2017-10-19 17:04
Last
month, Netflix released First They Killed
My Father, based on the
experience of Loung Ung who is a childhood survivor of the Pol Pot regime during the Khmer Rouge years in
Cambodia… Read More
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In The Open Space: God & Culture Blog
intheopen.blogspot.com
So Paul took his stand in the open space at the Areopagus and laid it out for them: "I'm here to introduce you to this God.... He doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. He's not remote; he's near. We live and move in him, can't get away from him!" ~Acts 17
2017-10-13 20:32
Screenshot Copyright TNT
“One ship against the three of us? They are outnumbered.”
~Sergeant Azima Kandie in the “Detect,
Deceive, Destroy” episode of The Last… Read More
2017-10-09 18:14
Blade Runner is one
of my favorite films. It is layered with meaning and questions and themes that
take you in all sorts of directions. And I found Director Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival… Read More
2017-08-04 17:45
Lynch/Frost Productions
In
May, Showtime released a limited series revival of Twin Peaks, a 1990 quirky two-season television crime drama set in
a small town in Washington and centered on… Read More
2017-07-11 18:42
I recently ran across an article in The Dartmouth that underscores the effects of political polarization in the U.S. "A survey of Dartmouth's political landscape" explores the results of a c… Read More
2017-06-02 18:21
If you are looking for something to binge watch on Amazon Prime, consider the one-season CBS
comedy-thriller BrainDead, a political
satire set in a present-day Washington, D.C. that’s… Read More
2017-05-16 19:08
Recently, I finally got around to watching Lion, the Oscar-nominated film based on
the true story of Saroo Brierley who, as a five-year-old boy, is accidentally
separated from his older brot… Read More
2017-05-11 18:27
photo by Carmen Andres
The
other day, I took the Metro into DC. The station was at the beginning of the
line, so the car was only a quarter full. I grabbed a seat, took out my phone
and… Read More
2017-05-06 20:46
Last summer, my family acquired one of the latest revolutions in
virtual reality — a headset that uses a smartphone as a display. It looks like
a giant visor, and once you hold it up t… Read More
2017-05-03 18:57
This past weekend, the film adaptation of Dave Egger’s The Circle premiered in movie theaters. While
the film—at least initially—sticks pretty close to the book, I didn&rsq&hell…Read More
2017-05-02 20:11
photo by Carmen Andres
Recently, friends of mine who are
software developers told me about Netflix’s data collection, which not only
tracks everything we watch but also every time… Read More
2017-04-28 03:30
Last month, the live-action remake of the 1995 anime film Ghost in the Shell hit theaters.
Set in a future when many humans are augmented with cybernetic
enhancements, the story follows… Read More
2017-04-26 19:00
Besides being a fascinating story about creating a business, 60 Minutes' interview with Chobani's billionaire founder last month gets at the benefits of employing refugees. Several chur… Read More
2017-04-25 19:05
Some of you have noticed that I took a break from blogging
for about a year. It was less intentional than due to an influx of responsibilities
and pursuits—from settling into a new job… Read More
2016-04-26 17:40
Good films, like all good stories, tell us something about
ourselves and the world around us, and the best stories challenge and inspire
us. You might think Christian films would be at the t… Read More
2016-03-19 18:53
Paramount
Years ago, I saw a painting of a scene from the flood story.
It is night, and heavy clouds weigh down the sky. People are being engulfed by dark swirling water. I remember the a… Read More
2016-03-19 18:53
The first full-length trailer for Jupiter Ascending--the latest from the Wachowskis (Matrix, Cloud Atlas)--unpacks the teaser trailer from a few months back, giving us a meatier glim… Read More
2016-03-19 18:53
wikipedia/public domain
“What do you do?”
It’s a simple question—one
of the first we ask when we meet someone new. I never gave this question much thought
until… Read More
2016-03-19 18:53
The first trailer for the big screen adaptation of Lois Lowry's 1993 Newberry-winning dystopian novel The Giver is finally here. I say "finally" because this film has been a long t… Read More
2016-03-14 20:37
Writer and
director Scott Derrickson recently posted on Twitter: “I believe that in
future history the revenge ethic will be seen as the great cinematic signature
of American ment… Read More
2016-02-23 19:12
[This
review may contain spoilers]
The Oscar-nominated Bridge
of Spies is an inspiring story and a great piece of filmmaking.
Critics praise the collaboration between Steven Spi… Read More
2016-02-22 19:15
via Wikipedia
Kyle Hinckley made a stir in the video-game world by
successfully completing the hardest mode of Fallout 4 with
zero kills. In this popular series of video games se… Read More
2016-02-16 21:29
Copyright Warner Bros.
