Oscar Romero

Recent

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

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Random

Time, Treasure

Saw an episode ages ago of one of the Twilight Zone reboots which, I’m pretty sure, starred Mark Hamill as this weird kid who collected toys. All this kitschy stuff from the ‘50s and grew up collecting them — and thus stayed weird and for the most part apparently lonely for his life entire. Of course

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Barbaric Yawn

One of the saddest things about Mildly Somnolent and Her Raging Nonesuch is she prolly thinks she’s transgressive, mayhap even original. Please. Madonna did it 30 years ago. Figure 15 more for Britney’s turn. Now it’s 15 again. See Ecclesiastes for explanatory of this clockwork snore — What has been is what will be, and

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Animal Planet Part XVII

Well we watched the end of Planet of the Apes. Oy. The 2001 version ends, as you may know, in a massive battle scene, like some simian Braveheart. Huh? This is how a Tim Burton film (almost) ends? Not with a weirdness but a boom? Then there’s the whole Lincoln Memorial (actual) end. Huh? Huh?

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Animal Planet

We’re watching Planet of the Apes. No, not the Charlton Heston one — this one. Only it’s supposed to be this one, from last year. So we’re on the middle one, the “first remake” (excluding the 17 sequels to the Charlton Heston one) and it’s by Tim Burton, with all that that entails, from Helena

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