Jeffrey Overstreet on FoxFaith and “Christian-friendly” movies: There are profoundly inspring, challenging, true, and beautiful films coming from all corners of the world, from all eras of filmmaking, and from both sides of the political divide. We need to stop looking for those that come to town wearing badges that say ‘Christian-friendly’ or ‘processed for easy family consumption.’ We need to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds,’ so that we can recognize how excellence reflects God far more powerfully than blatant preachiness.

I’ve fallen head over heels for jQuery, a lightweight but very powerful JavaScript library.  However, there’s another lightweight JavaScript library on the horizon: bytefx.  I haven’t had a chance to mess with it yet, but it looks intriguing.

Stylus reviews Christoffer Boe’s Allegro: ...Christopher Boe’s film soon shifts into a romantic thriller, contemporary sci-fi mystery, metaphysical sleepwalking elegy, and back again, all within the span of its 88-minute runtime. Which would be a delight, if it managed to sustain these ambitions with a solid screenplay, engaging dialogue, or character chemistry. Sadly, Allegro falls short on these fronts.

Twitch has a link to the trailer for Park Chan-Wook’s (OldBoy, Sympathy For Lady Vengeance) new film, I’m A Cyborg, But That’s Okay.  Which follows the exploits of a girl in a hospital who thinks she’s a combat cyborg, and the boy who falls for her—who himself thinks he can steal people’s souls.  From the look of things, this one’s going to be considerably lighter in tone than Park’s previous films, though the visuals look just as impeccable as you’d expect from the man.  I’m A Cyborg, But That’s Okay is scheduled for release in December.

Up until about the 4th or 5th grade, I was absolutely convinced that I was going to be a fighter pilot when I grew up.  I read all I could about F-15 Eagles and F-16 Falcons, watched documentaries on air combat, and would sit in the living room recliner, imagining myself taking on any number of Russian bogies (this was at the height of the Cold War, after all).

Whether they knew it or not, my parents did little to dissuade my piloting fantasies.  For starters, my dad pulled me out of class one day to go see Top Gun—which still ranks as one of the greatest moments of my pre-adolescence.  But even more importantly, they took my brother and I to the yearly open house on Offutt Air Force Base.

However, I haven’t been to an airshow since before junior high.  But I suppose there are some things you just don’t fully grow out of.  In my case, it’s a fascination with all things related to military aircraft, and so it seemed only natural that Renae and I attend this year’s Lincoln Air Show.

I will admit that I was a bit worried that going to an airshow at the age of 30 would feel a little silly once we got there.  But I needn’t have worried.  As soon as that F-117 Nighthawk came flying in low overhead, I turned back into a giggling twelve-year-old boy.  Indeed, I could barely keep my eyes on the road, but kept craning my neck to get a good look at the jet as it passed by a hundred feet or so overhead.  (It’s probably a miracle that I didn’t cause any fender-benders.)

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Former Cure keyboardist Roger O’Donnell is releasing a solo album entitled The Truth In Me in October.  You can listen to one-minute segments of the album, which was composed with only a Moog Voyager and a Macintosh, right here.  A few tracks are also available on his MySpace page.

The F-14 Tomcat, one of the most baddest-assed airplanes of all time, is being retired today.  Somewhere out there, Maverick is shedding a tear.

The first issue of “Visual jQuery Magazine” has just been released, in PDF format.  I’ve been using jQuery quite a bit lately, and it’s quickly become my JavaScript library of choice.