Douglas Coupland and the Art of the Extreme Present

2021 is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Douglas Coupland’s first novel, Generation X. To mark it, there will be an online international conference – the first on Coupland’s work – on 23–24 April. ‘Douglas Coupland and the Art of the Extreme Present’ will ‘explore the richness of Coupland’s engagement with contemporary life’ through […]

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Interview with Douglas Coupland

I interviewed Douglas Coupland in London in 2004, soon after the publication of Hey Nostradamus! With the 'Douglas Coupland and the Art of the Extreme Present' virtual conference coming up very soon, I thought I should publish an edited version of the interview. The original transcript was published on Culturewatch and has been unavailable online […]

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Innocence and Experience: The influence of William Blake on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials

This article is an extract from my book, Dark Matter: A Thinking Fan's Guide to Philip Pullman. I have edited it lightly to remove the worst plot spoilers, but inevitably I must mention some events towards the end of the trilogy. As far as possible, I have edited these so that the details of what […]

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Philip Pullman and the Devil's Party

This article is an extract from my book, Dark Matter: A Thinking Fan's Guide to Philip Pullman. See more articles relating to Pullman and His Dark Materials. Philip Pullman was sixteen, studying for A-Levels, when he first read John Milton's Paradise Lost, first published in 1667.[1]He immediately fell in love with it: ‘I found it intensely […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part six)

This is the last in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Two more aspects of responding to film and literature 4. Morality Image from iStockPhoto.com We have considered the moral […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part five)

This is the fifth in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Celebrate the good1 Image from iStockPhoto.com If the ideas actually make sense, we need to acknowledge that fact, even […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part four)

This is the fourth in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Image from iStockPhoto.com Worldviews in film and literature While not wishing to over-emphasise this aspect of responding to art […]

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Art’s Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part three)

This is the third in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Five aspects of responding to art If, then, art and media are the product of people made in the […]

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Art's Desire: Responding to Film and Literature (part two)

This is the second in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Two-faced human beings Adam and Eve were tempted by the freedom to make their own moral choices; they wanted […]

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Art's Desire: Responding to Film and Literature

This is the first in a series of six posts, which was first published as an article in Anvil journal, Volume 28 No 3 (November 2012), and is published here by kind permission of the editor. Reflecting or shaping? Marvin doesn't like living in a media-dominated world. He doesn't watch television, avoids the cinema, shuns […]

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Resurrection Year by Sheridan Voysey

I've just read the latest book by Sheridan Voysey, an Australian writer, speaker and broadcaster who is now based in the UK. Resurrection Year. is a very open and honest book about the anguish experienced by him and his wife Merryn as they struggled with infertility, and as they began to take positive steps into […]

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Twilight - True Blood and True Love

This is a repost to coincide with the cinema release of The Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn (Part 1) This article was first published on Culturewatch.org. © Tony Watkins, 2010. Vampires are currently one of the biggest phenomena in popular culture. They are central to hit television series like True Blood, Being Human and The Vampire Diaries, but leading […]

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This is the article on the book of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which I wrote for Culturewatch. Warning: contains major plot spoilers. Ten years after Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone blasted onto the best-seller lists, J.K. Rowling has finally brought the series to a spectacular and moving conclusion with Harry Potter and the Deathly […]

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Are Fairy Tales Finished?

An interesting piece by Mike Cosper on The Gospel Coalition Blog about Walt Disney's announcement that it will not make any more princess fairy tales, at least for the foreseeable future. I was particularly struck by this observation:   I can’t help but wonder, though, if the cognitive disconnect between today’s families and the world […]

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Seeing through other eyes - C.S. Lewis

I love this quote from C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism (1961), which is easily applicable to film as well as literature: This, so far as I can see, is the specific value or good of literature as Logos; it admits us to experiences other than our own. They are not, any more than our […]

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Jeffrey Overstreet on the how of storytelling

Encounter 10: Jeffrey Overstreet on the how of storytelling from International Arts Movement on Vimeo. Jeffrey is a great, insightful Christian film critic whose perspectives I value highly. This lecture was given at the International Arts Movement Encounter 10. Related posts: Being Charlie Kaufman Some recommended books on film and faith Discovering the brokenness of […]

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Interview with Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor

Colin Duriez, the most knowledgeable person on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien I know, interviews 'the Tolkien Professor', Corey Olsen, for Festival in the Shire Journal. Here's one question which particularly interests me. You can read the rest here, but you'll need to go to the Festival in the Shire home page to access anything […]

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A Hunger for Truth and Justice

Stieg Larsson’s Crime novels Interview with Tony Watkins by Christian Bensel, 23 March 2010   The bestselling Millennium Trilogy features cases of mass murderers, human trafficking and government conspiracies. 27 million copies have been sold in over 40 countries according to theEconomist (March 22,  2010), making the late  Stieg Larsson the second most sold author worldwide in 2008 […]

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The failure of His Dark Materials film trilogy

I stumbled across this yesterday, having missed it when it was published in The Guardian last year: The actor Sam Elliott, who starred in the 2007 adaptation of the first novel, Northern Lights (the film was called The Golden Compass), said earlier this week that books two and three were not being filmed due to […]

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Reinventing Jesus

This article was first published on Culturewatch. © Tony Watkins. When I interviewed Philip Pullman, I found him genial, generous and engaging. He has a sharp mind, a clever wit, and he’s a brilliant writer. He has justifiably been acclaimed as one of Britain’s finest writers, having won several awards including the Whitbread Book of […]

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Charlotte Higgins's response to The Good Man Jesus

Charlotte Higgins wrote this in her blog on the Guardian website yesterday. What a great response to Philip Pullman's new book: The Good Man Jesus is a fascinating story, told in the same kind of spare, lapidary prose as the Gospels themselves or a Grimm brothers fairytale. Pullman's gift for storytelling is in evidence on […]

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The God-Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman seems to enjoy stirring up controversy. He annoyed many Christians with his best-selling anti-church, anti-God trilogy His Dark Materials. And it’s evident that he was out to provoke when he made comments like, ‘my books are about killing God,’ and, ‘I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.’ He’s admitted that the […]

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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

I talked to Paul Hammond on UCB UK radio this morning about Philip Pullman's controversial new books. The conversation was put out as a podcast on Culturewatch: Click to listen Posted via email from Tony Watkins Related posts: The God-Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Philip Pullman Pullman's next book reworks of the story of Jesus […]

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Philip Pullman and his atheist fiction

Philip Pullman CBE is the acclaimed author of around thirty books, mostly aimed at older children. He is best known for His Dark Materials, a brilliantly written, ambitious trilogy (Northern Lights/The Golden Compass (1995); The Subtle Knife (1997); The Amber Spyglass (2000)). He has received many awards, including the highly prestigious Astrid Lindgren Award. His […]

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© Tony Watkins, 2020
The Tony and Jane Watkins Trust oversees and supports the ministries of Tony and Jane Watkins in Christian training, education, and communication. It is a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 1062254.
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