Brett McCracken's Blog, page 5

My Favorites of the 2010s Decade

As we enter the final month of the 2010s decade, I thought I would take a look back at some of my favorites from the last 10 years. Here are my favorite movies, documentaries, TV shows, music albums, and books released in the last decade.

Movies

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2011)

A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019)

Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)

Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)

The Social Network...

Recent Writings / Spring-Summer 2019

A collection of my publications from recent months

5 Films About the Beauty of Resurrection (April 15, 2019, THE GOSPEL COALITION)

Five movies that capture resurrection in all of its miraculous, unsettling, hope-giving glory

---

Aretha, Beyoncé, and the Shift in Musical Transcendence (April 27, 2019, THE GOSPEL COALITION)

A comparison of two concert documentaries: Amazing Grace and Homecoming

---

18 Paintings Christians Should See (May 4, 2019, THE GOSPEL COALITION)

A curated list of masterpieces eve...

On My Son’s First Birthday

A few weeks ago Kira, Chet, and I went down to San Diego for the day. We went there to spend the afternoon at a nice beach, but mostly to have dinner at a Peruvian restaurant in Del Mar where, a year earlier (a few weeks before Chet was born), we had the best meal. We are foodies and have a tendency to plan entire day trips, even vacations, around food. We were excited to take Chet to this restaurant to hopefully have another amazing meal, this time as a family of three. But when we showed up...

Music Overload and the Escape of Nostalgia

In recent years I have noticed that in most hip coffeeshops (which are innumerable in Southern California, and which are often my “offices”), the music being played is not current. Rather, it is the hipster music from 10-20 years ago (give or take). Instead of Weyes Blood, it is Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. Instead of Vampire Weekend’s excellent new release, Father of the Bride, it is Vampire Weekend’s debut album from a decade ago. It is not The National’s new music. It’s “Baby, We’ll B...

The Super Bloom’s Easter Lessons

It’s amazing how quickly dead things can come back to life.

In a matter of months, across California, our fire-charred, ugly-brown, crunchy dry hills transformed into verdant, lush, Ireland-green landscapes full of 8-foot-tall wildflowers.

We call it a “super bloom,” and it happens any year we get above-average winter rain, no crazy winds, and no extreme temperature swings. The last super bloom was 2017, but this year’s is a once-in-a-generation event.

The blooms across California have been no...

Recent Writings / Winter 2019

A collection of my publications from recent months

‘Boy Erased’ Suggests Sexual Desire Can’t Change, So Religion Must (November 13, 2018, THE GOSPEL COALITION)

A review of the film Boy Erased (dir. Joel Edgerton)

---

‘Buster Scruggs’: What the Coen Brothers Get Right and Wrong About Death (November 16, 2018, THE GOSPEL COALITION)

A review of the film Buster Scruggs (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

---

111 Great Songs for Advent (December 1, 2018, THE GOSPEL COALITION)

A playlist of songs I curated for Adve...

19 Resolutions for 2019

New Year’s is such a reassuring holiday. Whatever is happening in the world, however crazy a year it has been, a new year still comes. A fresh start. A natural reset.

When Earth begins another annual pilgrimage around the sun, it’s a reminder that amidst change, there is constancy. We grow older as the years pass, but Earth still moves along the same orbit, around the same sun, as it has for billions of years. It’s a comfort that the sun doesn’t revolve around us. We revolve around it—our rel...

Favorite Music of 2018

The sheer volume of music at our fingertips these days is overwhelming; it’s impossible to keep up with. Streaming services like Spotify are a blessing and a curse. They make a vast amount (almost all) of music accessible, create opportunities for creative playlist creation, and allow artists to reach fans easily anywhere in the world. All good things.

But there are downsides too. The Spotify experience, I find, cheapens music by spreading the listener thin. Because there is always so much gr...

Favorite Books of 2018

It’s the last week of the year, which means it’s time to look forward, but also to look back.

Tis the season for year-end lists.

I read more fiction and more really old books in 2018 than I had in previous years (I challenged myself to do this at the beginning of the year, in part to follow my own “wisdom pyramid” advice). It was a lovely reading year, and the lists below highlight some of my favorites in two categories: books I read in 2018 that were 1) released this year and 2) not released...

To Zion

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
    in the city of our God!
His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation,
    is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north,
    the city of the great King.
Within her citadels God
    has made himself known as a fortress.

Psalm 48: 1-3

On a Thursday in November, 2017, we drove east. In Santa Ana, to drive east is to drive toward the desert. And so to the desert we went: the high desert beyond the San Bernardino Mountains, the long stretches of Moja...