I grew up watching the Rocky
films, so after Sylvester Stallone received a Golden Globe for his performance
in Creed, I thought it about time to
see that one, too… Read More
2015-12-08 18:22
Peeta Mellark/Copyright Lionsgate via Rotten Tomatoes
Last
month, Mockingjay: Part 2 concluded
the film version of The Hunger Games series, a dystopian story
in which
children are forced t… Read More
2015-11-19 13:12
Syrian refugee children in a tent settlement in Lebanon (forsuchatimeisnow.org)
A few days after the news about the ISIS terror
attacks in Beirut and the day after the Paris attacks, I was… Read More
2015-11-18 02:24
Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow; My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe. ~Anne Bronte
Iraqi refugee family I met in Beirut forsuchatimeisnow.org… Read More
2015-10-27 17:39
Last spring, I read Andy Weir’s
sci-fi novel, The Martian, in less
than 24 hours. It doesn’t disappoint—and neither does the recent film adaption.
Like the novel, the fi… Read More
2015-10-16 19:27
Imagine experiencing a future of such beauty and possibility
that it transforms the way you think about reality and the choices you make in the
present. That’s what happens to Casey Ne… Read More
2015-10-11 18:28
Regina, an Iraqi refugee © Carmen Andres
I met ReGina on a cold January morning in Beirut after a women's Bible study for Iraqi refugees hosted by Heart… Read More
2015-09-26 11:30
David Reitsma Spoken Word Poetry
"The Tale of the Fortune Hunters"A spoken word video about the Syrian refugee crisis.
Filmed by Maarten Smeenk and Directed by David Bonsink Read More
2015-09-25 17:27
Young Syrian refugee living in a tent settlement in the Lebanon | copyright Carmen Andres
It has been a long week, full of long days--sick kids, doctor appointments, back to school nights… Read More
2015-09-14 17:39
Sometimes, images echoing the kingdom show up in unexpected places.
Take Furious 7,
for example. The latest installment in the Fast
& Furious franchise took in $1 billion in 17 days… Read More
2015-09-10 17:28
Refugees from the Syrian civil war rest at the Budapest Keleti railway station on Sept. 4. — Rebecca Harms, Wikimedia Commons via Mennonite World Review.
From A Disruptio… Read More
2015-09-07 20:31
Syrian refugee child in a tent settlement in the Bekaa Valley / copyright Carmen Andres
Last Wednesday, the photo of little three-year-old Aylan Kurdie lying on the beach in Turkey went v… Read More
2015-09-07 20:31
Syrian refugee child in a tent settlement in the Bekaa Valley / copyright Carmen Andres
Last Wednesday, the photo of little three-year-old Aylan Kurdie lying on the beach in Turkey went v… Read More
2015-09-06 17:29
A Heart for Lebanon non-formal education center for refugee children in Beirut ©Carmen Andres
My kids go back to school this week. Last week, I spent hours filling out stacks of… Read More
2015-09-05 15:52
You can help Read More
2015-09-03 21:00
A devastating picture made headlines yesterday: the body of a Syrian toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey. He has short cropped dark hair and he's wearing a bright red shirt… Read More
2015-09-03 18:31
Syrian refugee children © Carmen Andres
In the past couple of days, the Telegraph, Guardian and New York Times have all reported on how over 10,000 Icelanders… Read More
2015-04-21 20:15
IT’S JANUARY IN BEIRUT, LEBANON. The air is cold in the shade of the old apartment building
I walk into with Hoda Melki and two other women from Heart for Lebanon, a
Lebanese faith-bas… Read More
2015-03-19 18:30
via dvdreleasedates.com
This month, Ridley Scott’s Exodus:
Gods & Kings came out on
DVD. Below is a (slightly edited) reflection I wrote on the film in a MWR… Read More
2015-03-19 18:30
via dvdreleasedates.com
This month, Ridley Scott’s Exodus:
Gods & Kings came out on
DVD. Below is a (slightly edited) reflection I wrote on the film in a MWR… Read More
2015-03-18 00:52
Syrian child in a tent settlement in the Bekka Valley, Lebanon © Carmen Andres
In January of this year, I traveled to Lebanon with a small team from my church to gather stories from S… Read More
2014-12-30 16:47
If you have Facebook, you’ve
probably seen a lot of “Year in Review” posts, in which Facebook gathers a selection of
photos from the past year and puts them together in a k… Read More
2014-12-03 15:15
Something about space exploration invites us to ponder our place in the universe. From the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey to last summer’s Europa Report, storytellers hav… Read More
2014-11-06 18:24
This past spring, I spent a little over an hour on the
phone with David Fitch, an author, pastor and theology professor. Our
conversation has
just been published in Anabaptist Witness, a jou… Read More
2014-10-19 18:14
© Duard Van Der Westhuizen | Dreamstime Stock Photos
When I work, I often play music in the background. Recently I noticed that I was gravitating toward playlists I&rsqu&hell…Read More
2014-09-17 15:09
The Giver is one of my favorite novels. Critics are mixed on the
recent film adaptation, but I find it a good companion piece. I like how its
visual nature heightens aspects like the im… Read More
2014-09-14 21:08
Hadija
is 10 years old. She wakes up at 6:00am, climbs in the back of a truck full of
children, and drives to a potato field in the Bekaa Valley where she will work
for at least seven hours… Read More
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