Eve Tushnet
at Cracked–some blunt and fairly painful stuff in here. Read more
at Cracked–some blunt and fairly painful stuff in here. Read more
who is vastly more simpatico to Wendell Berry’s work than I am, but nonetheless writes: Just a brief follow-up to my earlier post on Wendell Berry: I have learned a great deal from Berry over the years, and some of his writings are among my intellectual treasures, but I’m not sure Berry’s ideas about place are fully, or even generally, compatible with Christianity. more Read more
in AmCon, for those who would like a vivacious little primer on the Profumo affair: Shortly before 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 1962, a 36-year-old Soviet naval captain, gourmand, and priapic man-about-town named Yevgeni Ivanov entered a low-lit restaurant in London’s fashionable South Kensington. Although dressed in the standard boxy dark suit and gabardine raincoat, Ivanov cut a striking figure even in that free-swinging era. There was a certain bustle about him, and he moved through the restaurant with... Read more
at Yahoo News. Some inaccurate or loaded phrasing, but this is… much better than it had to be! Between the faction of gay Christians who are happy with their sexual identity and “ex-gays,” who say they’ve removed their homosexual yearnings, is a third group that gets little attention. These so-called Side B Christians identify as gay and believe it’s not sinful to do so. But because they see acting on their orientation as ungodly, they commit to a life of... Read more
in the Washington City Paper: WCP: Along with location, the film’s pop-heavy, throwback soundtrack is also one of the most striking elements. Can you talk about the motivation behind the music? NB: I wanted the music to be big and romantic and celebratory and hopeful. I wanted it to feel good. That was the case with all the pop songs I used, they were all songs that I would always play and immediately want to play again as soon as... Read more
at AmCon. Spoilers. There may not be many movies with happy endings more heartless than the one in What Maisie Knew. The new adaptation of Henry James’s novel about divorce as seen through the eyes of a small child does some things really well. All of the acting is great, especially Onata Aprile as six-year-old Maisie and Steve Coogan as her art-dealer father. Cell phones are used terrifically to create a sense of parental distraction, chaos, and irreconcilable conflicting demands.... Read more
The director of The Squid and the Whale made a movie with the star of Damsels in Distress, and it’s about friendship between women, forgiveness, and coming to terms with your life. Ordinarily this is the kind of sentence I end with, “…and then I woke up.” But no! Frances Ha is real, it’s in DC at E St Cinema and Bethesda Row, and it is a really good, small slice-of-life movie. I don’t know that it’s earthshaking but it... Read more
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure. —readings for 5/24 Read more
First Things quotes a different pope–Benedict XVI: The question that torments us is . . . why, if there are so many other ways to heaven and to salvation, should it still be demanded of us that we bear, day by day, the whole burden of ecclesiastical dogma and ecclesiastical ethics? . . . If we are raising the question of the basis and meaning of our life as Christians . . . then this can easily conceal a sidelong glance... Read more
Progress in history! Over the last few years, I’ve watched as teens have given up on controlling access to content. It’s too hard, too frustrating, and technology simply can’t fix the power issues. Instead, what they’ve been doing is focusing on controlling access to meaning. A comment might look like it means one thing, when in fact it means something quite different. By cloaking their accessible content, teens reclaim power over those who they know who are surveilling them. This... Read more
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