While eating some Zeek’s pizza and reading the local paper’s coverage of the Terry Shiavo dilemma today, I suddenly realized what the lyrics playing on the radio were saying: No life’s worth more than any other No sister worth less than any brother …somebody please send us a prayer! It’s crazy, crazy We’re breathing in the same air It’s crazy, crazy, crazy Don’t tell me that you don’t care…. Well, no life’s worth more than any other, unless you’re on... Read more
So, here are a few pieces I stumbled across today… A mind-boggling update on director Todd Haynes’ spectacularly weird concept for a movie about Bob Dylan. I cannot wait to see this. Haynes said he wanted to capture the many aspects of Dylan’s character, and his solution was a “multiple refracted biopic” in which Dylan would be played, among others, by an 11-year-old black boy and a young white woman. I’m Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan, now... Read more
This review of In My Country was originally published at Christianity Today in March 2005. – South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings deserve a film like Schindler’s List or Hotel Rwanda—something that brings that historical drama to life in a way that helps us shoulder the burden of history and walk away wiser. In My Country tries to be that film, but falls short. The hearings, which started in 1996 and lasted two years, gave more than 20,000 witnesses a chance to testify—2,000... Read more
What happens when a reviewer I admire goes to hear a lecture by a stage-director and film critic I admire? (more…) Read more
Jason Bortz is a good friend, a driven and ambitious actor of stage and film, and a man with an enormous heart that would encompass Africa and its sufferings if it could. Bortz is in the news today … in the Auburn Journal. (more…) Read more
Kate Bowman is becoming one of the most interesting new voices in the dialogue about faith and art. (more…) Read more
I mentioned the new book by Marilynne Robinson a while back, and now it’s made even bigger headlines. (more…) Read more
What I’ve seen so far… (more…) Read more
lookingcloser.org ! (or www.lookingcloser.org, if you prefer…) I’ve moved to an easier address. You’ll see some changes made in the next few months. I’m very very pleased to finally be on my way to Chapter Two of the Looking Closer story. Read more
Peter Greenaway once said that cinema as an “art form” has yet to be established. He meant that, so far, movies aren’t much more than illustrated narratives: books with moving pictures to bring the manuscripts to life. That comment has stuck with me, as I’ve begun to appreciate, more and more, how film can communicate through methods other than storytelling. Like the animals who respond to the beauty of the music in The Story of the Weeping Camel, I think... Read more
Looking Closer
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