?Happiness is a problem.? The self-help industry revolves around selling books or programs that will make you happy. The world of social media thrives by offering us constant exposure to the newest trends and fads. We are always being pushed to buy (or buy into) the latest new thing that will fulfill our lives. Mark…
Faith and doubt struggle within a police detective investigating a brutal murder in Under the Banner of Heaven. The FX/Hulu series is a fictionalized version of a non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer about a 1984 double murder in Utah. It is steeped in the beliefs of the Church of Latter Day Saints (often referred to…
?And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.? (Gen. 4:8 NRSV) It is worth remembering that humankind?s first murder was a family affair. Ridley Scott?s House of Gucci is the newest way of telling the story of a family that destroys itself because of the greed,…
?Because I could no longer ignore death, I pay more attention to life.? Based on a true story, Grace and Grit, from director Sebastian Siegel, is story of love in the face of death. The specter of death is of such existential power that we would expect such a story to have a spiritual aspect….
Latvia?s official entry for the Best Foreign Feature Oscar is Blizzard of Souls from director Dzintars Dreiberg. The film is based on a book by Aleksandrs Grins, which was banned in the Soviet Union. The film has been the most watched film in the history Latvian cinema. The story follows Arturs (Oto Brantevics), a young…
Films have to ability to take us into unknown worlds?maybe through science fiction, or a setting in a different culture or time period. When I?m in a theater (ah, those were the days!) and the lights go down I feel a bit of excitement about where we will travel to today. The Reason I Jump,…
?Where we come from is who we are, but we choose every day who we become.? J. D. Vance?s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy has been brought to the screen by Ron Howard. The memoir recounted Vance?s childhood in the Ohio Rust Belt, where he was raised by a mother struggling with addiction and his grandparents…
Perhaps that is why when he finally found that new life and wrote his autobiographical books, they became bestsellers and prompted film adaptations. The riveting story of the absolute savagery and inhumanity within that prison setting eventually shifts to a story to hope and fulfillment.
Every year many fourth grade students read Island of the Blue Dolphins in school. ?The book is a fictional account based in a historic tale of a Native American woman who spent eighteen years alone on San Nicolas Island (part of California?s Channel Islands). Alone on the Island of the Blue Dolphins is a documentary…
The Zabinskis? decision to harbor as many Jews as they could was a courageous act?and a very illegal one. They were well aware of the threat that the Germans represented?both to the Jews and to those who harbored them.
