“Happily Ever After”? Yes, Really – Movie Review: Cinderella (2015)

Yesterday afternoon, my two older children and I went to go see the new, live-action Disney film Cinderella, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Lily James as Cinderella and Cate Blanchett as Lady Tremaine (the Stepmother). And I wanted to say a few things about it. (I’m not a professional movie critic, so this will not be the usual review. And yes, there are…

Jennifer Aniston Goes Makeup-Free. Liberation Ensues.

I read this morning that actress Jennifer Aniston (whose family name is Anastasakis and whose godfather is Telly Savalas) had declared that going makeup-free in her new film Cake was “dreamy and empowering and liberating.” I don’t normally bother with celebrity news, but of course when using social media, it’s hard to escape it. This caught my eye, though, because it struck me as…

The Tolkien Legacy

It’s a rare, if not exceptional, case. In an era where most people would sell their souls to be talked about, Christopher Tolkien has not expressed himself in the media for 40 years. No interviews, no announcements, no meetings — nothing. It was a decision he made at the death of his father, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), British author of the hugely famous…

Ecological Vision in James Cameron’s Avatar

Ecology was never particularly a subject I thought I would find myself thinking too much about, much less writing about, but it seems to keep coming to the fore for me, especially as I’ve begun to apprehend more of its theological, rather than secular/political, significance. Framing this theological vision in terms of “the story of home” (which is one literal rendering of oikologia, from…