November on the Road

From November 2 through 7, we'll be in Nashville for the "Past Watchful Dragons" conference, which will focus on the works of Tolkien and Lewis. The title of the conference is taken from a critical essay by Lewis which expressed the idea that works of fantasy are more worthy than many of cultural gatekeepers let on. While there, Greg will be presenting a paper titled "Sometimes a Film Says Best What's to be Said," a talk which reviews the rather harsh judgments of film levelled by Tolkien and Lewis. We'll also be attending a dinner with Douglas Gresham, Lewis' stepson, and a performance of the Lord of the Rings Symphony.

Then from the 14th through the 16th, we'll be in South Bend Indiana, where Greg will be lecturing on Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings films as part of the University of Notre Dame's falls literature lecture series. He'll be focusing on the moral dimension of Tolkien's tale lost when Peter Jackson cut the "Scouring of the Shire" sequence from his film.

Finally, Greg will be in New York City for the Narnia press junket.

For those inclined to pray, please keep these appearances in mind. We really want to represent Christ well on the public stage. We also hope for great exposure for our books and the work at Hollywood Jesus.

Two Roads Through Narnia

Narnia is the Next Big Deal. And everyone's selling a book on the series by C. S. Lewis, including us!

For seven months earlier this year, we collaborated with Kathy Bledose and George Rosok on a series of online features analyzing the seven volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia from literary and spiritual standpoints. Those essays have been re-edited with an introduction titled "Spirituality, Art and Narnia" and published in this volume. The attractive cover artwork and interior illustrations are by Dawn Davidson, a young artist in Florida who did some wonderful work for us on our web coverage.

A more thorough description of the book and its rationale is available on our Narnia News blog.

The book retails for $12.95 and is available online through Hollywood Jesus or Amazon, et al. If you buy it from us in person, it's $12.00.

If you're wanting to get up to speed on the whole Narnia thing without having to read all the books, Two Roads through Narnia will help you do that! It'd make a great gift this holiday season, with the movie due out December 9.

Hollywood Jesus Reviews 2004-2005

The second volume of reviews from the Hollywood Jesus website has just been published by Hollywood Jesus Books. This volume has ninety reviews from over twenty of HJ's staffers.

The book is priced at $14.95 retail, and is available online through Hollywood Jesus or Amazon, et al. If you buy from us in person, it's $14.00.

Greg's got six reviews included and Jenn just one this year (and it's probably appropriate that the movie is Kicking and Screaming).

These collections of reviews really do make good gifts, and are a nice alternative to the usual style of movie reviews. They offer more than just a thumbs-up or thumbs-down; they offer food for thought.

News Blog Launched

For the last five years, the "DIM News" has been updated periodically as we saw the need to update folks on what was happening with the drama ministry. Over the last two years, there hasn't been much to tell about on the drama front, because our "top story" has been Jenn's ongoing health crisis.

Well, that's no longer the case. Jenn's been off IV nutrition for six weeks now, and there's no reason to believe that she's headed back to the hospital any time soon. She's still suffering from lingering gastroparesis—but with the gastric stimulator finally doing some good and having learned a lot about what kinds of food Jenn can tolerate (jams, jellies, protein shakes, crackerbread and tofu!), we're now moving into more of a management phase with the illness (as we learned to do with Jenn's fibromyalgia three years ago).

The immediate (two-year) crisis has passed, and Jenn's recovering some of her body weight and the bulk of her emotional and cognitive capacities. She's working part time now, in the interests of building up her stamina in preparation for full-time work again later.

But what's really changed over the last two years is that the work of DIM is no longer our primary ministry, with our writing projects and publishing on the side. It's the other way around now. We're more involved with the work on Hollywood Jesus than ever: the After Eden Journal ran for two years, we've just completed our first year of coverage on the upcoming Narnia film franchise, and we've reviewed more movies in the last year than in the previous three years combined. And Hollywood Jesus Books has published six books in the last year.

So this DIM news blog now replaces the old "newsletter" style DIM news. And the emphasis will no longer be just on drama—which is just as well, since there's not much to report on there. But the blog will be updated on a regular basis, much more frequently than the old DIM news ever was.

So don't expect "health update" emails from us any longer. But do expect to be able to stay more informed about what we're up to by bookmarking this blog and checking it often!

And do feel free to leave us comments, too! Blogs are interactive; newsletters aren't.