Tag: movies
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Breaking Newsies
My betrothed and I caught the penultimate performance of Newsies: The Musical in Chicago on Saturday night. We’d been watching prices on StubHub for a while and finally jumped on them Saturday morning for the 8 PM showing. So glad it worked out because I’ve been excited to see it since its announcement years ago.…
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So Runs the Man Away or (The Unexpected Virtue of Synchronicity)
The theme that has defined my 2014, I only now realize, is synchronicity. That Jungian concept (“the occurrence of two or more events that appear to be meaningfully related but not causally related”) bubbled up several times this year, especially in what I was reading, watching, or listening to concurrently. For instance: To name only the…
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Einterstellar
My new definition of cosmic irony: to be in the midst of Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe as I went to see Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, a marvel of a film that directly references Einstein and his theory of relativity. I had a chuckle during the film when that moment arrived, not because I…
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The Plutonium Plot: An Ode to Doc Brown
Remember, remember, the fifth of November, When Doc bumped his head and made it so tender; He could not recall his singular sight: Capacitors fluxing and time circuits alight. Calvin the sailor with life jacket steady Inquired, ‘Hey Doc, are you now ready To freeze space-time in the tower-clock? Banish the thought of paradox. Not…
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Calvary
The Master of death will come soon enough—and perhaps we can already hear His footsteps. There is no need to forestall His hour nor to fear it. When He enters into us to destroy, as it seems, the virtues and the forces that we have distilled with so much loving care out of the sap…
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Jane Eyre: Live Blog
I watched the 2011 film version of Jane Eyre and instantaneously documented my unvarnished initial thoughts and reactions. I’ve never read the original book, nor know anything about the story, so it’s entirely fresh to me. “What is hell?” the headmaster asks Jane. A pit of fire, she replies. But she really knew, as others…
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This Is Martin Bonner
I’ve seen a face I won’t soon forget. It’s the face of an unsure redemption, of grace on the upswing. Of counting tenuous steps as tiny miracles. This face is a freshly washed used car whose surface is clean again, but whose frame within still carries the weather and rust. It’s a face leading a…
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Boyhood
With respect to the late, great Roger Ebert, I’m taking the name of his memoir and biographical documentary and giving it instead to Richard Linklater’s new epic novel of a film, for it is Life Itself. Boyhood chronicles the young life of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who at the film’s beginning is a six-year-old on his…
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Two Librarians Discuss ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ – Okay?
Alyssa Vincent (Twitter) and I go way back to our college days, where we were fellow English majors and worked as co-editors-in-chief of our school newspaper. When we were emailing about her contributing to the second issue of the Simba Life Quarterly, I made an allusion to The Fault In Our Stars, which elicited a strongly…
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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 thrillthat I 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…
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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.…