Plough, on Weil [Cf. Cervantes in ‘Man of La Mancha’]

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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

Columbo: Why It Matters

This is part two of a two-part post on why, some 45 years later, Columbo still matters. Part one is here. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, found here. Thank you. * I now have the entire collection, all 35 years, nearly 70 episodes in all, and I’ve seen each

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Dark Eyed Life

According to @CitizenScreen, doing yeoman’s* work daily on Twitter* relative to the Golden Age of film, today is the birth date of Mabel Normand, Hedy Lamarr, and Dorothy Dandridge — Normand: New York, 1892 Lamarr: Vienna, 1914 Dandridge: Cleveland, 1922 — which makes for coupla at least interesting, if not compelling or fascinating at the

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Just Win Baby

If Tim Tebow never plays another down as an NFL Quarterback it won’t be because he can’t. It will be because they say he can’t. I don’t even say “because they think he can’t,” since thinking — actually assessing the data they have in front of them — hasn’t been much involved here. And the bottom line

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