Holidays & Festivals

DRAMATICALLY DOWNSIZED HAJJ IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MEET OUR MUSLIM NEIGHBORS

The thousands of Muslim men and women who normally would be packing up for their once-in-a-lifetime journey to Mecca this month aren’t going anywhere, this year. Due to the pandemic, Saudi Arabia is turning this event that normally involves millions into a symbolic ritual for about 1,000 people. This is an opportunity for all of us to reach out to Muslim neighbors and co-workers and ask about family customs—as our holiday story by Stephanie Fenton suggests.

If you’d like to simply skip ahead to ordering your own copy of Victor Begg’s Our Muslim Neighbors—which includes a section on the Hajj—please follow this link to Amazon right now.

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Care to see all of our Holidays & Festivals columns? It’s easy to find our annual calendar of global observances. Just remember the address InterfaithHolidays.com

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Click this movie photo to read Ed McNulty’s review of Tom Hanks in the World War II adventure Greyhound.

FAITH & FILM 

CLICK THIS IMAGE to learn more about the July 2020 issue of Ed McNulty’s Visual Parables Journal, a monthly online magazine that is packed with complete study guides to discuss faith perspectives on contemporary cinema.

ED McNULTY, for decades, has published reviews, magazine articles and books exploring connections between faith and film. Most of his work is freely published. Ed supports his work by selling the Visual Parables Journal, a monthly magazine packed with discussion guides to films. This resource is used coast-to-coast by individuals who love the movies and by educators, clergy and small-group leaders.

Among Ed’s free reviews and columns are these films available for streaming now. 

1. GREYHOUND—Ed gives 4.5 stars to Tom Hanks in Greyhound. Ed writes, “Hanks turns in an excellent performance as the rookie commander who feels the pressure of his baptism by fire.”
2. THE RESISTANCE BANKER—Ed writes, “Dutch director Joram Lürsenfor shows us one more way in which an occupied people resisted Nazi tyranny. I love the way in which through the years such filmmakers manage to present a fresh view of WW 2 and of Nazi persecution.” (4.5 stars)
3. BAMBOOZLED—Ed reaches back to 2000 to highly recommend Spike Lee’s “attack on entrenched racism in this, the funniest and hardest hitting satire about American television since Network!”
4. MALCOLM X—This week, Ed writes: “This review was written for the December 1992 issue of Visual Parables. I am bringing it up from the archives because of a new project highlighting ten films I believe every American white person needs to see in order to understand the currently debated topics of systemic racism and white privilege. With a few minor exceptions, the text appears as originally printed, but the two Scripture passages and a set of questions for discussing the film are additions.”
5. BOYS STATE—Ed writes, “The new documentary by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss is an interesting look at our democratic process in miniature, as seen at a Boys State meeting, one of 49 held each year in every state but Hawaii since the mid Thirties, sponsored by the American Legion.” (4.5 out of 5 stars)
6. IRRESISTIBLE—Ed writes, “This is the delightful story of a political operative who might be too smart for himself. Director/writer Jon Stewart’s political satire does not hedge by conjuring up fictitious names of political parties, though the characters themselves are made-up. Steve Carell’s Gary Zimmer is a political consultant of the Democratic Party, and Rose Byrne’s Faith Brewster works for the Republican National Committee.” (4.5 out of 5 stars)
7. SWEETHEART—Ed writes, “Director J.D. Dillard also co-wrote the screenplay of this tense thriller set on a desert island. The sweetheart of the title is Jenn (Kiersey Clemons), who finds herself swept up on the sandy beach of a tropical island.” (4 stars)
8. HEARTS BEAT LOUD—Because of Kiersey Clemons’s new film Sweetheart, Ed reaches back to 2017 to recommend this earlier film in which she starred.
9. DA 5 BLOODS—Ed urges viewers to see this 5-star direct-to-streaming film from Spike Lee about five Vietnam veterans.
10. SEE YOU YESTERDAY—Ed writes, “This science fiction thriller by first-time director Stefon Bristol and his co-writer Fredrica Bailey boasts Spike Lee as one of its producers. With its ripped-from-the-headlines relevancy in regard to police brutality you might think it was made last week, but it actually was released a little over a year ago when another shooting of a black man by the police was in the headlines. Indeed, its genesis goes back even further when Bristol had made a short film and Spike Lee  helped him to expand it into its present feature length. With many #Black Lives Matter news clips interspersed throughout, the film seems like a mixture of Back to the Future, The Hate You Give and When They See Us.” (5 out of 5 stars)

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