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GIVEAWAY! Movies are Prayers by Josh Larsen!

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Josh Larsen’s highly anticipated new book, Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings, is finally out!  And ScreenFish wants to send a copy to you!

Movies do more than tell a good story. They are expressions of raw emotion, naked vulnerability, and unbridled rage. They often function in the same way as prayers, communicating our deepest longings and joys, to a God who hears each and every one. In this captivating book, Filmspotting cohost Josh Larsen brings a critic’s unique perspective to how movies function as expressions to God of lament, praise, joy, confession, and more. His clear expertise and passion for the art of film along with his thoughtful reflections on the nature of prayer will bring you a better understanding of both. God’s omnipresence means that you can find him whether you’re sitting on your sofa at home or in the seats at the theater. You can talk to him wherever movies are shown. And when words fail, the perfect film might be just what you need to jumpstart your conversations with the Almighty.

To enter, simply write in the comment section of the Facebook post and tell us what your favourite movie is and how it speaks to you!  The contest will close at 11:59pm on Sunday, June 18th, 2017 and the winner will be notified via. Facebook.

Good luck!

Praying the Movies: 1on1 with Josh Larsen

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For many, sitting in a darkened theatre, munching popcorn and taking in the latest blockbuster film or drama with Oscar buzz is a respite from modern culture.  In a moment of escape, they allow themselves to be pulled into another world of space aliens, superheroes or suspense in an effort to ‘turn their brain off’ and forget about the world.

In doing so, however, they may be missing out on something much more profound.

In his new book, Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice our Deepest Longings, film critic Josh Larsen (Filmspotting, Think Christian) argues that films offer a unique and powerful voice into our world that can serve as prayers for God to move.  Citing films from 12 Years a Slave to Chinatown to The Muppets, Larsen believes that the movies allow a filmmaker the opportunity to speak their heart, be it with tears of lament or tears of joy.  For him, the idea for the book began when he started to engage the filmmakers voice within the movies and how that served as a spiritual cry from the heart of our culture.

“The main idea was flipping… this Christian approach to film that we’ve been doing for the last couple of decades, which is to ask ‘How does God speak through the movies?’ I certainly believe that that can happen and I enjoy… looking at films from that perspective,” he starts. “But the more I began to think about movies theologically—and a lot of this came out of my work at Think Christian—and really studied how they worked… in terms of what the filmmakers were trying to do, the aesthetic choices they made, I began to see that movies function as forms of prayer that we are familiar with as Christians.”

“You think of prayers of confession.  You think of prayers of praise,” he continues.  “Movies express very similar things and, once I started seeing those parallels, it made a lot of sense to me.  What are movies?  At their best, they’re these artistic expressions of people coming together to consider ‘what is this place?’  ‘What is this world?’  ‘Why are we here?’ ‘What does it all mean?’  Now, obviously, not every movie is interested in that—some just want to make a buck—but there are those that are asking these other questions and that’s what our prayers do too.”

In Movies are Prayers, Larsen argues that our prayers are intrinsically linked to our human experience in the midst of a broken world.  In other words, the cries of our heart are an extension of what we are feeling and dealing with on a personal level.

According to Larsen, “The trajectory of Scripture is that the world was created good, it fell into sin, it was redeemed by Christ’s work at the Cross and now we are awaiting that full day of restoration.  So, if you look at these different sorts of prayers I talk about, they generally fall somewhere along that timeline.  So, prayers of praise echo delight at the good creation that God made initially and that we still see glimmers of in this day.  But something like prayers of lament, or anger, or confession—these all relate to that period of falling into sin.  Then we have something like obedience… [which] comes after that redemption of Christ on the cross. And then you move onto restoration which is a hard one because we’re not there yet but we do see glimmers of that as well… So, the book kind of has this overarching framework that is taken from the basic trajectory of Scripture.”

“It goes all the way back to [theologian] Abraham Kuyper and this idea of common grace,” he continues.  “This idea that God has bestowed upon all of his creatures these creative abilities, that are expressed in filmmaking.  That there is this longing for eternity that is buried in our hearts.  We all, as humans, share this.  It’s the imago Dei.  We are created in His image and we share this longing to be reunited with Him.  So, to me, that says that movies need to be at least allowed the opportunity to speak this way.”

 

Given the fact that the majority of films he explores in his book are not considered ‘faith-based’ in nature, one could argue that examining them through spiritual lenses is counter-productive.  However, Larsen believes that filmmaking offers universal cries that connect with the heart of God, regardless of religious affiliation.

