JEFFREY OVERSTREET started lookingcloser.org in 1996.
His first book, "Through a Screen Darkly," was published by Regal Books in 2007. His first novel, "Auralia's Colors," arrives in September '07. (You can order both at Amazon.)
Jeffrey reads and writes full-time at Seattle Pacific University, reviews films for ChristianityTodayMovies.com. His perspectives are also published in magazines like Paste, Risen, Image, Relevant, Books & Culture, and SPU's Response. He speaks about the arts at SPU, in churches, and on radio talk shows around the U.S. His film reviews were celebrated in a front-page feature of The Seattle Times’ Sunday magazine (Pacific Northwest), and his work has been noted in TIME Magazine.
Born into a family of educators, Jeffrey grew up in Christian education, from kindergarten through university, at Portland Christian Schools (Portland, OR) and Seattle Pacific. He and his wife Anne, a poet, can be found writing in the coffee shops of Shoreline, WA, or scolding their cats, Mardukas (4) and Sophie (18).
Jeffrey is overwhelmed by God's generosity, and wants you to join the grand conversation about art and faith.
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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
- 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.
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.
"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
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.
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."
