Collected Stones And so it’s the end; it was all Or nothing and now It’s the end. Every good thing Dies, so it may live again and Now it’s the end of my Passionate friend—collected stones From the ancient river hold Secrets of time forgotten On their journey to the sea. Time to move—to stay […]
Arts & Culture
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Movie Reviews – X2: X-Men United, The Lizzie McGuire Movie
X2: X-Men United Director Bryan Singer delivers the first subtle superhero movie. Yes, there are great stunts and flexing muscles. Heroes slice and dice their foes, shoot fire and ice, transport across time and space, and perform many other tricks. But it’s obvious Singer and screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris are far less interested […]
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Movie Reviews – Phone Booth, Basic, The Core and A Man Apart
Phone Booth Who would have guessed that Joel Schumacher–the director of bloated, empty movies such as Batman and Robin and the Anthony Hopkins-Chris Rock spy turkey Bad Company–would be capable of delivering a riveting film that depends on economic, narrative filmmaking. He does just that with the taut thriller Phone Booth, a tight 81-minute claustrophobic […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 3-20-03
Choices abound in American daily life As a matter of not only our legacy But as a sacrament of our freedom worship Ill winds are swirling in the country Because such worship liturgy Lacks sufficient humility There is wreckage in the country Strewn from the ill winds of hubris Surely our gods must often rue […]
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Movie Review – Williard, The Hunted
Willard While sitting through Glen Morgan’s update of the cult horror film Willard, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there must be other practical purposes for being able to communicate with rats than having them tear your boss to shreds. They could put those German Shepherds to shame searching out earthquake victims. Or say you’ve […]
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We aren’t the world
In the mid-1990s, French filmmaker Claude Berri warned that without protection from the products of the American media, “European culture is finished.” He had plenty of pessimistic company. French Culture Minister Jack Lang spoke of America’s irrepressible “cultural imperialism.” The popularity of a work like Jurassic Park was identified as a “threat” to others’ “national […]
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The big story
Sometimes real-life stories are so big they seem to be fiction. That’s what strikes you while reading Taylor Pensoneau’s latest book, Brother’s Notorious, The Sheltons: Southern Illinois’ Ledendary Gangsters. A lot of the most daring and violent bootlegging of the 1920s and ’30s took place in southern Illinois, and the Sheltons–Carl, Bernie, Earl, and Roy–were […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 5-1-03
To the Persian Cat . . . Make Much of Time Caught in the August moonlight spangling the porch My elder feline brings to mind that line Of Byron’s: walk like the night or choose to perch In imitation of the jays you find Fearing you from afar, though absent cause No claws, few teeth […]
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Movie Review – Confidence, The Real Cancun, It Runs in the Family, Identity
Confidence There’s no question that screenwriter Doug Jung is a student of film noir. His script for Confidence touches on nearly every convention of the genre and straddles the line between homage and rip-off. We have a doomed protagonist, a sultry femme fatale, a sure-fire heist that’s bound to become complicated, and more double crosses […]
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The Case of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon
For several weeks in September 1944, people in the town of Mattoon, Illinois, showed the symptoms of exposure to poison gas–nausea, vomiting, weakness leading to near paralysis, light headedness, even spitting up blood. All of the victims reported a “sweet cheap perfume odor” permeating their homes prior to the onset of sickness. Scott Maruna, a […]
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Movie Review – View From the Top, Boat Trip
View From the Top That Donna Jensen (Gwyneth Paltrow), you’ve got to admit, she sure knows how to aim high. She longs to see the world and thinks that the only way to do it is to become a stewardess. Of course, anything would be an improvement after growing up in a trailer in Arizona […]
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“Kandahar”
Strange things happen in this world, and the fact that the film Kandahar, by the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, found a substantial international audience after it was released in late 2001 is a small but genuinely strange byproduct of recent history. A few years ago Kandahar would have been a footnote on the movie-release calendar, […]
