Recently I've been reading a great blog series by the Anselm Society on "centric artists." In essence (and I highly recommend reading Brian Brown's introduction for the full concept), the series points out artistically-minded Christians shouldn't follow the "eccentric artist" ideal. Christianity claims people's talents are rooted in God and that people are called into …
Continue reading Eccentric Artist: Ken Russell and the Problem of Maverick Christianity
This blog series started by arguing writers may not be able to show divine encounters in a movie without it seeming cheesy. One way to get around this is show God or angels but focus the film on our inability to fully understand him. We can talk about how strange or even funny holy beings seem …
Thus far in this blog series, I've suggested that maybe you can't make a movie where God or angels literally show up without it seeming somehow cheesy, absurd. I've suggested that you can get around that by embracing that sense of absurdity, talking about the existence of evil in contrast to God, talking about the strangeness of …
Thus far, we've talked in this blog series about the idea it's hard to show God or angels literally showing up in a movie without it seeming absurd. Demonic evil may be something we can understand, but divine goodness is hard to translate into a story about the natural world. In the last post in this …
In my first post in this series I noted how it's possible you can't literally show God or angels in a movie without it seeming cheesy. As Roy Anker puts it in his book Catching Light, big epic movies that try to adapt Bible stories and make them into big spectacles often fall flat. Anker …
As I pointed out in Pt 1 of this series, it's hard to portray God or angels in a movie and make it serious, compelling. For some reason it tends to seem cheesy or absurd. Maybe the reason it's so hard to portray God in a movie is it's so hard to capture what a …
Here's where you can read part 1 in this blog series I noted last week that some film critics and filmmakers (particularly Paul Schrader and Roy Anker) have argued you really can't show divine encounters (God or angels literally showing up in a movie) without it seeming cheesy. This argument has big ramifications for Christians …
Continue reading Play Along with the Joke (God in Film Pt 2)
Quite a lot has been said about Christian films in recent years, particularly the kind of independent Christian movies that became so popular after Passion of the Christ came out. Many Christians have argued for and against these Christian films for various reasons. One big point of contention is how Christian films usually portray miracles. …
G. Connor Salter 