[NationalReview Online, October 18, 2005]
You had me at “Spasmotica.”
Cameron Crowe, director of “Elizabethtown,” has a knack for the perfect detail. In “Elizabethtown,” one of them comes along at the start: a billion dollars' worth of high-end athletic shoes are being returned to the factory, and on each box the ultra-hip name reads “Spasmotica.” With two dots over the first “a”.
[National Review Online, October 11, 2005]
About midway through “In Her Shoes” we see Rose Feller (Toni Collette, always a delight), semi-professional dogwalker, being yanked down the streets of Philadelphia by a team of mismatched pooches. It's a good metaphor for this film, which is propelled by several different stories at once, and some are livelier than others.
That's an eye-of-the-beholder thing, of course, and there were many in the audience who were happy-teary puddles by the end of the film. A great majority of that audience segment was female, and many of them were wearing red hats. If you don't fit that category, approach with caution.
[National Review Online, September 29, 2005]
Watching Roman Polanski's diligently faithful version of “Oliver Twist” prompts the question: how did anyone ever think they could get a musical out of this material? For 40 years now children have been prancing around theater stages, grinning and shouting about “Food, Glorious Food,” little aware of the relentless gloominess of the original. The darkness of Charles Dickens' 1838 novel must have come as a surprise even at the time; his only previous book was “The Pickwick Papers,” a jolly diversion. Dickens' fans eagerly awaited his second work, and as they paged through “Oliver Twist” it must have been as if Dave Barry had released “The Gulag Archipelago.”
[Books & Culture, September-October 2005]
Ungawa! Tarzan's timber-rattling call defies transcription, so we'll fall back on this all-purpose locution to salute this fine new box set of MGM's six Tarzan films. Ungawa is the perfect choice whenever you can't think of the right thing to say. It appears to mean Come here, Go away, Look out, Jump, and There's a cobra behind you. Just think how a sharply enunciated “Ungawa!” could clear a Starbucks when you don't want to wait in line.
However, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan's inventor, did not write “Ungawa.”
[Unpublished]
I don’t know when I’ve felt so ambivalent about a film. Let me first warn that it’s relentlessly foul and vulgar, so don’t think I’m encouraging you to run out and rent it. The DVD has been extended 17 min, so it’s even more raw than the film shown in theaters. But at the time of the Oscar nominations a couple of critics said that, if the Academy didn’t have indie-itis, and if comedies in general were not regarded as lesser films, this should have been considered for best film. If you could somehow filter out the crudity, it would indeed be very funny. And it actually has some interesting and appealing characters. Yeah, if it wasn’t so raunchy, it would be a very likeable movie.
[Beliefnet, August 6, 2005]
Summer days in the Holy Land are hot and still; the relentless sun beats down on green-gray shrubs and dusty rubble. It was on one such day - on August 6, as the church remembers - that Jesus took his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, and led them up the side of “a high mountain.” It is Mt. Tabor that claims this honor.
Perhaps the three were used to being taken aside for private conferences. But they weren't prepared for what happened next.
[Morning Meditations, CSLewis Oxbridge Conference, Summer 2005]
“We Will Be Like Him” (I John 3:2)
England can be delightful in early August, when the mornings are cool and the afternoons bright. At home, on America's mid-Atlantic coast, it's so hot and gummy that the dogs are sticking to the sidewalks. This is one of those rare patches of year when Americans might like to come to England for the weather.
Yet in the Holy Land it's hotter still, as any pilgrim can tell you. This year's Oxbridge conference concludes on the feast of the Transfiguration, that event which arises from the most somnolent point of summer, when August is a still lake of heat.
[Beliefnet, August 2005]
“What are the controversial issues in Orthodoxy?” This question, recently posed on a Beliefnet message board, is the dandelion in the lawn of Orthodox inquirers. It's the question I kept asking, fifteen years ago, when my family was deciding to leave our mainline denomination. If we became Orthodox, what would we be getting into? Was it going to be the same heartbreaking arguments and debate - just over pierogis instead of doughnuts?
Well, there are controversies in Orthodoxy, all right, but they're not *those* controversies. You can find people on the internet arguing heatedly about whether churches should follow the old or the new calendar, or whether Orthodox should participate in any kind of ecumenical dialogue. But the fierce internet debates don't seem to come up much at the parish level (though you'll find garden-variety power struggles, nominal faith, and other frustrations that plague any church).
[First Things, August 2005]
I’m a fan of old movies, the black-and-whites from the 30’s and 40’s, in part because of the things this time-travel reveals about how American culture has changed. One thing that’s struck me lately is how differently the adults in these films carry themselves, walk and speak. It seems adults used to have a whole different kind of bearing. It’s hard sometimes to figure out how old the characters are supposed to be. They seem to be portraying a phase of the human life-cycle that we don’t even *have* any more.
Take the 1934 version of “Imitation of Life.” Here Claudette Colbert portrays a young widow who builds a successful business (selling pancakes, actually. Well, it’s more believable if you see the whole movie.)
[Orthodox Christian Association of Medicine, Psychology, and Religion, July 2005]
A couple of years ago I was sitting on the dais at a banquet, just about to give a speech. About a thousand pro-life Christians filled the tables around the room, putting away the last of their cheesecake. Then the hostess of the evening stood up at the podium, immediately to my right. “As you know, it's our tradition to give a gift to each of the evening's speakers,” she said. “And, as you know, the gift is always a relic.” I must have done a noticeable double-take, because she looked down at me, smiled, and said, “Yes, that's right.” (I must say that this was not an Orthodox gathering.)
