Caught this on Sky last night, when I should have been getting into bed, and the first twenty minutes hooked me – really good, atmospheric, ‘is she insane or not?’ I knew nothing about the film prior to watching it – Julianne Moore is reliably excellent – so I settled in for the long haul.

Then it lost it, big time. I don’t know about you, but alien abduction just doesn’t interest me. The only thing I’ve seen which had any merit, related to this topic, was ‘Signs’.

Garbage. What on earth was Julianne Moore thinking?

Last year, the National Lottery provisioned the placing into 300 State Secondary Schools a collection of Everyman classics. Wonderful.

Most were rejected by the schools.

“For every state school that welcomed the books, several others said that they had not asked for them, had no use for or interest in them and no book storage and please would the publisher take them back forthwith.” (From a letter in the TLS, Jan 20, 2006 – which I’ve just got round to reading)

This is why it is part of the essential Christian task of this time to preserve our memory, to witness to the choices made. We look for the city that is to come, and we mourn the passing of this city that has been.

This was really very good indeed. Another one that may or may not get a second review in the future (bit like V for Vendetta), but the theme of violence is something that I dwell on a lot.

Highly recommended, if you can cope with this sort of thing.

the great giveaway: The Myth of Expository Preaching & the Commodification of the Word: “Expository preaching operates under the assumption that the congregation (or radio listeners) is composed of individual Cartesian selves isolated and separated from each other yet capable of listening and receiving truth as information from the pulpit.”

Good description of the way in which secular culture (what I call Modernism) infects much ‘conservative’ theology, and also why ‘Sola Scriptura’ cannot survive the change in culture.