My son and daughter were born yesterday, and it took me until tonight to check the IMDb and see with whom they might share their February 4 birthday. Here are the names I recognize: Natalie Imbruglia (1975)Gabrielle Anwar (1970)Clint Black (1962)Alice Cooper (1948)Dan Quayle (1947)Betty Friedan (1921)Ida Lupino (1914)Rosa Parks (1913)Charles Lindbergh (1902) I don’t detect a pattern here yet, but if you do, let me know. Read more

Terry Mattingly has an interesting post up at GetReligion.org now on the possible religious and cultural significance of the Disney-Pixar merger, based in part on a rumour to the effect that a fairly high number of Pixar types may be Christian. Ironically, while the post is all about Pixar’s success in red-state America, the graphic that accompanies the post depicts a British DVD case — you can tell because the film is rated “U” rather than “G”. Read more

My wife came home from the hospital on Wednesday, after getting three months of bed rest. And then, on Saturday, she went right back again — and you can see the results. Elizabeth Joy Chattaway (4 lbs, 12 oz) was born at 3:17pm, and Thomas Lawrence Chattaway (5 lbs, 2 oz) at 3:46pm, on February 4 at BC Women’s Hospital. That’s her above, and him below. (And believe it or not, the fact that Thomas Lawrence happens to be the... Read more

In December, Barry Pepper talked about the influence of the Bible and the works of Flannery O’Connor on The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, written and directed by Tommy Lee Jones. Now Jones himself discusses the subject in the Boston Globe: Flannery O’Connor matters to this movie first because Jones wrote his cum laude thesis at Harvard on her. Second, family members of the film’s coproducer, Michael Fitzgerald, are executors of O’Connor’s literary estate. ”So we both knew our O’Connor... Read more

Can you handle … Brokeback to the Future? Meanwhile, from the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction files, it seems that the person who helped save Joaquin Phoenix from his recent car wreck was none other than Werner Herzog. Wow. (And I get a kick out of the fact that I’ve spoken to both of them — to Phoenix, at the Walk the Line junket, and to Herzog, when he attended a retrospective of his works at the Pacific Cinematheque in... Read more

Time for another round-up. 1. In the mid-1990s or thereabouts, Gary Busey became a Christian and a Promise Keeper and did what many washed-up movie stars, especially those of a religious bent, have done: he starred in an end-times movie, namely Tribulation (2000). Produced by the same folks who made the Left Behind movies, that’s the one in which the Christians rig a house to blow up and kill those henchmen of the Antichrist who burst into the place. Somehow... Read more

Click here for the details. This list went online two days ago, but I’ve been so busy with other things lately that I didn’t realize it had gone up until now. Needless to say, since this list is a collective statement and not a personal or individual statement, there are some films here that I would have been happy to leave off altogether, and I would have written up some of the other entries differently, too. Ah well. Coming to... Read more

Looking for more info on Mark Dornford-May’s Son of Man, which sets the life of Jesus in modern South Africa? Last Monday, the Los Angeles Times ran the following story, which adds some interesting info that earlier stories did not have: PARK CITY, Utah — His name is Jesus, a disciple betrays him, he dies a violent death, his story is told in a foreign language — and Mel Gibson has nothing to do with it. Unlike its very distant... Read more

One of my e-pals summed up his response to the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the following seven words: “New director for the next installment, please.” Alas, Variety reports that my friend’s wish has been thwarted, and writer-director Andrew Adamson will indeed put his dubious stamp on Prince Caspian, due for a Christmas 2007 release. My favorite part of the Variety story is the paragraph that begins: “While it remains to be seen whether... Read more

I finally gave in and wrote a review of Brokeback Mountain for ChristianWeek — much of it based on comments that I have already made here on this blog — though in some ways, it’s less of a commentary on the film itself and more of a commentary on the commentary around the film. Maybe it’s a meta-commentary. On a completely unrelated note, those who have been following my wife’s progress may be glad to hear that she came home... Read more