Articles
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2004-11-15 04:44:34
In its most extreme form, the charge of morbidity has been
laid at the feet of the Christian faith itself. Christianity’s
harshest critics denounce it as "a religion of death." Clearly,
at some point objections of this sort must be regarded as a case
in point of what the scriptures call the "scandal" of the cross.
It is the cross itself, the very suffering and dying of God made
man, and the way Christians respond to this event in their faith
and devotion, that is behind much (though again not all) of the
religious and anti-religious controversy over the brutality of
this particular film.
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2004-11-05 00:03:42
Let’s face it: So far, it’s been a lousy year for family
films. Until now, the fine Two Brothers has been
just about the only bright spot. Of course DreamWorks’
phonetically similar CGI twins Shrek 2 and Shark Tale each made far
more money than Two Brothers, but neither is quite what I
consider fine family viewing. And other choices have been
forgettable and quickly forgotten: Home on the Range, Clifford’s Really
Big Movie, Good Boy!
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2004-10-29 12:24:25
The religious themes in the B-movie horror films directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Films could fill a book. In fact, there is such a book.
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2004-10-28 09:37:23
Actually, Spin, adapted by the younger Redford from
Donald Everett Axinn’s debut novel of the same name, is an
intimate coming-of-age drama set in 1950s small-town Arizona.
Starring Ryan Merriman, Stanley Tucci, Dana Delany, and Paula
Garcés, it tells the story of an orphan named Eddie
(Merriman) whose parents were killed in a flying accident, and
who was left by his uncle (Tucci) to be raised by a Mexican
employee (Rubén Blades) and his Anglo wife (Delany), a
schoolteacher.
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2004-10-22 08:52:50
In 2002, according to a July 16 Philadelphia Inquirer
story ("Film rating trend raises creepy issues"), Nell Minow,
a.k.a. the "Movie Mom" and film critic for
movies.yahoo.com, went to see the PG-13 rated
About a Boy. At one point in the film, Hugh Grant used an
adjectival form of what the MPAA calls "one of the harsher
sexually-derived words," but is often referred to as "the
f-word."
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2004-10-22 04:50:09
Must a decent film deal only with uplifting or wholesome subjects, or may dark or disturbing themes also be dealt with? Can a film include nudity or profanity and still be “decent”? Can “humane culture” include popular films or genres like action films and romantic comedies, or do only highbrow “art films” count as true culture?
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2004-09-30 05:16:35
The Question of God, airing in two parts on PBS
September 15 and 22, is an extension of Dr. Nicholi’s course and
of his book The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund
Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life,
published by the Free Press. Over the course of its four hours,
The Question of God blends biographical surveys of Freud’s
and Lewis’s intellectual and metaphysical journeys, panel
discussions of believers and unbelievers moderated by Dr.
Nicholi, expert interviews with authorities like Peter Kreeft and
Harold Blum, and dramatic readings from Freud’s and Lewis’s
writings with actors portraying the two thinkers.
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2004-08-31 07:01:15
As I contemplate Mel Gibson’s
The Passion
of the Christ, the sequence I keep coming back to, again and
again, is the scourging at the pillar.
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2004-08-31 07:01:14
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League declared recently that Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ is
not antisemitic, and that Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but a “true believer.”
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2004-04-17 19:13:25
The Matrix is simultaneously a
philosophical model and a popular myth — a postmodern analogue to
both Plato’s cave and Homer’s
Odyssey, Descartes’
daemon and
Pilgrim’s Progress, the brains-in-vats
scenario and
Star Wars.
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2004-04-16 10:32:42
Four years after its release, the world of
The Matrix has been
greatly elaborated by a pair of sequels,
The Matrix Reloaded and
The Matrix
Revolutions. Given the intense philosophical and
religious scrutiny to which the original film has been subjected,
doubtless fans will be scrutinizing the new films to see what
light they shed on the first film, and how they themselves should
be viewed in light of the spiritual questions raised by the first
film.
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2004-04-16 10:32:41
This level of interest is not primarily due to
The
Matrix’s visual innovations, such as its groundbreaking use
of bullet-time photography. Nor is it, for example, Keanu
Reeves’s acting that cries out for more critical discussion.
Rather, it’s the philosophical, spiritual, and moral implications
of this phenomenally popular action pic that are responsible for
all the attention.
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2004-04-02 02:41:33
Now, encouraging signs of change in recent Disney films
suggest that the Mouse may be starting to get the message. The
new trend began with surprisingly strong pro-family themes in
direct-to-video sequels such as Lady & the Tramp II:
Scamp’s Adventure. This positive depiction of family
continued in the theatrically released (though still low-budget)
sequels Return to
Never Land and Jungle Book 2.
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2004-04-02 02:41:32
Is Home on the Range really the final entry in the
canon of Disney’s traditional hand-animated feature films — a
body of work that goes back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
and includes such landmarks as Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Beauty
and the Beast?
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2004-04-02 02:41:32
The modern era of Disney animated greatness started with a splash in 1989 when the promisingly fresh
The Little Mermaid hit theaters. Delighted audiences actually burst into applause at colorful show-stopping musical numbers like the sprightly "Under the Sea" and the enchanting "Kiss the Girl." Coming as it did after a string of uninspired releases (
The Fox and the Hound,
The Black Cauldron,
Oliver & Company),
The Little Mermaid set the stage for a creative comeback.
