• Category Archives Cinema and Television

  • Acts of Creation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the crescent Wolf Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Beau Jo’s pizza. Easy Entree’s Chicago beef sandwiches. Keepin’ me sane. Kate. Somewhat better days. Trying new things with her nourishment. That crescent Moon. Sleeping through the night. Invisible City, a short Netflix series featuring Brazilian folklore. Latin American magical realism. 100 Years of Solitude. Marquez.

    Folklore. Legend. Fairy tales. Mythology. Religion. Art. These are some of my favorite things.

    Just finished the short series, Invisible City, on Netflix. It features Brazilian folktale creatures like the Saci, the Cuca, the Cucupira, the pink River Dolphin. Green Frontier, a Colombian series from 2017, focuses on the Amazonian forest and the supernatural.

    Netflix and to a lesser extent, Amazon Prime and HBO Max, keep offering films and television series from all over the world. I love this, especially the original programming on Netflix produced by local creatives in their own language and in their own thought worlds. The supernatural dramas draw me in though they vary a great deal in quality.

    I also love dramas and mysteries that show life in different places. Gomorrah, organized crime in Naples. The Alienist, turn of the century (19th to 20th) New York, Monarca, contemporary Mexico City, Wild District, contemporary life in Bogota and the lives of guerillas. Many others.

    Since I can’t get out, get around, these days, travel comes to me. The anthropologist in me loves the folktales, the cultures, the different mores. And the ticket price is far lower.

    Reading lately. Finished a few chess related novels after watching the amazing Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. Finishing Theodora Gossa’s European Travels for Monstrous Women and will pick up Kim Stanley Robinson’s, the Ministry of the Future next. Science fiction and fantasy also live in the fairy tale, folktale, legendary realm.

    Writing. Jennie’s Dead. Ancientrails. Writing a Psalm for the Rabbi Jamie class. Not as much as I’d like, more than I’ve been doing. Just bought some Brazilian folklore books. Might be good basis for a new novel.

    I have another novel idea I’ve been kicking around for years, one that would examine white supremacy, maybe militias. This one emerges not from the favorite things I mentioned above, but from my growing up years in Indiana. Like my buddy Mark Odegard this work sustains me, even though it may never see the light of day.

    My birthday’s coming up and I’m playing with the idea of a podcast or a Patreon website on which I would read my own novels, figure out some sort of subscription service. Not a new idea, novels were sometimes published in newspapers, magazines, in serial fashion. Combine my speaking voice with my creative voice. The birthday part of this is buying items for a podcasting studio.

    Friend Alan Rubin has a lot of experience in audio recording and has created a studio for himself to do voice overs and commercials. He’s advised me. I’ve watched Youtube videos and just bought Audio for Authors, a book about this sort of project.

    So, yes, the creative me stays alive, is never far from my consciousness.

    The only rule is to work. From a list of rules by John Cage. That’s the trick. Persistence.


    Art and Culture Cinema and Television Literature Media Myth and Story Plants Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Travel US History Writing

  • And they went and died about it

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter (last day) and the Imbolc (Wolf) Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Kate’s better couple of days. Rigel, who gets up between 6:30 and 7:00. I get up at 5:30 now, better rested. Resurfacing after 3 plus weeks of difficult days and nights. The Lupercalia. Lycaon. Arcadia. Pan.

    How many people have ever lived? Somewhere between 100 and 113 billion. See this wikipedia page for data. Got to thinking about this a few nights ago.

    How many people do you know? Probably higher than Dunbar’s number of the 150 with whom we can maintain stable relationships. This article posits a number between 290 and 600. The same article ends by saying most people know only between 10 and 25 people they can trust.

    Let’s imagine the number you trust is 25. The high end. Out of all the people that have ever lived you trust only .000000000025 of them and you know fewer than .0000000006 of them.

    Why am I belaboring this idea? Good question. What got me going was the idea of how few people, in relation to the historical population of the earth, I know. This thin, wafer thin, slice is the group upon which I base my understanding of our species. Sure, I’ve studied anthropology and psychology, both ways to understand our species considered in aggregations like cultures or personality types, but these are at best reductionist views of exceedingly complex phenomena.

    Reading helps. Novels in particular. Even there though we’re viewing characters through the understanding of a novelist whose known slice of humanity is as wafer thin as our own.

