Ave Atque Vale Cheeta
One of the last remaining survivors of the Golden Age of Hollywood has passed away:
Back in the Sixties the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies were replayed endlessly on TV, and as a boy I loved them. Completely inaccurate as to Africa, and with plots as skimpy as some of the costumes worn by Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane, they were always good, and, not infrequently, hilarious entertainment. I have always treasured Tarzan’s commentary on the legal system in Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942) where an evil circus owner is attempting to use the courts to win custody of Boy: Continue reading
Sly, Bruno, and Arnold Together Again
Action films have always been a favorite of mine and nothing comes close to action as those from the 80s. With Expendables 2 coming out any man worth his salt will make a beeline to the nearest theater to watch an ensemble of some of the best of the 80s and today’s action stars.
In addition to Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger you see my personal favorite Jason Statham along with Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Chuck Norris, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Of course there are more, but I’ll let you all figure the rest out in this trailer.
Susannah York of ‘A Man For All Seasons’, Requiescat In Pace
Susannah York succumbed to cancer this past Friday at the age of 72.
She is best remembered for portraying Saint Thomas More‘s daughter, Margaret More, in what is arguably the greatest Catholic film of all time, A Man For All Seasons.
She was very beautiful and enchanting and her role as Margaret More captured the essences of an integrated Catholic life that is an excellent example for laypeople everywhere today.
The following clip is that of the King paying his Lord Chancellor, Saint Thomas More, a visit on his estate. The King encounters More’s family and is introduced to More’s daughter, Margaret, at the :45 mark of the clip. They engage in conversation at the 1:32 mark of the clip. The entire 10 minutes should be viewed to really enjoy her performance and appreciate the film itself:
Here is the trailer to that magnificent Catholic film, A Man For All Seasons:
Post script: I was unable to find out if Susannah York was a Catholic or not, but her portrayal of Margaret More is a fine example of living a Catholic life.
Cross-posted at Gulf Coast Catholic.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen on the Silver Screen
A new documentary on the life of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen will be shown in movie theaters as pre-release screenings. It will also be available in DVD format (TBD).
A brief synopsis of the film is provided by the distributor (with minor editing):
“Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: Servant of All” is a one-hour documentary that tells the story of Sheen and the tremendous impact he had on individuals, the Catholic community, the American public, and the world. Divided into five main sections, the film uses still images, video footage and interviews with those who knew Sheen to tell the story of this remarkable man, gifted teacher, missionary, priest, and loyal son of the Church.
Sneak Peak At There Be Dragons Movie Trailer
UPDATE at the BOTTOM
The famous director of the movies The Mission and The Killing Fields, Roland Joffe, has just released a trailer teaser to his new film he is producing that encapsulates the early life of Saint Josemaria Escriva.
The film is about a news reporter investigating the life of his father where he discovers that his father was a lifelong friend of Saint Josemaria Escriva.
C.S. Lewis Book, The Great Divorce, Coming to the Big Screen
The following is from Alex Birko of the A.V. Club reporting on C.S. Lewis‘s book, The Great Divorce, being produced into a movie:
Last week marked the arrival of the trailer for the third “Chronicles Of Narnia” movie, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, and as everybody knows, C.S. Lewis news always comes in twos. It appears that Lewis’ religious allegory The Great Divorce is the latest of his work be slated for the big screen, according to Variety’s announcement that production studios Beloved Pictures and Mpower Pictures are joining forces to co-produce. Children’s author N.D. Wilson, known for the 100 Cupboards fantasy trilogy and his parodies of the Left Behind series, is attached to adapt the screenplay. With luck, the arrival of Mpower (The Stoning Of Soroya M.) will jump-start the project, and let it avoid the seemingly never-ending gestation plaguing the film adaptation of Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, which was announced back in 2006, scheduled for a 2008 release, and delayed until 2010. It’s seen little discernable progress since.
Under the Roman Sky
A new film, Under the Roman Sky, starring James Cromwell as Pius XII, details the heroic efforts of Pius XII to save the Jews of Rome from the Nazis, after Rome came under Nazi occupation subsequent to the fall of Mussolini following the Allied invasion of southern Italy in 1943.
