such a clever movie! I’s smart too because I understand it!” One walks out of Seven Psychopaths thinking, “Wow. Non-violence is radical and beautiful. How can I have more of it in my life?”
When I headed to the Toronto International Film Festival this year, I was excited, as I always am, to see some films that I may never get a chance to see somewhere else, but I must admit that the ticket I was most excited about was Cloud Atlas…
My desire is to see more beauty (wholeness, goodness, completeness) in the world. Sometimes seeing more beauty means looking in places I used to be afraid to look and applauding the beauty shining there. Sometimes seeing more beauty means creating beauty where I don’t see any. I believe the world is moving toward the Beautiful, that Beauty is overtaking everything. It is my humble pleasure to see it and join in…
The Dark Knight is still rising, the debates about guns and movies and killing are still waiting to be had, families in Colorado are still grieving. So if we’re going to take cinema seriously – which, if you believe in the power of art to interweave with autobiography, is indivisible from taking life seriously – we’re going to have to keep talking about Batman’s bad summer…
Reel Spirituality Co-Director Rob Johnston considers whether or not the movies are a legitimate place to encounter God.
One tells of the fitful test of faith that fell to Joan of Arc. The other tells of the attempted forced servitude of the Looney Tunes. We consider both in this week’s podcast.
We can’t simply care deeply about cities. We are going to have to be involved in them. Love is not an emotion. Love is action. Love is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, nursing the ill, and rehabilitating the criminals. Love is being good citizens…
Reel Spirituality Co-Director Elijah Davidson and guest host Richard Goodwin consider Crash and Bicycle Thieves and what, if anything, they have to offer an increasingly urbanized world.