Jared Wilson is, among other things, a pastor, a writer, and a participant at one of our favorite blogs, The Thinklings. Phil has already reviewed his recent book, Your Jesus is Too Safe, but I’d like to say a few things about it too.
I picked it up without great anticipation, assuming from the title that it would probably be lots of things I already knew, plus a guilt trip on a deeper Christian life which would only depress me. But I read it with great interest (almost the same as if it had been a novel), and benefited it from it. Continue reading Your Jesus Is Too Safe, by Jared Wilson
Category Archives: Reviews
At First Sight, by Stephen J. Cannell
Author Stephen J. Cannell explains, in his Acknowledgments at the beginning of At First Sight
The main character and primary narrator is Chick Best, a California dot com millionaire. He has a beautiful home, expensive cars, a beautiful wife and daughter. At first he seems a decent, amusing guy, too, with a self-deprecating sense of humor.
But gradually the picture darkens. His business is on the downslide, and he blames everyone but himself. He’s sick of his wife, and his daughter is a disaster waiting to happen (he never wonders why). He’s living far beyond his means, desperately trying to sustain the exterior trappings and the envy of others that, he imagines, are all that make life worthwhile.
While on a vacation in Hawaii, he and his wife meet Paige Ellis and her husband, and Chick is bowled over. Paige is naturally beautiful and sweet, in a way that his wife, for all her expensive physical training, can’t match. After they return to their separate homes, Chick can’t stop obsessing about Paige. Continue reading At First Sight, by Stephen J. Cannell
The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson
If there was ever an author whose work I ought not to enjoy, it would be the late Stieg Larsson. A Swedish journalist whose field of concentration was right-wing and “hate” groups, he was (as far as I can determine from net research) a lifelong, devoted Communist.
And yet I loved his first mystery, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I snapped up The Girl Who Played With Fire as soon as it came out in paperback, zipping through its 724 pages in a couple days.
I think it’s a case of “the enemy of my enemy.” Both I and the author view contemporary Sweden as an unsatisfactory country, but from opposite viewpoints.
The central character of this book, even more than of the first in the series, is Lisbeth Salander, a brilliantly realized character. Lisbeth is a tiny young woman, often mistaken for a teenager, multipally tattooed and pierced (though we’re told she’s removed one tattoo now, and stopped wearing most of her studs and rings). She’s an off-the-charts genius who works on Fermat’s Last Theorem in pencil, in a notebook, in her spare time. She’s also a world-class computer hacker, skilled in self-defense, socially inept, and slightly crazy, having been the victim of horrendous betrayal and abuse as a child—a history that forms an important element of the plot of this book. Continue reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
I think I can give a rough outline of church history, and I don’t mean the founding of my own church. The BBC has a six DVD set which promises to fill in many of the details I would miss. It’s called A History of Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years. Hosted by Dairmaid MacCulloch, professor of history of the church and fellow at St. Cross College, Oxford, this historical overview looks well-worth your time, though I can’t tell if MacCulloch will lead viewers down a dark road of doubting the supernatural and God’s testimony in the world or leave the faith examined but uncondemned. After watching only the first disc, I believe he will remain respectful, if nothing else.
Here’s a list of disc titles:
Program 1: The First Christianity
Program 2: Catholicism: The Unpredictable Rise of Rome
Program 3: Orthodoxy: From Empire to Empire
Program 4: Reformation: The Individual Before God
Program 5: Protestantism: The Evangelical Explosion
Program 6: God in Dock
I received the first disc for review. Ambrose Video is distributing the DVDs and has a trailer on their product page.
“The First Christianity” was beautiful filmed, as you’d expect. Professor MacCulloch says he won’t shy away from controversy, but he doesn’t delve deeply into it either. His explanation of the major argument over the divine vs. human nature of Jesus did not attempt to settle it with Scripture. He only presented the proponents with their claims and described how the arguments fell out.
In this part of the series, MacCulloch describes what he calls the eastern road out of Jerusalem. Continue reading A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
Passover greetings
I don’t know what church did this, but apparently it’s in Texas, and this clip is pretty cool.
To our Jewish friends (we have at least one), greetings and best wishes.
Tip: Moe Lane at Red State, by way of Wizbang.
DVD Review: Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King
I finally broke down and joined Netflix a while back, and am taking the opportunity to catch up on some Viking (and Viking-related) films I haven’t seen before. This weekend I watched the European made-for-TV movie, Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. As I understand it, it was originally broadcast in longer form, as a two-parter, so this American version is missing some material.
