ChristianMingle.com has now been made into a movie. Here’s the premise. A young woman pretends to be a Christian so that she can meet a nice guy through the Christian Mingle dating service. Along the way, she learns that maybe she needs to take Christianity seriously. I confess that sounds less like a premise and more like a summary of the entire movie. Blame the trailer. Watch it above.
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50 Shades of Strange
I have not read 50 Shades of Grey, nor do I plan to. The book is a bona fide publishing phenom, but every description I have read is that the story amounts to literary pornography. For that reason, I can’t imagine anything helpful coming from the film version set to be released later this year. I’ll be sitting that one out too. So I have great sympathy for the concerns Aimee Byrd expresses about the reception of the forthcoming movie. She writes:
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First trailer for the movie “Unbroken”
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Trailer for new Moses movie starring Christian Bale
Ridley Scott has directed a new adaptation of the Moses story from the biblical book of Exodus. It stars Christian Bale and will hit theaters in December. The film is titled Exodus: Gods and Kings. The newly released trailer is above.
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The poignant truth about Andy’s dad from “Toy Story”
If you pay close attention to Pixar movies, you may notice that filmmakers are intentional about what goes on in the background of their stories. They seem to be dropping hints that imply a backstory to the main story that you are watching. Speculating on the backstory has become somewhat of a parlor game for some. Jon Negroni has devoted a whole website to it. But the fascinating thing is that some of the observations he’s made are not wholly fanciful but are quite compelling.
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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken is easily one of the best books I’ve ever experienced. I love biographies, but this one is a stand-out. I first heard about this book years ago but only recently took the time to go through it myself. I just finished it Friday evening. If you are unfamiliar with the story, the book is about the life and times of Louie Zamperini, a 1936 Olympian and hero of World War II. His story is larger than life, painted on a global canvas, encompassing the heights of human triumph and the depths of human degradation. In short, Zamperini went from juvenile delinquent to Olympian (who met Hitler!)…
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Happy Belated Birthday to… Napoleon Dynamite
How could I have missed it? I do not know, but I did. Yesterday, Napoleon Dynamite turned ten years old. Happy Birthday, Napoleon. You are an American treasure. Now go back to drawing some Ligers.
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A movie that makes abortion funny
Louise Melling describes the new movie “Obvious Child” as a romantic comedy that tries to make abortion sympathetic and funny (view trailer here). Melling writes: In it, main character Donna has an abortion after a drunken one-night stand. But unlike most other characters who grapple with this question, Donna doesn’t torture herself. She makes the decision without angst, guilt, or extenuating circumstances. And like millions of American women, Donna follows through, then moves on with her life. A movie about an experience this common – nearly one in three American women will have an abortion in their lifetime — shouldn’t feel so revolutionary. But it does. Melling goes on to…
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The cast of the new “Star Wars” announced
The cast of the new Star Wars film has been announced, and it includes some of the old favorites from the original trilogy. From The Daily Beast: On Tuesday afternoon, the world took one step closer to that galaxy far, far away as Disney and Lucasfilm announced the cast for filmmaker J.J. Abrams’ upcoming sequel, Star Wars: Episode VII—a film reportedly set 30 years after the events of the 1983 flick Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Actors John Boyega (Attack the Block), Daisy Ridley (Mr. Selfridge), Adam Driver (Girls), Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis), Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings), Domhnall Gleeson (Anna Karenina), and screen legend Max von Sydow are…
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The midrashiest midrash that ever was midrashed. . . . . [a spoiler-free “Noah” review]
Shall I tread where angels fear to tread and give an evaluation of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah movie? Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by angels. In the movie Noah, the frilly feminine harp-stroking caricatures have given way to a cross between Ben Grimm, Peter Jackson’s Ents, and Gumby. I guess we can chalk that one up to the mystery of the Nephilim. But I digress. What about the movie? Is it any good? Should Christians go and see it? Should anyone go and see it?