Entertainment | TLG Christian News

Viewing “The Walking Dead” Through a Theological Lens

06/06/2016 0 Comment

Is All Life Precious?
I am unashamedly and unambiguously a fan of the AMC show The Walking Dead. I was also a fan of the comic that was released many years before the film adaption in 2010, and before every other show on television was about the undead. It is not just the suspense or gore that entices and entertains me, but the way the writers deal with metaphysical and theological issues. Humanity is devoured and consumed by walkers (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), yet there ..

Is Christian Music Too Happy?

03/06/2016 0 Comment

You can’t be bummed and be Christian. Or, at least, that might be your takeaway listening to contemporary Christian music.
According to Leah Libresco, writing for the website FiveThirtyEight, Christian pop is (in her words) “unrelentingly cheerful” these days, where nary a discouraging word is heard. Lyrics are chipper and upbeat, extolling “love,” “joy” and “strength” far more often than the flip sides of those words: “fear,” “sorrow,” “weakness”. “Grace,” for instance, is used abo..

Watching God Without a Screen (For a Change)

26/05/2016 0 Comment

Well, hi there, stranger! Welcome to my newish blog. It’s not really new, of course. Just remodeled—new address, new look, and as of today a new blog post. Because really, it’s about time.

While experts were tinkering away at the Watching God blog, I was off in Washington state, knocking around a couple of national parks with my wife. When you watch movies and television for a living, it’s nice to see the world without a filtering screen sometimes, and this was a fairly screen-free ..

RISEN now available on DVD, Blu-Ray. digital

24/05/2016 0 Comment

RISEN is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, digital, etc.
Here’s a link to the cast talking about meeting the Pope as well as my review of the film.

‘The Angry Birds Movie’ is a volatile pun fest

21/05/2016 0 Comment

Chuck, voiced by Josh Gad, and Red, voiced by Jason Sudeikis, appear in the animated movie “The Angry Birds Movie.” (CNS/Sony)
Flying off the gigantic success of its 2009 online video game “Angry Birds,” Rovio Entertainment of Finland commissioned a script from animation film and television writer John Vitti (“The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” “Ice Age”) for a feature film about the birds that fly via slingshot.
Joined by animators Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly in their directorial debut, “The ..

I Am Iron Man

14/05/2016 0 Comment

Team Cap or Team Iron Man?

Captain America: Civil War practically demands its fans to take sides—even before they even walk into the theater.

When I went to my advance screening for Civil War, the PR reps asked me whose side I was on. I said Captain America, of course, and they handed me a blue wristband and waved me through.

I’ve always been a Cap guy. His motives are purer than Iron Man’s His movies are better. Heck, he’s better. Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) is an old-fash..

Director Rodrigo Garcia Talks Last Days in the Desert

11/05/2016 0 Comment

Ewan McGregor and Rodrigo Garcia on the set of Last Days in the Desert. Photo courtesy Different Drummer.Director Rodrigo Garcia is not a particularly religious guy. He jokingly refers to himself as a “secular Catholic,” having grown up in Mexico and Spain where Catholicism was an integral part of the culture. But he says, “You don’t have to be Catholic to be intrigued by the life of Jesus.”

Garcia is so intrigued with Jesus that he wrote and directed a whole movie about Him. Last ..

Pope Francis invites us to reflect mercy in our speech and in Tweets for World Communications Day 2016

07/05/2016 0 Comment

One of the best-kept secrets of the Catholic Church is that we have a beautiful tradition of teaching about communication and media that goes back to the 1930s and continues through today. This teaching covers speaking with one another in the family, parish and community, to evangelization, to all the means of communication including radio, television, movies, social media and the culture they create.

Back in 1963 one of the Second Vatican Council documents issued by Pope Paul VI was “Inter Miri..

8 films and mini-series to see before you vote

07/05/2016 0 Comment

Reese Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick in the 1999 film “Election.” (Paramount Pictures/Bob Akester)

My ears perked up back in March when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz defended his wife, Heidi, after Donald Trump threatened to “spill the beans” about her. Cruz came back with a threat of his own that sounded like it was straight out of the 1995 film “The American President” when President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) stood up for his girlfriend (Annette Bening) to his opponent Sen. Bob Rumson (Richard Dr..

“Rabin in His Own Words” is a testament to peace

07/05/2016 0 Comment

At the Venice Film Festival last September, the SIGNIS (Catholic) Jury placed filmmaker Amos Gitai’s “Rabin: The Last Day” on our short list for the SIGNIS Prize as soon as we saw it. The film is a captivating docudrama form of a political essay that explores the last day in the life of the famed peace-seeking Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922 – 1995) who was assassinated during a peace rally on November 4, 1995. Integrating actual footage of the shooting by a 25-ye..