    In any case we compare our learnings from those methods against the people we know. Who aren’t that many, really. Especially historically. Here’s another issue. We don’t know 600 diverse people probably. Some may. But most of us know people whom we’ve met at school, in our hometowns, in our neighborhoods. Largely people like us.

    My point, you might reasonably ask? How little we know about our own species. How little we can know, even if we study the humanities, anthropology, psychology. How small our cohort of known persons is, how really small our cohort of trusted persons is. Given this reality is it any wonder that the 331,000,000 US citizens break into so many small and self-interested groups?

    And yet. We have this from Our Town.* Notions, ideas, beliefs. These are the trail markers on the ancientrail of human life. We use them to guide our actions because we can’t use our exhaustive knowledge of life as a human. We don’t have it. Can’t have it.

    And we go and die about those notions, ideas, beliefs, or, as General Patton memorably said, “We make some other poor sonofabitch die for his country.”

    Humility. That’s what all this means. Provisional, what we believe. What we know. What guides us. Based on so small a sample of other’s lives that it might as well be considered nothing. But of course it’s not. It’s our life, our way of being as part of this hundred billion mass of humanity that has lived and died upon this spaceship Earth.

    The things a guy thinks about. Geez.

     

    *Our Town, Act 3, spoken by the play’s narrator, the Stage Manager, as he gives the audience a tour of the town cemetery, pointing out meaningful landmarks:

    “Over there are some Civil War veterans,” the Stage Manager says. “Iron flags on their graves . . . New Hampshire boys . . . had a notion that the Union ought to be kept together, though they’d never seen more than fifty miles of it themselves. All they knew was the name, friends — the United States of America. The United States of America. And they went and died about it.”


    Aging Cinema and Television Commentary on Religion Commentary on the news Family Friends Humanities Literature Politics US History World History

  • Speak Across the Years

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Thanksgiving Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: The Clan. Gathering in an hour. Tom and his gift book. His thinking of Ruth. The morning darkness lit by the Thanksgiving Moon. Orion and his great Dog pursuing the hunt toward Mt. Evans. 50 days until Trump leaves. Vaccines. The holidays of light. Needed to dispel the four years of ethical darkness. The gas heater here in the loft/studio. Emerson. Lao Tze. Camus. Hesse. Aldo Leopold. Wendell Berry. Wes Jackson. Thomas Berry. Rilke. Saints in my short, very short, tradition.

     

    And your world, it’s rapidly changin’. Wow. Trump defeated. Vaccines looking good. Kate with almost a month of good days. Add your own spectacular news here.

    However. Even rapid change is sometimes not enough. This month, this December, will require all the good feeling we can muster. For ourselves, those we love, those in our neighborhoods and communities. It will require all the festivals of lights we celebrate: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s. It will require an extra effort to avoid a, “I’ll be dead by Christmas.” holiday season. Going home for Christmas may take on a new meaning unless we stay. at. home. wear. masks. distance ourselves from others. worship virtually. Flu. Covid. Cold. Holiday celebrations. = Potential disaster.

    Why? Because the surge, that one where the Covid infections became a hockey stick graph like climate change? Is about to surge. According to the NYT this morning, all of California’s intensive care beds could be overwhelmed by mid-month. We’ve not seen the uptick from Thanksgiving travel. It’s coming. The same article says that we hit four million infections in November, more than double the previous record. 1.9 million. When? October. Both before the Thanksgiving holiday visits.

    We’re in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. We can cross the bridge of death to a vaccine and Biden future but first we have to say just how fast the unladen swallow can fly. Or, Come up with capital of Assyria. If we’re wrong, well… I’ll give you a hint. Tell the gatekeeper that he needs to stay socially distanced, get his vaccine, cheer Biden at his inauguration (virtually), and, close the bridge, go home, and stay there.

    Rereading some Camus. I’m mostly with him. His notion of the absurd. The universe rolls on with or without us. There is no meaning to life. In other words the universe does not have an Easter egg for us that, if only we look in unlikely places, will reveal itself, as in a computer game.

    I part company with him on the notion that we cannot give meaning to our life. I believe we can give meaning to our own lives. We can choose, a critical idea in existentialism, to live for others, with others in spite of that ultimate absurdity of our situation.

    Thanks to Tom for sending out this poem, Wendell Berry’s XI.

