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Aside from the summer blockbusters like Bridesmaids, Hangover Pt 2, and Transformers, a few smaller scale films have been making the rounds, stirring up chatter in cinema lobbies and on the Internet. Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate has commented and been quoted on a couple of these films on CNN.com and other online outlets.

Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Rodriguez Plate made a multimedia presentation at the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan on May 7. The presentation, titled "The Altar and the Screen," was part of the Museum's exhibit, "Reel Religion: A Century of the Bible and Film." The exhibit has received positive reviews in The Los Angeles Times, Time Out New York, Christianity Today, The Jewish Daily, among others.

S. Brent Rodriguez Plate, visiting associate professor of religious studies, recently published the book, Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World with the London-based film studies press, Wallflower (distributed in the US via Columbia UP). The book is one of the first truly interdisciplinary works on the topic, investigating religions via film studies, and film via religious studies. Religions and films are akin, Plate argues, in that they both create worlds for their seers, hearers, doers, believers. At the altar and before the screen, audiences are invited to become participants via myths and rituals, cinematography and editing.