My experience with the Godfather films is really a strange one for me. It is usually very easy for me to get invested in a story; any story. I may lose investment afterwards, but I tend to be easily drawn in. But these films left me utterly cold in a way that very few films ever have. The … Continue reading Movies I Will Never Review: The Godfather I and II
Thoughts
The Scorpion and the Frog: Modern Version
A frog was walking down the riverbank one day when he saw a scorpion sitting in front a pile of dead frogs. “What happened here?!” the frog exclaimed. “Oh, I’m trying to make the world a better place,” said the scorpion. “I want a world where everyone loves each other, no one is greedy or … Continue reading The Scorpion and the Frog: Modern Version
The Gods of Progress
Recently, I saw two classic films for the first time; Blade Runner and Network. I enjoyed both, but there was also something intensely sad about them. They both expressed such…hopelessness. They’re very much modern films, that is to say, films made from the perspective of a modernist / progressivist worldview, though a self-reflective one. Blade … Continue reading The Gods of Progress
An Important Video And Certain Questions
The following is a video that more people need to see. From the description: Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi, specialist in microbiology and infection epidemiology, headed the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at the University of Mainz for 22 years. He wrote an open letter to the Chancellor with 5 questions that require immediate … Continue reading An Important Video And Certain Questions
The Embodiment of Christendom
On Good Friday, the Archbishop of Paris held a small service in Notre Dame Cathedral, during which the Crown of Thorns was venerated. Only a handful of people were permitted to attend, and one of them, French actress Judith Chemla, concluded the service with the Ave Maria. This, it seems to me, is the embodiment … Continue reading The Embodiment of Christendom
Authority in the Passion
The concept of authority has been on my mind quite a lot lately. There's a whole lot to delve into there, especially since it's a subject we moderns tend not to understand very well. We tend to think of it as either consented rule (which would make it synonymous with 'counsel' or 'employment') or oppression. … Continue reading Authority in the Passion
Thoughts on ‘The Andromeda Strain’
Just finished reading Michael Crichton's 1970 novel The Andromeda Strain (I don't know; felt in the mood for it for some reason). It's quite a page turner, and I heartily recommend it to anyone with a taste for hard sci-fi. The story has a US Military satellite bring an extraterrestrial microbe back to earth as … Continue reading Thoughts on ‘The Andromeda Strain’
Thoughts on a Movie I Haven’t Seen
My extreme antipathy towards Rian Johnson left me with no interest in seeing Knives Out, much as I love good mystery stories. I still haven't seen it, but I have learned the solution from someone who did, and, having confirmed it by a perusal of Wikipedia, I am about to say something about it. Though take … Continue reading Thoughts on a Movie I Haven’t Seen
The World We Live In
It is, I find, fatally easy to forget what kind of world we live in, especially today. We've got all our gadgets, our (relatively) ordered society, and all the rest of it, so that it becomes only natural to fall into a kind of trance assuming that everything just kind of works and that's all … Continue reading The World We Live In
Gunga Din at ‘The Everyman’
A new 'Everyman' post went up yesterday, talking about Rudyard Kipling's Gunga Din and what it reveals about both his perspective and ours: Now, you cannot think sense about morality unless you get this idea of principles clear, and you cannot get it clear until you can identify what is and is not an equivalent case. The … Continue reading Gunga Din at ‘The Everyman’
Serpent's Den 