Culture – Page 13 – Scripturient

Why Do We Make Music?

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d, And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d, By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound. What then am I? Am I more senseless grown Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe! ‘Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs. Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night The silent Tomb receiv’d the good Old King; He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg’d Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom. Why am not I at Peace? William ……… click below for more ↓

The Last Case of Sherlock Holmes

2015-11-29 2015-11-29 Culture / Film & Reviews / Pop CultureLeave a comment

Sherlock Holmes. Iconic detective, 93 years old. Tending his bees in bucolic self-exile near the Dover coast. Mycroft gone. Watson gone. Mrs. Hudson gone. Even the band of villains and criminals who made him who he was are gone. All he has left are his memories and his bees. And his memories are failing. It’s 1947 and the countryside still bears the visible scars of the recent war. Holmes (Ian McKellen) has just returned from a trip to Japan to see a mysterious contact who promises a rare, native plant will help him with his senility. In England, Holmes raises ……… click below for more ↓

The Gauche in the Machine

2015-11-14 2015-11-14 Advertising / Collingwood / Council / Marketing / Media / Public relations / Publicity & Communications5 Comments

Rudibus ex machina: criticizing Collingwood’s latest newsletter feels a bit like punching a puppy. Or commenting on the sloppy grammar of local bloggers. Both are far too easy, like catching fish in a barrel, and I feel guilty when I even think of doing it. But since your tax dollars are at work, it needs to be done. Someone needs to stand up and say this is not the standard we expect from a $55 million-a-year corporation. This might be a good runner-up in a high school contest, but it is not a professional product appropriate for municipal communications.* This ……… click below for more ↓

In Praise of Audio Books

2015-10-30 2015-10-30 Books & Reviews / Family history / Literature / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Although I had listened to them in the past, I really discovered the joys of audio books several years ago, when my 92-year-old father entered hospital for his final months. As I travelled to and from the city frequently that summer, audio books kept me entertained and my mind from dwelling on the more serious questions of his health and mortality. Travelling to Toronto to visit my mother in her nursing home, for several years after he passed away, often became a trip with audio books, too. Although I have always been an avid and voracious reader, CD recordings soon found a ……… click below for more ↓

The Signal

2015-10-06 2015-10-06 Culture / Film & ReviewsLeave a comment

One of the oddest – but most intriguing – scifi films I’ve seen recently was the 2014 movie, the Signal. It is a small-budget film that premiered at the Sundance Festival last year and seems to have gone to DVD soon after. I picked up a copy recently at a nearby HMV and watched it over the weekend. It stars Laurence Fishburne as the only big-name actor, while the main role is played by newcomer Brenton Thwaites. The film reminded me somewhat of George Lucas’s first big film, THX-1138, in its minimalist production and sets. But they’re not otherwise alike. THX-1138 ……… click below for more ↓

Houses of Cards

2015-10-03 2015-10-03 Culture / Politics / TVLeave a comment

While there are parallels between them, there is no direct, simple comparison between the original, British mini series, House of Cards, and the American series of the same name. The latter, aired 13 years after the original, owes much of its first-season content to the BBC’s production, but it quickly went its own way. Like its contemporary, The Bridge, the American version took on a life of its own – and a very distinct, American character – and can’t be considered a simple adaptation. Both are excellent shows. In part, the vast differences between American and British political systems compound the ……… click below for more ↓

The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction

2015-09-26 2015-09-26 Arts / Culture / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I have been reading the essays of the late critic, Walter Benjamin, most famous for his 1936 piece, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction (an earlier translation of this essay is available here). Wikipedia notes of this essay that it has been, …influential across the humanities, especially in the fields of cultural studies, media theory, architectural theory[1] and art history. Written at a time when Adolf Hitler was already Chancellor of Germany, it was produced, Benjamin wrote, in the effort to describe a theory of art that would be “useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands ……… click below for more ↓

Ex Machina

2015-09-23 2026-04-11 Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Ex Machina – “from the machine” – is a British film that is more about philosophy and morality than science. It opens a can or worms, philosophically, that underscores issues now being raised by advancing and increasingly intelligent technology. Its spare but crisp production reminds me of George Lucas’s first film, THX-1138. Spoiler alert, by the way… It is, in its essence, a modern exploration of the themes presented in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, using artificial intelligence as the fulcrum, rather than the reanimating of dead tissue. The film poses questions that are current in all AI research, but ……… click below for more ↓

