23 Nov
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- Caroline
Imagine a World Without Arms….
Imagining a world without arms was just one of the inspiring things we did at Conversations About the Arms Trade. Overflow, Open Heaven’s social justice group, organised the event as part of our Study War No More campaign. The campaign has two main aims:
- To help members of Open Heaven learn more about the global arms trade and some of the problems it is creating in our world.
- To see Loughborough University reduce the amount of research it does that has connections to the global arms trade.
Yoy can read the campaign’s full aims (six of them) by reading Overflow’s Dummies Guide to the Arms Trade.
18 Dec
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- Pete
International Prayer Breakfast – 2008 Review
We’ve had a fantastic year with our International Prayer Breakfasts. So we want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have got up early in the dark, cold mornings and joined with us to pray for people, and places around the world where we want to see God’s kingdom break in.
Enjoying Mike’s great breakfasts each month has definitely helped in dragging our tired bodies out of bed a few hours earlier than normal! Ranging from a full cooked breakfast to continental breakfast and good ol’ English porridge, Brilliant! We’ve heard from such a variety of people across a wide range of locations. Here’s a brief summary of some of the topics, people, and countries that we’ve prayed for...
18 Sep
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- Matt
Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner?
Tuesday night saw Channel Five air Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner, the third in their series of religious documentaries. Having been surprised to find the first entry,Secrets of the Jesus Tomb, adopting a reasonably conservative approach, and the 2nd film, Who Really Killed Jesus taking a reasonably strong historical position I was wondering how this latest effort would handle its subject. The advance publicity suggested it wouldn’t be simply be trotting out Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" in documentary form, but looking at things from very a different angle.
12 Sep
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- Matt
Who Really Killed Jesus?
Hot on the heels of last week’s Secrets of the Jesus Tomb comes Who Really Killed Jesus? the second entry in Channel Five’s series Secrets of the Cross. Of the four documentaries this looks to be the one least driven by conspiracy theories and the most grounded historical research. As ever the filmmakers cobble together their story from interviews with experts and voiced-over reconstructions. Some bits are new and surprising whilst others seem somewhat out of place.
The sad history of the church is that the last two thousand years have been marred by numerous acts of violence against those perceived as “Christ killers”. What this documentary wants to know is whether the charge is even plausible given the recent advances in historical research.
05 Sep
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- Matt
Secrets of the Jesus Tomb
Eighteen months ago James Cameron’s documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus was grabbing headlines with its controversial claims about the life and death of Jesus. With the news being released so close to the programme’s broadcast there was little time for most experts to get their heads 'round the data before it aired, let alone come to a consensus.
So Tuesday's Channel Five documentary, Secrets of the Jesus Tomb, was in some ways a welcome response to last year big religion story. After a year and a half of weighing the evidence what had the scholars decided?
27 Jun
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- Matt
Film Review: Prince Caspian
The publicity machine for Prince Caspian has been going full throttle for the past month promising a visually stunning action film for all the family. And, as one would hope for a film with a £200 million budget and no big stars to pay, the visuals are fairly stunning. Whilst never hugely original, the camera swoops and pans, captures the nice scenery and gets right in the thick of the action. The CGI is fairly impressive too. I can only recall two films that feature trees coming to life and taking part in a battle and Caspian's trees blow those from Lord of the Rings clean out of the water. Furthermore, the animals are animated far more smoothly than they were in the first Narnia movie. Reepicheep and Trufflehunter are portrayed so believably that all memories of Warwick Davis' awful mouse costume from the BBC version of this story were forgotten, at least for a moment.
24 Jul
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- Matt
Film Review: Evan Almighty
It's been raining lots and I've been growing a beard. Clear signs that Evan Almighty is about to hit cinemas across the land. It's a strange time to release a family comedy film with a spiritual edge. It'll be going head to head with a small movie you may have heard about called The Simpsons. Given that God-talk has never been far from the yellow lips of the inhabitants of Springfield it's strange that it's this film that has garnered so much Christian press. Are they onto something we don't know about, or have they simply just backed the wrong horse?
