Art For What’s Sake, IX: Special Effects
“This is all very well, if you are inclined to saints and mystics, but I thought we are trying to answer the simple question: Are movies art?
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Wednesday’s Child: The Joy of Lying
The evident pleasure taken by a habitual liar in the climactic moment of prevarication can be likened to that of a rogue builder – in London he would be Irish, although Albanians, I gather, are edging out the Irish nowadays – at the final hammer stroke when he hangs your bathroom cabinet upside down.
Movies That Began To Talk,
The Jazz Singer (1927) is said to have brought down the curtain on silent movies. Sound shorts were made before The Jazz Singer, but few theaters were set up for them, and it was Al Jolson’s hit feature that first pushed exhibitors hard to install sound.
Religio Philologi, Lessons for Septuagesima Sunday
Dr. Johnson once told Boswell that he often attended simple prayer services because he did not want people to think he only went to church to be entertained by the sermons. Those were the days!
Teleological Exercise, Floating Bait Holders and Redfish on a Salt-block
As time and work schedule allowed, my daily routine included a walk to a local South Georgia intercoastal community dock where I threw a cast-net for bait shrimp.
Trump-Cheney Family Feud
To solve our political problems, we should put our political families on “Family Feud,” currently hosted by Steve Harvey.
Treason, Black and White by The Alabamian
The night of May 13, 1862, some Confederate officers did not pay sufficient attention to a well loaded gun ship, the C.S.S. Planter. Very early the next morning, Robert Smalls and his accomplices seized the Planter loaded ammunition and weapons, and slipped past Confederate checkpoints out of Charleston Harbor and into the Union ships blockading the city.
Wednesday’s Child: The Joy in a Worm’s Eye
In England a Member of Parliament otherwise not known for his folly told a newspaper some days ago that the expected Russian invasion of Ukraine would almost certainly result in a dramatic increase in the price of biscuits, which is what the British call cookies.
