Critic Cal

Recently, my Twitter feed threw up a YouTube nugget that kinda made me want to throw up too. It was a paean to Wayne Grudem , performed – to the tune and choreography of Greased Lightnin' – by a merry band of UCCF volunteer workers at a summer training camp a few years back. For those of you wondering what half the words in that sentence mean: Wayne Grudem is a well- and widely-respected American evangelical theologian who helped found an  organisation  working to maintain the subordination of women (and, perhaps not unrelatedly, openly  endorsed Trump ); UCCF stands for  Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship  and is a UK-based charity overseeing a large network of student Christian Unions; a 'paean' is, as I was pleased to hazard correctly before seeking the assistance of the Internet, "a creative work expressing enthusiastic praise"; and Greased Lightnin'  is a song about a car that will help you to become more manly and to show the ladies w...

This friend I had — I don’t make friends easy. We met at the bus-stop I pass on the way to the gym. It took a year or so of amicable passing nods before we got to talking. And then … his thick Scottish accent … my tongue-tying social anxiety … it took a further while to piece together much of a rapport. But he was patient and, unlike so many, keen to see the best in me. Besides, we found ourselves on the firmest of common grounds. Soon our early morning chats were a routine feature of my rigid routine. I’d walk up first thing from my nice warm bed to go workout-away all the mental and physical hindrances between me and the forthcoming day. And he’d have been there some time already — the first stop of the day after quietly easing away from whichever half-sheltered corner he’d managed to stake for himself in the night. The thing with bus-stops is that "waiting" and "hanging around" are fairly indistinguishable activities — at least until the full roster of routes...

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...

"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...

I have been reading Frankenstein . As a novel, there is too much about it which irks me to not have a little rant. But I consign and constrain it to a short footnote.[1] There. Moving on… Hmm. It is rather devastating to come face-to-face with yourself in a fictional work. Particularly when that mirror throws back a hideously deformed, emotionally dysfunctional, morally destitute and violently destructive monster. At first, I thought I was the scientist -- nodding sagely at Shelley's knowing observations on the dangers of falling victim to the obsessive thirst for knowledge and learning (and ready, moreover, to pass on such advice to my academic and would-be academic friends): "A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weake...

Greater London ain't. It's pretty lesser I'd say. We had a choice of rundown three-screen cinemas, all of which were two bus-rides away, Selbourne Walk shopping centre (boasting an Our Price music store and a Mark One ) one very slow bus ride away, and a bowling alley in some bewildering, unlocatable industrial estate that was definitely a parental taxi ride away. Within walking distance was a library, a town hall (venue for craft fairs and the annual 'Churches Together' performance of Graham Kendrick 's The Gift [1]), a selection of Chinese and Indian takeaways, and a video rental store offering last year's top 10 and an odd assortment of nondescript mid-80s action flicks. Such were the dominant features of my 'cultural experience' prior to university. (Things could have been so different if only I had discovered the delights of not-so-distant-after-all Central London a bit sooner...but, as the over-protected firstborn of nervous parents, it was n...