March 31st, 2007
Stratford Caldecott has written a brief but alarmingly gratifying review of The Mystery of Things in the most recent issue (number eight) of Second Spring: A Journal of Faith and Culture:
“Labelled ‘Book One of the Ashland Grail Cycle’, this is a stunning debut novel in the modern thriller genre, complete with sex and violence. It [...]
March 29th, 2007
…in a sauna.
I’m not kidding.
This is a perfectly outrageous clip from Dame Edna’s show, filmed around the time of the release of Mel’s Hamlet, and posted on Mel’s MySpace page:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&friendID=98949622
And in case you missed it, here’s our bardolatry review of Mel’s Hamlet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, which I wrote back in 2002 or thereabouts.
And if [...]
March 27th, 2007
REPEAT MASSIVE SPOILER ALERTS about SEASON ONE!
Before I try to explain why the twenty-four-odd hours I devoted to watching the first season of “24″ ultimately left me feeling mighty ornery rather than entertained, I have to mention one more thing that was really good about the show. The odd thing is (and the reason why [...]
March 26th, 2007
It took me awhile before I got around to seeing M. Night Shyamalan’s much-disparaged Lady in the water; virtually everyone I know who’d seen the film warned me against a viewing. The flick even managed to pick up two ignominious “Razzie” awards (the opposite of the Oscars, to put it kindly), both of which went [...]
March 24th, 2007
Sorry for not sitting down to finish the “24″ bit. Anon, anon! My excuse is that I’m in the middle of Spring Cleaning–house, Idylls Press office, computer files, filing cabinets, and the ugliest UGLIEST e-mail inbox you’ve ever beheld. In fact, we’re switching from (horrors) Microsoft Outlook to online e-mail, and hoping to rid ourselves [...]
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