Monthly Archives: January 2010

Ralph McInerny, R.I.P.

January 30, 2010
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Ralph McInerny, R.I.P.

After a long illness Notre Dame professor and author of Father Dowling mysteries died Friday morning. Gerald Russello in National Review described Father Dowling as the “Patron Saint of Detectives:” The United States has seen several exemplars of the priest-detective, including Father Roger Dowling, pastor of St. Hilary’s Church, a small parish in seemingly bucolic Fox River, Illinois. Dowling is the creation of Ralph McInerny, a Catholic intellectual who has spent most of his career teaching philosophy at Notre Dame. Over the years, McInerny has written more than two dozen Father Dowling novels, as well as a separate series of mystery novels under the pen name Monica Quill, featuring Sister Mary Teresa. The Father Dowling series has been popular, rating even a four-season television series, starring actor Tom Bosley of Happy Days fame. The Wisdom of Father Dowling has just come out, and this collection of 15 short stories featuring the eponymous hero illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the genre. Its title invokes The Wisdom of Father Brown, which is probably Chesterton’s best collection, and the two priests share several characteristics. The centrality of reason is one: McInerny, like Chesterton, is a committed Thomist, and the respect for reasoning

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A Culture Without Fathers Is a Culture of Death

January 29, 2010
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A Culture Without Fathers Is a Culture of Death

Last September a young black man was beaten to death on the south side of Chicago, and this violence was caught on a cell phone camera and seen around the world. This was not good PR for President Obama, especially just before he was headed to Copenhagen to woo the International Olympic Committee to bring the games to Chicago in 2016. So he sent his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and other big wigs to Chicago to show that his administration took this violence seriously, and most importantly that they cared. I heard Mr. Duncan on NPR at the time talk about what needed to be done to stem this all too prevalent violence, and he mentioned several things including job training programs, mentoring, and other such community organization kind of things. What stood out and infuriated me at the time was that he didn’t mention fathers or intact families. It never occurred to this former head of the Chicago City Schools that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, two gender need I say, family contributes to youth violence in the inner city, let alone is a primary cause of it. The way I felt that day listening to the

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Fiction Friday

January 29, 2010
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Fiction Friday

Some in Hollywood might think folks on the Right have limited artistic ability and should stick with on investment banking and talk radio. Others, with a more open mind, believe people should pursue any vocation to which they feel called. A novelist in Minneapolis, thankfully, is not taking career advice from Hollywood. The Culture Alliance’s latest Fiction Friday newsletter focused on the work of Lars Walker, particularly West Oversea. Lars Walker has written five novels, Erling’s Word, Wolf Time, The Year of the Warrior, Blood & Judgment,  and West Oversea: A Norse Saga of Mystery, Adventure and Faith. Anthony Sacramone, writing at First Things blog “First Thoughts,” had this to say about Year of the Warrior, a sequel of sorts to West Oversea: Wow. From the first sentence I was hooked. An Irishman taken as a slave by vikings passes himself off as a Catholic priest in Norway amid warrior heathen—and blood-curdling wackiness ensues. It’s fun, at times funny, and always compelling storytelling. It mixes fiction with history, faith with doubt, and most important, it’s wise and subversive, conveying a gospel message not just to the worshipers of Thor and Odin but to the readers as well. The law has

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Only the Left can Judge Cultural Influence

January 29, 2010
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Only the Left can Judge Cultural Influence

Recognizing a novelist’s, filmmaker’s, or visual artist’s influence on society is perfectly acceptable as long as those Cultural Influence Professionals nudge folks in the liberal-left direction, and one limits comments to description alone. If, however, you criticize or create work that pushes back against this influence be prepared to suffer slings and arrows. Times Arts Correspondent Ben Hoyle noted J.D. Salinger’s influence on American youth. Catcher in the Rye, Hoyle noted, had spread its influence into many undernourished corners of cultural life. Along with Elvis Presley’s music and James Dean’s swaggering Rebel Without a Cause persona, it was Salinger’s Caulfield who best dramatised the emergence of a defiant youth identity in 1950s America. It helped to create demand among young people for their own cultural products, a demand that would fuel the youth cultural revolutions that convulsed the West, and later the whole world. Salinger helped to invent the notion of teenage angst, and is a father figure to everything from punk music to Donnie Darko, and Bart Simpson to The Graduate. In music, Guns N’ Roses and Green Day are two of the modern bands who have worn its influence most explicitly. In film, the director Wes Anderson often

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TCM Thrillers (February 1 – 7)

January 29, 2010
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TCM Thrillers (February 1 – 7)

This week: * Monday—Ingrid Bergman plots revenge—say it ain’t so. * Tuesday—Alec Guinness—a sadist? * Wednesday—Dane Clark fears murder is hereditary. * Thursday—Ray Milland has spook problems. * Saturday—Steve McQueen burns rubber. * Sunday—Joel McCrea just wants to report the news, not get shot at and shot at and shot at …. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday—February 1st 1:30 PM—Saratoga Trunk (1945) A woman with a past returns to 19th-century New Orleans for revenge. Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, Flora Robson. Dir: Sam Wood. BW-135 mins, TV-PG, CC ———- Tuesday—February 2nd 7:30 AM—Tunes of Glory (1960) When a popular colonel loses a promotion, it sets the stage for conflict with his new superior officer. Cast: Alec Guinness, John Mills, Dennis Price. Dir: Ronald Neame. C-107 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format 6:45 PM—One Way Passage (1932) An ocean voyage leads to romance for a dying heiress and a condemned criminal. Cast: Kay Francis, William Powell, Aline MacMahon. Dir: Tay Garnett. BW-68 mins, TV-G, CC 8:00 PM—The Thin Man (1934) A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts. Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II. BW-91 mins, TV-G, CC,