    We can choose, as Wendell Berry asks us, to:

    “Come,
    willing to learn what this place,
    like no other, will ask of you
    and your children, if you mean
    to stay. “This land responds
    to good treatment…””  Wendell Berry, XI

    He addresses this plea to these persons:

    “The need comes on me now
    to speak across the years
    to those who finally will live here
    after the present ruin…”

    This is crossing another bridge of death, the one after Covid, the burning of our planet. I agree with Berry that there will be a life after we’ve ruined this one. It will be. So different. Not recognizable to us. Our grandchildren will know. And their children will know nothing else. Not that far away in human terms.

    Go to a new tab, quick. Look up how fast an unladen swallow can fly. It just might save your life.


    Cinema and Television Commentary on the news Coronavirus Family Friends Great Wheel Great Work Humor Poetry Third Phase US History

  • An Age of Wonders

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the 1% crescent of the Labor Day Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: A better day for Kate yesterday. Chewy prescription order shipped. Mahi-Mahi in tomato sauce. Easy Entrees. Mary, Mark, Diane. Generous, kind. Tom and his knotty gift. Knotical. The Ancient Ones, my FFs, friends forever. Alan. The compounding pharmacy for my surgery eye drops. Rigel, the Yipper. Kep, the Snuggler.

    An age of wonders. Peak TV. There has never been so much good television, ever. And, there might not be again since Netflix spends money as fast as the Mississippi flows into its delta. Right now I’m watching the Turkish series, the Gift, an English limited episodes drama, The Third Day, and the Sony production, Away. The Gift and the Third Path fall in the folk horror genre, like the movies Midsommar and the Wicker Man. Away stars Hilary Swank as commander of the first expedition to Mars. Great Britain and Korea also make compelling television.

    Every Tuesday morning I speak with cousin Diane in San Francisco, sister Mary in Singapore, and brother Mark in Riyadh. At the same time. With video. On Sundays I speak with the Ancient Ones, my FF’s, friends forever, in Minneapolis and Maine. Every other Thursday Alan Rubin and I have a video chat. Without Zoom the pandemic would be so much worse.

    Another wonder. I wonder who will rid us of this troublesome President? Several million of us, I hope. Gotta work to make it happen. Encourage friends and co-workers. Family. Vote! Make phone calls. Send e-mails.

    I’m reading Rage, Bob Woodward’s book. It’s the only Trump era book I’ve read, finding my Trump box always filled to overflowing and not wanting to add that last word. It’s not revelatory so far, except for the big news of Trump’s early understanding of the nature of Covid. That’s a major item. He goes back to the beginning of Trump’s administration to put this story in context.

    Early in the book Woodward tells the story of Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum. He told his cabinet, after they tried to dissuade him, that he wanted the tariffs. Just implement them and we’ll see what happens, he said. His finance cabinet folks said the U.S. economy is nothing to play with. Do it anyway.

    This after they pointed out that we’re no longer a steel producer or an aluminum producer and tariffs would therefore have the result of raising prices on imported products, not invigorating our once dominate foundries.

    He went ahead.

    An early signal of Trump’s discounting of experts and privileging his gut response.

    I also read, yesterday, this troubling article by NYT columnist, Thomas B. Edsall. Most of us know, I think, that we live in partisan bubbles these days. Our friends, our news sources, our own analysis of the political. Even families. We don’t talk politics on Thanksgiving or at the reunion. Our lives are hermetically sealed from the other.

    I’m guilty. I see the Trump base, the MAGA reactionaries as I think of them, as both deluded and obedient. Edsall shows that this sort of us/them thinking might end in violence around and after the election. Our descent into Banana Republic status has gained momentum.

    What do we do? It’s not as easy as “having conversations with those with whom we disagree.” First of all, most of don’t know many with whom we disagree, at least not well enough to start a civil, literally, conversation. Second, even if we do know a few and engage them, our minds tend to be as made up as theirs. Where’s the gap, the space, for understanding each other. It’s thin at best.

    My admittedly partisan notion is that we first need to lower the intensity of public discourse. I believe electing Biden will do that. Then we need to do a careful, honest, and serious review of our own attitudes. Push white supremacist ideologues back to the fringes where they belong while opening ourselves to the pain and anguish of Trump’s base.

    This does not mean denying our own convictions. I won’t give an inch on eliminating racism, providing health care and food and housing for the neediest in our nation. Even so, I need to consider the sort of policies that would also benefit the white working class, would address the fears of white suburban women that their safety and their children’s is at stake, would reassure the small business owner that we care about their survival.

