November 30th, 2006
This is an article by Robert Novak on Bella, a little indie film by three Mexican (and Catholic) filmmakers. The movie is, says Novak, “no propaganda film but a dramatic depiction of choices facing an unmarried pregnant woman.”
Sounds like one to look for…if it can get distribution, and if the indie movie houses around [...]
November 9th, 2006
M.J. Rose’s November 9 Backstory blog features Maureen McQuerry and Wolfproof.
November 7th, 2006
Maureen McQuerry’s Wolfproof just received a five-star review from The Midwest Book Review, one of the most imiportant of the online book review sites…congratulations, Maureen!
November 3rd, 2006
Sad news for all audiobook fans: Recorded Books has announced the death in September of Patrick Tull, the audiobook narrator most famous for his perfectly marvelous reading of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series.
One of our greatest little pleasures, here in the Dungeon, has been working our slow way through the series. You haven’t lived till [...]
November 2nd, 2006
I confess we Murphys don’t get into Halloween much (except for the candy, and carving pumpkins), but we couldn’t fail to, er, appreciate this amazingly decorated house while we were down visiting Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last weekend. If you’re in the are, it’s on Siskiyou Blvd between downtown and SOU.
As for me, [...]
Debra Murphy on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
Kelly Hatzenbihler on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
Rach on Nessun Dorma, As You’ve Never Heard it Before
Kathleen Lundquist on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition Debra Murphy on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
Joan of Arc: A Life (Penguin Lives) by Mary Gordon
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Those were the days [the nineteenth century] of the great schism between the artist and Catholicism when it seemed that art and sanctity must be forever separated. One thinks of the convert J.K. Huysmans standing among the crowd of pious pilgrims at Lourdes, his soul harassed by the observation that, although Mary had chased the devil from the rocks of the shrine and the hearts of the pilgrims, he was still there blaspheming her and her Son by the ‘hideous’ architecture of the place. He distinctly hears the devil say to Mary: ‘I shall dog your footsteps, and wherever you stop, there I shall establish myself; you may have at Lourdes all the priests you please, but art, which is the only worth-while thing on earth after sanctity, not only will you not have, but I shall so effect that it will unceasingly insult you by the prolonged blasphemy of its uglinesss….All that represents you and your Son will be grotesque…’
— Calvert Alexander, SJ