American Sniper is a lie that does a disservice to the truth, and to those who died defending the truth. Read more at Patheos…
Category: Movies
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My review of “American Sniper”
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“Queers in the Kingdom” shares the stories of LGBT students at Wheaton College
Markie Hancock’s new documentary film casts a much needed light on the stories of Wheaton College’s LGBT alumni. Read more …
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Link Round-Up: World Vision, Waco, Noah and Lewis!
I’ve been blogging more and more over at Patheos. I don’t know if I’ll start blogging exclusively over there and abandon this little corner of the internet, or if I’ll split my writing between the two locations or if I’ll arrive at some other arrangement. But for now, here’s a round up of my recent posts:
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My review of “Noah”
My review of Darren Aronofsky’s film “Noah” is now up on the Patheos Unfundamentalist Christians blog: “Noah” in a nutshell: Watchers lose, love wins.
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Her Hustle
I unintentionally took in an Amy Adams double-feature this weekend: Her followed by American Hustle. The former gets a solid thumbs down, the latter, an equally solid thumbs up. (more…)
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Reflections on “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Rather than write a review of the Cohen brothers’ newest film, Inside Llewyn Davis, I’m merely going to offer some general thoughts in response to it. They likely won’t mean much to you if you haven’t seen the movie, and they necessarily contain some plot spoilers. So if you haven’t yet seen it, please move along and come back when you have. And you should see it. It’s a thought-provoking, darkly-humorous and beautifully-filmed reflection on life and art that accomplishes that rare feat of marrying artistic idealism with down-to-earth enjoyability — an ironic achievement given the subject matter.
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Review: The Great Gatsby
The old adage when it comes to art is “show, don’t tell.” The idea is that, by demonstrating rather than dictating, the audience is drawn in as participants instead of being kept at a distance by heavy-handed explication. But this advice can be taken too far: you can tell and show too much, forcing rather than leading, yelling rather than whispering. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a master of showing just enough, but not too much. His prose doesn’t have the austerity of Hemingway’s — by comparison he can be downright florid — but nevertheless, the economy of his lines often reveal more in what they don’t say than in what they do. The Great Gatsby is a short book — most editions run to a mere 160 or so pages — but it’s in between Fitzgerald’s lines that we find the elements of a transcendent tale of love and ambition and tragedy and hope. This why Gatsby is transcendent — not because of the story we have set down before us on the page, but because of the story that we create in our minds. The Great Gatsby moves beyond a simple tale of a lovelorn bootlegger and becomes our story, the American story.
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Whither Have I Been?
I’ve been away from this little corner of the internet for a few weeks, and while it’s tempting to say something pious like “I gave up blogging for Lent,” the truth of the matter is that I’ve just been busy with other projects and what-not. So my apologies to you, dear faithful reader. But you ask what else I’ve been up? Among other things:
- Listened to the audiobook of Angela’s Ashes. Highly recommended — Frank McCourt’s reading of his memoir is simply wonderful.
- Listened to the audiobook of Beautiful Ruins. Also good.
- Read Divergent. Highly recommended … that you avoid this book at all costs.
- Watched Beast of the Southern Wild. Highly recommended. Easily the best movie I’ve seen this year.
- Getting back into the poetry of William Stafford, Philip Levine and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
- Read a great review of the Piero della Francesca show at the Frick by Peter Schjeldahl.
- Working on several freelance design projects: a website, a book cover and a real estate magazine.
- Pulled up the carpeting and now refinishing the wood on my stairs.
- Becoming reacquainted with H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. Much food for thought here that bears continued consideration.
- Listing to Jeremy Irons’ reading of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Sublime. Transcendent.
- Trying like mad to lose 15 pounds. 10 down, 5 or so to go!
Hopefully I’ll soon get back onto some sort of semi-regular blogging schedule. I have a slew of working drafts, but it’s simply a matter of finding the time to make them suitable for mass consumption. Till then, I bid you patience!
