Advertising tends to be a devil’s advocate sort of device, convincing smart people to buy things they shouldn’t (Coke, candy, over-priced clothes) by appealing to some of their most basic desires. This scenario is made especially literal in the sorts of ads featured in mental_floss’s listicle of 8 Angel Vs. Devil Commercials, our favorite of [...]

What is it about pious religious peons in the movies? It’s as if these very inconspicuous figures from everyday life hit the big screen, and immediately become repositories of cool and vice. Often this includes being drunks, murderers, vigilantes and womanizers. Maybe this is compensation for the tough lives of real religious workers: in exchange [...]

Granted, we’re still celebrating the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, but who’s to say that in our modern, enlightened age, the controversial clash between science and religion, nature and nuttiness, can’t be resolved? What if we told you that many animals are religiously dedicated to, well, religion? Don’t believe us? We suggest you educate yourselves [...]

As our nutty Christian friends would have it, today is Good Friday (aren’t they always good, though?), which means this weekend is Easter. For some this will involve lots of talk about a Jewish carpenter named Jesus being crucified – ironically enough - on a fairly standard piece of carpentry (the classic T-model). For us, [...]

It’s Passover, it’s Easter, and so it must be time for the much-maligned religious movie to make its annual rentals spike. I know what you’re thinking: “Religious movies? Oh God, kill me now.” But God knows better than that. God knows that there are at least a dozen or so great religious movies, and the [...]

With Easter and Passover upon us, what better time to check on Jeremy Barker’s epic listicle of 101 Last Suppers at Popped Culture (which he started two years ago and completed Wednesday). As one of the most important events on the religious calendar and among Leonardo da Vinci’s most iconic (and frequently parodied) paintings, there’s [...]

Passover began yesterday, and global matzah consumption is in the midst of its annual spike. That said, by the end of the holiday next week, there will surely remain massive left-over quantities. What’s the best way to avoid wasting all the yummy Matzah? Well, thanks to Jewish Robot and Michelle Citrin we now have 20 [...]

In a rare display of anger, the 14th Dalai Lama (at right) voiced impassioned frustration with the ongoing Chinese suppression of Tibetans and their culture yesterday, on the 50th anniversary of his exile from the occupied territory. In a struggle that has lasted over half a century now, and seen one of its factions grow [...]

When actors talk about “the role of a lifetime,” they’re usually referring to a charismatic, morally conflicted and psychologically intricate personality. They rarely think of someone so uncompromisingly evil as Satan, but if Paradise Lost taught us anything it was that Lucifer had way more going on upstairs than Adam, Eve and God combined.
Not surprisingly, [...]

Movies are our religion (our cultural religion generally, and the Listicles religion specifically), so it’s fitting that some of the most moving stories put to screen should feature biblical narratives about precocious young folks being shoved into adulthood by the massive responsibilities heaped upon them. Unreality has compiled a brief listicle (too brief, we think) [...]