Category: Arts & Culture

50 Years Ago, a Grand Pianist Caught Washington’s Ear
An article on the silver anniversary of Glenn Gould’s concert debut in Washington, DC. Listen, you classical music fans, if you don’t have any of his recordings in your collections, stop what you are doing and get one. Start with his Bach recordings rather than the modern stuff, unless, of course, that is your bag. You won’t be disappointed.

I get the impression that the Giant Turd, Michael Moore, really isn’t very bright. I’m not saying that just because I despise him and everything he does in public. He’s either kind of dumb, or being dumb is part of his schtick.
Granted, he is very manipulative, especially for the lemmings on the Left, and he is charismatic to the same folks. But I don’t see much evidence that he has persuaded anyone except possibly the ignorant. He doesn’t so much argue as throw facts around, many of them questionable, in an inflammatory manner, without regard to whether those facts contradict themselves.
For example, in his latest screed, the Turd says that “…America has never thrown a sitting president out during wartime. That’s the facts.” But wait a sec, Mike…you said in your book “Dude, Where’s My Country?” that there is no war on terror. I saw you on the “Today” show with my own eyes, and you said those exact words: “There is no war on terror.” I wouldn’t be surprised if you copyrighted the phrase, and sold t-shirts with it on your Web site.
So the war doesn’t exist, but somehow that non-existent war managed to sink your candidate? Your candidate who, if you didn’t notice, did think there was a war on terror, one that he could fight in a “more sensitive” manner?
How can those two statements possibly be reconciled? Does the Turd think that there isn’t a war on terror, but Evil Karl Rove convinced 51% of the American population that there was, and therefore the faulty impression that George Bush was a wartime president was enough to defeat Kerry? Or maybe he doesn’t remember his previous statement that there was no war?
It’s all too much to contemplate on a Friday afternoon. Happy Christmas shopping this weekend.

And if this works out they are going to raise orphans to be Latinists and translate the 60% or so of philosophical works from the Medieval period that have not yet been translated. Yeah.

BANGKOK (AP) — A massive airdrop of paper birds intended to promote peace failed to halt violence in Thailand’s restive south, with a spate of new attacks Monday that targeted soldiers and local officials.

Do you think the writer who wrote “failed to halt violence” was laughing when he wrote it? I know I laughed when I read it.

The bombings, shootings and arson attacks came hours after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Sunday’s airdrop of nearly 100 million Japanese-style origami cranes over the predominantly Muslim region had achieved an “enormous, positive psychological effect” toward peace.

Except for the fact that it touched off murder and property destruction, it was a great success.

Encouraged by the government, Thais across the country — Cabinet ministers, office workers, schoolchildren and even convicts — folded more than 130 million birds to promote peace in the south. Approximately 30 million will be delivered by land.

The land-delivered ones are probably flightless paper birds, like penguins or ostriches.
And here I thought California had all the whimsical peace nuts.

An anonymous commenter at Barbara Nicolosi’s blog summed the movie up well:

I saw the film and it’s OK. The last half hour is excellent and I applaud them for taking this risk.

The last half hour has some wonderful moving moments, which make the flaws elsewhere in the film puzzling. The actors are at their best when they’re conveying their characters’ emotions, but at the beginning they’re too understated. For that part of the movie, the girls seem less like living children rather than sedate figures from a series of tableaux, speaking Victorianese.
The film begins with the death of mother Zélie, so that we don’t get to see what role she played in Therese’s formation. It’s a pity, since she’s a Blessed along with her husband, and presumably a wonderful person, but the audience is left knowing virtually nothing about her. From then on, grief and sorrow take all their breath away, and only as the action starts to shift toward the Carmel of Lisieux does the movie come to life for the first time.
The best performance in the movie is that of Linda Hayden, whose Pauline provides the Marian, motherly, steadying complement to Lindsay Younce‘s Therese, as the saint is conformed to Jesus in her own ‘Passion’.
Not in 96 minutes, and perhaps not in any one movie, can the story of St. Therese be told as it deserves. This film is however, a good companion to the 1986 Therese, which is the place to look for a better representation of Therese’s thought and spirituality, but tells little about her early life. (Caution: it’s not suitable for kids.)
For those of you blessed with worldly curiosity, figures on the box-office gross are on-line. The showing I attended Monday evening had about 12 viewers.