Culture – Page 16 – Scripturient

Gravity: A Review

2014-12-02 2014-12-02 Culture / Film & Reviews2 Comments

While watching director Alfonso Cuarón’s film, Gravity, this weekend, I was struck by how powerful the mixed themes of isolation and survival can be. I was reminded not simply of films – Tom Hanks in Castaway came to mind immediately – but in literature, too; from Robinson Crusoe to Blindness. Stories of survival have captivated humankind since the Gilgamesh epic was scratched into clay tablets by an anonymous Sumerian scribe. I really enjoyed Gravity for several reasons and highly recommend it. First it’s a science fiction film and scifi is my favourite genre of movies. And it’s a good, well-done, high-quality production, ……… click below for more ↓

Julius Caesar: Best of the Bard?

2014-11-22 2016-04-20 Culture / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

For my money, Julius Caesar is simply Billy Shakespeare’s best ever play. I mean, what’s not to like in it? It has some stonking great speeches in it – including one of his top five ever (Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen….”) as well as a passel of memorable lines you can quote at parties (Who among my readers hasn’t passed off a quick “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war…” just for effect?). Plus it has a conspiracy, a murder, a riot, a battle, and a couple of suicides to gussy up the action. Treachery, betrayal, loyalty, raw ambition, backstabbing, ……… click below for more ↓

The Three Godzillas: Size Matters

2014-11-16 2023-04-20 Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Personal Reminiscences14 Comments

This year another remake of Godzilla was released, and of course I had to get a copy. I have many of the other Godzilla films made over the past 60 years, sadly not all of them. There were so many monster movies made in Japan through the 1950s and 60s that it’s hard to keep track of them all, let alone collect them. B-films, all of them, and still entertaining if you can find them. (If I recall it properly, I first watched the original Godzilla in the late 1950s at a drive-in theatre, sitting with my parents in the front ……… click below for more ↓

Poems That Make You Cry

2014-11-15 2014-11-15 Books & Reviews / Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

I cannot read Dylan Thomas’ poem, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night‘ without a lump in my throat. I read it at my father’s funeral, several years ago, so for me it has a personal context that retains its emotional impact. Many poems move me or touch my heartstrings, however, that have no such personal context, although I cannot recall the last time one moved me to tears. When I got Anthony and Ben Holden’s book, “Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them,” I expected to be deeply and powerfully moved by the ……… click below for more ↓

The Theology of The Fly

2014-11-07 2014-11-07 Books & Reviews / Film & Reviews / Philosophy / Pop CultureOne Comment

While watching the 1958 film of The Fly last night, I was struck by its similarities to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. And in the similarity of the underpinning morality of both. I recently picked up the DVD collection with all three movies (The Fly, Return of The Fly and Curse of the Fly, plus a collection of special features).* I saw the original film back in the late 1950s at the drive-in with my parents, and I’ve seen it on TV since, but not for many years. It’s not quite the “terror topping supershock thrill sensation” promised on the box ……… click below for more ↓

Larry & Jerry’s Inferno

2014-10-29 2014-10-30 Books & Reviews / Poetry & Lyrics / Religion / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

I had forgotten about this book until recently when I came across a reprint. I read it originally in the late 1970s when I was reading a lot more sci-fi than I do today. (Many years ago, I ran a Toronto computer convention where I invited the authors to be the keynote speakers. I got to spend many hours and a memorable dinner with them.) I finished the reprint only a few days ago and started the sequel, Escape From Hell, shortly after. I was researching Dante of late for something I’ve been slogging at for the past couple of years, when ……… click below for more ↓

Cold Mountain Poems

2014-10-16 2017-11-11 Books & Reviews / Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & LyricsOne Comment

I first became aware of the Tang dynasty poet, Han Shan, in the late 1960s, when I was engrossed in reading the poets of the earlier Beat generation. It was at that time that, through them, I started to discover and explore Western Buddhism – as it was adapted and represented through their experiences and words. I eagerly read everything by Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and others from the era. Sometime around then, I discovered a few of Han Shan’s poems. Beat poet Gary Snyder had translated 24 poems for the Evergreen Review in 1958, and later ……… click below for more ↓

