It seems to happen whenever Steve Beard hangs out with friends — especially folks who don’t go to church — talking about movies, television and whatever else is on their minds.

“It may take five minutes or it may take as long as 10, but sooner or later you’re going to run into some kind zombie comment,” said Beard, editor of Good News, a magazine for United Methodist evangelicals. “Someone will say something like, ‘When the zombie apocalypse occurs, we need to make sure we’re all at so-and-so’s house so we can stick together.’ It’s all a wink-and-a-nod kind of deal, but the point is that this whole zombie thing has become a part of the language of our time.”

Read it all.

…many viewers of TV preachers are women. In the most conservative Egyptian households, women rarely leave their homes and account for nearly two-thirds of television viewers, according to Ipsos, a Paris-based global polling group. During the runoff of presidential elections last June, 76% of women voted for the Brotherhood’s Mr. Morsi, propelling him to a win, according to telephone exit polls by Baseera, a private Egyptian polling firm. Overall, Mr. Morsi received 51.7% of the vote.

“The advantage of the channels is that they reach those groups that the mosque will never reach,” said Aatif Abdel Rashid, one of the founders of Al Nas who is now a presenter on Al Hafez, another Salafi satellite station.

Al Nas was started by Saudi investors who owned a media group called Al Baraheen in 2006 as a “cultural” station that featured tame music videos, dance routines and religious dream interpretations””a variety show with an mildly Islamic slant.

Read it all.

Religion should be incorporated into “reality” television shows in order to increase understanding of other faiths, the Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed.

The Most Rev Justin Welby, who was enthroned in March, warned of “dangerous” consequences if religion disappeared from television schedules. Broadcasters who force religion to the margins are helping to “cultivate ignorance”, the Archbishop said.

He praised the ITV documentary series, Strictly Kosher, which featured an internet-dating Rabbi and a flamboyant fashion boutique owner based in Manchester’s orthodox Jewish community, for “stitching” religion into everyday life.

Read it all.

Speaking at a gathering of digital advertisers in New York City last night, Mr Schmidt refused to forecast when internet video would displace television, instead declaring: “That’s already happened.”

“It’s not a replacement for something that we know,” he added. “It’s a new thing that we have to think about, to program, to curate and build new platforms.”

YouTube recently surpassed the milestone of a billion unique users a month. Only the Google search engine and social network Facebook are frequented more often by those browsing the internet worldwide.

Read it all.

Mr. [Reed] Hastings said he realized that the company’s attempt to both raise prices and separate into two companies, one the legacy DVD-by-mail business and the other the up-and-coming broadband streaming business, was trying to do too much too fast. Angry subscribers abandoned the company in droves (800,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone), revenue missed estimates and the stock plunged.

“I messed up,” Mr. Hastings wrote in an unusually forthright September 2011 blog post. Citing the precedents of AOL and Borders Books, which struggled or failed to make the digital transition, “my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming.” But in the rush to accelerate the transition, he wrote, “In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.” He also made a video apology.

Mr. Hastings said he didn’t expect the apology alone to “turn it around,” adding, “I wasn’t naïve enough to think most customers care if the C.E.O. apologizes, but I thought it was honest and appropriate.”

Read it all.

magine two teams with more than a thousand competitors on each side. Imagine a playing field that stretches three miles from goal to goal. And imagine a single ball that both sides are fighting over.

That is Shrovetide Football, which is played each year over two days in Ashbourne, England between members of the town. In his documentary Wild In The Streets, Peter Baxter tells the story of the game that has been played for centuries.

Read it all and take the time to watch the official trailer video.

Hollywood movie critic and author Theodore “Ted” Baehr came to Columbia this week with the hope of persuading Christian parents and children they have a moral obligation to take on the popular culture moguls who traffic in sex and violence in movies, video games and online entertainment.

Baehr has spent a lifetime teaching, writing and lecturing on the importance of spreading Christian values on the widescreen. He has challenged the movie industry through his biblically based movie reviews to recognize that there is money to be made in family-oriented movies.

“I’ve often said we need more Christians in Hollywood and less Hollywood in Christians,” Baehr, the son of a television actor, said.

Read it all.

Watch it all. LOLOL.

A wonderful French comedy-drama film based on a true story. Terrific acting, lovely music, great scenes from Paris, and all deeply touching. The official website is here. Check it out if you have not done so–KSH (Hat tip: Abigail Harmon).

It’s, like, totally tubular. The ’80s: The Decade That Made Us isn’t about nostalgia; it’s about the history of our modern world that spawned political, technological, cultural, and social revolutions that began in the United States and went on to dominate the world. This cultural programming event is the defining biography of a generation. It’s about a decade of people, decisions, and inventions that changed our future, told from the perspective of the unknowing history makers who lived these iconic moments. We worked out, worked harder, played harder and consumed more””because the 1980s was the decade when we went forward to the future….

Read it all.

