Now sources have confirmed with Trekmovie that director Roberto Orci and his fellow Star Trek producers have picked Claudio Miranda to be the Director of Photography. Miranda won an Academy Award for his work on Life of Pi in 2012. He also picked up a BAFTA, a Critics Choice Award and a number of local critics awards for Life of Pi. Miranda also has an additional Academy Award nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, along with a number of other award nominations, including two from the American Society of Cinematographers.

Star Trek will not be Miranda’s first time in genre…

I have seen relatively few things that David Fincher has done, but what I have seen I have enjoyed immensely. This video explores some of the reasons why Fincher is such a good director. I do think it’s interesting that in a time when directors and filmmakers are running away from tried and true techniques and story telling craft to be more novel, bring more “gritty realism” to their cinematography, and generally throwing away the rules, Fincher is honing the craft in a tried and true way and people are loving it. Look at House of Cards. Whatever you think of the material or the story, it is…

And perhaps part of the problem is that such a thing as “Christian art” exists. There is no such thing as Christian art. It’s a convenient label with disastrous consequences. There are Christian artists, in the sense that there are Christians called to the arts, but the art that they make should not be constrained by some external, superficial idea of what “Christian art” should sound or look like.

Michael Minkoff is one of the hosts on the (sporadic… please don’t complain to me, I’d love for them to do more podcasts and have told them so) podcast, Movieology. I know I’ve been talking…

What’s a bad thing is that Hollywood producers now know that American Christians feel that way about their faith—that Christians so desperately want to participate in the mainstream, that they’re tired of having sanctioned music that’s like other music and movies like other movies and politicians like other politicians but always still being on the outside, that Christians just want to feel identified without having to carve out little alcoves or niche markets that exist alongside the Big Boys. And, now that they know it—that is, now that they know they can make back 5x their initial…

Have you heard of Alan Turing? Perhaps you’ve heard of The Turing Test? Well The Imitation Game is about the creator of The Touring Test and his quest as a cytologist to break the code the Nazis used during WWII called “The Enigma Code”. As history would bear out, the cracking of the enigma code was a great stepping stone on the way to victory for the Allies. The story of how that code was cracked and the man behind it is one that warrants the telling of a story. And so told it shall be. Benedict Cumberbatch looks, as always, nothing short of amazing.

I’m very excited about this film. We’ll…

…this evening the streaming video company announced another bold move with with respect to original movie programming: a four-picture deal with Adam Sandler. Sandler will star and produce four untitled movies for Netflix exclusively.

“People love Adam’s films on Netflix and often watch them again and again. His appeal spans across viewers of all ages —everybody has a favorite movie, everyone has a favorite line— not just in the U.S. but all over the world,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in a press release.

In general I’m all in favor of Netflix disrupting the…

Has Pixar ever done a trailer like this? I may be wrong but I don’t remember it. The majority of the trailer is clips from other Pixar films. These clips, along with the help of onscreen text, show us the range of emotions and feelings PIxar has been through in their many films over the years. It then concludes with introducing us to some actual footage and characters from the upcoming film.

It felt very odd and frankly, I don’t think I liked it. There was something very distinctly back patting about this approach. There is a time and place in marketing messages to gently remind us of the…

The rapture is new to the Christian scene. It arose in the late 1800’s, when Margaret MacDonald, a fifteen-year-old Scottish girl, claimed to have it revealed to her in a vision. Her vision was then picked up and popularized by the famous British preacher J.N. Darby, during his extensive travels in America.

All love to the high school prom queen and traveling street preacher, but this is a suspiciously short track record for nearly 2000 years of Christian theology.

You must go read all of this right now. And please, whatever you do, do not give money to this monstrosity of a film known by…

The buzz around this film is now so strong I keep feeling like a very angry swarm of tracker jackers is descending upon me. But, it turns out it’s just marketing, mixed with serious emotions seemingly spiraling out of control.

Seriously though, I do worry about how I will view this film. I try to be very cognizant of my biases and influences. I try to understand why I do or do not like something. I have a bad feeling that this film’s hype may be surpassing my ability to control and counteract in my own mind. That said, this trailer — what is being reported to be the final trailer we will see…