After reading some early negative reviews, I was pleasantly surprised by Tim Burton’s latest.It’s becoming more and more clear that Burton, despite his fetish for the phantasmagoric, is not so much a storyteller as a stylist. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory gives him a big, bold framework across which he can drape his latest outrageous decorations. It’s a challenge to take a story about people who do little more than tour a building and turn it into something consistently... Read more
James Doohan is dead. Long live Scotty. Read more
Peter Chattaway somehow came across some Google news stories about Drew Barrymore and Steven Spielberg discussing a sequel to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial that would focus on a grown-up Gertie. I’ll be shocked if it happens, and disappointed. E.T. is a perfectly complete story. It doesn’t need a sequel. Spielberg’s a much different person now, and I’m not sure he can write a story that takes place in that world anymore. I’m guessing this merely represents Barrymore trying to find something... Read more
Kate Bowman has me cheering for her new commentary at Christianity Today: “Secular, Sacred … or Both?” Great stuff. (more…) Read more
from The Onion AV guide: O: Have you been surprised by how much attention has been paid to the fact that you’re a Christian? SS: Um… Yeah, I think it’s a little disconcerting. It can be a little frustrating. I think that certain terms that we use to describe a culture or religion are in some ways our way of isolating people, and I think sometimes these terms bring up all sorts of prejudices and misunderstandings and misconceptions. And I... Read more
Today’s specials: Now you can watch Sufjan Stevens play Morning Becomes Eclectic. He plays music from 2005’s best album thus far… Illinois. Get ready. Elvis Costello’s gonna tour with Emmylou Harris. First, The Arcade Fire release the best album by a rock band in the last two years. Then, they buy a church. R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe reflects on the last ten months of touring. Hopefully his enthusiasm will help him record a better album than Around the Sun next time…... Read more
Thanks to Adam Walter for discovering news about the next project from Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco)… Jane Austen’s Winchester Races! Walter also links to The Wall Street Journal‘s review of the new novel by Mark Helprin. Because of these fine discoveries, I’ll show mercy to Mr. Walter and skip mentioning that I ever saw him carrying a stack of the Left Behind novels around. (Okay, he works at a bookstore. He was just shelving them.) Read more
Steven D. Greydanus has posted his mixed review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is enough to make any fan of Roald Dahl’s most beloved novel cry — with delight at all the film gets so magically right, and with frustration that in spite of that the film is still nearly ruined by Burton’s obsessions and a spectacularly miscalculated performance by star Johnny Depp. No one but Burton could possibly have so perfectly... Read more
From the supremely talented Fritz Liedtke, a photographer in Portland, Oregon… (more…) Read more
Thanks to GreenCine Daily for pointing me to this article from Regent on Tarkovsky’s great film The Sacrifice as a signpost pointing to Christ the Redeemer. Read more
Looking Closer
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