Critic Cal

I'm pensive as I pair the socks. A mournful sigh or two escapes my lips. There is a dramatic flourish to the manner in which I add each newly-reunited couple to the growing pile. "What is it, darling?" -- Mr. W, resigning himself to my woes in generous acknowledgement of my none-too-subtle signals. "Oh, I dunno, you know, the usual" -- I try to keep it brief. His magnanimity takes a turn for the mischievous: "Awww. Do you feel like the kid who didn't get the presents they wanted?" A horrifying, hilarious, humbling hiatus... I feel profoundly diagnosed, with no choice remaining but to laugh at myself and my hitherto noble sense of weighty sorrow. (The sorrow lingered, but its pride and self-satisfaction were sorely dented). Indeed, the major part of my more recent miseries could be aptly described in that way: I don't get the presents I want. 'Tis true I have, in my own way, had  ' stuff to contend with' over the years -- and by t

NOTE: If you only have a few minutes spare, skip my ramblings and go straight for the Tom Wright clip near the end.... I was a cow in my first nativity play. In fact, I was such a spectacular cow (as any who know me might readily imagine) that the next year I was promoted to Mary. [Fast-tracked to my  "level of incompetence" or what? Or rather, way beyond my level, skipping several interim incompetencies along the way...my hospitality skills are somewhat lacking, I'm useless with animals, I'm neither wise nor a man...]. Here is another nativity play; the clip featured at the big, shiny, (fire-hazard-y), carol service I went to at our big friendly local Anglican (in true, hip-and-with-it, "it's multimedia all the way now, kids" style). I laughed a lot -- not least because it called to mind my fabulous dear sister, who (as a child), looked a lot like the protagonist of the piece, and was prone to display similar character, guts, and volume, with si

" If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”  “Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.  “Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”  (Charles Dickens, from  A Christmas Carol ) Bah, humbug! -- Would that 'they' would let me be to keep Christmas my own way. But every year the same! Grrr. 'Be here', 'eat this', 'sing that', 'feel joy', 'talk to these people', 'smile now', 'say thank-you', 'wear this hat'... ('Drink up'...by which stage, it's usually '*sigh*, well, maybe I will...' :-/ ). If there's one thing that really riles me this time of year it's the 'magic' of it all (ferociously, disgustingly  monetised by the advertising industry ). Last year, I

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself." ( Matthew 22 :37-39) Intentionally or otherwise, the challenges posed by these instructions of Jesus underpin the achingly fabulous (but not-for-the-faint-hearted) work of self-reflexive [1] troubled genius that is ' Seven Psychopaths '. For all the gun-toting, axe-wielding, hacksaw-brandishing, crossbow-flourishing, gasoline-dousing, razor-slicing maniacal action, it is, at the end of the day, essentially a film about faith and friendship (as, arguably, was McDonagh 's previous film ' In Bruges '). To (very briefly) set the scene: Marty is a Hollywood scriptwriter working on a project which, as the film opens, has a title and not much else. His livewire best friend Billy is determined to help him find inspiration -- at one stage even putting an

"Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning." ( Joseph Heller ,  Catch-22 ,  from Chapter 8 'Lieutenant Scheisskopf ') Justice, injustice, and the aching arbitrariness of it all is a central theme of Catch-22 [1] -- summed up powerfully in Chapter 39, which finds the protagonist Yossarian (a WWII bombadier) wandering through the streets of Rome, hopeless and helpless in the face of human tragedy and suffering: The night was raw. A boy in a thin shirt and thin tattered trousers walked out of the darkness on bare feet. The boy had black hair and needed a haircut and shoes and socks. His sickly face was pale and sad. His feet made grisly, soft, sucking sounds in the rain puddles on the wet pavement as he passed, and Yossarian was moved by such intense pity for his poverty that he wanted to smash his pale, sad, sickly