Critic Cal

[Edited to add (31/03/2020): Two and a bit years since writing this, my unexpectedly drawn-out relationship with university has now, finally, for the time being at least, come to an end. But that part of the story is for another day.] I wrote recently about my  university days  – lessons learned (and unlearned), people met, struggles faced (or fled). Except of course, in spite of my undergraduate malaise, those days haven't technically finished yet ... I've just moved from one university to another, switched fields, raised my qualification level, and meandered recklessly into perpetual postdoctoralism. Still, change has this way of happening around me and at me in spite of my best efforts to avoid it. And this season is one of endings and new beginnings in the group where I work – including talk of an en masse removal from the uni building we've been based in since before I joined to some off-site offices just down the road. In nostalgic tribute, here is a poem –...

Ever since I started trying to write poetry in earnest, looking back has generally been nauseating. How can it be that lines I am so proud of at the time of writing always seem so ... so ... well, so earnest (at best) six months later? Here's an early sonnet that I do still harbour some residual affection for. It is one of the less irksome outputs of a training exercise I set myself, to poetically connect passages in Acts with personal experience. The poem itself doesn't really rise above the status of 'exercise piece' but the process was a thought-provoking and prayerful one: Felix reminds me of a number of people I care about. HAPPY NOW Your head is full of knowledge, and your heart Of reticence. These strange ideas alarm — How they alarm! From time to time you start The Conversation: tap me on the arm, And take a seat, and sound me out. Until: “I’m hearing ‘righteousness’, and ‘temperance’ — What is this? ‘Judgement’ too — I’ve had my fill; Spar...

Steve Carell  established himself in my estimation as among the most virtuosic of all comics with his role as Brick Tamland in Anchorman  -- a film which isn't really a film at all but which makes you seriously question whether you would ever choose to watch a film again were there sufficient like extended assemblages of 'funny' to fill up those time slots in which you would normally be watching films. Sadly, this question is academic, as there aren't. Since Anchorman, Carell has gone on to prove himself equally expert at attaching himself to disappointingly mediocre films  [1]. It recently struck me that were I, as a fan, to wait for a good one to come along, I might be waiting a while. So, I threw caution to the wind and placed £8.50 and 100 minutes on  The Incredible Burt Wonderstone  not being unbearable. The bet paid off -- I was adequately amused throughout, with moments of acute merriment and even the odd burst of mental provocation. One such burs...