The movie Million Dollar Baby walked away with far too many Oscars this year, what with it bein’ a pro-euthanasia flick an’ all.
The Passion of the Christ deserved best pic, not this flick.
(EARTH TO HOLLYWOOD!!! HELLOOOOOOO!!!)
Some try to defend Million Dollar Baby on the grounds that, despite its problematic euthanasia message, "It’s just a movie."
Not Ed Peters.
The mad Arab Abdul Alhazred (a.k.a. H. P. Lovecraft) has had a volume published by the Library of America, a prestigious non-profit publisher devoted to preserving the works of America’s greatest writers.
In the judgment of author Michael Dirda, that means he’s entered the American canon.
(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who pointed it out!)
Excerpts:
NO FULL UNDERSTANDING OF MODERN literature is possible without taking into account an exceedingly peculiar, self-educated, semi-recluse from Providence named Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
That is a conclusion no one, including Lovecraft himself, would have predicted. As he was dying in 1937 at age forty-six, he may well have felt he had lived in vain. His stories–sixty or seventy works of various lengths and completeness–resided in scattered notebooks and throwaway pulp magazines, uncollected and unlikely to be remembered.
But it now seems beyond dispute that H.P. Lovecraft is the most important American writer of weird fiction in the twentieth century–and one of the century’s most influential writers of any kind of fiction. His admirers range from the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges to such contemporary masters of darkness as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. Each year winners of the "World Fantasy Award" take home a trophy modeled on Lovecraft’s gaunt, lantern-jawed face. Nearly every author of supernatural fiction and dark fantasy sooner or later tries his hand at a Lovecraftian homage or pastiche.
The article contains some good analysis of Lovecraft’s literary work, but it also contains information on Lovecraft’s private side:
Lovecraft–under-sexed, neurasthenic, a Mama’s boy–actually got married in 1924, to a Jewish woman who described him, mirabile dictu, as "an adequately excellent lover." The couple resided in hated New York City for two years, until the marriage broke up and Lovecraft happily moved back home to Providence. In his later years, this once wholly introspective voyager traveled all around eastern America, from Quebec to New Orleans, from Cleveland to Key West.
He actually competed in an ice-cream eating contest and was reportedly offered the editorship of a periodical called the Magazine of Fun. He remained an almost literally starving writer, however, with so little income at one point that he ate his suppers out of cans, being unable to afford a stove. A typical dinner might consist of cold hot dogs, biscuits, and mayonnaise. Lovecraft died from cancer in 1937: forty-six years old and apparently doomed to be forgotten.
I can sympathize with Lovecraft’s poverty, as there was a time in grad school when I was so dirt poor in Arkansas that we were in constant danger of being evicted from our apartment, we couldn’t afford much-needed medicine, dollar packs of hot dogs were a principle means of subsistence, and cheese was something I regarded as "rich man’s food." I well remember picking loose change out of the couch to try to get enough coins that my wife and I could go to the market for a pack of hot dogs and a can of frozen lemonade, which would represent all the food we’d have to eat, ’cause the cupboard was bare.
Another summer (before I was married), I was so poor that all I could afford to eat was 17 cent boxes of low-quality, generic, Always Save Macaroni & Cheese–every single day. While macaroni & cheese had previously been a favorite dish, I couldn’t stand the thought of eating it for several years afterward.
Something that the article doesn’t mention is that Lovecraft’s friend, correspondent, and fellow weird fiction author Clark Ashton Smith (whom Lovecraft referred to as Klarkash-Ton) attributed Lovecraft’s death to malnutrition. Apparently Lovecraft was so impoverished that at certain points he was subsisting on food costing only $1.40 a week (a ridiculously small sum even in the 1930s).
Perhaps it was severe malnutrition that weakened his immune system enough to allow his stomach cancer to develop.
Bitterly ironic that a man who ate so little would be killed by a disease that gave him intense stomach pains.
Even more bitter is the fact that Lovecraft would have made more money if he had written more fiction, but criticism of his work demoralized him as a writer, keeping him from writing as much as he otherwise would have.
Now he’s considered one of the giants of 20th century American literature.
I still don’t buy his thesis that the universe is vast and uncaring and doesn’t give a whit about puny men.
God still loves H. P. Lovecraft.
A reader from another country writes:
This is another of those music copying questions. There was an old recording of a book on LP in the 1970’s (I think). As far as I know, the record is no longer for sale. You can buy second hand versions at some cost over the internet, but they seem to be very limited in number.
