I’m on a quest for the perfect pop song. “Bathsheba Smiles” isn’t quite perfect, but it comes awfully darn close: an infectious melody, a sing-along chorus, a simple chord progression, and a sweet lyric. Heck, you could almost dance to it.
All three characters in What Time is It There? represent Tarkovsky’s ideal — those who are “outwardly static, but inwardly charged with energy by an overriding passion” — and that passion alone is reason enough to watch.
A friend from Canada wrote, asking what friends and neighbors in the States are feeling and saying to each other. This is how I responded.
And when they come to march on ya / Tell ’em to make sure they got their James Brown pass / And don’t be surprised if Ali is in the White House
“A new day.” Hurrah. And I get this piece of crap in my mail on the same day that Paul Wellstone is killed in a plane crash.
Film, when rightly enjoyed, can offer holy moments such as this during which we are able to escape, even if only temporarily, from this “extraordinary egoism” into the freedom of God’s grace, experiencing anew the beautiful complexity of his creation and our selfless calling in it.
Snippets from church statements in opposition to the war in Iraq.
The first cut in Good Men, Good Women establishes several dichotomies that, over the next 100 minutes, are beautifully dismantled for explicitly political purposes.
I’ll eventually get around to writing (much) more about this, but I want to mention quickly that, while vacationing in Phoenix, Joanna and I had the chance to see Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the Herberger Theater.
It’s something about that bass line and the way that Gord Downie unleashes the line, “Armed with will and determination / And grace, too,” that rips me up.
An early update today because I’m at home, trying to kill a cold before it gets out of control. I hate being sick. Although I can’t really knock an opportunity to sleep late, drink coffee, and watch The Dixie Chicks: Behind the Music for the fifth time.
Liza Featherstone’s article, “Peace Gets a Chance,” provides a helpful overview of the various coalitions being formed to protest America’s regrettable foreign policy decisions of late.
Four random but interesting links.
I had no idea that George Kennan was still alive. The man who literally wrote America’s containment policy, the policy that has directed our foreign policy for nearly sixty years now, is 98 and living in Georgetown.
“I certainly do not deserve an entry visa any more than the aging mother hoping to visit her children in the U.S. perhaps for the last time in her life … For my part, I feel this decision is somehow what I deserve.”
A lot has changed in ten years. Well, except for Peter Gabriel, who has apparently spent much of the decade holed up in Real World Studios, listening to his old albums, looping African percussion tracks, and twiddling with his Mac.
“But the mistake is in thinking that we should only attempt to treat — that is, pray for — the fallenness and sinfulness without dealing with their symptoms.”
Herr’s porn analogy seems even more appropriate today, when technology allows us to watch a precision guided missile hitting its target from a first-person point of view. It’s Eisensteinian montage at its most perverse.
I find myself teetering between self-pity and self-righteousness, desperate to stave off the melancholia that lingers nearby. I mean, I’m not going to stop drinking coffee, right?
Knowing that I’m a fan, a friend just sent me this link to an interview with Ira Glass. I’ve always been struck by Glass’s even-handed treatment of Christianity, which is somewhat surprising for two reasons:… This American Irony
La Promesse is a wonderful film whose beauty is born from the Dardennes’ suffusion of honesty and moral complexity into standard narrative conventions: the simple two-act structure, Igor’s bildungsroman, the basic quest for human connection.
Things are getting interesting, eh? Looks like Hussein has called Bush’s bluff. This editorial is the best I’ve found. Of course, the folks in Washington and London are already voicing their doubts about Iraq’s motives,… Calling the Bluff
In today’s Post, Dana Milbank lets leading figures from both sides decide if the Bush administration is “Wagging the Dog” in Iraq. It’s a good, well-balanced piece, and worth a read, despite being fairly predictable.… Wagging the Dog
Apparently this is going to be an unusually “religious” blog today. It had been several days since I last visited Sightings, so I had missed both excellent entries from last week. In “Your Two Cents,”… Dorothy Day
If there’s such thing as a truly legitimate call for the use of art as a practical means to change the world, then it will probably never find a more sure voice than Denise Levertov’s.
Last night I watched Claire’s Knee (1970), the fifth entry in Eric Rohmer’s series of “Six Moral Tales.” This one is built around Jerome, an unusually self-absorbed rake (even by Rohmer’s standards) who spends the… Claire’s Knee (1970)
While they have succeeded (though not without difficulty) in reducing the situation to a gross dichotomy (good America vs. evil totalitarianism), they have suddenly abandoned our six-decade policy of deterrence and containment.
Two weeks ago I read a wonderful novella by Joan Didion called, Democracy (1984). Near the end, we learn that one of the main characters is an Ollie North-like agent, a guy who embraces the profit potential and moral ambiguity of international affairs.
Why am I surprised? The Sunday edition of my local paper leads with two “local interest” stories: one on a couple from Chattanooga who were married hours before driving to Knoxville for UT’s opening game;… A Blessing and a Symbol
I just spent the last hour in nirvana, listening to Beth Orton’s new album, Daybreaker. Soooooo good. 51 minutes of music without a single weak spot.