It’s a rare thing for a movie to end up in the theaters without me realizing it well in advance. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened with A Hologram for the King, the newest flick starring Tom Hanks. I’ve known about the film’s existence for a while, that it was in production. It’s based on a recent novel by Dave Eggers, who is one of my favorites. Here’s the trailer.
Hanks is an interesting choice for the lead role: he plays a fish out of water well. The last half of he trailer, though, makes me think that the movie will make a romance out of what seemed as less than that in the book. The trailer feels a little bit like Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with Tina Fey, which walked an odd line between comedy and drama. We’ll see how the finished product plays out.
I’ve been trying to think of some way forward for some time now. Forward in lots of ways really: faith, work, relationships, the rhythms of life. I get bits and pieces here and there, often from what I read, sometimes from the words and encouragement of others. Something that I find myself more and more convinced of, though, it that the way forward is going to look (at least a little bit, if not a lot) like looking back. You get a sense of that with the Benedict Option. You get a strong sense of it in the Old Testament. And you get a sense of it in the ideas of others who are trying to figure out how to be faithful in “what comes next.”
One of the greater challenges for churches at this point in the 21st century (and perhaps in any century) is how to work and worship for the formation of young people. For years, it seemed like youth work was the cutting edge of the church: it was where all of the good and appropriately-forward thinking was taking place. These days, from my outsider perspective, something about youth ministry seems somehow gutted. In You Are What You Love, Smith attempts to address the question of raising young believers. He works his way through the worship and communal aspect of the church. He plays off of the part of youth culture that seems addicted to emotion and a kind of anti-intellectualism. Consider:
One of the ways that You Are What You Love moves beyond James K. A. Smith’s other books on “cultural liturgies” is how it approaches the implications for daily life. Smith spends one solid chapter on marriage and “household life.” It’s great stuff, particularly in how it references the Orthodox wedding ceremony as a better picture to guide marriages.
I would love to say lots of things about Jeff Nichols’s Midnight Special, but saying almost anything beyond the basics would spoil too much. I caught a showing yesterday. I had high expectations, partly because Mud was such a well-done movie and partly because the only trailer that I saw for the sci-fi story of a young boy with powers (?) was its own kind of off-guard thrilling.
Space Enough, and Time 