Here’s an interesting post from Peter Chattaway about a new film:

The Devil’s Miner began as a project about devout Catholics who also happen to worship Satan — or if not Satan himself, then something very much like him. Apparently the Bolivian miners who populate this film do believe that God rules above the ground, but they also believe that a capricious, horned, and rather well-endowed entity called "the Tio" rules below.

And so, in addition to attending mass at the local Catholic church, these miners also make offerings of garlands, food, even cigarettes to the idols that lurk in the corners of the tunnels where they work. While there is a hint of irreverence about all this — I find the cigarettes dangling from the Tio’s mouth particularly difficult to take all that seriously, and co-director Kief Davidson said after last Friday’s screening that the miners encouraged the filmmakers to swear at the statues because this, too, is considered an "offering" of sorts — we also see the local people sacrifice a llama and splatter its blood around the door to the mine, in the hope that the Tio will "drink" this blood and not their own. What makes this particularly striking is that a cross — the symbol of the sacrifice that brought an end to all blood sacrifices, as far as Christians are concerned — is carved into the doorway that the locals have splattered.

And over at Looking Closer, Jeffrey Overstreet comes down hard on the Narnia soundtrack deal – which is actually 2 soundtracks. One for the secular audience and one for "Christians," using Contemporary Christian artists. Overstreet doesn’t like the ghettoization, and feels like attaching CCM-style music to the project violates the work.