Some Latin Quotes to Ponder

2014-09-21 2014-09-21 Culture / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Here are some translations from Latin quotations I took from a few books of mine, notably The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations, compiled by Norbert Guterman (Anchor-Doubleday, New York, 1966 and reprinted 1990) and Cave Canem: A Miscellany of Latin Words & Phrases, by Lorna Robinson (Walker & Co., New York, 2008). Some of these have resonance in today’s politics, even local politics. Others have resonance in events, issues and thoughts about the world. Some are simply words that have resonance to me and my own choices in life. Terence: People who are unsuccessful are all somehow inclined to be ……… click below for more ↓

Our gawker culture

2014-09-09 2014-09-09 Critical Thinking / Culture / Manners & Civility / Media Issues / Memes; Internet & Social / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Suddenly the Net lit up with headlines news: celebrity nude photos leaked! Videos too! Facebook timelines were replete with media stories. Shock. Horror. Voyeurism. Click, click, click the viewers racked up the view count as they raced to the sites just in case they actually showed something. A little flesh to feed our insatiable desire to gawk. Meanwhile psychopaths in ISIS continue to harvest human lives and slaughter journalists, Syria continues its brutal civil war, drought threatens the American southwest, climate change ravages the planet, Russia sends soldiers to undermine Ukraine and shoot down civilian airliners, pesticides continue to wipe out ……… click below for more ↓

Sex, violence and TV shows

2014-08-31 2021-05-15 Culture / Media Issues / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

We just finished watching the third season of Game of Thrones on DVD this past weekend. Before that, we watched The White Queen, another DVD series (one season only, although it deserved more). As we watched both, I found myself wondering why directors and producers felt the need to insert gratuitous – but apparently obligatory – explicit scenes of sex and violence that really had little to do with either plot or character development. The same questions arose when I watched Deadwood, The Sopranos, First Blood and Boardwalk Empire. Personally, I found these explicit bits distracting, like commercials, because they ……… click below for more ↓

Great books: the academic view

2014-08-21 2021-05-15 Books & Reviews / Culture / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

In the mid-1990s, journalist David Denby took on a personal challenge to return to Columbia University for a year to take two courses, both focused on reading the “great books” of the Western canon. The results and his observations – along with an entertaining bit of biography about his journey – is told in Great Books (Simon & Schuster, 1996). I was interested in Denby’s narrative primarily because, in looking through the table of contents, I noticed he commented on Machiavelli and Montaigne – two of my favourite writers. That made me want to read what he says about them, ……… click below for more ↓

Dave Clark Five

2014-08-10 2021-05-15 Culture / Music & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

We’re sitting on the front deck listening to British Sixties Radio, an internet radio station we like and listen to a lot, and they just played the Dave Clark Five doing Glad All Over. That song came out on the UK charts in January, 1964, reaching North America a bit later. Fifty years ago this year. I was a young teenager then, not long moved to a new apartment, going to high school, and listening to the music of the British Invasion on the transistor radio I carried everywhere with me. In another year or so, I would be moved ……… click below for more ↓

Finding my muse in Montaigne

2014-08-09 2014-08-09 Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / Culture / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Muse: a source of inspiration; especially a guiding genius; the imaginary force thought to provide inspiration to poets, writers, artists, etc. A muse, for modern writers, is that indefinable force that drives us to write. It’s part imagination, part inspiration. I suspect there’s a heady brew of psychology and biology at work, too. Why write instead of, say, paint? Or sculpt? Or compose? I don’t know. It just is, for me, the thing my muse – however you define that – compels me to pursue. It compels others, though in different ways, and many in much more creative and innovative ……… click below for more ↓

Neolithic site dig uncovers sophisticated structures

2014-08-01 2014-08-01 Critical Thinking / Culture / England and Britain / History & Biography / Media Issues / Places & Geography / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

A Neolithic site in the Orkney Islands shows our ancestors had sophisticated building skills more than 5,000 years ago. According to a story in The Scotsman, A groundbreaking excavation of a 5,000-year-old temple complex in Orkney has uncovered evidence to suggest that prehistoric people were a great deal more sophisticated than previously thought. The archaeological dig at the Ness of Brodgar, which is still in its early stages, has already thrown up discoveries that archaeologists say will force us to re-evaluate our understanding of how our ancestors lived. The picture that has emerged so far points to a complex and ……… click below for more ↓