Before the Giants…

Before the surprising success of Facing the Giants, Alex and Stephen Kendrick, produced their first feature film, Flywheel.  With a budget of only $20,000, these relatively new filmmakers cast community and church members to tell a morally uplifting story about the power of prayer and the necessity of placing God first in your life. [Read more]

Shock me, shock me, shock me with that deviant behavior

Over the next year, I will be co-directing the sociology of religion movie night along with Pop Theology contributor Wendy Arce under the supervision of Jerome Baggett, Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.  A monthly film screening that started over a year ago, the series features documentaries about religious subject matter, as Jerome argues that, and I agree, we are experiencing a heyday of religious documentaries.  This year, while we have convinced Jerome to include narrative films, we began with another documentary, The Devil’s Playground (2002). [Read more]

Tekkonkinkreet

I am no anime or manga expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I recognize the artistic value, beauty, and potential for these art forms.  They, or animation in general, can image the limitless possibilities of our imagination.  Theology and film scholars are starting to catch on to the implications of great works like Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.  Unlike much mainstream animation, great anime often blends truly fantastic animation with deep storytelling.  Flipping through some past BFI catalogues, I noticed that throughout the summer, they offered anime screenings from various filmmakers.  I decided to take a chance on one that stood out with at least the most interesting title:  Tekkonkinkreet (2006), directed by Michael Arias and based on the popular manga by Taiyo Matsumoto. [Read more]

Do You Believe In…

In college, I read a book that began to drastically change the way I thought about God and the ways in which God worked in the world.  For a young person from a conservative Southern Baptist background, Leslie D. Weatherhead’s The Will of God was a radical reading experience.  Faced with theological inconsistencies during World War II, Weatherhead began re-thinking his concept of the will of God.  His text, a series of sermons to victims of the war and their families, resonates decades later with anyone experiencing suffering or, perhaps, a series of debilitating doubts.  I recently watched two films that reminded me of Weatherhead’s text.  Both Saint Ralph (2004) and The Third Miracle (1999) deal, indirectly, with the will of God through their characters’ pursuit of miracles or interactions with the miraculous. [Read more]

New Leader…

Congratulations to Dr. Brad Braxton, former homiletics and New Testament professor at Wake Forest University Divinity School, on his election as the sixth senior pastor at Riverside Church in New York City.  Follow the link after the jump for more. [Read more]

The Flip Side of the Coin

Occasional Pop Theology contributor Daniel Skidmore provides a quick review of the Coen brothers’ latest film, Burn After Reading. [Read more]

The Audacity of Despair

During the Olympics, President Bush sat down for a rather lengthy interview with Bob Costas.  Costas began a question about China’s problems by saying, “I know America has its share of problems, but….”  Almost before Costas could finish his question, Bush rushed and said, “America doesn’t have problems.”  Clearly President Bush and David Simon are not looking at the same America.  Simon, former journalist for The Baltimore Sun, acclaimed author of Homicide and The Corner, and the writer and producer of the greatest television series ever, The Wire, is currently serving as the writer-in-residence at Cal Berkeley.  Yesterday afternoon, he gave a lecture entitled “The Wire:  The Audacity of Despair.”

[Read more]

Lifeboat

Pop Theology contributor Wendy Arce reviews a Hitchcock classic, Lifeboat. [Read more]

Fall TV Preview

I received my favorite issues of Entertainment Weekly recently, the Fall telvision and movie previews.  I thought I would comb through them and create my own version of each.  So here it is, the first ever Pop Theology Fall TV Preview or, rather, the contets to the Pop Theology DVR Box. [Read more]

Survival…

For two weeks during the summer, I took a course on American slavery and the Holocaust.  Talk about summer time fun time!  From the start, we sought to avoid “invidious comparisons” between the two events that would eternally debate who suffered more or which event was more horrific.  Instead, we looked at issues of race, power, economics, and evil in an attempt to understand how events like these could happen and how ordinary people could collude with such extraordinarily evil circumstances. The question of how ordinary people could survive such horrific circumstances, though never explicitly raised for discussion, inevitably followed readings about the Middle Passage or any number of Nazi death camps.  To illustrate the lasting psychological damage that these events exacted on their victims, we watched two films, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker and Jonathan Demme’s Beloved.  Recently, I encountered another, The Counterfeiters. [Read more]

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