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2004-04-02 02:41:30
Veteran Catholic performer Barry, who calls his apostolate
Radix, has been doing his live one-man passion play for a decade,
accompanied for most of that time by his musical partner, Eric
Genuis. One recorded version has played for a number of years on
EWTN around Holy Week. This version, filmed live in 2003 at the
Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, TN, benefits from enhanced production
values including multiple cameras.
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2004-04-02 02:41:30
The open-mindedness of the young obviously imposes a huge
responsibility on parents to watch what their children are
exposed to. But it also represents a tremendous opportunity to
expose children to valuable and worthwhile experiences that for
many of their peers will be lost, possibly forever, by the time
they are teenagers.
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2004-03-05 15:38:05
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2004-02-28 18:53:58
As Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis was the first
great science fiction film and Ford’s
Stagecoach was
perhaps the first great Western,
The Lord of the Rings is
the first great cinematic achievement of its kind - a genre that
might be described as epic Western mythopoeia, but is often
popularly (if imprecisely) called "fantasy" or "swords and
sorcery."
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2004-01-30 03:07:21
Even movie-savvy Catholics often haven’t heard of One Man’s
Hero, Lance Hool’s 1999 film about the San Patricios, a group
of Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1840s who joined the U.S.
Army but deserted after suffering religious and ethnic
persecution, fled to Catholic Mexico, and wound up fighting on
the Mexican side in the U.S.-Mexican War. The film, starring Tom
Beringer, never got a proper U.S. theatrical release, and hasn’t
been promoted on video and DVD, even in Catholic markets and
media.
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2003-12-15 12:32:31
“I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged,” said
Rhys-Davies, “and if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.”
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2003-12-12 06:48:10
J. R. R. Tolkien once described his epic
masterpiece
The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally
religious and Catholic work." Yet nowhere in its pages is there
any mention of religion, let alone of the Catholic Church,
Christ, or even God. Tolkien’s hobbits have no religious
practices or cult; of prayer, sacrifice, or corporate worship
there is no sign.
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2003-12-12 04:27:15
Yet neither Baum nor even Mitchell ever quite generated the
level of intensely passionate fan devotion inspired by J. R. R.
Tolkien’s epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. This is
a fact not lost on New Zealand director Peter Jackson, whose
ambitious, unprecedented back-to-back three-film adaptation of
The Lord of the Rings launches this December with The
Fellowship of the Ring.
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2003-11-24 06:32:04
Beautiful, rugged UK landscapes, splendid old castles and other shooting locations, and some fairly impressive sets help create a sense of authenticity. At the same time, with the earlier episodes especially limited by modest production values, rudimentary special effects, and uneven acting, the
Chronicles can’t be held even to the standard of such American TV productions as the
Merlin and
Arabian Nights miniseries.
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2003-10-10 13:41:15
The hero’s nearly religious reverence for rock’s angry
posturing and anti-authoritarianism — reverence culminating in a
pre-concert prayer to the "God of rock" — isn’t quite condoned,
but isn’t put in any larger context either. Rock culture’s darker
side is whitewashed (it’s not about drugs, kids, and groupies are
really just band cheerleaders!), and subjects other than music
(and even music other than rock) get short shrift. Then there’s
the swishing, lisping fifth-grade "band stylist" bringing "Queer
Eye" camp to the grade-school setting.
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2003-09-25 21:54:05
In one sense, I’d like to see more films like this made. At
the same time,
Luther is also a seriously flawed film. Relentlessly hagiographical in its depiction of Luther and one-sidedly positive in its view of the Reformation, the film also distorts Catholic theology and significant matters of historical fact, consistently skewing its portrayal to put Luther in the best possible light while making his opponents seem as unreasonable as possible.
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2003-08-04 10:43:18
Seven years ago, after nearly six decades of marriage to an
active Roman Catholic, Bob Hope was received into the Catholic
Church, and became a frequent communicant. His funeral Mass was
celebrated on July 30 at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in
North Hollywood, and on Sunday, August 3, he was remembered at a
memorial Mass celebrated by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of
Washington, D.C. at the National Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception.
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2003-07-19 18:51:49
A Jesus who commits sins — who even
thinks he commits
sins, who talks a great deal about needing "forgiveness" and
paying with his life for his own sins; a Jesus who himself speaks
blasphemy and idolatry, calling fear his "god" and talking about
being motivated more by fear than by love; who has an ambivalent
at best relationship with the Father, even trying to merit divine
hatred so that God will leave him alone — all of this is utterly
antithetical to Christian belief and sentiment.
This is not
merely focusing on Jesus’ humanity, this is effectively
contradicting his divinity.
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2003-04-20 06:38:16
From a religious point of view, Kevin Smith’s
Dogma comes a lot closer to making sense if you just accept one premise: The angels in it — fallen and otherwise — are all really bad at theology.
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2003-04-20 06:38:15
Moral and spiritual issues raised by the Star Wars
phenomenon range from the problem of where to draw the line on
Star Wars tie-in products all the way to the
theological problems associated with the concept of "the
Force."
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