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Jeffrey is...

- delighted and honored to learn that Auralia's Colors is nominated for two Christy awards!

- recommending "The Visitor," an inspiring, funny, and powerful new film by Thomas McCarthy, writer-director of The Station Agent

- working full-time as a writer/editor at Seattle Pacific University.

- finishing revisions for Cyndere's Midnight and preparing for the proofreading round.

- bedazzled by new albums by Portishead, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Lizz Wright, Allison Moorer, and Sam Phillips.
LookingCloser.org

Guess what! This *isn't* the home page. This is just the blog.
Visit the Looking Closer home page to access Jeffrey Overstreet's archive of reviews, interviews, and more.
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Welcome!

Welcome to Jeffrey Overstreet's blog. Here we discuss news, reviews, and perspectives on movies, music, literature, faith, and plenty more. You'll also find news and updates regarding Jeffrey's books:

Through a Screen Darkly,

Auralia's Colors,

and the upcoming sequel in The Auralia Thread,

Cyndere's Midnight.

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Contact Jeffrey.

- Email

- Facebook

- MySpace.
RECENT HOT TOPICS

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Auralia's Colors Earns Two Award Nominations

Wow. What an honor. Thank you, Christy Award judges!

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Expelled... Not So Excellent?

Greg Wright reviews Expelled: No Intellgence Allowed. And contrary to the chorus of ecstatic Christian leaders, Wright is willing to point out that the film has flaws as serious as any rabble-rousing Michael Moore movie.

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Best Final Shot of a Movie... Ever

What's your favorite closing moment of a feature film?

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What's your favorite Bob Dylan lyric?

From now on, that's "The Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Bob Dylan."

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Ender's Game

Who should direct the adaptation of Orson Scott Card's classic sci-fi adventure novel?

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Should Public School Students Be Required to Celebrate the Dalai Lama?

When Seattle Public Schools *required* students to attend a visit by the Dalai Lama, and *required* them to wear lotus flower t-shirts, was that a show of diversity and tolerance? Read this letter of protest.

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Michael Chabon & Spider-Man

McSweeney's offers up an alternate script for Spider-Man 2, written by the celebrated author Michael Chabon

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The Eagles are Coming!

Fairy tales and fantasy stories... what good are they? A celebration of the stories of Madeleine L'Engle, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and George MacDonald.

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The Hobbit

What do you want the screenwriters to get right?

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Flight of the Red Balloon

Here's my review of my favorite film so far in 2008.

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Can you name 100 influential, respected, celebrated "writers of faith"?

The folks at Image journal can.

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"Expelled" and The Big Ben Stein Brouhaha

First, my friend Brett McCracken posted this review of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." Then, this post broke all records at this blog, with 10,000 readers in 24 hours. Looking Closer reader Stuart Blessman sent me an email about what he witnessed at a screening of Expelled, and suddenly an army of offended athiests showed up here to burn Blessman at the stake, or at least to call for his expulsion from his university. What a ride. One might almost conclude that they responded with "moral outrage," which would suggest they've discovered a foundation for absolute right and wrong, by which they judged Blessman "unrighteous." Fascinating. And then, one of Blessman's professors defended him. Because it's a free country, apparently, and we're free to discuss ideas in a public forum. The drama continues.

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Shall we ban all R-rated movies? What about PG-13?

What Ted Baehr, Tom Snyder, and Movieguide really want.

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Why the Academy's Foreign Language Film Oscar is a Joke

It's time for the Oscars to revise their selection process, and avoid any more worldwide embarrassment.

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Looking Closer's 25 Favorite Movies of 2007

Monks, rats, mass murderers, sex dolls, an "oil man", and a guy who's unable to move anything but his left eye. What do they have in common? They're in some of Jeffrey's favorite films of the year!

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10 Favorite Recordings of 2007
Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, Joe Henry, Radiohead, Over the Rhine, PJ Harvey... read about Jeffrey's favorite records of the year.
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Who's Afraid of "The Golden Compass"?

In the second-most widely read post in the history of this blog, Jeffrey answers questions that he's been asked about "The Golden Compass," the author, the movie adaptation, and the controversy.

Will this movie make kids want to "kill God"? Find out here.

Plus, listen to The Kindlings Muse, a program hosted by Dick Staub, and hear a conversation about author Philip Pullman and his series of children's books that he wrote to "undermine Christian faith." Free download here!

And now, here's my review, and two more non-hysterical, condemnation-free reviews of the film by Christian movie reviewers:

- Steven D. Greydanus

- Peter T. Chattaway

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COMMENTS POLICY

- Please speak up! This blog exists to encourage conversation. I've learned a lot here, even (and especially) from those who know how to (respectfully) disagree.

- I reserve the right to approve or delete any comments, so I can keep the "dialogue" on-topic and civil. This is not an "anything goes" site.

- Please keep comments fairly brief. No manifestos. No essays. Feel free to include links to your own sites, where you can ramble on as much as you like.

- If a back-and-forth debate gets on my nerves, I'll delete it. My nerves get enough trouble as it is. Take the debates into email, please.
Have you read Jeffrey's books?

Auralia's Colors
Auralia's Colors, Jeffrey Overstreet's first novel, is now in bookstores everywhere. The reviews are in.
Did you miss the three big release parties? You can listen to one of them at THE KINDLINGS MUSE.

And you're invited to an upcoming reading. Watch AuraliasColors.com and Auralia's Blog for details.

Order Auralia's Colors from: Amazon.com.

Visit Auralia here.

