If you haven’t yet read Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (Little, Brown and Company 2012; out in paperback this month) it will likely be your favorite beach read this summer, so I won’t give away the ending. It’s the beautiful and hilarious story of 15 year old Bee Branch’s attempt to understand what happened when her mother disappeared without warning on the day before they were set to leave for an Antarctic vacation. A modern epistolary novel, the... Read more
On March 3, History Channel premiered its much-discussed miniseries The Bible, which proved to be thoroughly popular both on its original airdates and now on DVD. But what intrigued me more was the show that followed The Bible’s premiere, History Channel’s first original fictional series, Vikings. The series ended its inaugural season this Sunday but will return for a second season sometime in 2014. The brainchild of former Tudors scribe Michael Hirst, Vikings follows the exploits of the semi-mythical Ragnar... Read more
Each week in The Moviegoer, Nick Olson examines new and upcoming films. During an early scene in Gorō Miyazaki’s From Up on Poppy Hill, our attention is directed to a high school in Yokohama, Japan. Poppy Hill tells the story of 16 year old Umi Matsuzaki who, in this particular scene, is sitting outside enjoying lunch with a couple of friends. Suddenly, the lunch is interrupted when, next door, a crowd of boys from the high school emerge dutifully from the Latin... Read more
We've got something new to show you, and we think some of you are going to like it. Read more
Brief thoughts on songs that are on CaPC writer’s playlists. You can check out this week’s playlist on Spotify here. http://youtu.be/256xNjMgBVs “Always” – Killswitch Engage From their latest Disarm the Descent, “Always” is a picture of love through suffering, an acknowledgement of the momentary nature of human love and our fading legacy after we die. In these moments of loss and torment When the vast skies don’t seem to call to you When the weight of this world bears down And... Read more
The Internet could be seen as a mirror that reflects back to us our best -- and our worst -- qualities in very public and immediate ways. Read more
Not to play a game of blogger’s call and response, but over at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher interacts thoughtfully with my review of his book, explaining more about the way he views church and sainthood. Read more
If you’ve ever thought about writing about games, or writing at all, Patrick Stafford has written a great piece over at Gamechurch about his experience as a Christian games journalist: The Gospel and Games Journalism. Read more
In a piece that’s been passed around quite a bit, Damon Linker suggests that film critics in the mainstream media have, for whatever reason, largely ignored its religious outlook. Here’s the key assertion from Linker: [T]he vast majority of mainstream critics have failed to treat [The Tree of Life and To the Wonder] as the profoundly religious — and specifically Christian — works of art that they are. Whether or not the silence is a product of the theological illiteracy and scriptural... Read more
Good news! Looks like J.J. Abrams will be enlisting the iconic John Williams to compose the soundtrack for “Star Wars: Episode VII,” due out in the summer 2015. Read more
Christ and Pop Culture
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