Never Let Me Go is a film that sticks with you, packing a punch perhaps more in remembrance than in the actual experience of watching it. It's a startling, unexpected film, mostly in the matter-of-fact manner of its genre-bending exposition. It's a love story set against a sci-fi backdrop, with the elegance of an Austen novel and the quietly somber mood of an Ozu film. It's a jarring experience, and a profoundly moving one.

It's doubtless a strange thing to routinely bear witness to an external version of yourself in the media—watching yourself on YouTube, seeing yourself on Access Hollywood or in tabloids. Throughout I'm Still Here we see Phoenix watching himself on his laptop—glued to the screen like Narcissus looking into the pond. But is what he sees a familiar self? Or is it something as foreign as Commodus or Johnny Cash? Or is it ultimately all the same?

I pulled out 10 CDs that were either my most treasured or most listened-to recordings of the period from about 1995-2000 (more or less my high school years). They are the albums that comforted me most in the tumultuous adolescent years, the albums that taught me how to truly love music.

What does it mean to package Christianity in a methodical manner so as to make it salient to as wide an audience as possible? What does Christianity lose when it becomes just one piece of a consumer transaction? These are questions that the brand managers of “cool Christianity” would do well to consider. 

It’s a strange and wonderful feeling, to see one's idea come to fruition. I never really thought during the summer of 2005 that I'd write a book about hipster Christianity, but I'm glad I did. Looking back I marvel at how it all came together, how so many of my experiences and interactions and relationships all fed into this idea, and how the people in my life during this season were so absolutely instrumental in the whole endeavor.

The Suburbs, though not a “concept album” per se, is cohesive and literate in ways few albums are any more. Each of its 16 tracks (neatly divided into two 8-song halves) follows smoothly and deliberately from the previous one, with repeated words and phrases (and ideas) that tie things together.

Last week on the Hipster Christianity Facebook page, I posted YouTube videos from the last 4 decades of "Christian hipster" music, or music that was at least pivotal in the ultimate development of today's culture of hipster Christianity. Here they are, in chronological order... Enjoy!

How did today's Christian hipster come to be? Here are some key dates in the formation of hipster Christianity.

Unlike any film I can remember, Inception surely puts the psychological in "psychological thriller." This is a film that is about the mind, takes place in the mind, and will stick in your mind. It's energy comes not from explosions or cheap thrills but from the steady, deliberate way that it wraps itself around your brain, python like, a tighter and tighter coil as the film goes along.

I'm all for social justice. I'm passionate about it. Christians have to be serving people and loving them not just in word but in deed. But man, if I hear another well-fed, Toms-wearing evangelical kid quote St. Francis ("preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words") one more time as a justification for their unwillingness to utter a word to anyone about Christ as the one true hope, I don't know what I'll do.

In this interview, Rachel Held Evans discusses some of the problems that led her to question her faith (hell, "the cosmic lottery," etc), the damage done by "false fundamentals," and what parts of Christianity she'd like to see evolve.

Read the following list of juxtaposed attributes of "cool" and "Christianity," and tell me if you think I'm wrong to suggest they are fundamentally contrary ways of being.

I don't mean to say soccer isn't a good sport or that Americans shouldn't pay attention to it. I personally don't find it all that exciting, and clearly most other Americans agree with me. But the rest of the world finds it VERY exciting, and I'm happy for them. America doesn't have to win at everything.