Whilst it wasn't until the unexpected success of The Passion of the Christ in 2004 that Hollywood really started to sit up and take notice of the "Christian market", director Tom Shadyac was way ahead of the game. Shadyac was the writer and director of 2003's Bruce Almighty, a film that, somewhat unusually, chose to combine comedy with the problem of suffering and unanswered prayer. Nowadays, studios seem to give the green light to practically any religious film project that comes its way, so it's not too much of a surprise to find Shadyac given another bite of the cherry.
29 Mar
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- Matt
Film Review: Amazing Grace
William Wilberforce is one of the true heroes of the Christian faith, and rightly so. For all those who, over the centuries, have claimed Jesus' name but totally missed the point of his message, Wilberforce stands as one who lived out the principles of his master and made a difference.
His is an inspiring story, not just because of what he achieved, but because of how he achieved it. There was no quick fix solution; it was a life's work. He didn't reach his destination by riding a wave of popularity; initially, support for the slave trade was huge. Progress was slow and difficult. The wages of his campaign were ill health. And he never lived to see the full extent of his dream reach fulfilment – he died a month before slaves throughout the British Empire were given their freedom.
Strangely Amazing Grace only follows the story up to the 1807 Slave Trade Act. This act ended the trade in slaves, but didn't free the existing slaves. This typifies the film's greatest weakness – it doesn't have that much to say about the rights and wrongs of slavery itself. Amistad, featured slaves making passionate pleas for their freedom as well as examining the shocking way in which they were transported. Amazing Grace focuses only on the latter. Once slave trading has finished, the film has little to say about existing slaves regaining their freedom.
14 Dec
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- Matt
Film Review: Brick
These days many people have a somewhat hazy notion of the words “film noir”. They may know it has something to do with old films, but for many it is most closely associated with the old OrangeTM commercial that ran just before the feature began on trips to the cinema. That advert voices the popular misconception that film noir has to be shot in black and white. In actual fact the “noir” is more to do with the pessimistic feel of these films that the colouring of the film stock.
Back in the 1940s though Film Noir” was where it was at. The war meant films had extremely low budgets, meaning expensive epics, or special effect laden movies were out of the question. Instead the modern detective novels became popular stories to film, and low lighting was used to hide cheaply built sets. The result was that a whole genre was invented. Private detectives, cynical about the world, and more than willing to bend the rules, investigated suspicious, and usually fairly convoluted, cases, aided or obstructed by intriguing femme fatales. The genre became so iconic that even once the war was over and Hollywood’s cash flow problems were over the genre was still in fashion, and even once its popularity declined, filmmakers have returned to it over the years.
10 Nov
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- Matt
Film Review: Little Children
In our society where so many things have been taken to such extremes simply for their shock value, there is perhaps only one taboo that still has any currency – paedophilia. Thankfully, whilst the tabloids are only too happy to rain down verbal sulphur on those afflicted with this condition, a few film-makers recently have been brave enough to try and look the problem in the eye.
2004’s Mystic River examined the terrible impact child abuse can have on a person’s life. Last year’s The Woodsman, also starring Kevin Bacon, took an unflinching look at the life of a convicted child molester trying to re-integrate back into society whilst attempting to free himself of his condition. Bacon’s character is unable to hold down a job once his colleagues uncover his past, and struggles with the temptation to re-offend, whilst simultaneously trying to prevent another man committing a similar crime.
If possible, Little Children goes a step further. Whereas Bacon’s character was in some sense sympathetic, Ronnie – convicted of indecent exposure to children – is far less so. Whereas Bacon’s film star looks, and numerous “good guy” roles make it easy to identify with him, Ronnie is played by Jackie Earle Haley, a relative unknown. Furthermore, whereas Bacon is tempted but resists, Ronnie fails at precisely the moment when the audience is beginning to root for him. It’s a disturbing moment as it lifts the lid on the darkness inside, and we realise that previously we have only seen him through his mother’s eyes.
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