Ryan and Amy are finishing up a week in a Southeast Asian paradise with little or no contact with the outside world. This past week, I made the decision to leave Berkeley and join Fred in Southern Louisiana. Apparently, after 6 years in the middle of things in the Bay Area, Ryan and I are [...]
In ongoing research for a book on violence, forgiveness, and reconciliation in film, I’m looking at texts that explore Christian reflections on the the latter. I came across Andrew Sung Park‘s Triune Atonement: Christ’s Healing for Sinners, Victims, and the Whole Creation, which provides both an informative look at a host of atonement theories and [...]
Catching up on a bit of film-watching and research, I recently watched Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Five Minutes of Heaven, a 2009 film inspired by the Protestant/Catholic wars in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and based on a script by Guy Hibbert. Not only is it a stirring image of the effects of individual and collective violence, [...]
Maybe you’ve heard about it in the traditional media or stumbled on it on YouTube, but one of the hottest viral videos on the ‘Net today is a sermon, delivered in hip-hop/spoken word style by 22 year-old Jefferson Bethke.
I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about sin, violence, forgiveness and reconciliation for a book I’m starting to write on the portrayal of these themes in film. I’m also beginning a search for films to use in the book (suggestions are always welcome!). I just watched a 2005 Iranian film, Day Break, which has [...]
I fancy myself a bit of a gamer. Here on our world tour, I’ve allowed myself a PS Vita as my luxury item. It’s helped feed the addiction in between sight-seeing and eating/drinking. I check the game sights every few days to keep up with the latest news, releases and reviews. But in my most [...]
A fuller engagement with media (film, music, novels, etc.) requires not only an active imagination (in order to make cinematic leaps or construct visuals from the written word, for example), but also an active memory. We enjoy films, in part, or better connect with the characters because we remember similar joyful or painful experiences that [...]
Richard here. There comes a point–maybe it’s after studying a bunch of obscure films for a graduate degree–that you discover you’re completely culturally out of touch with the rest of the world.