I found it a somewhat enjoyable, correspondingly frustrating film. In a nutshell, the production values were excellent, and some of the acting was good. Unfortunately, in a strange dramatic inverted pyramid, the better the actor, the smaller (in general) was their part. Continue reading DVD Review: Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King
God's Battalions, by Rodney Stark
Sad to say, it is no surprise that the massacre of Antioch is barely reported in many recent Western histories of the Crusades. Steven Runciman gave it eight lines, Hans Eberhard Mayer gave it one, and Christopher Tyerman, who devoted several pages to lurid details of the massacre of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, dismissed the massacre of Antioch in four words. Karen Armstrong devoted twelve words to reporting this massacre, which she then blamed on the crusaders since it was their dire threat that had created a “new Islam” with a “desperate determination to survive.” Armstrong also noted that because Baibars [the Mamluk commander] was a patron of the arts, he “was not simply a destroyer . . . [but also] a great builder.”
This excerpt from page 232 of Rodney Stark’s God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
He identifies four great lies that have become common wisdom in recent decades, all of which (he insists) are demonstrably false: Continue reading God's Battalions, by Rodney Stark
Film review: Gone Baby Gone
Gone Baby Gone
The movie is very faithful to the book. Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Genero (Michelle Monaghan) are called in by the family to investigate the high profile disappearance of a little girl, kidnapped while her drug user/alcoholic mother was distracted. In cooperation with the police, they follow various leads, trying to pry the lid off a story that seems at once too neat, and infested with too many loose ends. The final payoff prompts a heartbreaking choice for Kenzie.
It’s a well-done movie, worthy of its source. The performances are excellent, the Boston locations perfect. I think (my memory may be fooling me) that the final crisis may have been presented with more ambivalence in the book. As it stands here, Kenzie’s ultimate decision seems a little hard to understand.
I don’t remember the language in the book being as rough as it was in the movie. I suspect that’s only because it’s less jarring on the page than when the words actually fall on your ears in your own living room.
But I wonder if that didn’t contribute to the movie’s lackluster box office performance.
Somebody (it may have been Michael Medved, or one of his guests) has pointed out that there’s really no economic incentive for film makers to use a lot of profanity in their movies.
Other vices have (let’s admit it) market appeal. A sex scene with a nude actress will admittedly sell tickets. Extreme, graphic violence will put lots of bodies in theater seats.
But nobody thinks, “Boy! I sure want to see this movie! I’ll get to hear a lot of F Bombs!”
I suppose the makers of Gone Baby Gone would have felt they were selling out if they’d toned the language down. But I have an idea they might have made money by it.
Film review: How to Train Your Dragon
As announced last week, the other Vikings and I were on hand Saturday morning for a sneak preview of the new Disney animated flick, How to Train Your Dragon. We posed for pictures, gave away stickers and temporary tattoos to the children, and terrified people with our impassioned denunciations of horned helmets.
This was the big IMAX theater out at the Minnesota Zoo, in Apple Valley. The theater people couldn’t have been nicer, and we got in to see the film for free (I marched past the ticket takers brandishing my sword, crying, “THIS is my ticket!”).
How did I like the movie? Well, it’s complicated.
One of my companions put it well when he said, “I’d have loved this film when I was eight.” It’s a well-done and clever movie, with interesting characters, good dialogue, and outstanding visuals (we saw it in 3-D, which made it even better). If you’re thinking of taking your kids to it, I won’t tell you no. It was lots of fun, and pretty harmless.
And yet, I have objections.
And it’s not just to the horned helmets. Continue reading Film review: How to Train Your Dragon
Long Lost, by Harlan Coben
I didn’t much care for the first Harlan Coben book I read, and it was part of the Myron Bolitar series. But Coben—and the series—have been growing on me, and I liked Long Lost
very much.
Coben, apparently, has decided to take the series (which has been pretty conventional mysteries up to now) in a new direction—to international thrillers. It would seem a stretch to make a sports agent (that’s Bolitar’s profession) a spy chaser, but Coben accomplishes it pretty deftly (I thought), by the wisest course possible for a writer. Instead of adding novel elements to the formula, he takes an underutilized character he’s already established, and gives her a back story that rears its ugly head to take her (and our hero) into fresh territory. Continue reading Long Lost, by Harlan Coben