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Road Trip
Tuesday January 6, 2009
I drove to Vermont over the holidays. As one drives west from Maine, the landscape becomes rolling and pastoral. Small farms dot the valleys along Route 89, which passes New London, New Hampshire. Years ago, one of my priest uncles, Father Ed, was stationed....
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We Count those Blessed Who Have Endured (Songs from 2008)
Monday January 5, 2009
One thing that I learned in 2008 is that everything is going to keep changing, all the time, and is always going to be not what it was last year. And what I want from songs now is comfort. Not to be pushed forward or challenged, though this is occasionally necessary, but to hear music that says....
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Five Favorite Essays of 2008
Friday January 2, 2009
Inspired by a similar tradition in David Brooks’ New York Times column (but with fewer pretensions to comprehensiveness—I am calling them favorites, not the most important or influential), here is a list of five essays or reviews that I have read, on the....
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Jeffrey Overstreet’s “Strongest Impressions” of 2008, Part III
Thursday January 1, 2009
#7—Syndromes and a Century Is it a drama? A series of dream sequences? Finally available in the U.S., this experimental film about time, science, superstition, and medicine is strangely hypnotic. I'm not sure how to summarize it. We spend a lot of time in a small, country hospital and a bright modern hospital. Old-world practices are clashing with....
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Jeffrey Overstreet’s “Strongest Impressions” of 2008, Part II
Wednesday December 31, 2008
#14—Doubt -- John Patrick Shanley's play is written to be an even match between a priest who befriends a troubled boy, and imperious nun who ruthlessly investigates his suspicious behavior. Unfortunately, the lead actors upset the balance: Meryl Streep has one foot firmly planted in comedy, making the nun a wicked witch, while Philip Seymour Hoffman gives....
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