March is Women's History Month, so to celebrate in a small way I thought I'd list my favorite 31 films directed by women (one for each day in the month of March). If you haven't seen these, I recommend it! 

Lord, bring us to our knees. Quiet our hearts.

Away from the onslaught of screens and tweets and texts, focus our eyes on you.

Abide in our perceptions, as we taste and see and hear that you are good.

The Grey is a movie about death. But don't worry, it's not depressing. It's about dying well, dying humanely. What separates humans from animals? Among other things: the way that we die. Sure, we are like animals in that we instinctively fight to the death. Like wolves, we do not go quietly into the good night.

Why did God create human beings to need to sleep? There's really no reason he needed to. He could have just as easily created humans to be creatures alive, alert and productive 24 hours a day. Instead, he created us to be people who sleep about one third of our lives.

The 2012 Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and as is typically the case, there are some hits and some misses. I'm pleased that the Academy recognized The Tree of Life (best picture, best director, best cinematography), but I'm also perplexed by some of its other choices (Demian Bichir best actor for A Better Life? No Michael Fassbender?). If I were to have a say in the nominations, they would have gone something like this.

I was somewhat skeptical going in to Tilt-a-Whirl; mostly because "Christian films" of any sort are almost always a let down. But this was a pleasant surprise—a genuinely compelling, well-made film that never feels false or inauthentic and actually leaves us with insights to ponder and stirs our hearts and minds toward God.

A tender, nuanced portrait of modern city life in Tehran, A Separation is not a political or statement film. It's a film about people and their struggles, specifically two families whose fates become perilously intertwined.

My 2011 recaps ends here, with my list of the best books I read in 2011. I read 42 books, of vast variety—some old, some new, some fiction, mostly nonfiction—many of which were in some way research for the book I am currently writing. About half were for no other purpose than pleasure. Here are my picks for the ones that stood out the most.

There was so much good cinema that my “best of” list actually includes three different top tens: the best 10, the second best 10, and then 10 honorable mentions. Many of them are available now on Netflix Instant, while a few of them have yet to release in most parts of the country. However you can, I hope you get a chance to see them!

I love good documentaries, especially the ones that combine artistry and exposition without becoming preachy or didactic. My picks for the top 5 documentaries of the year include films about cowboys, fashion photographers, 9/11 survivors and two films by the venerable Werner Herzog. 

My year-end listmaking continues today with my recap of the year in food, an area of culture I am particularly fond of. God gave us taste buds and he made food tasty, and enjoying food is just such a blessed thing; something we shouldn’t take for granted. To celebrate the preciousness and artistry of food and the many ways it can be prepared, here is my list of the 15 tastiest things I ate in 2011, followed by a list of the 10 food trends I’m most excited about this year.

It's December, which means one thing for a guy like me: list making. I'm starting my "best of the year" series on my blog with my picks for best albums of the year. Here they are: my top ten list and honorable mentions for the best music of 2011. (You can listen to all 15 hours of this music on Spotify here).

As a Christian a few years older than Tebow (and, full disclosure: a Broncos fan) I see in this guy an enviable model of what it means to be a Christian in the public square. Tebow didn't seek to become the flashpoint of discussions of faith in public life, but he has. Tebow has gotten more secular people talking about faith than most pastors ever do. And he's doing it not from a Pat Robertson-esque bully pulpit but from a vocation he's been called to, is good at, and publicly gives God glory for.