Why Silence Deserved Oscar’s Love

Last updated on: January 27, 2017 at 3:39 pm By Paul Asay

When Academy Award nominees earlier this week, plenty of Oscar’s snubs made headlines. No Amy Adams? No Sully? Where’s Hugh Grant? But the Academy reserved its biggest oversight for one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed directors: Martin Scorsese. Silence, the film that Scorsese spent 26 years planning and making, earned just a single nomination—for Rodrigo Prieto’s gorgeous cinematography. Nothing for Andrew Garfield (though he did earn a Best Actor nom for Hacksaw Ridge); nothing for Adam Driver or Issei Ogata, nothing... Read more

The Story of God: Is There Anybody Out There?

Last updated on: January 25, 2017 at 4:03 pm By Paul Asay

For two seasons, National Geographic’s The Story of God With Morgan Freeman has taken us behind the curtain to see the world’s religions, both great and small, at work. This Monday in the second season finale, Freeman and his crew tackle the biggest question of all: Is there a reason for all this religion? In other words, is there a God? But proof of God, as Oxford Theoretical Physicist Ard Louis says on the show, is impossible to find through... Read more

The Story of God: Finding Heaven in Hell

Last updated on: January 20, 2017 at 9:29 am By Paul Asay

What is heaven? What is hell? And how do they impact how we live right now? “Heaven and Hell,” the latest episode of The Story of God With Morgan Freeman (airing Jan. 23) grapples with those questions. They’re questions that have fascinated me, too. They always have, ever since I was a little boy. In the episode, Freeman and others take an interfaith trip through the Good Place and Bad Place. The show takes us to a cave in Tennessee... Read more

The Story of God: Are We All Chosen?

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 7:20 am By Paul Asay

National Geographic’s fascinating series The Story of God With Morgan Freeman kicks off its second season Jan. 16. The first episode is titled “The Chosen One,” and it focuses on those whom, in a variety of religions, believe that they’ve been picked to do special work. Some of these folks have daunting tasks to fulfill. The show begins with 9-year-old Jalue Dorjee, a soccer-loving, Pokemon playing kid from Minnesota who was told he’s the reincarnation of a famous Tibetan lama.... Read more

Ha La Lu Land: How Christianity is Like a Classic Hollywood Musical

Last updated on: January 5, 2017 at 10:42 am By Paul Asay

If you’ve seen my rundown of the year’s best films, you’ll know I really, really liked La La Land. Like most musicals, it features a pair of dreamers. Mia (Emma Stone) is a barista working at a movie lot coffee shop, but she longs to be an actress. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a “serious musician” who floats through an endless stream of low-level musical gigs. But he loves jazz music—the pure, unpredictable jazz played by Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.... Read more

You Picked What?! Watching God’s Best Movies of 2016

Last updated on: December 30, 2016 at 3:09 pm By Paul Asay

I love reading year-end lists. I’m not such a big fan of writing them. Hey, it’s not easy to sift through all the year’s movies and come up with what I think are “the best.” What does that even mean, anyway? Are these the best movies, aesthetically speaking? The stuff that secular critics drool over and take home scads of awards? Or are these the movies that I enjoyed the most? The movies that made me smile while leaving the... Read more

Carrie Fisher Was More Than a Princess

Last updated on: December 27, 2016 at 3:45 pm By Paul Asay

I met Carrie Fisher when I was 8 years old. Well, “meet” is perhaps too strong a word. The actress, who died this morning at age 60, didn’t see me. I was just one of dozens of people in a tiny Taos, N.M. movie theater, watching Star Wars. She wasn’t Carrie Fisher to me, of course, but Princess Leia, a beautiful galactic heroine with a rather unflattering hairstyle. She fired laser guns and swung on ropes and cracked jokes like... Read more

Rogue One’s Heroes Aren’t so Heroic, and That’s a Good Thing

Last updated on: December 17, 2016 at 3:49 pm By Paul Asay

I was a scrawny, buck-toothed –year-old when I first saw the first Star Wars movie—known then simply as Star Wars. (No “A New Hope” for us.) It changed my life, no joke. I loved the lasers and light sabers. I loved C-3PO and R2-D2. I hated Darth Vader, but that hatred, of course, made the movie all the more loveable. This clean-cut story of a plucky bunch of ragtag good guys taking on an evil galactic Empire pulled me in... Read more

The Best Scene in Manchester By the Sea is Funny, Painful and Spiritual

Last updated on: December 12, 2016 at 10:24 pm By Paul Asay

Grief challenges us in a way nothing else can. When we love and lose someone, it’s as if someone flicked off the lights. We can’t move. We can barely breathe. You’d think that faith would be a hard sell in times of grief. And yet, in those times of agony, faith often rescues us. We lean on that God, even if He feels distant. Our loved ones haven’t left us; they’ve gone home. But faith wraps itself in such strange,... Read more

Talking adoption, foster care and faith with the author of Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins

Last updated on: December 8, 2016 at 12:56 pm By Paul Asay

The following is a guest post from Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, who recently talked with one of my favorite authors, Katherine Paterson, about some issues pretty close to my own heart. I love what she has to say here. It’s well worth the read. *** Embed from Getty Images “No book made a greater impression on me before high school,” a 40-something magazine editor recently shared with me. My 10-year old daughter said much the... Read more

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