Critic Cal

A revised version [1] of a sonnet which originally appeared on the Sophia Network blog  in February 2016: ANTIPHON “No” for a thousand tongues resounds unheard As men in every corner wield might And will, surmising that the sum gives right, Against the impotence of Tamar's word. The image jointly borne is two-ways marred: A brutal face to face a veil of fright, As “love” dissatisfied engenders hate, Faith fails, and hope seems hopelessly deferred. But One of strength eclipsing any man's Waits for a yes and, with Mary’s consent, Conceives to turn the tables, overthrow The proud and raise the powerless with hands Outstretched; a Word within a womb, intent On answering each disregarded no. Carolyn Whitnall, 2015/2019. It happened that I spent much of December 2015 grappling in new ways with Luke's Annunciation account. I'd not long since been reading 2 Samuel, and the story of Tamar's rape by her brother Amnon had resonated painfully with...

"Now, we can do this the hard way or ... well actually, there's just the hard way." ( S1E1 )  "Didn't anyone warn you about playing with pointy sticks? It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye." ( S3E2 )  "You know very well, you eat this late ... you're gonna get heartburn. Get it? Heartburn?" ( S4E6 )  "That's all I get? One lame-ass vamp with no appreciation for my painstakingly thought-out puns." ( S4E6 )   "Didn't your mom teach you? Don't play with your food." ( S1E6 )  “If I was at full slayer power, I’d be punning right about now.” ( S3E12 ) Buffy ! I finished watching the 7-season teen-TV spectacular late last autumn, having 'discovered' it at a somewhat advanced age, with the help of my sister, against the anxious life-long advice of our parents (as I've mentioned  elsewhere ). What's not to love? Go Buffy! Go women! Go non-patriarchal models of masculini...

I wanted it to be  The Avengers  really .  Or that one  the other day with the sardonic raccoon and the slow-witted tree and the mixtapes. It was a bit optimistic, but -- too tired after an intense weekend cocktail of cleaning and serious reading to move or to try to think deeply -- I talked myself into  Captain America: The Winter Soldier . It was ... decent. Some nice thoughtful touches about the Information Age and the tensions between security and freedom, leadership and egalitarianism. And they have managed to make Steve Rogers a far more appealing and nuanced character than the all-American cliché I was apprehending. But ... it lacked the energy of the aforementioned Marvelous ensembles, and I did find myself a little fidgety at having surrendered my mental energies for two straight hours to moving images and noises that were only ... decent. It also re-raised, for me, another, far more significant objection. I am increasingly unimpresse...

I wasn't going to write anything about 12 Years a Slave ; if ever there was a film which speaks for itself... But the morning after seeing it I was reading Habakkuk, and found in there a striking unison: O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. […] You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? ( Habakkuk 1 :2-4, 13) Much of the rest of the short book is about the terrifying judgment of the Lord. The sort of stuff that attracts a considerable amount of bad press around "the God of the Old Testame...

"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 h...