The daily Twitter referendum or lottery

Twitter is truly an odd, albeit interesting, beast when it comes to “following” and “followers” for those of us anyway whose numbers aren’t up in the gazillions on either side of the equation and we have at least a general sense of plus or minus changes.

Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, where one’s number of “friends” and “connections” seem more stable (sure you lose the odd one but generally gain them at least incrementally), Twitter is more akin, at least in my experience, to a daily (if not hourly) referendum or maybe lottery. I’m really not sure which.

While I like social media analytics and trying to figure out how algorithms are applied to determine the feed of tweets in my stream, and find engagement metrics as truly fascinating as the next guy who went through high school years ago loathing mathematics and majoring in history in university, I really find it hard to see direct correlations in terms of the numbers sometimes. Does losing a “follower” on Twitter mean you’ve offended someone? Or even worse bored them? Or maybe they just wanted to round-off their numbers or make room to follow someone else?

Anyway. Below are some of the folks we follow on Twitter. For today anyway. My very unscientific analysis of how I wound up following these folks, based on something like a cursory glance at the list, goes like this. Some are personal friends or former colleagues I’ve known for years. Some are related to places where I have previously worked and lived. A disproportionate number are Catholic, but a good number are simply religion writers in general or journalists. Add in some union activists. Chris Rutkowski, research co-ordinator for UFOlogy Research of Manitoba (URM) by night, communications officer in media relations with the communications marketing office of the University of Manitoba by day, is my go-to UFO guy, while Mark Boslough, an Albuquerque, New Mexico physicist, is a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories and an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico. He also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and member of the group New Mexicans for Science and Reason. Asteroid 73520 Boslough (2003 MB1) is named after him.

Follow me, tweet me and retweet me. Go ahead. Make me viral. Make my day.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Following

So Bad So Good

@sbadsgood

We hunt best & worst pop culture on the web, so you don’t have to.

Old Pics Archive

@oldpicsarchive

The most interesting historical photographs. Follow, discuss, share!

CANADALAND

@CNDLND

http://CANADALANDSHOW.com

Amy Welborn

@amywelborn2

Catholic,writer,reader,traveler. Blog: http://amywelborn.wordpress.com New book: ADVENTURES IN ASSISI: http://tinyurl.com/adventuresinassisi …

coreyredekop

@CoreyRedekop

Author of (award-winning) SHELF MONKEY [http://ow.ly/A6iQa ], (award-nominated) HUSK [http://goo.gl/PwxpQz ], and an assortment of quality sweets.

CJR

@CJR

Monitoring the press, tracking the evolving media business & encouraging excellence in journalism since 1961.

J-Source

@jsource

News, research and commentary about Canadian journalism. Tweets by @rpobeirne.

ChurchMilitant.TV

@Church_Militant

Save the World. Be Catholic. http://www.churchmilitant.tv/premsignup.php http://www.facebook.com/ChurchMilitant.TV …

Francis X. Rocca

@FrancisXRocca

Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service

The Tablet

@The_Tablet

The Tablet is a weekly Catholic journal which has been reporting on events of significance for more than 170 years.

Dr William Pelletier

@BibleScienceGuy

Mathematician. IT company vice-president. Bible-Science blogger. Sportsman, Orienteer, Camper. Husband, father of 7.

maurice emelu

@Revemelu

Catholic clergy, TV host, author, journalist, retreat preacher, African content producer for EWTN and President, Gracia Vobis Ministries,…

Jorge Barrera

@JorgeBarrera follows you

Journalist/Periodista, dabbler, occasional absinthe sipper, follower of threads. 6132942011 Email: jbarrera (at) aptn.ca; fax: 6135671834

Rev. Fidelis Omeaku

@RevFICO follows you

Catholic Priest, Gospel Artist and Follower of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Co-Heir of God’s Kingdom and son of our Blessed Mother Mary.

Jeff Mcinnes

@herbalizer306 follows you

Admin for the private FB group Thompson Confidential. Original admin of Thompson Talk. What a shitty list of accolades

Lisa Winters Evasiuk

@greta202 follows you

Someday maybe I will write the story of my life. Maybe.