    An anti-big business conversation might yield interesting results, for example. Debt relief. Job protection and job education for those below middle class income. Higher pay for “essential” jobs since we know how essential they are.


    Cinema and Television Commentary on the news Dogs Family Feelings Friends Politics Shadow Mountain Third Phase US History

  • Zoombies

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Rigel’s appetite. Kep’s centeredness. Our home. Kate feeling better last night. Chicken and blueberries and asparagus and beets. Our front, cleaner, more natural after the stump grinding. The night sky, visible now at 5 a.m. 36 degrees this morning.

    Cold here overnight. Down to 36. Refreshing, invigorating. Up early, 4:30 a.m. with enough sleep. I go to bed early, around 8 p.m. The night Sky. Don’t see it much when I get up later, around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. though that’s changing as the Great Wheel turns toward the vernal equinox.

    Kate had a hard day yesterday with shortness of breath and not feeling well. I moved a TV into the bedroom. She can watch NCIS and Blue Bloods while resting. She feels better lying down. Our agreement is that the TV goes off when I come to bed. This is a change from her last year and a half when she read through books in a day or two, filling shelves of books she had read.

    Rigel’s appetite, boosted by the prednisone she’s on for fever control, is good. She’s gradually returning to her old habits, a couple of cups of dry food with some wet food mixed in. Since her time in the hospital, she’s eaten a lot of canned food. It all has to be single protein, rabbit. That makes it expensive, three to four dollars a can. And she’s a big dog.

    Zoombies. Don’t know why I haven’t seen this word yet, but it’s my neologism now. This is the zoombie apocalypse, characterized by so many seen but not felt. I don’t find that zoom eats my brain, but I do know it can cause a deadening if done too much. Many working at home have overloaded.

    Yesterday the old zoombies met for what Paul calls our church. The topic was staying healthy as we age. A table with four legs: diet & exercise, relationships, sleep, and regular medical care. Couldn’t remember medical care as the fourth leg so I added curiosity. That works, too. So, five legs.

    What we’re trying to do is lengthen healthspan, that period of life where you can do what you want to do with minimal interference from frailty or disease. As we age, so many of us experience dire insults that don’t kill us, but do render us weaker, less able to engage in our lives as we used to know them.

    Ideas from the zoombie session: exercise bands, going to the club, cleanses of various sorts, walking, physical labor, interval training, workouts from a trainer, staying in touch with loved ones, with friends, with dogs.

    I mentioned curiosity because it acknowledges mystery, wonder, and an openness to the future without trying to control it.

    Here’s to your health, your loved ones health. May you live long and prosper.


    Aging Cinema and Television Dogs Family Feelings Friends GeekWorld Health Our Land and Home Shadow Mountain Third Phase Weather +Climate

  • America’s Id

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Amber and Lisa. Hummingbirds. Simple joys. Lisa. Her obvious concern and help. Derek, who offered to complete our fire mitigation work. A day of sunshine yesterday. Drove 150 miles yesterday to medical appointments. In air conditioned comfort. Tisha B’av. A day of mourning for the loss of the first and second temples. And, later, for all the trials of the Jews, including pogroms and the holocaust. A somber day. Yesterday.

    A video maker held his Black Lives Matter sign in what he called the “most racist town in the U.S.,” Harrison, Arkansas. Here’s an edited version of that experience.

    This video could be titled, America’s Id.

    Also in America’s south, NASA successfully launched its Perseverance spacecraft. Headed to Mars with a helicopter and water seeking instruments, Perseverance continues the human fascination with life not of Earth. It will land in the middle of February, 2021 in Jezero Crater. An excellent explainer about why NASA chose Jezero is this July 28th article in the NYT.

    Though Earthbound and isolated on Shadow Mountain Perseverance gives me a thrill. And, not just a thrill, but a scientific extension of my own interests. It pleases me in a deep way that we’ve not abandoned space exploration. Humans need to know, to explore, to test ideas and equipment. And, Mars! Speculations abound. I’m glad we Americans can still pull together for such an event. Looking forward to next February.

    America’s Id and its shiniest example of hope. We are both, all. This time calls for Perseverance.