In 2004 Sandra and I flew to the northernmost part of Uganda to visit a couple of theological seminaries in the city of Arua. The Ugandan seminary was relatively well appointed. Its faculty joyful. Its students adequately fed and eager to learn. The Sudanese seminary, across town, was a study in contrasts. Bare buildings, dirt floors, underfed students, listless faculty were all testimony to the suffering of Sudanese people who had sought refuge across the Uganda border to save their lives.

Today South Sudan is its own country, thanks to the accord in 2011, by which 8 million Sudanese ”“ mostly African and Christian (as opposed to northern Sudanese who are Arab and Muslim) ”“ ceded from Sudan. People like the seminarians we saw are now moving back home and rebuilding the decimated southern part of the country. When we lived in Pittsburgh we got to know many of the so-called “Lost Boys” who had come to America back in the 1980’s and ”˜90’s as refugees. Beautiful young men, many of them had seen the most brutal atrocities the human mind can imagine.

These atrocities are paraded across the wide-screen in a new movie from Relativity Media called Machine Gun Preacher. Starring Gerard Butler as Sam Childers and Michelle Monagan as his longsuffering wife Lynn, the movie tells the true story of one man’s effort to help the suffering children of Sudan….

Read it all.

Read it all.

Watch it all (a little over 13 1/2 minutes) or if you need to (second best) read it all.

I caught this by accident recently and was hypnotized by its beauty. It is simply splendid–on central park, on the seasons, on the birders, and, oh my–on the birds.

You can read more about it here and if you are up for it there is a spectacular bird show there to whet your appetite.

On a Sunday afternoon several months ago, I was engaged in one of my favorite religious rituals, watching pro football on television. During a break in the game, I reflexively clicked the “mute” button on the remote control. But my eyes stayed fixed on a startling commercial.

The screen showed a balding man with tawny skin and a salt-and-pepper goatee, and seconds later it spelled out his name: Mujahid Abdul-Rashid. The advertisement went on to show him fishing, playing in a yard with two toddlers, and sitting down to a family meal.

One week later, again during an N.F.L. game, the same commercial appeared. This time I listened to the words. The advertisement was for Prudential’s financial products for retirees. Mr. Abdul-Rashid was talking about his own retirement after 19 years as a clothing salesman, and the family time he now intended to enjoy….

Read it all and you can see the commercial there.

In an interview with Esquire that is generating a surprising amount of buzz””and not just because she appears on the magazine’s cover in her underwear””TV and film star Megan Fox talks about her Pentecostal upbringing and her experience of “getting the Holy Ghost.” Ms. Fox’s account of speaking in tongues is proving particularly buzz-worthy, prompting comment in Christian media as well as mainstream news outlets in the U.S. and abroad.

Why the kerfuffle? Didn’t we get our fill of this a couple of years ago with similar descriptions by the Pentecostally raised singer Katy Perry? And what does it mean to speak in tongues?

Read it all.

1 Kings 18:21 describes a crucial moment of decision. It’s the final showdown between the God of Israel and a false god called Baal. Elijah calls God’s people to choose once and for all between the living God who delivered them, and this false god who has captured their affections: “‘How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said nothing.”

They seem unable, or unwilling, to make a choice. They want to hedge their bets, sit on the fence, and keep their options open. How different are we Christians in the 21st century? Would you prefer to make an ironclad, no-turning-back choice, or one you could back out of if need be? Do you ever find that you’re afraid to commit? Do you reply to party invitations with a “maybe” rather than a “yes” or “no”? Do you like to keep your smartphone switched on at all times, even in meetings, so that you are never fully present at any given moment? Will you focus on the person you’re talking to after a church service, or will you look over her shoulder for a better conversation partner?

If so, you may be worshiping the god of open options.

Read it all.

For those of you who know the story/like the movie, etc. here is the Baltimore Raven’s Michael Oher with his adopted mother after winning the Super bowl, and here he is with his adopted sister.

If interested, you may read a lot more about this over here.

[Yesterday].. Netflix…release[d] a drama expressly designed to be consumed in one sitting: “House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rather than introducing one episode a week, as distributors have done since the days of black-and-white TVs, all 13 episodes will be streamed at the same time. “Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the producer Beau Willimon said with a laugh.

“House of Cards,” which is the first show made specifically for Netflix, dispenses with some of the traditions that are so common on network TV, like flashbacks. There is less reason to remind viewers what happened in previous episodes, the producers say, because so many viewers will have just seen it. And if they don’t remember, Google is just a click away. The show “assumes you know what’s happening all the time, whereas television has to assume that a big chunk of the audience is always just tuning in,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer.

The producer Glen Mazzara took a similar approach to AMC’s “The Walking Dead” this year. In the second half of the season, which will start in mid-February after a two-month break, “we decided to pick up the action right away ”” to just jump right in,” Mr. Mazzara said. Fans of the show, he said, have little tolerance for recaps, since many of them will have just watched a marathon of the first half to prepare for the second.

Read it all.

