Posts tagged “religion”
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Jesus of Nazareth reviewed at Patheos
July 27, 2010
From the Patheos review of Paul Verhoeven’s Jesus of Nazareth (article is the first search result at this link)
Imagine this movie trailer: from the director of ”Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct” comes his most revealing project yet—“RoboJesus.” One might expect such a…
Tags: jesus of nazareth, patheos, paul verhoeven, religion, reviews
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Jesus of Nazareth in the New Yorker
May 19, 2010
… Much of what he has to say [in Jesus of Nazareth] is shrewd and learned… Verhoeven, citing Crossan… imagines a man being nailed to a cross, cries of agony, two companion crosses in view, and then we crane out to see two hundred crosses and two hundred victims: we are at the beginning of the story, the mass execution of Jewish rebels in 4 B.C., not the end. This was the Roman death waiting for rebels from the outset, and Jesus knew it. — Adam Gopnik, writing in the New Yorker
Tags: adam gopnik, articles, god, jesus of nazareth, new yorker, paul verhoeven, religion
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Paul Verhoeven interviewed in Playboy
April 30, 2010
On the surface, Verhoeven is an unlikely person to advance the pursuit of Jesusology (my term). The director of such thrillers as Basic Instinct, he has no formal training in the high academic arts. He is the only voting member of the 77-seat Jesus Seminar—a group of New Testament scholars who try to find consensus on authentic material in the gospels and letters—who does not have a scholarly background. But his insights are masterful. —Playboy on Paul Verhoeven and Jesus of Nazareth
Tags: articles, jesus of nazareth, paul verhoeven, playboy, religion
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Paul Verhoeven in the Wall Street Journal’s “Speakeasy”
April 14, 2010
The moderator of the discussion [at the IFC in New York City on April 8], Slate contributor Eric Hynes, noted that the filmmaker’s dour explanation of Jesus’s world “sounds just like a Paul Verhoeven movie.”
The response was immediate. “Yeah,” Verhoeven said, “but I didn’t invent it this time.”
— From the Wall Street Journal’s “Speakeasy” blogTags: articles, interviews, jesus of nazareth, paul verhoeven, politics, religion, speakeasy, wall street journal
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Paul Verhoeven interview with MTV
April 13, 2010
For your approval, here’s Paul Verhoeven’s filmed interview with Josh Horowitz at MTV.com about Jesus of Nazareth and how it fits with other recent treatments of one of the most sacred stories in Western civilization. Take a look below!
Tags: interviews, jesus, jesus of nazareth, mtv, paul verhoeven, religion
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Paul Verhoeven interviewed in New York Magazine
April 13, 2010
“Jesus was a human being, bound by history and the natural world; an extraordinary man, to be sure, but still a man,” says the now-71-year-old Verhoeven as he sits in the coffee shop of a midtown hotel, his lank silver-gold hair swinging about as he staccato-fires his argument. “Jesus may have had an immense sense of importance or destiny, but he never claimed to be the Son of God.” Verhoeven’s here to plug his book at the Hudson Union Society. Then why care about Jesus if he’s not the Son of God? Verhoeven says, “Because of his ethics. His thought. It isn’t because of the healings, because now humans possess the healing technology to do 100 times, 1,000 times what Jesus did. What we are left with is what he said, the parables, the moral thinking, because when you begin to study Jesus’ life, as the miracles fall away as physical impossibilities, you learn that the quotes, the speeches, and the reasoning behind them, for the most part, are genuine.”
As to how he came to write such a book (the notes, bibliography, and various indexes take up 87 of the 288 pages), Verhoeven, who grew up in The Hague during the Nazi occupation, smiles slyly and says, “You mean when I’m supposed to be spending all my time making another version of Total Recall? There are other things to think about, you know.” — Marc Jacobson interviewing Paul Verhoeven
Tags: che guevara, jesus, jesus of nazareth, marc jacobson, paul verhoeven, religion
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Paul Verhoeven on Jesus of Nazareth
April 1, 2010
… The book is a beginner’s guide to the Gospels. It also has your personal theory of Jesus as a cross between Che Guevara and Bertolt Brecht.I would say the parallel is slightly there with Che Guevara, but of course Che Guevara’s ethics are different than Jesus’. And if I compare him with Brecht, that is only in the way Brecht has tried in his work to keep distance, to avoid the identification that happens in American movies, where for the pleasure of the audience you can identify with the hero or the heroine. And I think the parables Jesus invented and spoke follow a little bit more Brecht than, say, Hitchcock. — Paul Verhoeven, to the Willamette Week
Tags: film, interviews, jesus of nazareth, paul verhoeven, religion, willamette week
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Paul Verhoeven on Jesus of Nazareth
February 4, 2010
From an interview at Cinema-Scope with Robert Koehler, from just after the 2006 release of Paul Verhoeven’s film The Black Book:
… You had this strange encounter with Pentecostal Christianity. How did that happen, and how did your reaction to that experience prompt your concern for reality and even hyper-reality?
My then-future wife Martine got pregnant in 1966, and we didn’t want a child at the time. I was just starting my film career, and the prospect of an unplanned child might force me to abandon film at least temporarily. To a large degree, it was disturbing: during that period, I had a sense that I was losing my mind. I wouldn’t say a psychosis, but it felt close to that. My response was to become a member of a Pentecostal church, for a month. It was an existential need. This wasn’t common in Holland in the ‘60s… This encounter with spiritual, mystical Christianity had an enormous impact on me.
Tags: biography, film, interviews, jesus of nazareth, paul verhoeven, religion
“religion” Posts
- Jul 27, Jesus of Nazareth reviewed at Patheos
- May 19, Jesus of Nazareth in the New Yorker
- Apr 30, Paul Verhoeven interviewed in Playboy
- Apr 14, Paul Verhoeven in the Wall Street Journal’s “Speakeasy”
- Apr 13, Paul Verhoeven interview with MTV
- Apr 13, Paul Verhoeven interviewed in New York Magazine
- Apr 1, Paul Verhoeven on Jesus of Nazareth
- Feb 4, Paul Verhoeven on Jesus of Nazareth
