Blog
These stories have been around a long time. Some of them I have updated. Many of them I haven’t. This started out when blogs were like, new!
A Recommendable Horror Flick: “Sinister” – A Movie Review
Remember the name of the genre---horror---because images very unsettling keep meeting the eye in Scott Derrickson's Sinister (2012). It'll remind you of real life---existential terrors. The movie begins, after all, with a grainy old film shot of four members of a...
Movin’ On to a “Heart in Motion,” the Amy Grant CD (Music)
Some of the lame stuff Amy Grant has given us many moons ago is almost nonexistent on her 1991 recording, Heart in Motion, a worthy achievement. It isn't overtly Christian except in the gospel-pop song at the end, "Hope Set High," but implications of belief plainly...
The Fascinations of “Atlas Shrugged, Part 2” – A Movie Review
The first Atlas Shrugged movie was merely good (if faulty); Atlas Shrugged Part 2 (2012) is terrific. The word "socialism" is never uttered in the two films, but a corporation-controlling and anti-business U.S. government has emerged and is hitting hard the likes of...
“Won’t Back Down,” ‘Cause the System Deserves It
Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal are thoroughly credible in 2012's Won't Back Down, in which two single mothers, one of them a teacher, become unlikely pro-education activists. They seek to gain school board approval to turn a miserably failing grade school into...
Mendelssohn at Seventeen, His Overture (Music)
Most of the music (incidental) Felix Mendelssohn composed for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream I have not heard. But if one has enjoyed the Scherzo and the ever-famous "Wedding March", which I have heard, even more, surely, will he or she relish the Overture...
Fun with Bro and Sis: “The Savages” – A Movie Review
On The Savages (2007): A feckless father is now an aging creature of spleen and mental brokenness. He has dementia, and his grownup offspring, Jon Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his sister Wendy (Laura Linney), must locate an acceptable nursing home for him. ...
Some of the Finest Christian Pop Songs (Music)
Most of the finest were written a couple of decades (or more) ago. For instance, "A Strange Way to Save the World," by the Christian group 4Him, came out during the '80s. Here, the singer marvels that God has chosen lowly Mary, a manger, etc. as a means to...
Attention Must Still Be Paid–To Orson Welles
The other night I saw the 1946 Orson Welles film, The Stranger, about the tracking down of a Nazi war criminal in a small American town. It's a seriously flawed picture, but one which ought to be seen for the same reason The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from...
Backwoods Brutality: “Lawless” – A Movie Review
John Hillcoat's Lawless (2012), written by Nick Cave, is little more than an entertainment, but entertain it does. It's about backwoods bootleggers during the Prohibition era and unscrupulous law officers who desire a piece of the action. Cave, however, is not much...
