Notes from a bibliophile

I was raised Baptist. My grandmother on my dad’s side was very much into church life. She was there every Sunday and Wednesday; she helped serve the Wednesday dinner at the church; she played piano for a long time, then retired so to speak to the pews where she was almost a hall monitor over the kids, who kept moving further and further to the front to escape her. The quote from Shakespeare could have been written for her, “And though she be little, she is fierce.” My dad said I’m a lot like her; I kind of wish that was more true than it is. My family was not into church life so much. We recently watched the film Almost Christmas with Danny Glover, and there’s one part where they’re all in church and the pastor refers to them as CME Christians - they’re only in church on Christmas, Mothers Day, and Easter. That was us. Dad claimed it was because of the hypocrisy he saw in the church, and I totally understood that. I went to a private school tha...

It’s the last month of the year. Finally. We get to the end of the year and we’re just so ready for it to be over, hoping the new year will hold so much more promise. But the end of the year is the time when the Oscar-bait movies come out. Here’s some stuff I’m looking forward to. On December 1st, Netflix debuts the first German language series its carried as an original series. Dark   is a story about a town where two kids go missing. The disappearances hearken back to other missing kids from decades earlier and reveals secrets about the town and its inhabitants. It sounds a little like a German version of IT  but without the creepy clown. It looks like there will be some mind-bending, timey-wimey warping that the characters have to deal with, maybe? Whatever it is, it looks really pretty cool. Also on December 1st, is the decidedly uncool sounding, and yet still intriguing, Voyeur . This is the true story of Gerald Foos, who bought a motel for the ...

I love Rowan Atkinson. I think he’s a comedy genius, but I’m not sure how well known he is here in the US. I think we’ve mostly seen him in some bit parts like in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and maybe Mr. Bean, but that may be it. While I love Mr. Bean, which shows off his enormous talent at physical comedy, I first became aware of him thanks to a friend who introduced me to his series, Blackadder. If you have never seen this, I hope you do yourself a favor and seek it out. The series tells the story of several generations worth of scoundrels. The story begins in the Dark Ages, where Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh. It starts out with the Battle of Bosworth Field, where a kindly Richard III is killed and succeeded by Richard IV. Edmund is the second son and so not favored at all. His inept attempts to redeem himself continually fail, until he eventually decides to scrap the idea and just become a bad guy, adopting the nickname The Black Adder, which all of his offspring adopt. From there ...

Parts of this blog were previously posted on the website I used to write for, but it's been tweaked a little. The men in my family were big into war films. They were also big into westerns, but some thing's just don't take. But war movies can be so much more than just about the battles. Some of the films I've listed here may not be really considered war films, but there is an element of war about them. These are some of my favorite films, in no particular order. Five Came Back I can't stop talking about this documentary series on Netflix. It relates the story of five big name Hollywood directors - Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler - who, like so many actors at the time, volunteered for the army. They immediately began making propaganda films. The films were used to get the American public to back the war in multiple ways - by signing up, by buying war bonds, etc. What began innocuously turned into some of the most amazing, gri...

We live in an age where people are shouting about freedoms everywhere. And it's great to be able to live in a country where we are so free, but one thing we often forget is that other people are also free to disagree with us. Just as we are free to shout our beliefs and opinions from the rooftops, we have to allow others to do the same, no matter how wrong we feel they are. Freedom is hard won and difficult to foster. But it's beautiful just the same. One of the most discussed freedoms (especially now) is freedom of speech and press. I've only recently gotten interested in comics/graphic novels, so the history of the genre is lost on me. I'm not surprised though to learn that comics have suffered the same strong-arm tactics that face controversial novels. It just seems sillier. To arrest people for selling comics that have boobies drawn in it seems truly a waste of law enforcement's time. That's one of the scenarios addressed in this collection of comics, w...