    Beyond the Boundaries Cinema and Television Commentary on the news Coronavirus Family Health Science Shadow Mountain Third Phase Travel US History Weather +Climate

  • Good News

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Moon of Justice

    Thursday gratefuls: Chuck roast fork tender in the Instapot. Yum. The stillness. Only the occasional car on Black Mountain Drive. Just us and the critters. Wild and domesticated. PSA next week. Kate’s ostomy nurse referral. Kep and the bone from the chuck roast. Rigel and the bone from the chuck roast. Kate’s voracious reading. Robertson Davies.

    Doomscrolling. Covidiot. (thanks, Tom) Mask maker, mask maker, make me a mask. At home with the virus raging outside. Like a wild snowstorm blowing across Shadow Mountain. So quiet here.

    Generation hide. They told us it would be bunkers, radiation hazards. They prepared us with duck and cover drills. (though, to be honest, I don’t remember any.) Pamphlets. Civil defense sirens. Those yellow and black icons of danger. Nope.

    The biohazard sign, triplet open crescents over a circle. Duck and cover = masks. Bunkers = self-quarantine, but, at least above ground. No sirens, just daily updated charts of the infection curve. Never flattened here. Here, in the United States of America. Maybe we should duck and cover. In shame.

    Mutually assured destruction now means all those freedumb loving libertytards who refuse to wear masks. Who refuse to believe the virus is real. Or, if it is real, they believe it’s germ warfare. God, our fellow citizens as intentional disease vectors. What….?

    Our generation sits behind closed doors. Those books on the nightstand now read. Newspapers, for those ancient of days who still receive them. TV tuned to Netflix. As the bleeding edge of the Baby Boom, we’ve been in a high risk category for over 10 years. Now it counts.

    Those who like good news can find a lot of it on television. Though I long ago stopped watching infotainment, the protests get covered. What a joy they are in this otherwise bleak time. Young people speaking their minds. Yes, something’s happening here. And this time, it’s very clear.


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  • Ättestupa

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Corona Luna

    Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage collectors, workers at power plants, cleaners in all places, showing us how important “menial” labor can be. Kate in her sewing room!! Yeah. Sewed on some buttons, made some mug rugs. Seoah doing grocery shopping for us. Brenton and his many pictures, videos, obvious joy being with Murdoch. Concerned friends. Upcoming PSA blood draw, Lupron, visit with Eigner.

    Another, grimmer topic. Wanna sacrifice yourself for the economy, grandpa? Any of my readers of a certain age going with Dan Patrick? “‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?…If that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said.” Patrick is Lt. Gov. of Texas, Dan Patrick. The quote is from a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson.

    Patrick made his senicidic comment after Trump declared he wanted to get the economy going by Easter, “This country’s not made to be shut down.” Only after being told that if he did, deaths would be in the hundreds of thousands, and his lackey Lindsey Graham said, “You would own those deaths.” did he pull back. OK, we’ll open it up on April 30th, he decided. Why April 30? Who knows?

    Last year when Kate had a period of feeling better we went to see, first, “The Kitchen”, a women take over the mob movie with Elizabeth Moss and Melissa McCarthy, in return Kate agreed to go see Midsommar. “It’s Scandinavian,” I said.

    Hmm, yeah. Sorta. I’m a fan of horror movies (not slasher flicks. Ugh.). Hammer Films. The Thing. The Fly. Rosemary’s Baby. The Exorcist. The Shining. The Omen. Creature of the Black Lagoon. Not many get made that are thoughtful, even beautiful. The Horror of Dracula, a 1958 Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee movie in the Hammer Film series, was beautiful. So was Polanski’s 1967 The Fearless Vampire Killers.

    There are now two that are both beautiful and thoughtful: The Wickerman (1973) and Midsommar (2019). The Wickerman has a Celtic folklore background while Midsommar uses Swedish themes. I’ve learned in doing some research that these are folk horror movies. A new genre to me by name, but not by preference.

    Anyhow, in Midsomar, Ari Aster, director and writer, draws on Swedish folklore. Some of the ideas there are familiar to you like the Maypole, the colorful Swedish garments, white trimmed in flowers and runes, all that blond hair, and festive bonfires outdoors. And, yes, naked Swedes can be seen dancing around midsommar bonfires. Look it up on your interweb.