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Private Eye Fiction by S. J. Rozan

January 28, 2010
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Private Eye Fiction by S. J. Rozan

A Tale About a Tiger and Other Mysterious Events by S. J. Rozan Crippen & Landru Publishers Paper: 243 pages ISBN (cloth): 978-1-932009-89-7 … (paper): 978-1-932009-90-3 $42.00 (cloth) … $17.00 (paper) Multiple-award-winning private eye (p.i.) author S. J. Rozan is equally at home writing novels or short stories. Crippen & Landru has collected together some prime examples of her work in the short form. Rozan’s tone in these stories varies from decidedly grim to lightly humorous, but she never strays very far from what is usually called the “real” world — or at least the world typically envisioned by private eye authors (i.e., that environment of unremitting sin and corruption in high and low places which p.i. writers have created by common consent and inhabited with sinful and corrupt characters who are never more than one step removed from being stereotypes) — a world, in brief, that is as real and yet as unreal as Middle Earth. All of which in no wise detracts from Rozan’s story-telling skill; when it comes to p.i. fiction, she may be one of its foremost contemporary practitioners. “Night Court” takes us to an unexpected place, almost to another universe, yet it’s where we live

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Inglorious Controversy

January 27, 2010
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Inglorious Controversy

A quite revealing exchange has broken out between the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan and Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein about the merits, or lack of same, of Quentin Tarantino’s award-winning and popular film Inglourious Basterds. Klavan, a conservative whose fiction writings are quite admirable, started it with an item called “Inglorious Malarky,” which conveyed the following opinion and argument: I found it an appalling movie—really; appalling. t exhibits an understanding of human suffering so shallow it falls outside the bounds of civil discussion. . . . or Tarantino, no matter how talented, to address the issues inherent in the event as pure fodder for storytelling, to think his squirrelly man-on-man torture fantasies or his video geek understanding of life provide an adequate moral response to that level of history—I don’t know, man—it just felt to me like he was molding toy soldiers out of the ashes of the dead. . . . When you ask yourself how our creative class could have responded so shabbily to 9/11; when you wonder how they could’ve made movies that gave aid and comfort to our enemies while our soldiers were in the field; when you wonder why so few of

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Eastwood, Winfrey Top Polls

January 27, 2010
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Eastwood, Winfrey Top Polls

Harris Interactive‘s annual polls of public opinion of entertainers found Clint Eastwood as the top movie star and Oprah Winfrey is the best-liked TV personality. Other interesting findings: NBC talk-show host Jay Leno dropped from number 1 to number 3 in the TV list (and the poll was taken before the recent public bloodletting over NBC’s talk show scheduling). Men still rated Leno as their favorite, however, while women favor Winfrey. Fox News personality Glenn Beck debuted on the list at number two, much to the dismay of the several-dozen people who watch MSNBC. Seven of the ten personalities on the TV list are talk show hosts. George Clooney is back on the movie stars list after a two-year absence in which he concentrated on overtly political films as opposed to this year’s Up in the Air. Lesson learned? (Probably not.) Johnny Depp jumped all the way to number 2 from number 8 last year. Apparently people don’t hold him responsible for Public Enemies. Sandra Bullock returned to the list, at number 4. Number 1 move star among political independents: Eastwood Number 1 movie star in the Midwest: Depp Number 1 movie star in the South: Sandra Bullock Tops movie

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Eastwood Voted Top Film Star

January 27, 2010
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Harris Interactive‘s annual polls of public opinion of entertainers found Clint Eastwood the top movie star and Oprah Winfrey best-liked TV personality. >> More . .  .

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Sci-Fi Classic: ‘A Voyage to Arcturus’

January 27, 2010
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Sci-Fi Classic: ‘A Voyage to Arcturus’

David Lindsay’s 1920s novel A Voyage to Arcturus is a great work of philosophical fiction, writes Shmuel Ben-Gad.

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Marvel Comics Change

January 27, 2010
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Marvel Comics will move away from “darker” story lines and characterizations, and  “heroes will be heroes again” while the stories remain “edgy” and contemporary according to Marvel’s editor in chief, USA Today reports.

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Networks Raising the Bar on TV Sex

January 26, 2010
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Networks Raising the Bar on TV Sex

The woman in the Monty Python sketch was right when she said she’s against sex on the television because she keeps falling off. As an informative article from USA Today makes clear, once the medium gets started down that road, there’s no stopping halfway, and the consequences become unavoidable for the unwary viewer: Critics such as the Parents Television Council decry the mushrooming sexual content. “It’s become downright ubiquitous,” says council president Tim Winter. “Families are under siege, teenage girls are under siege. You don’t know what the cultural impact will be down the road.” Programmers seem less enthused about this greater freedom than anti-Hollywood conspiracy theorists might expect. The USA Today story quotes several making that point: Says Doug Herzog, president of MTV Networks entertainment group: “The line moves every day, so you got to move with it. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. . . .” “When advertising dollars are down you have to cut through—you have to get attention,” says JD Roth, producer of NBC reality hit The Biggest Loser. . . . “You can definitely see an arms race,” says FX programming chief John Landgraf, whose groundbreaking series such as Rescue Me and

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