Steve Lambert

@stevelambertwpg

Reporter with The Canadian Press. President of the Manitoba legislature press gallery. Music geek. Distance runner. Hacks-and-Flacks street…

Mark Boslough

@MarkBoslough

Physicist and skeptic. Tweets about science, asteroids, and climate change. Annoys deniers.

ninaburleigh

@ninaburleigh follows you

Journalist @newsweek, bestselling author. Anywhere on the Med. And Washington, D.C.

John Baert

@JohnBaert follows you

MGEU Special Projects Officer. Views expressed are mine. Jets, Bears, Blue Jays, 76ers, Chelsea.

Tim Fontaine

@anishinaboy follows you

Ojibway factotum. Associate Producer at https://twitter.com/CBCManitoba . http://mediaindigena.com contributor. Tweets about bannock. Often.

The Times

@WellingtonTimes follows you

Prince Edward County’s Independent News Source

Ruth Gledhill

@RuthieGledhill follows you

Loving life one day at a time. Contrib Ed @ChristianToday & student @GoldMADjourno. Reviewer @LondonTheatre1.

Anne D’Innocenzio

@ADInnocenzio

National Retail Writer for The Associated Press. Foodie & theater lover. Having fun with standup comedy. Manhattan. Email me story pitches…

Chris Rutkowski

@ufologyresearch

UFO guy, media guy, writer

Rachel Zoll

@rzollAP

@AP national religion writer since 2001. b. Salem, Mass. rzoll@ap.org

Michael Paulson

@MichaelPaulson

National religion reporter at The New York Times. Living in New York; missing New England.

Religion NewsService

@RNS

Religion News Service reporters, columnists and bloggers cover news & views where faith, spirituality and nonbelief meet society, culture, politi…

Sarah Pulliam Bailey

@spulliam follows you

On vacation! Soon: @WashingtonPost religion reporter. Amateur violist, cook, board gamer. spulliam@gmail.com

Religion Newswriters

@ReligionReport

Religion Newswriters Association provides networking, tools and training for reporters covering religion. We envision fair and informed religion…

GetReligion

@GetReligion

GetReligion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business…

ChristianCinema.com

@ChristianCinema

Since 1999, we’ve been connecting audiences with Christian movies and filmmakers. Now over 4000 titles that will impact lives via DVD, Rental, VOD…

Ted Andkilde

@andkilde follows you

photographer, malcontent, new dad, old soul

Luke Coppen

@LukeCoppen

Editor of the Catholic Herald

Damian Thompson

@holysmoke

Associate editor at The Spectator specialising in religion and classical music. Once described as ‘A blood-crazed ferret’ by the Church Times

Dwight Longenecker

@dlongenecker1

Bob Jones U, then Oxford and an Anglican priest, now Catholic priest, blogger, broadcaster, Author of Romance of Religion and fifteen…

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

@fatherz

Catholic Priest, Blogger, Columnist – http://wdtprs.com

Anchor, The World Over Live on EWTN Thurs.8PM ET., EWTNews Director, New York Times Best Selling author, journalist, producer, husband, dad.…

L’Osservatore Romano

@LOsservatoreUSA

USA edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, now printed by Our Sunday Visitor. Follow @CatholicReview for latest Vatican…

Fr. Robert Barron

@FrRobertBarron

I am a Catholic priest, author, and creator and host of the award-winning documentary series CATHOLICISM

Our Sunday Visitor

@OSV

Sharing our Catholic Faith online & in print …. Looking at news & trends of today through Catholic eyes.

Vatican – news

@news_va_en

Vatican media: CTV, Osservatore Romano, Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Vatican Radio, Press Office, Vatican website, V.I.S.

Catholic News Svc

@CatholicNewsSvc

Catholic News Service is a leader in religious news. Our mission is to report fully, fairly and freely on the involvement of the church in the world today.

Salt + Light

@saltandlighttv

Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation is a charitable organization devoted to spreading the light of Christ through media.