Anyway, a man has put mp3’s of his old LP on the internet. He’s not selling them and says he’ll remove the files if they’re ever re-released by the record company. In this situation, is it licit to download these files, with the knowledge that the quality is poor and that no-one is being deprived of their fair wages from it? A person I know has made a CD of the mp3 files for me and I would like to hear them, but I don’t want to steal!
Not wanting to steal is the right attitude to have! Kudos!
Unfortunately, I don’t know what the law in your country (which shall remain nameless) would say about whether or not this is stealing.
Let me therefore prescind from the legal question to look at the moral question. As we covered in The Moral Question, the sin of theft is "usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner" (CCC 2408).
Let’s ask, therefore, whether it would be against the reasonable will of the owner to object to you downloading these .mp3s:
What the civil law may say about the matter, I couldn’t tell you, but in terms of the moral law that the action would not count as the sin of theft if done under the conditions just named.
One of the books I’m currently reading is titled The King In Yellow. It was first published in 1895, which makes it young in comparison to some of the books I read.
What’s interesting about it (among other things) is that it’s a kind of sci-fi/horror anthology of stories that are all loosely connected by a play they all mention. The title of the play is "The King In Yellow," and it is a most remarkable play. We only get a few snatches of dialogue from it and only the vaguest hints of what it is about, but the characters who read it in the stories have the unfortunate tendency to either go completely insane or suffer a horrible doom of some sort.
The author of The King In Yellow was Robert W. Chambers. It is his best-remembered book and is highly thought of by horror authors, some of whom included references to it and things it mentions in their own works. Unfortunately, they have somewhat less regard for some of Chambers’ later works. Apparently he decided that it was better to be a well-fed best-selling author rather than a starving artist, and he ended up turning his literary output in a more commercial direction.
I don’t know what Chambers’ religion was, but there is a surprising amount of positive material in it about the Catholic Church (so far), and Catholic themes are prominent in several stories (including, obviously, "The Street of Our Lady of the Fields").
It’s interesting reading sci-fi from 1895. The first story in the collection ("The Rapairer of Reputations") is set in 1920, and it’s interesting to see a turn-of-the-century perception of what the futuristic year 1920 would be like. (Among other things, they have euthanasia chambers on public streets in major cities.)
It’s kind of interesting, though, that everybody in 1920 is still riding horses. Chambers didn’t anticipate Henry Ford’s unleashing of the automobile on America. Which brings to mind some
REMARKS MICHAEL CRICHTON MADE.
Chambers also probably didn’t envision (a) that someone in 2005 would be reading his book and (b) that they would be reading it in the way I am: I downloaded the text from the Internet and ran it through my speech-synthesizer to output it as .mp3 files that I can now listen to on my computer or via my iPod or in my . . . pickup. (Sorry; horses don’t typically have .mp3 players installed on them.)
READ THE KING IN YELLOW–IF YOU DARE! (WARNING: There is some material in it that can offend modern sensibilities.)
J. Michael Straczynski has been hinting for some time that there was a Babylon 5 movie in the offing, titled Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows.
Rumors emerged earlier this year that he was having problems with Warner Brothers over the casting of the movie. Some roles (such as Technomage Galen) were apparently under pressure to be cast with different (and more popular) actors.
Now JMS tells us that the movie deal is off . . . for now. And that he can’t use the script he wrote for it should a movie deal be revived with someone else. (Makes me glad that he, apparently, didn’t tell the story of the Telepath Crisis–as I was hoping–in this script).
JMS writes:
The rule of thumb in Hollywood is that for every thousand scripts that get written, only a few dozen get into development, and out of those, only one will ever get made…if that.
A little over a year ago, I was approached by a company that wanted to make a Babylon 5 movie. They optioned the rights, and commissioned a script. (It’s worth mentioning that I, not WB, own the rights to a B5 movie. When we were negotiating the original B5 deal — by whose terms I will never see a dime in profit — the one thing they did let me have were the movie rights, figuring they’d never be worth anything in the long run.)
Anyway…on December 27th of 2003, the script for "The Memory of Shadows" was turned in, and the process began of trying to make the deal work with all the various forces involved. It is, to say the least, a very difficult process on any movie where the studio does not directly take the financial reins. In terms of B5, Warner’s position was esssentially, "We only do big-budget movies with big names, so you’re on your own." If there were big-name movie actors in the film, they’d get behind it; without that, things become very problematic, especially as far as the financing was concerned. You much have to put together a consortium of international interests and business plans rivaled in complexity only by the Allied invasion of Normandy Beach.
