According to the UK's Telegraph, a new film based on the legend of Pope Joan – an Englishwoman who purportedly disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female pontiff in history – has sparked debate in the Roman Catholic Church.
Peter Stanford, a former editor of the Catholic Herald and the author of The She-Pope: a quest for the truth behind the mystery of Pope Joan, said, "It's perfectly feasible that Joan existed. A monk's cowl is baggy and well suited to covering up a woman's body. We know that some women bound their breasts and cut their hair to pass themselves off as men."
When our colleague Laura Leonard heard that Glee was adding a Christian character to its second season, "I worried that she might be just another outrageous caricature representing the worst people think of us," she writes on our sister blog, Her.meneutics. "But in the hands of a show like Glee, which combines choreographed musical numbers with high school drama and teenage self-discovery, this might just turn out to be a good thing."
Leonard continues, "I anxiously await Glee’s interpretation of the American Christian teenager, having been one myself and knowing many who currently choose to identify themselves with Christ in the halls, and play fields, and choir rooms, of their schools. If she can demonstrate Christ’s love in her relationships with others without giving up the values and beliefs that form her identity, it will be a great success indeed,"
When it was announced last October that Beloved Pictures had picked up the rights to make a movie of C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, many reacted with a "huh?" Who is Beloved Pictures? Though respected director David L. Cunningham (To End All Wars) had signed on to helm the project, some still wondered if it would ever see the light of day.
Now it has been announced that Beloved is partnering with Mpower Pictures to produce the film, with Mpower founder Steve McEveety to lead the production team, moving the movie one critical step closer to reality. McEveety is best known for producing a number of Mel Gibson films, including The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart, and We Were Soldiers.
Beloved Pictures president Caleb Applegate says that McEveety and Empower are "keen on the project. It's definitely going to happen." He said the release date is still to be determined; the script hasn't even been written yet, but acclaimed children's writer N.D. Wilson (Leepike Ridge, 100 Cupboards) will tackle that task. "He's a phenomenal writer," says Applegate. "He's a Christian, and he's red-hot right now. I've got nothing but great things to say about him."
Thanks to Walden Media and 20th Century Fox, CT is among several select outlets pleased to bring you the world premiere of the trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Let us know what you think.
If you weren't already a believer in the saying that a dog is man's best friend, you will be after watching Mine, a 2009 documentary about the pets that survived Hurricane Katrina, their subsequent journeys, and whether or not they were reunited with their owners.
Distributed on DVD by Film Movement (a terrific indie movie "club" chronicled by our friend Jeffrey Overstreet here), Mine has been hailed by various critics as "a must see" and "Oscar material." I'd add words like "tearjerker" and "heartwarming" and "a testament to passion and compassion" -- especially pertaining to the people who rescued these animals from New Orleans and tried desperately to reunite them with their owners . . . or at least get them placed into good homes.
It's that last effort -- placing the pets in good homes -- that's the most gut-wrenching of all in this film. Those who took on the "orphaned" pets were doing a very good thing, sometimes as "foster parents," sometimes as permanent new homes. But then, when the original owner would finally find out the whereabouts of his/her old pet, they of course would want them back. The new families, already attached to the new pet (sometimes a year or more had passed), were sometimes reluctant to give them up -- and that subplot plays out as one of the film's most stirring, because there are no easy answers.
The filmmakers follow a handful of journeys here -- of Katrina survivors both human and animal -- and several of the storylines have happy endings. But, since this is real life, some of them don't, and that's the hardest part of this film. But it's an eye-opener to a situation that could happen again in the wake of a disaster -- natural or not. What laws and mechanisms are in place to take care of the pets left behind when people have to flee so quickly -- and their pets are not allowed to come along?
A highly recommended film. Check out the trailer here:
