Posts tagged "Joss Whedon"
All Aboard the Murder Train: Sigmund Freud Visits The Cabin in the Woods
Death / Film / Psychology / Theology

All Aboard the Murder Train: Sigmund Freud Visits The Cabin in the Woods

by Mockingbird on Nov 20, 2012 • 1 Comment

Another wonderful one from new contributor Charlotte Getz:

If you haven’t seen Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods yet, then you might be like me – you don’t just watch a scary movie, scream, and then roll over and go to sleep. No. You ingest it. Your skin soaks it up like toxic rays that, by the time you should have long been asleep, have charred your whole being black and left you at the mercy of the feral wilderness of your imagination… Yet…the very next night, that trailer for (another) movie featuring a nighty-clad little girl being exorcized in a…

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Joss Whedon on Genre Filmmaking, Objectification and Sympathy for the Devil
Film / Interviews / Religion

Joss Whedon on Genre Filmmaking, Objectification and Sympathy for the Devil

by David Zahl on May 14, 2012 • No Comments

Joss “Mr. Avengers” Whedon was interviewed in Wired last week, and as you might expect, made some thought-provoking observations on ‘genre’ filmmaking, the creative process and self-justification as it relates to drama:

Whedon: For me, I love genre because you can talk about things more intimately and specifically than you can in a family drama or a cop show without being didactic. You can absolutely get to the heart of something very weird and very personal because you have that remove…

I guess the thing that I want to say about fandom is that it’s the closest thing…

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Another Week Ends: Attachment Parenting, Sendak on Innocence, Self-Disclosure, Fraudulent Psych, Prometheus, Avengers, and Josh Hamilton
Children / Film / Gender / Identity / Radio / Social Science / Sports / Testimony / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Attachment Parenting, Sendak on Innocence, Self-Disclosure, Fraudulent Psych, Prometheus, Avengers, and Josh Hamilton

by David Zahl on May 11, 2012 • No Comments

1. Why Is This Attractive Woman Breast-Feeding This Giant Child? asks Hannah Rosin over at Slate, in response to Time’s, um, eye-catching cover this past week. You know the one I’m talking about – at least you do if you’ve seen it (below). The story within, bearing the not-so-subtle title of “Are You Mom Enough?”, profiles the controversial world of radical attachment parenting and the man behind it, Dr. Bill Sears. Now I’m as big a proponent of breastfeeding as the next guy (…), so the reason I include the article here has nothing to do with developmental health or…

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Another Week Ends: Reddit Confessionals, Influencing Nick Cave, Deciphering Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Gospel-Centrism, Reinhold Bieber, White People Problems, Bat-Staches and Haidt on Colbert
Children / Film / Humor / Identity / Music / Politics / Suffering / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Reddit Confessionals, Influencing Nick Cave, Deciphering Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Gospel-Centrism, Reinhold Bieber, White People Problems, Bat-Staches and Haidt on Colbert

by David Zahl on May 4, 2012 • 6 Comments

1. Last week I mentioned a recent study exploring the physical impact of keeping secrets, and by implication, the biological necessity of confession (to say nothing of absolution). This week, that study has become manifest in an alarming way. A Reddit thread which asked the question, “What Secret Could Ruin Your Life If It Came Out?” has turned into a stomach-churning tour of the darkest recesses of the human heart and experience, with people anonymously confessing to things as innocuous as petty theft and faking an illness (e.g. “I once helped out my a female friend’s family by taking care…

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Another Week Ends: Celebrity Body Image, Depression Chemistry, the Burden of Secrecy, Fitz Allison, Ryan Gosling, Community, Game of Thrones, and Spiritualized
Celebrity / Film / Humor / Music / Psychology / Science / Suffering / Technology / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Celebrity Body Image, Depression Chemistry, the Burden of Secrecy, Fitz Allison, Ryan Gosling, Community, Game of Thrones, and Spiritualized

by David Zahl on Apr 27, 2012 • 5 Comments

1. On Slate, Emily Shire asks, “Should Celebrity Body ‘Struggles’ Make Us Feel Better About Ourselves?” and her insightful little response doubles as quite the treatise on the function of Standards (of beauty etc) and how attempts to allay judgment often backfire, i.e. that the notch on the scale isn’t the issue so much as the scale itself:

Allure’s feature is only one of the latest in a long line of magazine stories about female celebrities “bravely” grappling with their “physical imperfections.” A growing number of publications are trying to pass off barely-clad celebrities strutting their stuff as an inspiring act…

