Christ and Pop Culture

To start some early buzz for the summer, I thought I’d round up information on the big releases so you can be better informed about what’s coming down the pipe. Below you will find a chronological listing of 16 featured upcoming summer of 2008 movies and links to their respective websites. Fair Warning: most of these films are made by non-Christians and may contain questionable material. Hopefully you can save this list for when things begin to thaw out, to help you decide what to see this summer.

I imagine a large number of people don’t usually care about the Oscars, but those numbers must have increased this year. The nominees have been announced and the season is upon us, and yet this year Oscar the Grouch is probably gaining more attention (though Ben Bartlett would probably say that he always gets more attention). But it’s not just the mediocre awards show that is gaining little-to-no applause from fans this year, it seems to me that no one really even cares about Hollywood at all this year.

There must be a great deal of shock involved for those first-time offenders who find themselves in prison. There is the shock of realizing you’ve been caught and sentenced. There is the shock of the strip search and the first night in a terrifying place. And then, for some, there is the shock of being released after only a short period of prison time has passed.

To start some early buzz for the summer, I thought I’d round up information on the big releases so you can be better informed about what’s coming down the pipe. Below you will find a chronological listing of 16 featured upcoming summer of 2008 movies and links to their respective websites. Fair Warning: most of these films are made by non-Christians and may contain questionable material. Hopefully you can save this list for when things begin to thaw out, to help you decide what to see this summer.

A few days ago a news article ran on the front page of Yahoo which reported on a recent scientific study. The research claims to show that mice - and by extension humans - naturally take pleasure in violence.

There are two types of people who will see J.J. Abram’s monster thriller, Cloverfield: those who know and celebrate J. J. Abrams as the creator of Lost and are looking forward to a fun movie instilled also with poignant meaning, and those who just want to see a good monster movie. I found myself in the first camp. Lost is surprisingly meaningful for serialized television drama, concerned constantly with deep human issues such as human responsibility and redemption. Certainly, given an hour and a half of film and an audience’s rapt attention, sans commercials, J.J. Abrams would deliver.

“I’m not interested in this movie. It’s old.”

As a part time high school substitute, I’ve heard many students express this sentiment when I’ve played them a video left by their teacher. One popular variant goes, “But it’s in black and white!” For many of these kids, films are viewed more like newspapers than drama, music, or literature: the movie is only good when it is fresh off the presses.

The summer films of 2008 are shaping up to be some of the most exciting in years. While a handful look like they will be fodder for good theological/cultural discussion, most will be visually electrifying escapist fare. While there aren’t as many sequels as 2007, there are quite a few movies that look absolutely incredible. To start some early buzz for the summer, I thought I’d round up information on the big releases so you can be better informed about what’s coming down the pipe.

One problem with much of the Christian commentary on the arts is that it treats every medium essentially the same. Television, music, film, stage, the internet, literature, and illustrated novels are all treated vaguely as one giant neutral monolith by which culture influences weak Christians. The truth is that these mediums are drastically different in what their primary uses are, how they are received, the amount of influence they can have, and their conditioning effects on our culture.

Technology is moving us all faster and faster into a new world. We can now get our job done quicker, more efficiently, and with greater ease. But according to Mark Saltzman, it doesn’t have to work in only that direction.