Tag: movies
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Dorothy Day and the Noah Way
A passage early on in Paul Elie’s The Life You Save May Be Your Own popped out when I first read it and stuck with me as I watched Darren Aronofsky’s remarkable Noah. Elie’s book chronicles the intersecting lives and spiritual journeys of four influential Catholic writers: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery…
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Hoffman And Heath
I watched this video from the 2005 Oscars to remember the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, but was reminded when watching it that Heath Ledger was also up for the award that year. And now both men are gone. When an old actor dies we can look back fondly on his career and be grateful for…
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12 Years A Slave
I was having a bad day. And then I saw 12 Years A Slave and regained some perspective. Director Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s incredible memoir was remarkable in its restraint. Though a strange thing to say about a film that has been lauded for depicting the horrors of slavery accurately and harrowingly, it’s not…
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Electrick Children
And you’ll see the glitter of crashing cymbalsand you’ll hear the thunder of rolling drumsand the shimmer of trumpets.Ta-ta-ta!And you’ll feel something akin to the electric thrillI once enjoyed.— “Seventy Six Trombones” from The Music Man How does God speak? Through nature, according to the book of Job. Through Jesus and a holy spirit, says the…
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The Purple Rose of Heaven
Just read this in the peroration of N.D. Wilson’s (magnificent, challenging, tempestuous) Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: If the Maker of the world were to descend to earth, how would you expect him? If you heard that the Infinite, the Spirit Creator was entering into His own Art, wouldn’t you look to the clouds? Wouldn’t you…
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Twelve Years A Slave
I recently saw the above trailer for Steve McQueen’s upcoming film 12 Years a Slave and immediately got excited to see it on the merits of the trailer, cast, and director alone. But then at the library the following day I happened to see the memoir upon which the film is based and decided to read it.…
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Living In Dystopia
I kind of have a thing for the end of the world. That tweet from Lexicon Valley (one of my favorite podcasts, by the way) merely validated a feeling I’ve had for a while: that I’m a sucker for dystopian films. I’m still not sure exactly what draws me to this kind of story. Maybe…
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Wild Strawberries and a poem
I recently watched Ingmar Bergman’s achingly doleful Wild Strawberries, and one particular part stood out: the poem read by Isak Borg, the lonely old professor, when asked to resolve a lunchtime debate over the existence of God. After some Internet research, I learned the poem is an 1819 Swedish hymn by Josef Olaf Wallin called “Where is…
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Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
Watching Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop made me realize something I’ve suspected for a long time: I don’t ever want to be famous. There’s a scene in this documentary about the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television” stage tour Conan created immediately after his inauspicious exit from The Tonight Show in 2010 where Conan does a meet-and-greet after…
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A Different Look at ‘Back to the Future’
For a college class in winter 2008-09, we had to make a “zine” on a topic of our choice. Mine was called The Movies: Take Two. It aimed to “take a different look” at all things movie-related using crowd-sourced haikus, six-word summaries, and some of my own comparative film analyses to cast some of my…
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Why ‘Back To The Future’ Still Rules
To celebrate Back to the Future Week, I’m posting a story I wrote for my school paper in 2008 about my hopeless devotion to the time-bending trilogy. If I were asked to name what I think are the greatest films of all time, I might throw out a few high-brow titles like Rear Window or Casablanca or…
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Love and Illusion in ‘Midnight In Paris’ and ‘Me And Orson Welles’
Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality / Open your eyes / Look up to the skies / And see.—“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen A few summers ago I was in Guatemala with my sister, staying with an older married couple near the…
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There’s No Felling This Forrest
Can’t say that I’m a big fan of the results of this new poll from The Telegraph, in which voters named Forrest Gump the greatest movie character of all time, with James Bond, Scarlett O’Hara, Hannibal Lecter, and Indiana Jones filling out the top five. While I know some lists are entirely unserious affairs, the…
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The Warmth Of The Snow
Living in a warm climate during the Christmas season is good and bad. On one hand, you can walk around in shorts and a t-shirt while your northern friends brave harsh winds and icy roads just to get to their mailbox. But on the other hand, it’s just not Christmas without the cold. As a…