Laurie Goodstein

@lauriegnyt

New York Times National Religion Correspondent. Covering the reverent and irreverent since 1993. @washpost @nytimes http://nyti.ms/VFHNZR

Crux

@Crux

Covering all things Catholic, from Church doctrine to personal faith. Featuring expert Vatican coverage by @JohnLAllenJr and edited by …

John L. Allen, Jr.

@JohnLAllenJr

Vatican expert, journalist, author and pug lover. Associate editor at Boston Globe and also at Crux, covering all things Catholic.

Paul Andersen

@PaulAndersen6 follows you

Producer for Shaw TV in Thompson, Flin Flon & The Pas. I only have two talents in Life: Mini Putt and Bubble Hockey. Views are my own.

Shaw TV Thompson

@ShawTVThompson follows you

Shaw TV Thompson brings your local community content to you. We represent your local community programming in Northern Manitoba

Abigail Bimman

@AbigailCTV

Videographer & anchor for CTV Kitchener.

City of Thompson

@cityofthompson

Journalism.co.uk

@journalismnews follows you

News, digital tools and tips for journalists and publishers from http://Journalism.co.uk . Contact @abigailedge or @ajreid. Tel: +44 (0)1273 384290

Thompson Citizen

@ThompsonCitizen follows you

50 years and counting as Thompson’s source for local news.

Steve Ladurantaye

@sladurantaye

Government and news at Twitter Canada.

Neil MacCarthy

@neilmaccarthy

Com. Dir., Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. Follow @archtoronto for official feed. I’m that church media guy, smiling most of the time. Tweets are my own.

Jeanette Kimball

@dancewithsun7 follows you

Mediator, conciliator, cedar, bamboo and silver flute player. Peacemaker and camera maven.

Ryan Flanagan

@flanaganryan follows you

News dude. Sports fan. Pop culture noun. I’m a web writer at @CTVKitchener.

Dan Heffernan

@DanHeffernan2 follows you

Scott Edmonds

@tsedmonds follows you

Vice-president, Canada, The Newspaper Guild-CWA, Writer, multi-media journalist, Formerly with The Canadian Press

And (did I happen to mention?) you can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Popular Culture and Ideas

Flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar: Christian movie genre is ‘hot’

The 10-day Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) from Sept. 4 through Sept. 14 just wrapped up yesterday. In the cinema world, TIFF is a big deal. An important arts event eagerly anticipated every September.

But flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar there is a whole slew of movies released over the last year or just about to be released, which might surprise you both in their totality and who stars in them because Hollywood, for a season at least, has rediscovered the Christian movie genre and the religious, spiritual and supernatural themes that are woven into their fabric. In a word, Christian movies are “hot” in 2014. Hollywood, which is usually a synonym for Sodom or Gomorrah in the vocabulary for many Christians, is this fall on the side of the angels. There is apparently an upside for Hollywood where commercial potential stands in for faith in salvation if need be.

While the big knock against the Christian movie genre for more secular moviegoers – aside from the fact the films are Christian – has long been heavy-handed theological scripts, clunky acting and cheesy sets, with mainly bad films, which, to be charitable, do little more than preach to the choir, there hasn’t been, aside from the occasional blockbuster, much for broader audiences to judge such films on if they were done, well, well. You know, decent scripts, good actors, high production values, that sort of thing.

On Aug. 15, The Weinstein Company, founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979, released The Giver, starring three-time Academy award winner Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges. Set in a fictional post-war 2048, the community has decided to get rid of colours and, as a consequence, different races and feelings. All citizens have had the memories from before erased from their minds.

Raymond Arroyo, who is a classically trained actor himself, interviewed Bridges, and Lois Lowry, author of the 1993 novel by the same name on which the movie is based, on EWTN’s The World Over last month.

Heaven Is for Real, directed by Randall Wallace and written by Christopher Parker, based on Pastor Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent’s 2010 book of the same name, and starring Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Jacob Vargas and Nancy Sorel, was released April 16. It tells the story of three-year-old Imperial, Nebraska, native Colton Burpo, the son of Pastor Burpo, and what he says he experienced heaven during emergency surgery.

