Looking Closer
A few days back, Looking Closer celebrated the resilient marriage of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist. Today, applause for the resilient marriage of Bono and Ali! (more…) Read more
A few days back, Looking Closer celebrated the resilient marriage of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist. Today, applause for the resilient marriage of Bono and Ali! (more…) Read more
I wrote one review of this album for Christianity Today, which you can still find here, and another for this blog, which is restored below. • All marriages are broken. We’re broken people, and when we commit to each other, for better or worse, we are guaranteed that there will be difficult — sometimes severely painful — times. How we respond to those trials will depend largely on our priorities and our beliefs. Am I in this for my own... Read more
from IMDb.com: Mel Gibson has denounced the Oscar ceremonies as “a celebration of mediocrity” and accused academy members of treating his The Passion of the Christ as a political football. “My film is not right-wing or political, but they made it so,” he told an interviewer on the Catholic cable channel EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network). Gibson, who won an Oscar for his direction of Braveheart in 1995, remarked: “The whole notion of these awards ceremonies is ludicrous. … It’s... Read more
My friend Stef writes: (more…) Read more
My favorite album of last year, A Boot and a Shoe, was born from divorce. It was a heartbreaker. This year, what may well be my favorite album has come from a marriage that’s been saved. (more…) Read more
I’m not making this up. This just happened to me. I was contacted this morning by someone who works for one of the three major news networks. They wanted me to come downtown and film a segment for a TV news talk-show addressing the question, “Is the media anti-religious?” I prepared. I pondered. I was ready. Here was the basic idea of my planned reply: “‘The media (if we must use such a vast generalization, like “Hollywood” or “Democrats” or... Read more
… then I suspect this will boggle your mind. It boggled mind. (more…) Read more
This review was originally published in March 2005 at Christianity Today. – Be Cool, directed by F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job), tries to strike the cocky pose of its 1995 predecessor, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty, and other show-biz satires like The Player. But above all, it alludes to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, with its dimwitted gangsters, glamorous ne’er-do-wells, gunslinging face-offs, painful ironies, and its centerpiece John Travolta/Uma Thurman dance floor flourish. So, let’s borrow a note from Pulp Fiction and begin with a definition:... Read more
At Books and Culture, Thomas Gardner reviews the long-awaited novel by Marilynne Robinson … Gilead. (more…) Read more
To those who have emailed me in response to The Seattle Times feature on Looking Closer, I can’t thank you enough for the encouragement you’ve given me. I *will* answer each and every email that you’ve sent as I find the time, but it’s going to take a while, so I appreciate your patience. If you wrote and asked me to come speak to your church, I appreciate that, but please understand that my several jobs make for a fairly... Read more
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