Season two of Star Trek: Discovery incorporates religion differently than season one. While there are religious overarching themes running throughout, like how actions to shape the future and faith not as convictions but as empowerment, a more fitting and interesting… Read More ›
First of all, I’m grateful to Bridgerton for providing several spirited conversations between my friends and me, not to mention the POVs penned recently in these pages. It was fun to take part in exchanges that did not highlight or… Read More ›
In keeping in line with my last month’s post, movies are on the docket, 2018’s Mary Magdalene. It’s fairly recent with not a lot of discussion around it. Here we go. The film written by two women, Helen Edmundson and… Read More ›
A few weeks ago a Slovak journalist reached out to me about the new Netflix four-part series entitled Unorthodox. In the email, the journalist wrote that they had read about my work as a Jewish feminist and wanted some insight… Read More ›
I contemplated doing a post on the current rising issues of the Coronavirus but as so much of life has been stopped, altered, and/or rearranged, that I figured I would embody the proverbial statement of “Just Keep Calm and Carry… Read More ›
The first time I saw Frozen 2, I was impressed by the ecofeminism and the efforts to respect the Sami culture. The second time, I thoroughly enjoyed the superb music and the character development. The third time… was a religious… Read More ›
As someone who spent my prepubescent years watching director Gillian Armstrong’s “Little Women”, I was eager to see Greta Gerwig’s newly released version. Previously unexplored contours of each character, and of my changed perceptions, were made visible through this iteration…. Read More ›
It is February 14th, Valentines Day. So, today I want to explore my daughter’s love affair with Frozen; a story that I did not like, but that I learned to love by watching it through her eyes. A story which… Read More ›
Last week, I attended a film festival in Waco, Texas that showed the 2019 documentary This Changes Everything. Spending Friday evening at a film festival seemed like an enjoyable and appropriate way to kick off a weekend that would culminate… Read More ›
The country desperately needs to see the Nuns on the Bus on the road again. I just watched Radical Grace, nearly three years after my daughter and son-in-law gave it to me as a Christmas gift. My tardiness made me feel guilty,… Read More ›
Last year, I turned 40 and started grad school while working part time at the public library as the Children’s Services Manager, living in a cohousing community, volunteering with my Sisterhood, and raising three teenagers. I’m between semesters at the… Read More ›
Every year, I see multiple pleas from concerned mothers (rarely fathers, because (straight) fathers rarely take on emotional labor of child rearing) wondering what to do about the pile of pink plastic that just came into their home. It’s such… Read More ›
Note: Black Panther movie spoiler alert. I attended my friend’s dinner party (now my beautiful partner) recently in honor of her birthday. It was an intimate gathering of nine, mostly her immediate family, so I felt privileged to be included…. Read More ›
This post is written jointly by sisters, Trelawney and Tallessyn, who have been thinking and discussing together about this. Contains Spoilers from the movie Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (TLJ). I was born in 1974. Star Wars IV: A… Read More ›
Every summer in the US, movie theatres show their newest big budget films, hoping to draw in large audiences. While I appreciate an air-conditioned theatre on a hot day, I love the opportunity to go to an outdoor movie screening…. Read More ›
I find myself asking (again), when the religious right, evangelicals, and Christian fundamentalists hear Trump say, “Make America Great Again,” do they really hear him saying, “Make America Christian Again?” How can the really hear him saying that in light of what this man has actually said and actually done? The answer: because of the same mythical purity that erases the violence, slaughter, and atrocity attached to this “Christian nation’s” founding.
I love going to outdoor movie screenings. Sitting outdoors on a summer evening with good company brings me joy. Last week, I went to an screening of Moana, the Disney movie about a teenager who goes on a quest through… Read More ›
She studies, and disputes, and teaches, and thus she serves her Faith; for how could God, who gave her reason, want her ignorant? —Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Villancico, or, “Carol”, in celebration of St. Catherine of Alexandria (1692)… Read More ›
“In this nation of thinkers and philosophers, poets and artists, idealists and enthusiasts, the world will recognize nothing but a people of conquerors and destroyers. …we are neither loved nor respected, but only feared. We are deemed capable of every… Read More ›
We live in a dystopia. This world is filled to the brim in dichotomies: poverty and extreme excess, hunger and mountains of food, disease and cutting-edge medicine, materialism and an immense environmental crisis, and hour-long walks for water and hour-long… Read More ›
The creation of cinema brought a new medium to which art and representation were transmitted. This new visual tool allowed people to bring to life favorite stories. Deemed in 1947 as ‘the greatest story ever told,’ the four Gospels found… Read More ›
In “Ecofeminism and Wilderness,” Linda Vance believes that Western society defines wilderness by “… the absence of humans, we are saying, in effect, that nature is at its best when utterly separated from the human world. The idea of wilderness… Read More ›
I started this post just after getting back from an India trip, always very challenging because of memories that haunt me not only through their high negative recall value, but also in that I often find myself reverting to the… Read More ›
Last week I was finally able to see “Spotlight“, the recent movie depicting the true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation into the priest pedophilia abuses. What makes “Spotlight” so compelling is the shared burden of culpability by those… Read More ›
Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), on the other hand, works to resist the call of the “light.” The Force Awakens puts emphasis on the villain’s perspective; and my question is, is this because many of us who are in the audience need to see how we are also like this villain?
Sci-fi fan that I am, I recently went to go see the film The Martian, after hearing overall good reviews from friends and family alike. A ‘stranded in space’ film, The Martian considers the plight of fictional astronaut Mark Watney… Read More ›
I love Bollywood. The colors, the over-the-top drama, the singing and dancing, the suspension of reality for three hours…I see how it can provide a break from the challenges of everyday life for over 700 million Indians living below the… Read More ›
Netflix released a new Sci-Fi drama series called Sense8 in June. This original series was created, written, and produced by Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) partnered with J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) to bring to life a world where… Read More ›
On May 8, Fifty Shades of Grey became available in DVD format. Marking its release, this post reflects on the mass consumer consumption of this provocative film and the abuse inherent in its script previously discussed here by Michele Stopera… Read More ›
WARNING: This article or pages it links to contain information about domestic abuse and sexual violence which may be triggering to survivors. No matter what you call it abuse is abuse. This is highlighted in the popular book and now movie Fifty… Read More ›
