{"id":180,"date":"2006-03-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html"},"modified":"2006-03-02T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-02T12:00:00","slug":"simon-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html","title":{"rendered":"Simon Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p>One benefit of Oscar season&#8211;besides finding out which gown designer is totally hot&#8211;is the rash of articles about worthy movies that didn\u2019t get nominated. The films that make critics\u2019 woulda-shoulda lists are jewels that are too small, too weird, or too spiritually challenging for a statue. The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/gate\/archive\/2006\/02\/27\/findrelig.DTL\" target=\"_new\">version<\/a> this year comes in the form of an interview with Stephen Simon, the erstwhile Hollywood producer (\u201cSmokey and the Bandit\u201d; &#8220;Bill and Ted&#8217;s Excellent Adventure\u201d) who chucked it all to found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiritualcinemacircle.com\/\/Public\/Welcome\/index.cfm\" target=\"_new\">The Spiritual Cinema Circle<\/a>, a kind of Netflix of the soul. Besides pumping Cameron Crowe&#8217;s critical punching bag \u201cElizabethtown,\u201d Simon wishes for a world in which Oscars would go to Kevin Costner and Joan Allen for \u201cThe Upside of Anger\u201d or Anthony Hopkins in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/blogs\/idolchatter\/2006\/02\/if-anthony-hopkins-can-do-it-so-can.html\" target=\"_new\">The World&#8217;s Fastest Indian<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One benefit of Oscar season&#8211;besides finding out which gown designer is totally hot&#8211;is the rash of articles about worthy movies that didn\u2019t get nominated. The films that make critics\u2019 woulda-shoulda lists are jewels that are too small, too weird, or too spiritually challenging for a statue. The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s version this year comes in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Simon Says<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Simon Says\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One benefit of Oscar season&#8211;besides finding out which gown designer is totally hot&#8211;is the rash of articles about worthy movies that didn\u2019t get nominated. The films that make critics\u2019 woulda-shoulda lists are jewels that are too small, too weird, or too spiritually challenging for a statue. The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s version this year comes in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-02T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"burb\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Simon Says","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Simon Says","og_description":"One benefit of Oscar season&#8211;besides finding out which gown designer is totally hot&#8211;is the rash of articles about worthy movies that didn\u2019t get nominated. The films that make critics\u2019 woulda-shoulda lists are jewels that are too small, too weird, or too spiritually challenging for a statue. The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s version this year comes in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2006-03-02T12:00:00+00:00","author":"burb","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html","name":"Simon Says","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-03-02T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-03-02T12:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/712e98c75f8fee807fba226a8bfa2bd8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/03\/simon-says.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Simon Says"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/712e98c75f8fee807fba226a8bfa2bd8","name":"burb","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"burb"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/burb"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}