Rabbi David G. Dalin, in his review of a Moral Reckoning, a tome by Daniel Goldhagen which sought to blame Catholicism for the Holocaust, details the efforts of the Pope to save the Jews of Rome:
Goldhagen’s centerpiece is the outrageous allegation that Pius XII “did not lift a finger to forfend the deportations of the Jews of Rome” or of other parts of Italy “by instructing his priests and nuns to give the hunted Jewish men, women and children sanctuary.” Much of this is lifted straight from anti-Pius books like Susan Zuccotti’s Under His Very Windows–and thus Goldhagen repeats the errors of those books and adds extras, all his own, in his determined attempt to extend their thesis into over-the-top railings against the sheer existence of Catholicism.
Sergeant York and Gary Cooper-Part II
Continuing on from the first part of this post on Sergeant York and Gary Cooper.
Frank James Cooper, a\k\a Gary Cooper, was a child of the last century, being born into it on May 7, 1901, the son of Charles and Alice Cooper. Unlike Alvin C. York, Cooper was born into a prosperous family, his father being a farmer turned attorney who would eventually serve on the Montana Supreme Court. His parents were English immigrants from Bedfordshire, and from 1910-1913, Gary and his brother were educated in England.
After high school, Cooper went on to study at Grinnell College for a few years, although he did not receive a degree. After an unsuccessful attempt to earn a living as an editorial cartoonist in Helena, he followed his parents out to Los Angeles where they had retired. Cooper later said that if he was going to starve, he might as well do it where it was warm rather than where it was freezing.
Out in the land of fruits and nuts, Cooper tried his hand at many things in order to earn a living: promoter for a photographer, a seller of electrical signs and even applied for work as an ink-stained wretch at a newspaper. Out of desperation for employment rather than any burning desire to be an actor, Cooper began to work as an extra in movies. A friend, Nan Collins, advised him to change his name to Gary after her hometown of Gary, Indiana, and Cooper took her advice. After several years as an extra, Cooper achieved early stardom in the western, The Virginian. Although he would appear in every type of film imaginable in his career, Cooper always appeared most comfortable in Westerns, a genre which fit his understated, laid back acting style, and his laconic speech. Cooper specialized in playing ordinary decent men, trying to do their best in extraordinary situations. He also had a flair for comedy where his dead pan delivery, combined with a dry wit, ensured laughter whatever “funny” lines he was attempting to deliver.
The archetypal film during this period of his career for Cooper was The Westerner where he played a cowboy who tangled with “Judge” Roy Bean, “Law West of the Pecos”, magnificently portrayed by Walter Brennan who appeared with Cooper in several films, including Sergeant York as York’s pastor. The film is a skillful mixture of comedy and drama, with Cooper giving a bravura performance.
Alvin C. York had been approached by Hollywood producer Jesse Lasky several times, beginning in 1919, to make a movie of his life. Each time he refused, summing up his position simply with the phrase, “This uniform ain’t for sale.”
Gibbon, Hypatia and Bigotry
One of my favorite historians is Edward Gibbon. I have made my way through his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire several times. I find his style entertaining, his wit dry, and his scholarship, for his time, adequate. Unfortunately Gibbon was also an anti-Catholic bigot, in part a reaction to a brief conversion to the Faith as a teen-ager, which exposed him to considerable paternal displeasure. His bigotry is on full display whenever he treats of the Church, but usually he does not distort the facts. That was not the case in his account of the female philosopher Hypatia, and the fate she met in Egypt in 391 AD. That account, usually in distorted form, is a staple of anti-Catholic and atheist websites. Now Hypatia is the heroine of a Catholic bashing movie Agora. The English trailer of the movie is at the top of this post. David Hart has a superb post at First Things correcting Gibbon and the movie.
The occasion of my misery is the release of Alejandro Amenábar’s film Agora, which purports to be a historical account of the murder of the female philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob in the early fifth century, of the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, and (more generally) of an alleged conflict that raged in the ancient world between Greek science and Christian faith. I have not actually seen the movie, and have no intention of doing so (I would say you couldn’t pay me to watch it, but that’s not, strictly speaking, true). All I know about it is what I have read in an article by Larry Rohter in the New York Times. But that is enough to put my teeth on edge.
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