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To Hell With Dante! (To Purgatory and Paradise, Too)
The Divine Comedy offers compelling answers to many questions about
the purpose of life and the principles of eternity, presenting a vision of
the love of God evident in his government of the universe and in his grace
expressed to humankind. But that doesn't make it a theological treatise:
Dante seeks to engage our imaginations. Author of books on George MacDonald,
Rolland Hein has recently revised
his
Christian Mythmakers (Cornerstone Press) to begin with a new
chapter on Dante, the first and foremost of Christian mythmakers.
Souls for Hire: Deals With the Devil In Literature & Film
Ever since that business in the Garden, temptation has suggested itself as a
sort of exchange: formalizing matters with a contract makes a potent metaphor
and perennial theme in fallen humanity's literature and film. Terry Wandke examines soul selling,
focusing on Christopher Marlowe's Faustus, drawing in Screwtape to see C. S.
Lewis's take on the myth, and then on to popular cinema, from The Devil's
Advocate to End of Days.
The Legacy of Hammer Films: Spiritual Conflict in the Movies
Hammer Films was the undisputed master of British Horror, making stars of
Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and influencing a generation of filmmakers
from George Lucas to Tim Burton. Contemporary films like Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone and Lord of the Rings owe something to
Hammer's legacy — a legacy that includes treatment of spiritual conflict in
often very Christian terms. Paul
Leggett, who wrote about Hammer's most famous director in Terence
Fisher: Horror, Myth and Religion (2001), examines that legacy.
From Fiction to Film: Hobbits & Hogwarts Go Hollywood
From the first, film versions of popular fantasy stories have both
popularized and profaned those tales. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: "Drama is
naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly
ever succeeds in Drama...Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited" (On
Fairy-Stories). Prof. Mike Foster,
the Tolkien Society's North American representative, focusses on the recent
and upcoming film versions of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels in this critical chronicle of
fantasy on film. Commentary on the changes film-makers wrought in translating
the printed page to the silver screen will be part of this presentation,
which also includes a retrospective look at the Walt Disney versions of
classic fantasy tales.
What if God Was One of Us?: An Adventure in Pop
Typology
Take a crash course in Christology — by way of the movies!
Author and Imaginarium regular Rod
Bennett uses films like The Matrix, TRON and Ghost in
the Shell as his text and (guided by the genius of the great St.
Athanasius) he'll find startling truths about Jesus Christ hiding in these
unlikely, unearthly places. From theophanies to the Trinity, from homoousios
to hypostatic union — to infinity and beyond!
© 2002 Cornerstone Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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