    Aster also draws on one aspect of Swedish folklore embedded enough in the culture to give a name to certain high cliffs and promontories: Ättestupa. In prehistoric times, Swedes believe, elders threw themselves from the attestupa when they were no longer able to care for themselves or assist around the camp. Senicide. Though attestupa may have been challenged among folklorists, senicide is/was real. Elders wandering away from the village to starve, active euthanasia of the elderly, or, as Lt. Patrick suggests, economic senicide.

    The most disturbing scenes in Midsomar come during the attestupa. The Harga collective using seasonal language for life’s stages: Spring: 1-18, Summer: 19-36, Fall: 37-54, and Winter: 55-72. This last season, Winter, is the mentoring season. At 72 Winter ends, and so do you. That, for the Harga, was when you headed for the attestupa.

    Midsomar is on Prime Video right now, free. If these kind of movies fit into your cinema way, I’d encourage you to watch it. It’s a very good example of the folk horror genre. If you watch it, let me know what you think of the last scene.


    Cinema and Television Commentary on Religion Coronavirus Health Myth and Story News of the Strange Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase

  • As Happy As Can Be

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Leap Year Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Bright sun. White snow. Sturdy mountains. Gov. Polis. All workers in essential jobs, risking themselves for the rest of us. Tough decisions, made well. Governors and mayors. Drugs. Rigel, who practiced non-violent resistance last night when I moved her off my pillow. (100 lbs. of limp dog.) Seoah with her spray can of Lysol. Seoah for cleaning and soup and pancakes (veggie, Korean type). Kate for good attitude in spite of, well, all of it.

    Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song:

    I want to live alone in the desert
    I want to be like Georgia O’Keefe
    I want to live on the Upper East Side
    And never go down in the street

    Splendid Isolation
    I don’t need no one
    Splendid Isolation

    Michael Jackson in Disneyland
    Don’t have to share it with nobody else
    Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand
    And lead me through the World of Self

    Goofy and I have set out on this quarantine journey. It’s the Mickey Mouse club hike for us older Mouseketeers, now latch key elders stuck at home while the young ones go to work. What kind of mischief can we get up to? Been rummaging around for that chemistry set with the REAL piece of uranium. We can wave at the other seniors through the window. Hey, there, hi, there, ho, there.

    We can also follow Goofy down the yellow-brick road to that ego wizard living behind the green curtains of our fear. Let him/her out. We’re all afraid now. Maybe not quaking or shaking, but definitely concerned. No reason to hide.

    Here’s an elder countryman, speaking of a different time, but also of ours:

    “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated” Thomas Paine


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  • Art House Cinema

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Leap Year Full Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Kabbalah Experience. The stimulation I’ve gotten from that reading. Bill, fellow seeker and his gifts this morning. Kate and the start of our 31st year together. Kimbop. Picnic food, Seoah says, a Korean sushi-like roll. Seoah’s delight at the ease of her UPS interaction. Jackie, a sweet and delightful person. The coronavirus, for what it’s teaching us about global community and compassion.

    Max von Sydow died. His Antonius Block in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal captivated me long ago. His turn in the Exorcist. Memorable and difficult. Liv Ullman, Bibbi Anderson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, and Ingmar Bergman introduced me to art house cinema. I got infatuated with Bergman and his ensemble of actors, watched all of them I could. Hard to remember now how difficult it was to find movies and watch them in the pre-internet era.

    When I was at United Seminary, I organized an arts week. This was 1972. I was able to show two Bergman movies that had not been seen too often then, Hour of the Wolf and the Ritual. It might have been the American premier of the Ritual.

    Turns out that Albert Camus’ widow was good friends with Bergman and had all of his movies in her collection. I had some connection to her but I can’t remember what it was. She lived in Wisconsin, so I borrowed them from her. It took a lot of phone calls, visits, and organizing to get them onscreen. Nowadays I could look them up on the internet, find a place to either buy or stream them, set up a projector and we’d be ready to go.

    Von Sydow was a key presence in Bergman’s work. His tall, angular, serious demeanor gave each film an anchor in his gravitas. He is among my favorite actors and I’ll miss him in this life, but will continue to enjoy his work on screen.

    Driving in today to make my presentation at the Kabbalah Experience in Denver. I’m feeling good about the work I’m doing in this class. It has pushed me into new clarity about religious life, given me some conceptual hooks for things I’ve been thinking about for years.

    Long day. Lunch with Alan after the class. Purim celebration tonight at CBE. Kate’s the board member on duty. She greets folks as they come in. Quieter week overall. Good.


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