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Idol Chatter

It seems reasonable to assume that a film whose soundtrack is a setting of the Passion of Christ from the Gospel of John will have a religious or spiritual theme. The film “Passio” by Paolo Cherchi Usai, presented during the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, is a silent film about the plight of the human condition,…

Many feature film directors learned the craft of moviemaking by originally making short films early in their careers. The Damah Festival, one of the most successful spiritually-themed film festivals (which focuses on short films), opens in Los Angeles starting tomorrow. The Damah (the word means transformational art) Festival has a top-notch judging panel including Christian…

We’re all Mormons. That was the essence, anyway, of the first half of “The Mormons,” the Frontline/American Experience documentary that concluded last night on PBS. The film implies that the founding myth about the United States–that Americans were a pilgrim people persecuted for the purity of their belief who then found freedom in a vast,…

Remember the 2000 Oscar’s when Angelina shocked the viewing audience by declaring in her acceptance speech that she was “so in love” with her brother, James Haven, and actually snogged with him? Definitely different. While little was known at the time about Haven, also an actor, the public had come to expect the unexpected from…

Politicians? Diplomats? World leaders? Does anyone know what to do with the Middle East conflict? It seems to be the consensus that children in the region learn from their parents and the society that surrounds them–and those messages are hard to combat. Unless you’re made of felt. After more than a decade of having been…

It’s been obvious for some time that the Dalai Lama has rock-star status. A funny piece in yesterday’s Contra Costa Times gives us the particulars: Organizers of his appearances, often in halls made famous by ’60s musical attractions, face “many of the same issues as a typical rock show: entourages, backstage ambience, and who gets…

I should have listened to New York Times film critic Stephen Holden, who called “In the Land of Women” meek and mopey, “the film equivalent of a sensitive emo band with one foot in alternative rock and the other in the squishy pop mainstream.” The film stars Meg Ryan in a relatively new role–down and…

Two of America’s biggest born-again tabloid sensations are getting together in a stage musical with all the hoopla of a tent revival meeting. One is Kathie Lee Gifford, the public Christian and former morning talk-show matron whose repeated bouts with the unforgiving press finally drove her to resign her spot on “Live with Regis and…

Any Tolkien fan can tell you that J.R.R. Tolkien, a faithful Catholic, was pals with pop theologian C.S. Lewis, and that he laced his Lord of the Rings trilogy with Christian theology. What’s not always obvious, however, is how. What’s a hobbit got to do with the Messiah? The “new” Tolkien book, “The Children of…

A week or so ago, I suggested that “Idol Chatter” cover the Richard Gere kissing kerfuffle that was consuming India. It seems the “Officer and a Gentleman” exhibited what some Indians consider less than gentlemanly behavior by vigorously kissing Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty several times on the hand and cheek while attending an AIDS/HIV awareness…
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