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!
Summer Economy (2018)
In June, unemployment in the U.S. rose from 3.8 percent to 4 percent. Did it have anything to do with President Trump's tariffs on aluminum and steel? The economy is strong. It could be stronger, and might have to be---through the removal of tariffs. Conservative...
S’all Right: “The Confession”
It is unusual these days to see a film where a man suffers inner torment because he has committed sin. But it goes on in the 19-minute Catholic film, "The Confession" (2017)---an award winner at a Catholic film festival---and, as it happens, it is not only the Big...
Sadness At The Marathon: The Movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”
Jane Fonda is magnetically terrific in the 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, losing herself in the role of Gloria, a bitter would-be actress. She and the other characters are desperate, first of all, to survive during the Great Depression and, second, to have...
The Sorrows Of Drink In The Original “Days of Wine and Roses”
Written by JP Miller, Days of Wine and Roses (1958) was a Playhouse 90 TV movie before it was remade as a theatrical film. Though technically crude, it is a memorably strong drama about the ruination of sought-after social mobility---and of people's lives---by...
My Favorite Classical Compositions Of The Twentieth Century (And They’re Very Accessible)
Well, I think Gyorgy Ligeti's Atmospheres is very accessible, despite its lack of melody and, according to Ligeti, "dense canonic structure." A short piece, it is frighteningly stratospheric before deliquescing. Ravel's Piano Concerto in G is snappy and limpid in its...
Take It Easy, Movieguide
Aprops of the film First Reformed, a writer for Movieguide.org avers that "the movie's politically correct leftist politics . . . are easily refuted by any person who's done some research on those topics." I do not doubt the reality of such refutation, but Paul...
The Churched: “First Reformed”
Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2018) gives us a paster, Ernst Toller, with problems. Enacted by a well-cast Ethan Hawke, Toller does pretty good pastoral work for First Reformed, a church in upstate New York, but he lost a son in Iraq, is divorced from Esther...
A Moon Shot Movie From 1950: “Destination Moon”
U.S. astronauts reach the moon, in the 1950 Destination Moon, only because they choose to defy the government, which has ordered them to stay on the earth. The public fears radioactivity after liftoff, but the determined astronauts slip away and take their historic...
I Won’t Be Panning “Peter Pan”
The 2003 Peter Pan is pretty good, except for the boringly routine fight scenes. P. J. Hogan's film version of the 1904 British play (very old) captures much of playwright Barrie's sophistication and all of his high spirits. It concentrates on Wendy Darling's...
