Looking Closer
I linked to this interview when Philip Pullman’s book The Amber Spyglass, the concluding chapter in His Dark Materials,was published. (more…) Read more
I linked to this interview when Philip Pullman’s book The Amber Spyglass, the concluding chapter in His Dark Materials,was published. (more…) Read more
Luci Shaw’s friendship, generosity, and writing has been an inspiration to Anne and me. Luci was the one who persuaded Madeleine L’Engle to write Walking on Water: Reflections on Art and Faith, a book that transformed my understanding of creativity and Christianity. And Luci herself has written several volumes of poetry, as well as The Crime of Living Cautiously, an inspiring book about living courageously, and a new memoir called Breath for the Bones. I did a lot of work... Read more
Luci Shaw’s friendship, generosity, and writing has been an inspiration to Anne and me. Luci was the one who persuaded Madeleine L’Engle to write Walking on Water: Reflections on Art and Faith, a book that transformed my understanding of creativity and Christianity. And Luci herself has written several volumes of poetry, as well as The Crime of Living Cautiously, an inspiring book about living courageously, and a new memoir called Breath for the Bones. (more…) Read more
In today’s mail, I received a note from a reader named Trace: Hello Mr. Overstreet. … I am reading Through a Screen Darkly and thought I’d share a short story with you. When I was about 20 years old I was watching the movie Blade Runner. Near the end of the movie Harrison Ford is trapped with Rutger Hauer on the roof. Hauer’s character explains to Ford some of the incredible things he has seen in his short life and... Read more
I suppose this is worth noting. I’ve been rather astonished as my post about The Golden Compass, which I wrote just a few days ago, has already become the most frequently opened and linked-to post in the eleven-year history of Looking Closer! More than posts about Star Wars, Spider-man, Harry Potter, or The Lord of the Rings! Read more
Author and radio star Dick Staub hosted another engaging, spirited discussion of movies over at Seattle’s Hales Brewery last week. I joined Staub, Greg Wright, and Jennie Spohr to discuss Gone Baby Gone, Michael Clayton, Dan in Real Life, Amazing Grace, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Devil Came on Horseback, Vanaja, Longford, and No Country for Old Men. You can download and listen to our conversation here. Read more
I just spotted this fantastic quote about art on a friend’s Facebook page, and thought I’d post it here. It’s from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Nobel lecture on literature: The task of the artist is to sense more keenly than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and the outrage of what man has done to it, and poignantly, to let people know. Art warms even an icy and depressed heart, opening it to lofty, personal experience. By means of... Read more
Thanks to Peter Chattaway for finding this spot-on analysis of 3:10 to Yuma. Mark Steyn: Mr. Scott trembles, albeit accidentally, on the brink of a great insight here. Hollywood assumes that if you have enough beautiful stars making out and getting shot at and running up stairwells and diving through windows and outrunning the fireball, that that is sufficiently “American” (as Mr. Scott puts it) that the absence of a heroic narrative won’t matter. The movies have divorced the form... Read more
¬† And so it begins. The first review of New Line Cinema’s The Golden Compass, which is based on the first book in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, has been published in The Daily Telegraph. Telegraph reviewer John Hiscock says: … an early screening of The Golden Compass in Los Angeles reveals that the investors who put up the $90 million cost of the film can rest easy – though it lacks the impact or charm of The Chronicles... Read more
The Coens and The Golden Compass You can now download my conversation with radio show host Paul Edwards as we discuss the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men… and then the controversy surrounding The Golden Compass. – The Coens… They’re Not Nihilists Among people who write about movies, few writers capture my attention as consistently as the insightful Matt Zoller Seitz. And now he’s eloquently making an argument for what I’ve always believed about the Coen Brothers: That, for... Read more
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