“Some chapters were easier than others and I think that’s because certain expressions are more universal or more common,” he explains. “I think the two that worked that way in my experience were prayers of yearning, which is kind of the baseline.  Every human being has some form of yearning within them and trying to figure out ‘is there something more than what I see in front of my face and experience with my senses?’ What else might be out there?…   Lament is obviously universal [as well].  No matter who you are or whatever religious affiliation or none that you have, you experience lament in your life.  So, we have tonnes of movies that capture just the terrible things that people have experienced and offer these experiences up… So, those are two things—yearning and lament—that, because they’re so universal are easily found in non-religious films.”

When asked which form of prayer speaks most clearly to him, Larsen argues that he can relate most to the prayers of yearning and lament.  Through the gravity of their cries, these prayers allow him an opportunity to release his inner angst to God by giving voice to his deepest spiritual longings.

“The yearning one really does speak to me.  That’s not just for those that are curious about faith or have questions coming into faith.  That’s something that I still feel everyday as a life-long believer.  So, that was a really rewarding chapter, and to think of the movies that echo that for me.  Because, really, this is part of the motivation for the book.  While I was watching films, these feelings and expressions that I had within me were being put out there by the movie, almost on my behalf… I’d probably go back to lament as well because that’s a common one and its cathartic for a movie to lament on my behalf.  So, something like anger works similarly too.  A movie can express that for me, whereas I might keep it buried down myself or feel like I can’t express that to God, then having a movie do it for me kind of gets that out there.”

Of course, not all forms of prayers are ubiquitous to everyone.  For example, during his preparation for the book, Larsen recognized that prayers that required more reflection and silence were the ones that most brought him out of his comfort zone.

“The real challenge for me with me for the book was considering prayers of meditation and contemplation,” he reflects.  “It just hasn’t been a part of my own experience so it was fascinating to research that and try to put that into practice.  I’m a very logical and reason-based guy so I’m not wired that way.”

With this in mind, he also believes that another challenge to this sort of approach to film analysis was recognizing when to view it through this lens and when to leave it alone.  For Larsen, allowing the film to speak first proved essential in knowing when this sort of reading was appropriate.

Says Larsen, “I don’t want to come to every movie and say ‘what type of prayer is this’ because that’s kind of working the process backwards.  I really want to approach movies and let them speak first, see what things are they interested in saying and then say ‘how does that resonate with my Christian faith?’  Sometimes it might be because the movie works as a prayer but sometimes it might not.”

Through his book, Larsen would like to help his readers not only understand the value of allowing films to speak for themselves, but also that they would recognize the value of different forms of prayer.  In other words, his intent is not only to highlight great works of cinema but also to challenge them to open their hearts as well.

“I guess my hope would be that… it’s not only illuminating potential aspects of these movies but that it’s illuminating good things about these types of prayer and give them more prominence in our lives.  That was my experience.”

 

You can check out our giveaway of Movies are Prayers here.

Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice our Deepest Longings is available on Amazon now.

Rob Bell Wants You to Read the Bible

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In the fifteen years I’ve spent writing about media online, only three things have earned me digital (and real-life) tongue-lashings.

  1. My proposal that Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice is better than Captain America: Civil War.
  2. My belief that The Shack explains spiritual truths in a real and powerful way.
  3. My admiration for the sometimes bespectacled Rob Bell, former pastor, podcaster, speaker, and author.

Momentarily ignoring the first, I must admit that the complaints against the second and third seem to spawn from the emphasis of Paul Young and Rob Bell on the grace of God versus his judgment. [Others, even their detractors, have questioned whether jealousy plays a role in the way that the evangelical religious community has received Young and Bell, but that’s for another day.]

And then Bell released What is the Bible? How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything as a follow-up to How to Be Here.

“Oh my goodness, he wants us to read the Bible differently? Who is this guy?”

The short answer: Bell is a very intelligent man with a lot to tell us about what it means to be human, to be faithful, and to read the Bible.

So he starts with a lesson about the Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 34:7 about the state of Moses’ body when he died. Again, the short version: Bell says Moses was still fertile, that he could still “get it up.” And from that point forward, he launches into a series of stories and explorations about how we read the Bible, what we filter out and ignore, what we accept and include, how we allow ourselves to acknowledge the history, experience, and process around the books that make up the Bible.

Bell implores us to learn the historical context, to consider the things that seem strange or weird in the story (a left-handed assassin, a talking donkey, a practice of sacrifice that ends differently than it ever had before) as the most important or significant. Bell wants us to use our brains to consider the works in the Bible in the way they were meant to be received and to apply them to the life we live today. And it’s beautiful.

On page 116, Bell writes this (in response to another pastor, a pastor intent on emphasizing the judgment and anger of God):

I don’t read the Bible like a flat line. I don’t see all of the passages in the Bible sitting equally side by side so that you can pick one and then counter it with another and go back and forth endlessly., endlessly leading you to the barbaric and violent and random nature of life–and God. I read it looking for what the story is doing, what’s happening within it. What new perspective is emerging? What sense is being heightened? The stories in the Bible –and the Bible itself –have an arc, a trajectory, a movement and momentum like all great stories have. There are earlier parts in the story, and there are later parts in the story. The story is headed somewhere. 

