Imagine waking up tomorrow in a hospital bed, unsure of how you got there.  As you look up around the room, you notice several unfamiliar faces that are looking empathetically at you.  In the midst of your aching head and confusion, one of those persons says they're your spouse.  But you don’t recognize them, and you have no idea how you got there.  You just want to go back to your life as you know it and wake up from this bizarre dream.

Suppose in that old familiar life you were already engaged or even married to someone else.  Suppose you had a career in law but in your newly awoken life you were a renowned visual artist.  The amount of disorientation – a rebirth and change in your life that was unforeseen and now unrecognizable – would be staggering.  Yet, it would be true.

continue reading

Joe Carnahan’s The Grey is the first truly great 2012 release. Which is surprising. I didn’t expect all that much from it, thinking it might just be a typical “angry Liam Neeson” action film. But wow is it more than that.

Ostensibly a “been there done that” narrative (survivors of a plane crash in the harsh environs of remote Alaska try to stay alive), The Grey adds impressive layers of depth to what might otherwise just be a serviceable action thriller.

Neeson leads a band of seven survivors when a plane full of oil drillers crashes in the wintry, impossible wilderness of Alaska. From there, the movie could essentially be called Man vs. Wild. Or, more appropriately: Man vs. Wolves. There are wolves everywhere, and they are territorial and hungry. They like killing humans. And, one by one, they savagely pick off the band of plane crash survivors, stalking them mercilessly with those big, bad, glow-in-the-dark eyes.

continue reading

When a Hollywood studio options the rights of a book to make into a movie, fans of said book get nervous. And rightly so – how many adaptations have we seen in the past where things go from grand and glorious, to botched and reworked?

So, when I had the chance to learn more about the film “The Vow” (due out this Friday), I learned that fans of couple Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, whose lives and book inspired the film, will be in for a potentially unpleasant surprise: Screenwriters Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn have never read the book. They just got some ambiguous direction. “They (the studio) really said ‘a couple, they’re married, a crash, she doesn’t remember him.’” So naturally, we are in for rough waters, right?

But for “The Vow,” the filmmakers were intent on making a compelling narrative inspired by true events, not based on true events. Said Kohn, “I’d prefer that. It leaves us free to create whatever we think would make the most of that dramatic situation. Whatever characters we want to create, whatever past we want to have for them, we can invent. I think that left us free to create something that we felt best served that.” After all, there are some book adaptations that are so faithful that they lose sight of the possibilities given the medium of film.

continue reading

Why is apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith, important?

In one sense, Christianity needs no defense. God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, does not depend for His existence on our belief. However, many people who do not know the living God are separated from Him in part by intellectual obstacles. Removing those obstacles by showing that Christianity indeed makes sense on a rational level is an act of love and care for our neighbor. Defending the faith also builds up a strong foundation for believers. A securely built house has a solid, well-built foundation, so that the vagaries of wind and weather don’t damage it or cause distress to the inhabitants. It’s natural to have questions and doubts - think of the disciples, asking Jesus “increase our faith!” or the man who cries out “Lord, I believe: help my unbelief!” Apologetics helps strengthen the foundations by providing answers to questions and doubts, so that the Christian can grow stronger in his or her faith.

Let’s face it: movies have been pretty underwhelming this year.  There has been an explosion of comic book movies adapted from nearly every angle – from dark and gritty, to lighthearted action.  There have been silly dramas, requisite attempts at an Oscar grab, and a couple of underwhelming features from the giants of filmmaking (“War Horse” and “Hugo” while good, were far from as great as they could have been).

Enter “The Artist.”  It’s the film people are talking about with overwhelming praise, as well as a few angry detractors (which I suspect will only grow as the film gains more and more momentum).  My expectations were high going in after seeing the trailer, which floored me in communicating its emotion and charm.  Added to that is the amount of critical praise the film has received so far, making me excited for what appeared to be a breath of fresh air in the theater.  For the most part, “The Artists” delivers.

continue reading

I love being that kind of sick where I’m just under the weather enough that I need to stay home and rest, but have enough coherency that I am not tied to the bathroom and miserable.  It allows me to watch my Netflix backlog, and catch up on guilty pleasures.  I am emerging from my living room cave with comments on a few flicks for your perusal...What have you seen lately that you would recommend to watch or avoid?

Cowboys and Aliens:

A movie without a center of gravity on which to stand:  Both too derivative to be a great sci-fi flick, and too stupid to be taken seriously as a hard boiled western.  The trailer made it look and feel tongue in cheek, and every write up ahead of time made it look like a fun time at the movies.  In addition, the film is stocked with talent: Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard produced it, Jon Favreau is a great action director, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are more than capable, etc.  Hey, the creature design is even really cool.  But when any film is credited as having 7 people creating the story (5 of whom are the screenwriters), you know there are going to be some bumps in the road

continue reading

My 2011 recaps ends here, with my list of the best books I read in 2011. I read 42 books, of vast variety–some old, some new, some fiction, mostly nonfiction–many of which were in some way research for the book I am currently writing. About half were for no other purpose than pleasure. Here are my picks for the ones that stood out the most:

10) Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? by C. John Collins: A very thought provoking, biblically informed and fair assessment of a timely and important question. See also this Christianity Today story on the topic of the historical Adam.

continue reading

Perhaps I’m biased (see my #1 pick and the entire month of May in my blog archive), but 2011 was a banner year for cinema. The Tree of Life is one thing, but there was a lot more going on this year to make a cinephile like me excited. There was a lot of artful doomsday (Melancholia, Take Shelter, Tree of Life, Another Earth), some great homages to early, classic and Spielbergian cinema (Hugo, The Artist, War Horse, Super 8), and some truly exceptional films about faith (Of Gods and Men, Higher Ground, The Way, The Mill & the Cross, Tree of Life). There was so much good cinema that my “best of” list actually includes three different top tens: the best 10, the second best 10, and then 10 honorable mentions. Many of them are available now on Netflix Instant, while a few of them have yet to release in most parts of the country. However you can, I hope you get a chance to see them!

continue reading

I read some great books this year. Here are the books that made my year-end review of bests.

The Help: Wow! What a great story this was to read. This book was an entertaining page-turner. Set in the south during the 1960’s The Help captures the voice and perspective of the white women who employ black women as the help and the black women who work for them. The Help captured some of the realities of that time and managed to bring out some humor in doing so. Check out the movie too if you haven't seen it yet. 

Unbroken: Looking for an adventure story? Unbroken is your book.

You were MADE to meet your maker

If you know me then you know that my wife is way cooler than me. No question. One such area of cooler-ness is that she seems to find new and interesting music all the time. This is especially depressing for me because I have been a musician, in one form or another, for the better part of 20 years. Depressing I say - but on with the point.

One such discovered band (update - now super popular and super Grammy nominated) is Mumford and Sons and they have a song Awake my Soul that I love with the following lines:

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life

Awake my soul, awake my soul
Awake my soul
You were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your maker

Normally the phrase “meeting your maker” is used around the idea of death and the fact that we all get the chance to meet our maker - like it or not – when we close our eyes that last time. You meet your maker when life runs out – or rather into Him.

continue reading