We watched Life of Pi last night, a film that has garnered much critical acclaim and won four coveted Oscar awards (although it has not been without controversies). I had struggled somewhat with the book (for reasons given below), but … Continue reading →
Continue readingTag: arts
Chadwick's Blog & Commentary: More’s Speech to the Mob
The scene is a riot, on the first day of May, 1517. It would later be known as Evil May Day,or Ill May Day. An angry mob, mostly comprised of apprentices, marched through the streets of London, their passion inflamed … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Notes for a Spring Evening
Late spring, Saturday night, sitting here surrounded by the trees and garden in full bloom, everything lush and full of life, my view from the front porch of verdant trees and garden, everything so very green. Peaceful. Relaxing. Would that … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: When did I become my parents?
I was driving down to Toronto, Saturday, listening to a CD with Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and several other singers of my parents’ generation, singing along, and I wondered aloud, “When did I become my parents?” When did … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Midway in our Life’s Journey…
So begins The Inferno, the first of the three books that comprise Dante’s magnificent and complex work, The Divine Comedy.* It’s a rich, complex and challenging read. I have to admit I have not read it all – all three books … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Musing on Melville’s Poetry
I came across a poem last night that I had not read in the past (always a pleasant thing to discover something new in one of your books)*. It is by Herman Melville, an author I associate with novels and … Continue reading →
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Iron Thingie 3 – The Wrap Up (-ish).
I’m not much for the Hollywood movie-culture scene. Either I’m getting to old or too smart for the usual smarm of what Hollywood has to offer; and on that note I’d like to think of my self in the later rather than the former category. Ironic self-delusion aside, pop
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Appreciating B-Movies
It drives Susan to distraction that I love B-flicks. She squirms and fidgets if I put one into the DVD player and can seldom sit through an entire movie. They get cut off mid-film, and saved for me some time … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Little Dorrit: BBC Drama
We just finished watching the 14-part BBC series of Little Dorrit. As usual with most BBC series, it was superbly cast, acted, paced and filmed. Each episode was a mere 30 minutes, and almost every one of them ended in … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: 10,000 or 20,000 hours?
Malcolm Gladwell introduced the concept of the “10,000-hour rule” in his 2008 book, Outliers. As Wikipedia describes it, “…the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship
I was 8, maybe 9 years old, when my parents gave me a hardcover copy of Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship by Victor Appleton II. Probably a birthday or Xmas present. I can’t recall which. I just recall how … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Snow White and the Huntsman reviewed
Take one part Brothers Grimm and one part Malory’s Morte d’Artur, add a dash of Tolkein, a pinch of Joan of Arc, a sprinkling of Robin Hood and a sprig of English folklore; mix it in a bowl with copious … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Shakespeare’s Lost Plays
Shakespeare’s canon, as it is known today, is incomplete. The Bard is known to have written several plays that were not, for various reasons, included in the First Folio printed shortly after his death. Other plays, several included in the … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Pulp Renaissance
In the late 1950s, I came across a copy (1912; an original edition, I believe) of Edgar Rice Burrough’s first published novel, Tarzan, The Ape Man, on my parent’s bookshelf in the basement. A forgotten book, one my father had … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Plato, Music and Misquotes
I spent a pleasant morning, Saturday, browsing through the works of Plato, hunting for the source of a quotation I saw on Facebook, today.* I did several textual searches for words, phrases and quotes on sites that offer his collected … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Missing Lines
The National Museum of Iraq – known originally as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum – once housed some of the oldest works of literature in the world. Treasures from the origins of civilization, from the cities of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria were on … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Profundity
In 1923, William Carlos Williams wrote one of the most profound poems in the English language: The Red Wheelbarrow. It reads like a Japanese Zen haiku: so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: April, the cruellest month
April, wrote T.S. Eliot in his remarkable poem, The Waste Land, is the “cruellest month.”* And not merely because of the inclement and unsettling weather that seems to mix winter with spring in unpredictable doses. Nor for the necessity of … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Enter Christopher Marlowe – Again
Back in the late 1990s, I wrote an essay about the “controversy” over who actually wrote the works of Shakespeare. I wrote, then, Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. The challenge to his authorship isn’t new: for the last … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Shaolin: the film
I like Chinese films, particularly the epic wuxia films. They are often a refreshing change from the effects-driven/CGI monstrosities pumped out by Hollywood. Subtitles don’t bother me (better them than dubbed). They remind me of the westerns of the 1950s, … Continue reading →
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