More Than One Lesson

8. CHILDREN OF MEN

When I first saw Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece, I watched it casually as a recommendation from a friend. Little did I realize its story would exponentially grow in my heart and mind as the years progressed. In a futuristic world, women cannot conceive children. The world is steadily decaying with this realization and amidst this turbulent scenario, one man stumbles across a frightened young pregnant girl. What follows is a journey about death (and ultimately rebirth in a very literal sense). There are too many themes at play in this movie to do justice in a single paragraph, but what most inspires me about the film is the heartbeat at its center that with new beginnings (specifically the birth of a new generation) comes hope. Hope like that is not only worth fighting for, but worth giving your all to see it come forth. As a man of faith, this theme speaks very loudly to me and the journey that Clive Owen’s character takes in this movie is one of the most beautiful illustrations of it I have ever seen.

9. 12 ANGRY MEN

Perhaps the greatest courtroom drama to not take place inside of a courtroom, 12 Angry Men started as a play by Reginald Rose with a masterfully simple premise: a young man is on trial for the murder of his father and his fate is in the hands of 12 jurors. As they deliberate on the trial and its evidence, what begins with one man against the other eleven becomes an incredible examination of the assumptions, prejudices, and judgments we make daily in the course of our lives. The film is an exercise in subtext, and it works not only as a gripping mystery story while the evidence against the accused young man unfolds, but also as a provocative portrait of the wounds and frailties that lay within all of us. The formula has often been duplicated in TV shows and movies (always translating the superficial mystery story and never translating the profound human undertones of the original). But Sidney Lumet’s film version, with its subtle power and threads of grace, is still my favorite.

“Survivor” has long since established itself as a prime time staple.  In many ways, it has paved the way for reality competition programs.  Challenges, alliances, confrontations; it all started with “Survivor.”  I myself was never a big fan of the show; like so many others, I wrote it off as “just another reality show.”

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Selecting your favorite list of anything can be a pretty pretentious act at times. If you’re like me, you enjoy multiple pieces of art for multiple reasons and the stack of qualifying elements to place something in a category of favorites can get buried under the weight of its own possibilities.

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Sunday night’s finale of The Walking Dead, entitled Welcome to the Tombs,  concluded the opposition between the prison group and the citizens of Woodbury. The episode managed to successfully dish out a little slice of everything: suspense, horror, action, emotional conflict, and philosophical dialogue. All the while, the episode maintained the attention-grabbing quality that the show has earned this season.

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In this episode, Tyler and Josh are joined by Jason Eaken to discuss Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty and Sean Penn’s The Pledge.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:45- Intro, minisodes
00:01:30- Wondercon
00:02:15- The SHIELD Act
00:04:40- Tyler’s hiatus
00:06:00- Jason Eaken
00:10:00- Zero Dark Thirty
01:13:45- The Pledge
01:42:35- Sermon Recommendation- “Hell”
02:23:45- Episode wrap-up

In this minisode, Tyler and Josh discuss Josh’s ninth favorite film of all time, Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim.

In this minisode, Tyler and Josh discuss Tyler’s ninth favorite film of all time, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon.

In this sermon, Rankin Wilbourne discusses Genesis 3.

DOWNLOADABLE MP3

It seems that as the quality of the The Walking Dead increases week-by-week, the moral convictions of its protagonists decrease. On Sunday night’s episode, entitled Clear, we discovered the fate of Rick’s friend, Morgan, whom we last saw back in the first season. As powerful as the scenes featuring the interaction between Rick and Morgan were, the scenes which left a lasting impression on me are the bookends of this episode.

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