Critic Cal

No one enters suit justly;       no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,       they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. They hatch adders' eggs;       they weave the spider's web; he who eats their eggs dies,       and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched. Their webs will not serve as clothing;       men will not cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity,       and deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil,       and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;       desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they do not know,       and there is no...

There was a time before YouTube – remember? – when people relied on the television for humorous video snippets. And if you wanted to watch one again (and again and again and again) you'd better hope that somebody had set the VCR. Well, my family were utterly entranced by a dog called Domino that said "I want one". He starred in a 1988 episode of the BBC's 'That's Life' and my dad has been doing impressions of him ever since. (In fact, I'm pretty sure we  didn't  catch it on tape – which means we probably only saw the actual footage once; it was dad we had on repeat). Unsurprisingly, by now   it can  be found on  YouTube , comfortably at home alongside a selection of tortuous  wannabes  – talking dogs just aren't what they once were. It's an odd experience watching it for real for the first time in all these years. Like most memories, it's evolved in the retelling; for something so embedded in our family culture it seems strangely ...

Having so far avoided seeing Argo , Lincoln , or Zero Dark Thirty  does not seem to have prevented me from waxing vitriolic about my disdain for film adaptations of real events. [1] Perhaps if I can get it out of my system in the quiet of my own blog then I can stop inflicting my opinions uninvited on others. [2] My reasons for disliking true story films are many and varied. For one thing, I find a lot of them distasteful: they strike me as 'cashing in' -- financially, and/or in terms of recognition for those inclined to court award success -- on tragedy (e.g. Elephant ), or public sentiment (e.g. The Queen ), or other people's nobility and achievements (e.g. Schindler's List ). Secondly, I dislike the fact that they inevitably present fictionalised accounts and biased analysis as historical actuality (e.g. Braveheart , A Beautiful Mind , Pearl Harbor ). It is hard to escape the conclusion that we can never *really* get to *the* objective underlying reality of any his...

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...

"I have a story that will make you believe in God" -- a promise made by a 'spry, bright-eyed elderly man' to a writer's-block-stricken author, as they make polite conversation in a busy coffee house in India. And it is precisely this 'story' that lifts Yann Martel 's fictional author [1] from the mire of despondent unproductivity and occupies the remainder of Life of Pi ...my latest venture into the world of contemporary literature. That this novel, like my previous venture , should be so pre-occupied with religion, prompted some hasty generalisation on my part -- until Mr. W reminded me of the high chance of selection bias in a sample based on recommendations made by people who know me. That said, the attitudes and ideas reflected by the two books, as examples of what 'the rest of the world' are reading at the moment, provide some indication that God -- His existence or otherwise, and what to do about it -- is still a burning question. And t...

When the greatest poet of the 20th century* writes a playful collection about cats targeted at children (albeit in such a way as to endow them with a pretty remarkable vocabulary by the end) it is, I guess, fair game for the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Actually, I really enjoyed 'Cats' as a 9-year-old. We had this amazingly inspirational and creative teacher, who (among many other things) taught us dance and read us poetry and took us to the theatre. So I've always remembered it with fondness -- a rich, multi-dimensional, culturally-expanding experience. Even in my musical-skeptical adulthood I don't mind what they did to 'Old Possum's' poems, pretty much preserving the fabulous words intact and matching them with energetic and atmospheric music/set/performance etc. BUT I made a discovery a few years ago which rather does grate with me... The big, crowd-pleasing, 'hit single' song from the show is ' Memory '. It's not from 'O...

A habit I have benefited lots from is stocking up my iPod with stuff that I might be able to learn from in those moments where I'm physically occupied but mentally at liberty (cleaning and exercising being obvious such opportunities). Hopefully some of it filters through! (A habit which I have not benefited from is falling asleep listening to BBC 4's ' Unbelievable Truth '...I don't half worry about what that has 'taught' me! :-/ ) This talk by Dallas Willard on 'Nietzsche vs. Jesus' made for a very interesting gym session a couple of weeks ago. The premise of his talk is that 'the burden of human life is to find an adequate basis for human action in knowledge' and explores what those two thinkers* have to say about that knowledge. According to Willard, Nietzsche was calling out the hypocrisy that was rife in academic/social/cultural institutions, which professed Christian ideology but in practice were driven by ambition, cliques, and ...

(BBC's 'Sherlock', Season 2, 2012) Gatiss, Moffat and Cumberbatch between them have tapped into some of the deepest yearnings of human nature, and done it with style, wit, visual flair and remarkable insight. Who wouldn't want a friend like Sherlock? The sheer certainty and brilliance of the man…he always knows what is really going on, speaks with astounding confidence and is pretty much always vindicated. His apparent invincibility…able to outsmart the world and the enemy, comes back just when you think he's surely beaten. And his faithfulness…prepared to lay down his life for his friends (the fact that friendship is so hard won from him just makes it all the more desirable). The final installment of series 2 made for compelling viewing. Actually, it caught me off guard…I had forgotten how powerful good television could be. Ever find you've subconsciously written yourself into a story that isn't real and that you prefer it to reality? I felt strangely ...