January 2019
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This is a British comedy series set in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s and featuring a quartet of teenage schoolgirls. I had never heard of it, but it showed up on Netflix recently and my wife and I thought it looked interesting enough to give it a try. We pretty quickly went through all…
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In case you aren't in the habit of reading Craig Burrell's blog All Manner of Thing, here are links to his three annual best-of-the-preceding-year posts: Books. Music (mostly classical). Film. In addition to the always-interesting subjects and opinions thereon, Craig is an elegant writer and a pleasure to read. While I'm at it, Craig mentions,…
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Maybe it's the result of early imprinting, of the fact that moody, mostly black-and-white, mostly European films from the '50s and early '60s were more or less the definition of "art film" when I was in college in the late '60s and first encountered the concept and the thing itself. I remember seeing this one…
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This is a topic that has come up several times in comments on various posts, but for those who haven't seen those I thought I'd make it a post. (I assume there are people who sometimes read the posts but not the comments.) I mentioned a while back that although I applaud the revival of…
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Back in August I had a post about the often-funny result of someone hearing a common phrase without having seen it in print or learned its actual meaning, then setting down in print what he thought he heard, which is sometimes oddly plausible. "Tow the line" as a misconstrual of "toe the line" was one…
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Thanks to a much-appreciated Christmas gift from two of our children, my wife and I went to the Mobile Symphony Orchestra concert last night. The first piece was Smetana's Overture to The Bartered Bride. Most people who have listened to classical music very much have probably heard this. It's one of those fairly short (under…
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Have at it, y'all.
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I meant to mention this a couple of weeks ago. After reading the book, I wanted to see the film, and did. I'm talking about the 1949 one, with Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Three-word opinion: it's pretty good. Slightly more expansive opinion: it doesn't do justice to the book, which of course you wouldn't…
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EPIPHANY POEM The red kingCame to a great water. He said,Here the journey ends.No keel or skipper on this shore. The yellow kingHalted under a hill. He said,Turn the camels round.Beyond, ice summits only. The black kingKnocked on a city gate. He said,All roads stop here.These are gravestones, no inn. The three kingsMet under a…
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Fr. Michael Rennier at Dappled Things has some good remarks on the poem and on Epiphany, along with two readings of the poem, one by Eliot himself and another by Alec Guinness. Guinness has by far the more appealing and skillful voice. But I think I have a slight preference for Eliot's reading; somehow it…
Light On Dark Water 