Depicting a society in which every aspect of daily life is state-controlled — even birth and death — The Giver takes moviegoers on a journey from childhood naiveté to the harsh realities of shattered innocence.

Although evangelical moviemakers have been in the spotlight lately with features such as Son of God and God’s Not Dead, at least one other prominent, mainstream director is also turning — or returning — to religion.

When you walk the Camino de Santiago, what you think will be hard is easy and what you think will be easy is hard. That's the advice Annie O'Neil gives after embarking on the 805-km pilgrimage known as the Camino Francés from St. Jean Pied de Port, France, to Santiago, Spain, the most popular of the Way of St. James. 

NEW YORK - Those super-sentient simians are back in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (Fox).

TORONTO - Media guru Fr. John Pungente, S.J., has been fighting media illiteracy for half-a-century, and for his work the Marshall McLuhan Initiative has awarded Pungente and the Jesuit Communication Project the fourth annual Medium and Light Award for significantly contributing to religious communication.

Complications: Abortion’s Impact on Women (deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 433 pages, softcover, $29.95). 

We often reduce human sexuality to the individual. We concentrate on personal experience, preference and desire. Which is certainly not irrelevant, but it reduces the abortion debate to a question of individual women making individual choices. 

SASKATOON - Toronto artist Sarah Hall was in Saskatoon as her latest work, housed in the Queen of Peace Chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, was blessed by Bishop Donald Bolen. 

Embracing Edith Stein: Wisdom for Women from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, by Anne Costa (Servant Books, Softcover, 110 pages, $13.99). 

Edith Stein was many things — a Jewish woman from Eastern Europe, a philosopher, an academic, a teacher, a writer, a feminist, a convert to Catholicism, a Carmelite nun, a victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, a saint (she was canonized by John Paul II in 1987) and a martyr. Stein was far from a simple person, so it must be said that setting out to write a short compilation (101 pages) of Stein’s thoughts on women and womanhood is a mighty challenge indeed. 

ISTANBUL - Turkey’s religious authorities have given the go-ahead for the country’s controversial “Rockin’ Imam” to keep on rocking.

TORONTO - Prolific organist James David Christie is coming to Toronto to perform what appears to be a tour-de-force concert.