1. In Mark Galli’s recent column over at Christianity Today, “The God Who Became Blood”, he uses his dysfunctional prostate as a jumping off point to talk about the Incarnation:
2. It may be a rotten summer at the box office, TS3 notwithstanding, but with M. Night’s latest catastrophe, The Last Airbender, and Sex and The City 2 before it, it’s been a banner season for movie critics. I’ve never read such horrendous or hilarious reviews. A.O. Scott writes, “the idea that this is just the first Last Airbender seems either delusionally optimistic or downright cruel.” Roger Ebert writes, “The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here.” Keith Phipps on The A/V Club goes as far as saying, “If any movie ever warranted a class-action lawsuit against the filmmakers, it’s The Last Airbender.” !!
We may have to commission a “grace for M. Night” post… Any takers? In the meantime, check out Margaret Evans’ “Life In The Shallows” column, which covers a lot of related ground.
3. A great little post on CNN.com by Jonathan Acuff, author of Stuff Christians Like, entitled “Why Christians Are Jerks Online,” where he makes the bold claim that Jesus even came to save sanctimonious bloggers… (ht BS).
4. Interesting article about online marriage counseling at The NY Times, “Seeking To Pre-mpt Marital Strife”:
Newsweek weighs in on the same topic with the depressing, sign-o-the-times-heavy I Don’t (ht BM).
5. In video games, check out the trailer for El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, based on the apocryphal book of Enoch(!), ht SZ:
Then, as an antidote, read, mark and inwardly digest programmer Andy Geers’ Old Testament Adventures Creed, which represents about as Mockingbird-friendly approach to video game programming as we’re likely to find.
COMMENTS
3 responses to “Another Week Ends: Prostate Gospel, Rotten Airbenders, Marriage, OT Video Games”
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Wow! What's my silly little column about Your Brain On Internet doing in this impressive lineup? Very sweet of you, DZ 🙂 Hey, I have promised to take my daughter to see Airbender this weekend. If I can muster any grace for M. Night, I'll write it up! (Amelia and I used to watch the cartoon together, and we really liked it, so I'm sad to read these reviews. We'd been so looking forward to the movie… )
Simeon, I might just have to give that game some footnote cred in my dissertation…amazing find!
Okay, well… I just saw The Last Airbender. And yes, I have abundant sympathy and compassion for M. Night. Here's the thing: I saw plenty of glimmers of the movie he WANTED to make – and it could have been glorious. Adding the 3D after the fact really mucked up the look of the film, and some of the casting was off… and some other things. But his vision for the movie was clearly beautiful and transcendent; he just didn't achieve it. He spent three years of his life trying, and not only did he fail… he's being savaged for that failure. So, yeah… I've got PLENTY of grace to spare for the man. And incidentally, my eight-year-old ADORED it. That's something in my book.