stories

Look, nobody reads this blog. Nobody reads, period. Said grumpy blogger man who nobody reads. But I was at a dinner tonight where the host asked, "What is your favorite story?" An excellent question. Anyone?

30 Days.

Okay, so there are 30 days left over at my attempt on Kickstarter to raise money for Alphonse issue two. We're at not quite one-quarter funded. But you know what? I'm gonna keep hoping. Thanks to everyone who has donated.

52 Movies for the Year of the Priest at Korrektiv

Rufus & Co. are having a festival! I've gone and italicized the ones I've seen, and starred my favorites. Because dammit, it's my blog.

"Korrektiv and Transcendental Musings are celebrating the Year for Priests (or the Year of the Priest, if you please) by launching an entirely unofficial 52-week (beginning last week) festival of films about priests.

What follows is our list -- hammered out over a bunch of Twitter posts and blog comments, a few beers and prayers -- of 52 movies in which a priest or priests take center stage or at least play a pivotal role in the development of the films' concerns.

I've arranged our selections chronologically, with the notion that it might be interesting to thus trace the evolution of filmmaking over the past seventy years while at the same time considering how perceptions of the priesthood, as reflected in these cinematic images, may have changed over that same period.
1. San Francisco (1936) [view the week of 6/19/09*]
2. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) [6/26/09]
3. Boys Town (1938) [7/3/09]
4. The Fighting 69th (1940) [7/10/09]
5. The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1941) [7/17/09]
6. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) [7/24/09]
7. Going My Way (1944) [7/31/09]
8. The Bells of St Mary's (1945) [8/7/09]
9. The Fugitive (1947) [8/14/09]
10. Monsieur Vincent (1947) [8/21/09]
11. Fighting Father Dunne (1948) [8/28/09]
12. The Miracle of the Bells (1948) [9/4/09]
13. Diary of a Country Priest* (1951) [9/11/09]
14. I Confess (1953) [9/18/09]
15. Father Brown (1954) [9/25/09]
16. On the Waterfront* (1954) [10/2/09]
17. The Left Hand of God (1955) [10/9/09]
18. The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) [10/16/09]
19. The Prisoner* (1955) [10/23/09]
20. Seven Cities of Gold (1955) [10/30/09]
21. Nazarin (1959) [11/6/09]
22. Hoodlum Priest (1961) [11/13/09]
23. The Cardinal (1963) [11/20/09]
24. Becket (1964) [11/27/09]
25. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) [12/4/09]
26. The Exorcist (1973) [12/11/09]
27. The Massacre in Rome (1973) [12/18/09]
28. Hounds of Notre Dame (1980) [12/25/09]
29. True Confessions (1981) [1/1/10]
30. The Scarlet and the Black (1983) [1/8/10]
31. Mass Appeal (1984) [1/15/10]
32. The Assisi Underground (1985) [1/22/10]
33. The Mission (1986) [1/29/10]
34. Au Revoir les Enfant* (1987) [2/5/10]
35. The Fr. Clements Story (1987) [2/12/10]
36. Under Satan’s Sun (1987) [2/19/10]
37. Don Bosco (1988) [2/26/10]
38. Francesco (1989) [3/5/10]
39. Black Robe (1991) [3/12/10]
40. Zycie za Zycie (Life for Life) (1991) [3/19/10]
41. Sleepers (1996) [3/26/10]
42. Molokai: The Story of Fr. Damian (1999) [4/2/10]
43. The Third Miracle (1999) [4/9/10]
44. Keeping the Faith (2000) [4/16/10]
45. The Confessor (The Good Shepherd) (2004) [4/23/10]
46. The Ninth Day (2004) [4/30/10]
47. Saint Ralph (2004) [5/7/10]
48. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) [5/14/10]
49. Pope John Paul II (2005) [5/21/10]
50. The Novice (aka Crossroads) (2006) [5/28/10]
51. Doubt (2008) [6/2/10]
52. Gran Torino* (2008) [6/9/10]


Alternate Selections
· Francis of Assisi (1961)
· The Reluctant Saint (1962)
· A Man for All Seasons (1966)
· Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
· Jesus of Montreal (1989)
· Stigmata (1999)
· St. Patrick: The Irish Legend (2000)
· Papa Giovanni John XXIII (2002)
· The Order (2003)
· Twist of Faith (2004)
· Into Great Silence (2005)
· Karol: The Man Who Became Pope (2005)

"Fields of Gold" in my living room.

The sound is terrible, but that is the fault of my recorder - not the guitarist.



The man has a gift. Go buy his stuff.

How it's done.

Now that's a pie:



The Wife goes from strength to strength.

Happy Feast.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Help Us Perpetually.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy...

...they allow to self-interview. Me yammering to myself about Alphonse.

What's that? The Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, my Patron Saint, was yesterday? Sigh.

While attending a local Friends church a couple weeks back, I heard, for perhaps the first time, the following line preached from the pulpit: "Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him."

That's Job talking. But it might have been John the Baptist, he of the great insight that "He must increase, I must decrease." It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The Feast of St. Thomas More Ended Half an Hour Ago...

...but I'm gonna post this from the Patron of Lawyers anyway: "But truly I will give counsel to every good friend of mine that unless he be put in such a position as to punish an evil man in his charge by reason of his office, he should leave the desire of punishing to God and to such other folk who are so grounded in charity and so fast cleaved to God that no secretly malicious or cruel affection can creep in and undermine them under the cloak of a just and a virtuous zeal. But let us that are no better than men of a mean sort ever pray for such merciful amendment in other folk as our own conscience shows us that we have need of in ourselves."

Overheard.

"This is KPBS noise...news."

Classic.