MAGIC is everywhere you look these days. From bookstores to movie theatres, stories about wizards, witches and mythological beasts are all the rage; and for a person like me, who grew up with hobbits, aliens, flying horses and Jedi Knights, the current fantasy craze — and the various Christian responses to it — bring back a lot of memories. How popular is fantasy right now? The most successful movie of the year (so far) is Shrek, a cheeky parody of... Read more
If there is one thing the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone may prove, it’s that fidelity to the original text isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. For over a year, director Chris Columbus has assured followers of the young orphan wizard that he intends to stay as true to J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular novels as possible — he has repeated this mantra so often he probably says it in his sleep — and to be... Read more
IF THERE is one thing the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone may prove, it’s that being faithful to the original text can be both a strength and a weakness. For over a year, director Chris Columbus has assured fans of the young orphan wizard that he intends to stay as true to J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular novels as possible, and to be sure, his film gets many details right. But Steve Kloves’ script tries so hard... Read more
• The Simpsons: The Complete First Season, Fox Video, 2001.• William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble, eds.: The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer, Open Court, 2001.• Mark I. Pinsky: The Gospel According to the Simpsons, Westminster John Knox, 2001. I DON’T watch a lot of television, but I have always been a fan of The Simpsons. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie made their debut in the late 1980s, in a series of short animated... Read more
Forget Charlton Heston. And for that matter, forget Krzysztof Kieslowski, too. One of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s special presentations this year is a series of short documentaries based on the Ten Commandments, and unlike past films, which have explored this material through the eyes of Protestant melodrama and Catholic mysticism, this series, which was produced for Dutch television, has a more skeptical, even secular, sensibility. (more…) Read more
In recent years, audiences have paid good money to see new, expanded versions of classic 1970s movies such as Star Wars and The Exorcist, so it was probably only a matter of time before Francis Ford Coppola restored roughly 49 minutes of deleted footage to his sprawling Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now. Coppola spent nearly three years of his life making the original film, which came out in 1979, and he has not produced anything all that noteworthy since, so you... Read more
There are any number of reasons to expect the worst from Jurassic Park III. It’s the second sequel to the original Jurassic Park, and sequels, as a rule, are supposed to get progressively worse. In addition, it has been eight years since the first film came out, and the computer-generated lizards that seemed so ground-breaking back then have become all too common; thanks to Godzilla, Dinosaur, Evolution and similar films, the presence of larger-than-life reptiles virtually guarantees a film’s mediocrity.... Read more
• Richard Abanes: Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick, Horizon, 2001. • Connie Neal: What’s a Christian to Do With Harry Potter?, WaterBrook, 2001. YEARS AGO, as a teen, I heard a man at a church speak on the evils of popular culture. I expected him to rail against the usual suspects — rock and roll, Star Wars, Disney cartoons with grey-bearded magicians in pointed hats — but I was entirely unprepared for when he turned... Read more
It’s clear from the trailers and posters for Evolution that director Ivan Reitman wanted to recapture some of the magic that made Ghostbusters, one of his earlier films, one of the most successful comedies of all time. The heroes in his new film do battle with alien lifeforms, rather than supernatural spooks, but otherwise, the mix of carefree humour and oversized special effects, combined with an outrageous product placement at the film’s climax, has a familiar feel. Dan Aykroyd even... Read more
MANY FILMMAKERS have turned to the Good Book for story ideas, but they haven’t always turned those ideas into good movies. The genre’s highs and lows are both on full display in The Bible Collection, an ambitious series of TV-movies that has been produced over the past eight years, and isn’t quite finished yet. The first four films covered the Book of Genesis in warts-and-all detail, and dealt matter-of-factly with some of the racier episodes that Sunday School classes tend... Read more
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