“Today in New York City, our Moviefone colleague Kevin Polowy attended the Disney/Pixar Animation Presentation hosted by Dick Cook and John Lasseter. Apparently, a whole handful of new, upcoming titles were announced — some of which we’ve known about and some brand new. Additionally, they screened 30 minutes of WALL-E footage and announced that Sigourney Weaver would do a voice in the film.”
I just stumbled across this one today, but Ben Stein is doing a documentary (or whatever you want to call these things) about get, this Intelligent Design and what's going on in the scientific community in relation to it. It seems pretty neat.
Without giving too much away (you probably know what to expect anyways) you have to watch this movie in a certain way. It's basically like the Blair Witch Project or Signs. What would it be like for you or your friends to go through a disaster. In most movies you are in a God-like vantage point seeing an event in its entirety. That's not the case here. One camera taken around by one guy. It's the story of normal people during a disaster.
" … I don’t know who is in the cast yet…but I do know that the only person I want right now is, that I really, really want is Woody Harrelson to play Murdock — the guy who is crazy but he’s kind of real smart, a jack of all trades. That’s the only person I really, really want. … It’s not a comic movie farce like Starsky and Hutch, it’s kind of in the tradition of the ’80s action pictures
“I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.”- Cormac McCarthy in an interview
The following post is actually written by Rich Clark, not David Dunham, who is the creator and director of Christ and Pop Culture (A website and podcast where the Christian faith interacts with various elements of pop culture. Check us out.
In the first scene of Juno, a girl drinks Tang, walks through a hand-drawn cartoon credit sequence, and has a high-speed and ironic conversation with a convenience store clerk. Immediately, I’m thinking this movie is in trouble. Like a lot of people, I’ve grown tired of the ironic cynicism displayed in many of the most recent films and television shows. While I enjoy many of the more balanced films that started the fad, the onslaught of one-dimensional copycats has been unfortunate.
Jesus made it very clear, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). He holds us to a standard where “good” simply isn’t enough. So what does this mean, then, for “good” men? What does this mean for the just and upright, the honorable? What does it mean for good cops like Richie Robbins, who once found 5 million dollars and turned in every cent of it? And Richie is an especially worthy cop to mention here. He, with his team, brought down Harlem’s most dangerous drug lord and crime boss: Frank Lucas. Their story is the highlight of the big screen this fall as Ridley Scott’s latest film American Gangster has stormed the box office.
This is an amazing real movie. Scott’s directorial gifts are in full display as he brings this true story to the big screen in not only epic proportions but with gritty realism and graphic detail (more on this in a moment). The movie chronicles the rise and fall of the Frank Lucas drug empire, and the cop that brought him down. The movie revels in contrasts. So in a brilliant scene we get the stark contrast between Frank Lucas’ family thanksgiving meal and the sickening decay of the drug users he has made his money off of. The one is a scene of love and warmth, split with other scene of coldness and death. This disturbing scene highlights even more the contrast within Frank Lucas himself. Here is a man who on the one hand loves his family and cares so deeply about their preservation that he will do anything for them. He teaches his brothers about the important features of business: integrity, honesty, and family. And in the same scene he gets up from their coffee shop table walks across the street and blows a hole in a man’s head for not paying for his drugs. Frank’s success, which is built of evil, is also contrasted with Richie’s meager life, which is the result of honesty. The two live in different worlds, but just how different are they.
“When Polar Bears Attack” is not the name of a new Fox Television reality show, rather it is the only remotely interesting part in an otherwise confused, tiresome, and overly-hyped film. The Golden Compass directed by Chris Weitz, was billed as another Lord of the Rings type fantasy epic film, it falls far short, however.
For months we’ve been hearing, reading, and talking about the dangers of Philip Pullman’s atheistic children’s literary trilogy His Dark Materials, and particularly we’ve been hearing about these books, which came out in the late 90s but are only now getting American publicity, because New Line Cinemas has produced the first of these books as a film. Christians were preparing for protests, evangelical authors were publishing books to give insight to Christian parents, and theologians were talking about Pullman’s atheism on the airwaves. But in all they hype and concern it never seemed to occur to anyone that the movie might actually be bad. And it is. On opening night The Golden Compass bombed in North America. And for those of us who did have the misfortune of suffering through this film we can probably all agree that it fails because it has no heart, much like atheism itself.
Without giving too much away (you probably know what to expect anyways) you have to watch this movie in a certain way. It's basically like the Blair Witch Project or Signs. What would it be like for you or your friends to go through a disaster. In most movies you are in a God-like vantage point seeing an event in its entirety. That's not the case here. One camera taken around by one guy. It's the story of normal people during a disaster.
Jesus made it very clear, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). He holds us to a standard where “good” simply isn’t enough. So what does this mean, then, for “good” men? What does this mean for the just and upright, the honorable? What does it mean for good cops like Richie Robbins, who once found 5 million dollars and turned in every cent of it? And Richie is an especially worthy cop to mention here. He, with his team, brought down Harlem’s most dangerous drug lord and crime boss: Frank Lucas. Their story is the highlight of the big screen this fall as Ridley Scott’s latest film American Gangster has stormed the box office.
“When Polar Bears Attack” is not the name of a new Fox Television reality show, rather it is the only remotely interesting part in an otherwise confused, tiresome, and overly-hyped film. The Golden Compass directed by Chris Weitz, was billed as another Lord of the Rings type fantasy epic film, it falls far short, however.