Through a Screen Darkly
Through a Screen Darkly, Jeffrey's travelogue of "dangerous moviegoing," is a memoir, a guide to the some of the best movies you've never seen, a resource for moviegoing discussion groups, and an archive of amusing anecdotes drawn from his many interviews with filmmakers, movie stars, and cantankerous cinephiles.
"Compelling. Two thumbs up!"
- *Starred Review* in Publisher's Weekly
"Inspirational. Sometimes all of us forget that love for movies, that internal spark inside us that movies lit, and [Overstreet's] book is going to remind many of us about it."
- Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain

Order Through a Screen Darkly from: Amazon.com
or from Jeffrey himself (an autographed, personalized copy).
Read all you want. I'll write more.

film reviews

music reviews

more film reviews at CT

contributions to Response magazine

film reviews in Risen magazine

articles and interviews

...and here's my viewing journal for 2008.
The Kindlings Muse - Movie Review Podcasts

Listen in to the monthly Kindlings Muse movie podcast, a lively chat about movies with Dick Staub, Greg Wright, Jennie Spohr, and Jeffrey Overstreet.
- The Kindlings Discuss the Top Films of 2007: Into Great Silence. There Will Be Blood. The Devil Came On Horseback. Assassination of Jesse James. Hot Fuzz. Juno. Gone Baby Gone. Feast of Love. Deep Water.

- December 2007 - Christmas Edition: Atonement. Enchanted. Juno. No End in Sight. The Namesake. Deep Water. Millions. Scrooge. Joyeux Noel.

- November 2007: Baby Gone, Michael Clayton, Dan in Real Life, Amazing Grace, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Devil Came on Horseback, Vanaja, Longford, and No Country for Old Men.

- October 2007: Into the Wild, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Stardust, Away From Her, Lives of Others, Zodiac, Outsourced, For the Bible Tells Me So and Into Great Silence.

- September 2007: Ratatouille, Bourne, Simpsons, more.

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Bite-Sized Food for Thought

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

– Anne Dillard

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You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.

- Saint Bernard

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As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

– Annie Dillard

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The Christian writer does not decide what would be good for the world and proceed to deliver it. Like a very doubtful Jacob, he confronts what stands in his path and wonders if he will come out of the struggle at all.

– Flannery O’Connor

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Our response to life is different if we have been taught only a definition of faith than if we have trembled with Abraham as he held a knife over Isaac.

– Flannery O’Connor

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Certainly some revolt against our exaggerated materialism is long overdue. They seem to know a good many of the right things to run away from, but to lack any necessary discipline. They call themselves holy but holiness costs and so far as I can see they pay nothing. It's true that grace is the free gift of God but in order to put yourself in the way of being receptive to it you have to practice self-denial. As long as the beat people abandon themselves to all sensation satisfactions, on principle, you can't take them for anything but false mystics. A good look at St. John of the Cross makes them all look sick.

- Flannery O'Connor

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"And like all true believers, I am truly skeptical of all that I have said."

- Over the Rhine, "The World Can Wait"

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"The point of an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."

- G.K. Chesterton

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"If they won't write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious."

- C.S. Lewis to J.R.R. Tolkien

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"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

- Franz Kafka

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"The truth must dazzle gradually."

- Emily Dickinson

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"There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without light is wasteland and chaos, and a life without sacrifice is abomination."

- Annie Dillard, "Holy the Firm"

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“If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

- C.S. Lewis

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"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

- C.S. Lewis

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"When we understand the outside of things, we think we have them. Yet the Lord puts his things in subdefined, suggestive shapes, yielding no satisfactory meaning to the mere intellect, but unfolding themselves to the conscience and heart."

- George Macdonald

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“I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.”

- Orson Welles

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"If you write for God, you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men, you may make some money, and you may give someone a little joy, and you may make a noise in the world — for a little while. If you write only for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written, and after ten minutes, you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead."

- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

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Looking Closer Archives
Recent Posts
Poetry time!

Read poems by Anne M. Doe Overstreet:

Here,

here,

here,

here,

here.

and, here.
Overstreet on Flickr

More Photos

In art and faith, “the truth must dazzle gradually.”

The Browser, 3/24: Leary on Terrence Malick; Whedon & Fillion; R.E.M.; Malkovich

The Browser: News and links to lift your eyebrows and furrow your forehead

Leave a Reply

Jeffrey is...

LookingCloser.org

Welcome!

Contact Jeffrey.

RECENT HOT TOPICS

Auralia's Colors Earns Two Award Nominations

Expelled... Not So Excellent?

Best Final Shot of a Movie... Ever

What's your favorite Bob Dylan lyric?

Ender's Game

Should Public School Students Be Required to Celebrate the Dalai Lama?

Michael Chabon & Spider-Man

The Eagles are Coming!

The Hobbit

Flight of the Red Balloon

Can you name 100 influential, respected, celebrated "writers of faith"?

"Expelled" and The Big Ben Stein Brouhaha

Shall we ban all R-rated movies? What about PG-13?

Why the Academy's Foreign Language Film Oscar is a Joke

Looking Closer's 25 Favorite Movies of 2007

10 Favorite Recordings of 2007

Who's Afraid of "The Golden Compass"?

COMMENTS POLICY

Have you read Jeffrey's books?

Auralia's Colors

Through a Screen Darkly

Read all you want. I'll write more.

The Kindlings Muse - Movie Review Podcasts

Bite-Sized Food for Thought

Heaven's favorite bookstores

Favorites

Looking Closer Archives

Recent Posts

Poetry time!

Overstreet on Flickr