Elizabeth and I finally got to this and it was simply lovely in every sense. Touching, moving, well acted and produced–it has all the hallmarks of a true story, based as it is on the diaries of one who worked as a midwife as it is–KSH.

One scholar says it’s impossible to understand American history without an understanding of the nation’s Christian history. Another suggests that it can lead to church renewal. A third says it helps us interpret Scripture, shape our mission, and appreciate God’s grace. People of Faith serves most of these needs well.

The series””produced by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College (Illinois), with support from the Lilly Endowment””shows Christians engaged in public life during the European settlement, the founding of the nation, the Civil War, the 19th-century social reform movements, and the civil rights movement. Christian activity is portrayed as predominantly positive, though not entirely so. For example, the series points out that Christians made arguments both for and against slavery, and that Prohibition began as a public health crusade against a devastating social problem but quickly turned punitive and counterproductive. Subjects that Christians got mostly wrong, notably the treatment of Native Americans, are touched on lightly, if at all.

Read it all.

In 2012, the average cost of a movie ticket in the United States was $7.92.

This doesn’t include all of the (expensive) extras that you usually get roped into buying when you hit the theater, such as popcorn, pop and chocolate bars. We are just talking about the actual ticket.

In 1910, the average cost of a movie ticket was $0.07. Adjusted for inflation, a movie ticket in 1910 would work out to about $1.71 in 2013 dollars.

Read it all.

…surely some things should be left to the imagination? The ancient Greeks knew the meaning of the word “obscene” and obscene acts ”“ castrations, rapes, beheadings and the like ”“ were not depicted in the theatre, but had to be imagined as having taken place offstage, the literal meaning of “obscene.”

Unfortunately for us, we live in the age of blatancy. Everything must be seen in all its disgusting horror or squalor ”“ and usually both. We have been taught since Freud to think that this is somehow good for us. But all it has done is corrupt our morality and obliterate our powers of imagination. We live in an age where every image is an advert. Now I’ve gone and said it: we have forgotten the prohibition on the making and worshipping of images.

Read it all.

Critics say the show takes reality TV one step too far, exposing personal, intimate and sometimes unflattering details about pastors’ wives. But Domonique Scott, former first lady of The Good Life Ministry church, tells NPR’s David Greene that The Sisterhood was somewhat of a calling for her. “We definitely believe that God told us to do it,” Scott says. “Individually, and together as a group.”

“I think for us, the assignment was to step out,” adds Christina Murray, the first lady of Oasis Family Life Church. “We knew it would probably be a little controversial, but we don’t do anything just for people to understand and give us our approval; we do everything for what God is trying to lead us to do.” But, Murray says, appearing on The Sisterhood was not a decision any of the women made lightly. “Basically, you’re putting your life out there with the control of somebody else.”

Read or listen to it all.

…this past week, Sister Rose of the Daughters of St. Paul moved through Park City’s starry firmament as Sister Rose of Sundance, a veteran film critic participating in this year’s edition of the renowned indie festival. By the time Sundance ends on Sunday, she will have seen upward of 20 films, blogging and reviewing most of them for The National Catholic Reporter and joining in panel discussions for students from religious colleges and seminaries.

In all those ways, Sister Rose was serving not as a sentry protecting religious belief from cinematic product, but rather as a mediator helping to explain one to the other. As such, she embodies a departure both from the religious temptation to police popular culture, in the manner of the Roman Catholic Church’s now-defunct Legion of Decency, and the effort in fundamentalist circles to create a parallel universe of theologically safe movies, television and music.

“To paraphrase a Gospel passage, Christ came into the world to redeem the culture, not to condemn it,” Sister Rose, 61, said in an interview here. “It’s a negotiation. You don’t give everything a free pass. Something has to come out of your convictions and values. But what matters isn’t what the movie contains, but what it means.”

Read it all.

Watch it all. Clean humor, oh so funny.

In spite of tepid reviews from some film critics, “Les Miserables” is booming at the box office, and that financial success can in part be traced to a group of its biggest boosters: Christians, particularly evangelicals whom NBC Universal went after with a microtargeted marketing strategy.

The story in “Les Miserables” is heavy with Christian themes of grace, mercy and redemption. The line everyone seems to remember is “to love another person is to see the face of God.”

NBC Universal looked to capitalize on those components and promoted the film to pastors, Christian radio hosts and influence-makers in the Christian community.

Read it all.

This year’s best-of lists could make a history class curriculum, with films about the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the final months of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. All will factor into an Oscar race that won’t be as clear cut as last year’s coronation of “The Artist.”

Four movies filmed in part or full in Pittsburgh opened in 2012 — “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “Won’t Back Down” and “Jack Reacher” — with a fifth, “Promised Land,” due in theaters Jan. 4.

Read it all. I am interested in how many you have seen, and what you make of their list–KSH.

One of my friends sent me this this week, and it moved me to tears. Please do take the time to watch it all (in the ten minute range)–KSH.

Watch it all–heartwarming stuff.