Colton Burpo, now 14, later described to his incredulous family scenes of having looked down to see the doctor operating, his mother calling people to pray in the waiting room, and his father in another room yelling at God and knowledge gleaned from his time in heaven that he could not otherwise have obtained about his great-grandfather and his second sister who died before being born. He goes on to describe Jesus, his physical appearance, and his horse.

When the Game Stands Tall was released Aug. 22. It stars Jim Caviezel, best known for portraying Jesus in Mel Gibson’s blockbuster 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, now playing Catholic De La Salle High School Spartans’ football coach Bob Ladouceur (with Laura Dern as his wife, Bev Ladouceur), and telling the story of the record-setting 151-game 1992–2003 winning streak by De La Salle of Concord, California, just east of San Francisco. The movie is an adaptation of the 2003 book of the same name by Neil Hayes, then a columnist with the Contra Costa Times. The movie was filmed in Louisiana.

God’s Not Dead with Kevin Sorbo was released March 21;
Noah with Russell Crowe was released March 28;
Son of God, produced by evangelical Mark Burnett from Survivor, and his Catholic wife, Roma Downey, was released Feb. 21.

The “new” Left Behind movie about the Rapture by Paul Lalonde and Stoney Lake Entertainment, with Nicolas Cage starring as Rayford Steele, and Civil Twilight’s song “Letters from the Sky” being used in the trailer, is being released in North American theatres Oct.3.

The Rapture in Christian eschatology refers to the “being caught up,” as written about by St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, when he says the “dead in Christ” and “we who are alive and remain” will be “caught up in the clouds” to meet “the Lord in the air.” It is a long and complex discussion, but suffice to say Catholics, while they believe in the Second Coming of Christ at the end of the age, do not literally believe in The Rapture as understood by premillennial dispensationalists, which shapes the theology, as it is, in recent years in almost all popular culture books and movies about the Rapture, including the ones discussed here.

The choice of Cage has caused some quiet murmurs in certain evangelical circles, although not particularly loud ones for the most part, as Cage, a bankable box office star, is rumored to be Roman Catholic. Lalonde and his new Stoney Lake Entertainment have really stepped their game up to big-league production values from the first three Left Behind movies he was involved in with Cloud Ten pictures more than a decade ago.

And speaking of the Rapture, Tim Chey’s movie, Final: The Rapture, released a year ago in theatres, will be out in DVD in November, starring Jah Shams, Mary Grace, Carman, Masashi Nagadoi and Dave Edwards. While there have been generally cheesy church-sponsored, Halloween “Hell Houses” videos in the past, Final: The Rapture is an unusual sub-genre of Christian horror movie or Christian disaster movie. The movie’s poster promise, “When the Rapture strikes … all of hell will break loose.”

Chey said his purpose is “to scare the living daylights out of nonbelievers … If it means I have to make a horror film to make it realistic to win people to Christ, then so be it.”

Online Maranatha News of Toronto calls Final: The Rapture “the scariest Christian movie ever.”

Final: The Rapture depicts the apocalyptic chaos that ensues for four nonbelievers – an African-American, an Asian, a Hispanic and a white man living in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and on a South Pacific island, after the Rapture occurs. “In Los Angeles, Colin Nelson desperately attempts to flee to Bora Bora. Keenly aware that he’s in the Tribulation period, his only hope is in a mysterious man. In Tokyo, a journalist, Masashi, tries to unravel the disappearance of millions of people as the government closes in on him. In Buenos Aires, Marie searches for her final relative as time runs out. And on a deserted island in the South Pacific, Tom Wiseman, an avowed atheist, attempts to be rescued after his plane goes down.”

The film was shot in six countries over five months for about $7 million, Final: The Rapture, raised the necessary production money across a spectrum of investors, ranging from faith-based to hedge funds.

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Tag Archives: Raymond Arroyo

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Flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar: Christian movie genre is ‘hot’