The Missing Frankenstein Movies

2015-09-10 2015-09-10 Culture / Film & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

I was worried when I saw a new package for the Frankenstein films in WalMart recently. Labelled the “Complete Legacy Collection,” it offered eight original films on the Frankenstein theme, from 1931 to 1948. I snapped it up and read the back. I had to have it. (I always check the films they bring in pre-Halloween, in case they have any classics I don’t yet have….) Oh oh, I said to myself as I read the cover. I had purchased all of the Legacy monster movie collections a few years back (they were first released in 2004) and my set ……… click below for more ↓

Where Have The Real Heroes Gone?

2015-09-04 2015-09-04 Language & Grammar / Media / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

Heroes, it sometimes seems, have been relegated to legend and myth. There are none left, none of the sort I used to associate with the name. Not in the media, anyway. The word has been so abused in the media over the last century, tossed about in such a cavalier manner that it has lost its former credit; it has become debased language, its pith cored for showy effect, like glitter, like so many over-used superlatives have been. Its strength drained away. Calling someone a hero today has the same punch as a teacher saying a child “lives up to his ……… click below for more ↓

Boccaccio’s Decameron

2015-09-01 2015-09-01 Books & Reviews / Literature / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I never read The Decameron in any original, or complete translation. I have a bowdlerized edition I read in part some time ago, perhaps the 1970s. I recall seeing an art film based on the book, in the 1970s (directed Pier Pasolini). But I can’t recall it in any detail, except that it was subtitled. I have an old Penguin edition upstairs, its pages yellowing, mostly unread, but saved for that time in my life I felt able to tackle it. Seems that time has come. This week I found a copy of a recent translation of the Decameron at ……… click below for more ↓

Anthony and Cleopatra

2015-08-23 2015-08-23 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Literature / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

While Julius Caesar is my favourite of all Shakespeare’s plays, I think Anthony and Cleopatra is my second favourite. I know it’s hard to choose any favourites from his plays, they’re all so good, but this one seems to resonate with me more than most others, enough to encourage me to reread it this week. Perhaps it’s because both lead characters are past their prime (as I am), but – like all of us who have put a few years behind us – reluctant to acknowledge it and still see themselves as their younger selves. In that, Cleopatra shines, while Anthony ……… click below for more ↓

The Road Not Taken

2015-08-20 2015-08-20 Books & Reviews / Culture / Poetry & LyricsLeave a comment

I was surprised to read a recent piece in the New York Post that suggests a poem I have long loved was actually not what I thought it was about. It was one of those epiphanies that made me reassess my attitude not only towards the poem but towards what I had assumed it meant. The poem is Robert Frost’s famous piece, The Road Not Taken. You might remember it as “The Road Less Travelled” by which it is sometimes misnamed. It’s a short poem, only 20 lines long, each with a mere nine syllables. Many of us read it in ……… click below for more ↓

Stop Whining, Elvis Haters

2015-08-08 2015-08-08 Collingwood / Council / Culture / Festivals & Events / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

Don’t people who hate Collingwood’s Elvis Festival ever get tired of whining and bitching about it? I guess not. There’s another whining letter about it in this week’s Connection. More than twenty years the festival has been running successfully and they still haven’t figured it out yet. Just because you don’t like the event, doesn’t mean others don’t. In fact, tens of thousands of people really enjoy it and come from all over the province, from nearby US states and even from overseas to attend it. We cannot all like the same things and we certainly cannot all like what little lightens ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Tennyson’s Ulysses

2015-08-02 2023-11-18 Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Last weekend, while watching the delightful movie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I heard Bill Nighy make a wedding speech that included lines from one of my favourite poems: Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I recognized it immediately and it made me open the poem and read it again. The poem was written by Tennyson in 1833, but not published until 1842. I can’t recall exactly when I first read it, but it was in high school, in the 1960s. I’ve read it many times since. It’s funny how one can read into a poem something entirely different on another ……… click below for more ↓