Will the new Jurassic Park movie be an anti-GMO adventure?
The only thing scarier than a rampaging mega-dinosauar is a rampaging mega-dinosaur that’s also a…
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The Avengers, Rogue Roombas, and Robot Accountability
Artificial intelligence is taking over—at least in Hollywood. In 2013, there was Spike Jonze’s acclaimed…
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Jesus Backs Gender Equality at the Oscars
In her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress, Patricia Arquette called for equal rights for…
Read MoreNoah, Cosmos Controversies Not About Biblical Literalism
The Noah controversy has more to do whether or not Aronofsky approached the sacred text with the proper reverential attitude, placing himself under the authority of scriptural truth; Biblicism is the issue, not biblical literalism.
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Great White Men, Again?: On Lincoln and Our Civil Religion
After the emotion evoked by the film subsides, sober consideration begins here: why, in the supposedly “post-racial” age of Obama, is there no space in movies to imagine the historical story of African Americans creating the conditions of their own emancipation?
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Denzel’s Profane Preaching: A Religious Movie for the Rest of Us
Flight, like most of the other religiously-themed scripts to which Washington agrees to lend his star power, is no Kirk Cameron morality play. As in The Book of Eli, in which Washington played a post-apocalyptic loner who creates a trail of gore during a violent spiritual pursuit of the lone remaining copy of the Bible, the celluloid preaching in Flight is rated R. In addition to the early lingering shots of full-frontal and rear nudity, the film provides a steady stream of f-bombs, and from nearly start to finish it is awash in booze.
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An Atheist Hero is Something to Be
Faith is completely redundant. It may take a long time for people to figure out it’s redundant, but given what we know about psychology and the way the brain works and the way evolution has taught us not to just battle each other into submission, but to cooperate and help each other, there will come a time when people see it as unnecessary, a philosophical distortion of reality.
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Hysterical Heretical Hollywood Humanism: The Theology of The Adjustment Bureau
Can Matt Damon’s love trump God’s Will? Does it have to?
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A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void
Two very different films about what happens after we die are in the theaters right now: Clint Eastwood’s gentle Hereafter and Gaspar Noe’s raw, hallucinatory Enter the Void. While covering the same cosmological territory, the films couldn’t be more different, stylistically, thematically, and religiously.
Read MoreHollywood Agents of God: Are Movies the Sacred Texts of our Time?
As the ‘gods’ of Hollywood descend in designer digs, religion scholars Gary Laderman and Anthea Butler discuss the divinity of celebrity in America.
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