Caleb Woodbridge's Blog, page 5
August 26, 2014
Hodderscape: Doctor Who “Deep Breath” review
Doctor Who is back! And I’ve reviewed it over at Hodderscape:
Hero or madman? Warrior or healer? Wanderer or planner? Alien or human?
The Doctor is all of these, and each regeneration gives the opportunity to twist the dials, remix the levels of the different elements of his character. David Tennant and Matt Smith shared many common traits (+5 Wacky Hair, +10 Flirtation and +15 Youthfulness), so it comes as a bit of a shock to be confronted with Peter Capaldi (-10 Flirtation, +10 Grey Hairs, +5...
July 4, 2014
Reading round-up: Foundational Reading, TV Drama vs Women, Books vs Internet and more
Some weekly picks from what I’ve read online recently…
Western Foundations
In his book The Case for Classic Christian Education (Crossway, 2003), Doug Wilson offers a list of “foundational” books for Western Civilization (some of which, but not all, would make their way onto his desert-island reading list.)
I’ve reproduced his list below, along with my own parenethetical recommendations on some translations, editions for kids, etc.
Foundational Literature of Western Civilization – Justin Taylor...
June 27, 2014
Reading round-up: Bunker Diary, DRM, Snowden’s Lawyer and more…
I chew through a lot of articles, blogs, videos and the like each week, so I’m planning on picking out some of the most interesting to recommend each week.
Kevin Brooks’ bleak The Bunker Diary wins Carnegie
Brooks’s story of kidnapped kids who never escape from their prison offers no more hope than John Fowles’sThe Collector– which it echoes without ever achieving Fowles’s humanism, poignancy and gorgeously literate style. It is depressing both in its nature and its lack of redemption; as a...
June 11, 2014
Hodderscape: Nick Fury Must Die
My article on Captain America 2, Agents of Shield and the challenges of telling stories in a shared fictional universe is now up on the Hodderscape blog! Beware of spoilers for the film and tv show.
Nick Fury Must Die: Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD vs the Franchise on Hodderscape.
June 9, 2014
Moving blog...
June 8, 2014
How Imagination Engages the Heart – Morphe Monday
Over the last few months, I’ve started getting involved in Morphe Arts group, especially the writers’ group that meets in the Southbank Centre twice a month. They recently produced the first issue of their literary magazine Margins and I’ve contributed a short story, The Wordless to the website.
Morphe also has monthly meetings covering a range of stuff in the arts generally, and this Monday was a lecture by Edith Reitsma from L’Abri Fellowship. I’ve met and heard talks by Edith several times...
May 21, 2014
Should the BBC become more like Buzzfeed?
Neil Postman, who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, might have been grimly amused to see Sir Howard Stringer recommending that BBC News online emulate Buzzfeed.
Now there may be some very general principles that the BBC can learn from about creating engaging, sharable content. But the news should be very different from cat photos and funny lists. For the BBC, not being Buzzfeed is a feature, not a bug.
The Unique Way That The BBC Is Funded (TM) should mean that BBC News isn’t beholden to genera...
April 26, 2014
What happens when we die?
One of life’s great questions is what happens to us when we die? Is there anything beyond this life, or is this all that there is?
All of us must face death – both the deaths of people we know and love, and eventually our own deaths. It is a solemn and serious matter. How can we be prepared for whatever comes next? What comfort is there when loved ones die?
People do not normally come back from the dead, so having any certain answer is very difficult. Some people have near-death experiences, bu...
April 20, 2014
What’s our ultimate hope – Heaven or Resurrection?
“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. My treasure lies laid up, somewhere beyond the blue. The saviour beckons me from Heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world any more”
So goes the old song. But is it true? Is the Christian hope simply that we “go to heaven when we die”?
Today is Easter Sunday, and I like to wish people a Happy Resurrection Day. The historical event of Jesus rising from the dead shows us many things. It shows that Jesus is the divine Son of...
April 18, 2014
Moving blog…
I’m now going to be blogging here on my self-hosted WordPress site. I’m going to leave the old site up at blog.calebwoodbridge.com as an archive – I hope that some of my articles might still be of occasional interest!