Nonetheless, every attempt was made by the people involved to get this deal in place. This was not being done by Doug or myself, but rather by the company/individuals who approached us and optioned the rights. At times, it seemed we were inches away from a deal…stages were reserved at Elstree, actors were contacted, a director was in place, the script went through many revisions, a few key staff were hired, again not by me…it was really a year-long roller coaster ride. During that time, the people involved, with every good intention, tried very hard to pull the necessary pieces together on the deal. The option expired in late December 2004, but I renewed it without cost, to give those involved more time to try and make things work.
In the end, however, the deal could be put together, and it did not look as if that was going to change at any point in the foreseeable future. So the option has reverted, and to all intents and purposes, the project has dead ended. Nor do I think this particular incarnation will arise again at any point in the future, though prognostication has always been a tricky art, especially if you have to do it without the benefit of hindsight.
This was not the first time someone’s taken a run at a B5 feature film, and it will not be the last. Eventually it will happen, because such things are simply inevitable. If they can do a Brady Bunch movie, you can be sure that sooner or later, somebody’s going to do a B5 movie. The only thing I can say without equivocation is that when that day comes, as the rights-holder, I will make darned sure that it’s done right, because I’d rather have no B5 movie than one that doesn’t live up to what fans and I myself would want to see.
To that end…I can wait.
Anyway, just thought you should know the story.
jms
[SOURCE.]
What do you do for an encore if you’ve made The Passion of the Christ?
I read one interview where Mel Gibson talked about making a film version of the books of Maccabees. (Lotsa blood n’ gut in that saga.)
But now a British magazine is reporting that Mel’s next film is slated to be about
Specifically: It is reported to be an adaption of the novel Stealing from Angels, which came out late last year. The novel is a fictionalized account of a man from New York who gets swept up in European intrigue and comes into contact with the Third Secret and the assassination attempt on John Paul II’s life back in 1981 (presumably the novel is set back then).
In-teresting. Could be a good movie. Mel might still changes his plans, though, (or the report might be wrong) but this sounds like it could be both right up his alley and a commercial success (though not on the same level as TPOTC).
GET THE STORY. (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this.)
Want spoilers for the movie?
GET THE BOOK. (Caveat emptor: I haven’t read it.)
What do you do for an encore if you’ve made The Passion of the Christ?
I read one interview where Mel Gibson talked about making a film version of the books of Maccabees. (Lotsa blood n’ gut in that saga.)
But now a British magazine is reporting that Mel’s next film is slated to be about
Specifically: It is reported to be an adaption of the novel Stealing from Angels, which came out late last year. The novel is a fictionalized account of a man from New York who gets swept up in European intrigue and comes into contact with the Third Secret and the assassination attempt on John Paul II’s life back in 1981 (presumably the novel is set back then).
In-teresting. Could be a good movie. Mel might still changes his plans, though, (or the report might be wrong) but this sounds like it could be both right up his alley and a commercial success (though not on the same level as TPOTC).
GET THE STORY. (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this.)
Want spoilers for the movie?
GET THE BOOK. (Caveat emptor: I haven’t read it.)
A reader writes:
Thanks for all you do, God is smiling on you! Since Relevant Radio has move C.A. spot to 2pm I rarely get a change to hear your wisdom any more. I caught a bit last week, a listener asked about free masonry and you refer him to a book by Fr. Whelan at Ignatius, I think! I went to the Ignatius web sight and can not find it. Did I remember the information incorrectly? I appreciate any response.
The book was CHRISTIANITY AND AMERICAN FREEMASONRY by William Whalen.
Given the sensationalistic nature of most books on Freemasonry, this is the only one out there that I can recommend at present.
A piece back a reader wrote to suggest that I do a permapost on book recommendations drawing together the various recommends I’ve made from time to time (a la what I do with Lent questions in Annual Lent Fight). I’ve decided to do so, so here goes.
(I’m not sure if I’ve got all the recommends, so if anybody finds ones that I’ve missed in the archives, e-mail me. Thanks!)
This list will become more organized over time.
. . . Or at least all of us who want to know.
Here’s the explanation for why Klingons in the 23rd century were human-appearing, while those before and after are forehead-ridgers.
The episode of Star Trek: Enterprise that establishes the on-screen explanation should have aired in everyone’s town by now, but lest anyone not want to know, I’ll put the spoilers in white-on-white, so you have to select the text (by swiping it or hitting Ctrl-A) to see it.
Here goes:
So there!
That explains:
for this week’s episode, which spells it out in more detail.