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Another Week Ends: Louis CK, Sam Spade, Prevailing Grace, Heavy Metal, Axl Rose, Viennese Creativity, Cabin in the Woods, and yes, more Damsels in Distress
America / Film / Grace in Practice / Humor / Identity / Law / Music / Science / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Louis CK, Sam Spade, Prevailing Grace, Heavy Metal, Axl Rose, Viennese Creativity, Cabin in the Woods, and yes, more Damsels in Distress

by David Zahl on Apr 13, 2012 • 4 Comments

1. “The Filthy Moralist: How Louis C.K. Became America’s Unlikely Conscience” in The Atlantic is remarkable, especially in its conclusion. As always when it comes to Louis, there’s a high depravity quotient, so don’t say we didn’t warn you. But also as always when it comes to Louis, the darkness is not neutral or meaningless (or merely shocking). In fact, it might even be worth the discomfort in this case to get to the final couple of paragraphs, which truly capture what Louis is about, whether he wants to be or not. It strikes me as especially pertinent as we…

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Avengers Assemble and Whedonites Tremble (in Anticipation)
Comics / Film

Avengers Assemble and Whedonites Tremble (in Anticipation)

by David Zahl on Oct 11, 2011 • 5 Comments

If you’re a moviegoer, odds are you’re pretty sick of superhero movies. Many of us remember a day not so long ago when comic book adaptations were big-budget spectacles to be anticipated and even planned around. This past summer represented something of a lowpoint for superhero fans, or a highpoint of superhero fatigue, depending on whose side you’re on. The releases were not only non-events, the films behind them were depressingly pedestrian (Green Lantern in particular). Fortunately, there’s a ray of light on the horizon, a long-rumored champion coming out of hiding who could turn the tide. We are talking,…

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Joss Whedon on The True Enemy of Humanism
Religion / Theology / TV

Joss Whedon on The True Enemy of Humanism

by Bonnie on Apr 15, 2009 • 12 Comments

Joss Whedon (creator of the incredible Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse) recently received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from the Harvard Humanist Society, and delivered an interesting address at Memorial Church at Harvard. Here’s a snippet of it, but the most interesting part is the last 20 odd seconds, in which this quotation is heard:

The enemy of humanism is not faith; the enemy of humanism is hate, is fear, is ignorance, is the darker part of man that is in every humanist, every person, in the world. That is the thing we have to…

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Whedon show "Dollhouse" premiers on Feb 13
Identity / TV

Whedon show "Dollhouse" premiers on Feb 13

by Bonnie on Feb 8, 2009 • 3 Comments

Joss Whedon’s new show, “Dollhouse”, premieres in 5 days! Needless to say, Simeon and I will be trying to Hulu/Tudou/TVLinks this…

Joss Whedon, creator of the immensely awesome and successful Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, is back with this new science-fiction show. Here’s the synopsis from Wikipedia

In Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls.” The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They’re then hired…

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Mockingbird At The Movies: Joss Whedon’s Serenity
Film / Suffering / Theology

Mockingbird At The Movies: Joss Whedon’s Serenity

by Kris on Jan 23, 2009 • 5 Comments

The brilliant space opera Serenity was born out of the short-lived, Joss Whedon-created TV show called “Firefly.” To get an idea of the setting, think Wild West in space and then, if you can figure out how that could possibly be any good, you will be on the right track.

The power of the show comes from the characters that make up the pirate crew of the [Firefly-class] spaceship “Serenity.” They are remnants of a rebellion against “The Alliance” (the confederation of civilized and technologically advanced planets toward the center of the galaxy) and long after the war is lost, they…

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Poetry / Theology

Man and Stone (part II)

by Lauren R.E. Larkin on Nov 7, 2008 • 3 Comments

(continued…)

His knees could not bear the weight of ego’s last stand,They bent and buckled; his mind and will would fight;But when the body is tired…his knees hit the rocky sand,He slumped. Man destroyed, beaten by Nature’s might.His left hand thrust upon the dust near his scraped knee,He gripped the muted ground…useless…it, too, could flee.

A guttural sob welled in his starved and deprived core,The shackles around his ankles felt tighter and excruciating,His hair fell around his face, forcing breath more and more,His muttered words, inaudible; lips incapable…

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Dexter.
Psychology / Theology / TV

Dexter.

by Choi on Jul 3, 2008 • 5 Comments

My friends accuse me of having highbrow taste in pop culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m a pop culture junkie—I’ll get my fix anywhere. Yet, I do have my standards and limits. I’m aware, too, that many of them are illogical. For example, I often pass over music bands and TV shows simply because their names do not appeal to me. Without shame, I confess that I would rather listen to Coldplay or Rhianna over My Morning Jacket or Portishead any day of the week. Who cares about critical acclaim…

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Post-Apocalypto: The Last Man on Earth… on Screen
Film / Theology

Post-Apocalypto: The Last Man on Earth… on Screen

by David Zahl on Apr 18, 2008 • 19 Comments

We are living in ominous times. Or so Hollywood tells us. It’s true though – impending doom has become a fixture in our political and cultural discourse as of late. The natural disasters of the past few years probably have something to do with it, as does the economic downturn, or you could just chalk it up to Bush-related malaise/nihilism. Whatever the case, if there’s any upside, it is the many works of post-apocalyptic fiction that are currently being produced: novels (The Road), movies (I Am Legend), comics (Y: The Last Man, Old Man Logan, Sweet Tooth), television (Battlestar…

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