Gareth Higgins (garethhiggins.net) is a writer and broadcaster from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who has worked as an academic and activist. He is the author of Cinematic States: America in 50 Movies and How Movies Helped Save My Soul: Finding Spiritual Fingerprints in Culturally Significant Films. He blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.wordpress.com and co-presents “The Film Talk” podcast with Jett Loe at www.thefilmtalk.com. He is also a Sojourners contributing editor. Originally from Northern Ireland, he lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Posts By This Author
Why Clint Eastwood Can be Trusted with Mandela (and Why Glenn Beck Can't be Trusted with MLK)
It's that time of year again -- you know, when Clint Eastwood releases a trailer for a movie that looks fascinating and completely different from the last thing he did, and your trio of reactions run something like this: 1) Hmmm, Clint's got a movie coming out -- didn't we just see 'Gran Torino' five minutes ago?
A Pre-Emptive Peace Prize?
Roman Polanski and the Politics of Remembering
My Experience of U.S. Health Care as a Recent Immigrant (Part II)
My Experience of U.S. Health Care as a Recent Immigrant (Part I)
The Hurt Locker and the Cause of War
Dueling Visions of Human Life
THE UNITED STATES as envisaged in cinema is often a fight club, a place where there are three kinds of people—the thieves who milk the system, the cops who try to catch them, and the rest of
Health Care in the UK: An Astonishing Example of Communitarian Justice
Real Life at the Movies
Now that most filmed records of human life are made by amateurs—the growth of YouTube and other forms of uploading moving images is the most influential recent development in cinema—we
Abortion: Conversations, Not Killings
Eschatology or Bigotry?
Fox 'News' on 'Obama's Apology Tour'
Watchmen: A Clone without a Soul
Imagine a world in which a human being developed godlike powers and put them to military use. War might soon be a thing of the past. Imagine this world also tolerating people who dress up in costumes to avenge crime before -- as worlds often do -- turning its back on these vigilantes in search of another scapegoat on whom to project its hunger for violence.
New Violence Takes Aim at Northern Ireland's Hard-Won Peace
Audio: Gearing up for the Oscars with Great Films from 2008
A Controversial Approach to Healing Northern Ireland's Violent Past
The Futility of Violence: Eastwood's Gran Torino
The other day I heard a 78-year-old man sing, through a cracked voice, one of the most moving and gentle jazz melodies, as the iconic image of a fetishized sports car being driven into the sunset was projected. And, not for the first time in recent years, I was crying at the end of a Clint Eastwood film.