Here at ScreenFish, we have made it our business to consider the way that the gospel, the good news of God, is breaking through the world we live in. We are focused on interpreting and examining and re-imagining what the storytellers meant and what we see or feel in response to our own experience. But the truth is that one person’s joy (remember BvS?) is another person’s tragedy (or at least, their most panned movie). Ask our staff, and we’re mostly still arguing about the beauty or stupidity of Mad Max: Fury Road.

But Bell isn’t just concerned with interpretation. He wants us to recognize that we’re supposed to be applying and living out the truths contained in Scripture. It’s not just ‘wisdom’ or ‘colloquial’ but alive.

Read that again: Rob Bell clearly states that the Bible – words of God – are alive, and in motion.

He doesn’t lay out a definitive creed.

He doesn’t spend time on articles of faith by which a person can join a church, denomination, or movement.

He doesn’t answer all of the questions that his most famous book – Love Wins – raised in the minds (and hearts) of his critics.

But what he does do is demand we think, and pray, and apply. He does ask that we view the Bible and the world we live in critically. And he believes that when we do that, we can grow in our faith toward God.

And for that, What is the Bible? becomes beautiful, and approachable, and mind-blowing.

You just have to actually read it – like the Bible – to get it.

David Ortiz’ Papi on Baseball, Patriots Day, & Boston Strong

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Tom Brady might be New England but David Ortiz is Boston.

While the three-time World Series champion might have been “just” a talented designated hitter on an American League team fighting decades of failure to the world before Patriot’s Day 2013, afterward, he was the galvanizing face of a city that stood against terrorism, fear, and violence.

Sure, New York had the New York Yankees and the NY Giants after 9/11. But with one ad-libbed speech in Fenway Park, just days after two brothers had rocked Boston with homemade bombs, Ortiz announced that Boston would be broken:

“This is our $^&@#$% city. And nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”

While this is one of many stories that Ortiz tells with Boston-based writer Michael Holley in Papi, My Story, it is the one which will bring Ortiz to mind for years after his baseball feats have been forgotten. But that’s a long while from now, because Papi’s rise coincided (are there ever coincidences?) with the ascension of the Red Sox from late-night punchline to World Champions.

In his autobiography, Ortiz recounts his childhood, and the beauty of his parents’ efforts to raise him right; his marriage, with its ups and downs to his wife, Tiffany; his experience as a minor leaguer with the Seattle Mariners and Minnesota Twins; his challenges and successes with the Boston Red Sox. Peppered throughout are reminders that Ortiz sees how God has seen him through, how hard work achieves results, and wisdom from the journey.

Entertaining, funny, poignant, and always straightforward, Ortiz’s story reflects the same man who showed up for interviews and told it like he saw it. Sure, that created some friction with management, but all of the great ones have been willing to tell what they thought. Now, Ortiz does the same, looking back, not with regret but with respect and humility for twenty years in the majors.

Boston fans will find this a must-read, but any aspiring athlete, or someone seeking a reminder that there’s more to life than being knocked down, will appreciate the rise of one of Boston’s greatest.

Papi: My Story is available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The Sons of Solomon: Pulp Fiction at Its Finest

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In the debut our new page, “OtherFish,” where we’ll cover the various pieces of media that catch our attention that aren’t movies or television, I am proud to present the work of one of our own ScreenFishers, Jason Norton. After years of slaving away over writing, editing, and journaling his own stories, Norton has proudly release in printed form The Sons of Solomon. Here, in an epic genre that recalls A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Indiana Jones, Norton spins a pair of stories that call to mind the work of Richard Connell, “A Most Dangerous Game,” with humor to spare.

Brothers Danny and Jake Solomon have been passed down legendary rings from their ancestors, dating all the way back to King Solomon. With apologies to Allan Quatermain, their exploits are significantly more intense than hobnobbing with some natives who are blown away by the Solomon Bros.’ intense skill and wit. Instead, they find themselves blowing past natives, Nazis, femme fatales, and the like, until their moral compass finds them fighting for some genetically engineered wildebeasts. While the action is always intense, Norton’s prose keeps us guessing as to how all this will play out – just like the short story included afterward, “Shocking Tales of the Eel: All’s Fare.”

While we’re able to see that this is the first in a set of adventures – John Carter of Mars, anyone? – we can see the background we’re dying to know more about and see that the stones that give the Solomons power must one day be united a la the Infinity Gauntlet. While the book is in written form – with a comic artist’s cover by Chris Burke – the cinematic, episodic value can’t be oversold. This may be the first you’ve heard of Norton’s own fictional work, but it won’t be your last. 

From Pro Se Productions, you can buy Norton’s book here.