2,748 words

November 4, Day 1

On the gathering storm comes a tall, handsome man

With a dusty black coat and a red right hand.

Nick Cave, Red Right Hand

 Watching The US Presidential Election...

1,597 words

There have already been reports of election irregularities, raising the specter of another stolen election. As far as I know, however, the Trump campaign is merely hoping for the best, not...

2,803 words

The Weiser Book of Occult Detectives: 13 Stories of Supernatural Sleuthing

Edited by Judika Illes

York, Maine: Weiser Books, 2017

Dr. Raymond Stantz: You know what it could be? Past-life...

4,011 words

Before beginning the second instalment in this series of film reviews, let’s revisit the criteria.

Is the cast “diverse” only in a way that comports with historical facts, contemporary...

1,989 words

Bruce Springsteen performing on stage. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This past Thursday, rock n’ roll icon Bruce Springsteen gave a solo acoustic performance during a Kamala Harris...

3,329 words

Catherine Ruth Pakaluk

Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth

New York: Regnery Gateway, 2024

It is uncanny how many contemporary ideals find their common denominator...

3,037 words

The word “sleaze” has a strange history which has left it with a number of meanings. In the UK, it has become associated with political corruption, and has recently been brought back...

1,335 words

I can just imagine Woody Allen’s elevator pitch for Blue Jasmine: “Imagine Streetcar Named Desire, only Blanche du Bois was married to Bernie Madoff.” Yes, Blue Jasmine (2013) is derivative....

2,346 words

Isolationism Reconfigured (1995) by Eric A. Nordlinger

Professor Nordlinger passed away before Isolationism Reconfigured was published, so he couldn’t promote it on CSPAN and other...

1,761 words

Washed-out section of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Image source: National Park Service

Last week I spoke of my morose dread that when Hurricane...

6,206 words

Francis Ford Coppola

Megalopolis: A Fable

Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne

Produced, written...

1,794 words

Kaci Lenise-Charlie Sloan. Photo courtesy of Maricopa County Jail.

It was just another day for two teenage girls attending class at Arizona State University.

One of the girls was black...

5,816 words

Patrick J. Deneen

Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future

Sentinel, 2023

Patrick J. Deneen, a professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, came to prominence as the author of Why...

2,441 words

Huw Edwards, former BBC news presenter and a convicted paedophile. Image courtesy of Crown Prosecution Service

Hello, and welcome to Celebrity Paedophiles!

The phrase “two-tier policing”,...

2,450 words

The idea of the personal journey being self-documented on film is not new. Ross McEllwe’s autobiographical 1986 documentary Sherman’s March is a great example. McEllwe initially wanted...

2,237 words

In “They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To,” Angelo Plume’s paean to the film First Knight, he gives us a blow-by-blow account of the film, lamenting that such films don’t get made...

7,243 words

CHAPTER 6 THE FERN AND THE LATHE

The Technocratic Fallacy

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which...

2,020 words

When I was young, I saw most of Woody Allen’s early movies in bits and pieces on television: Sleeper, Bananas, Annie Hall, Love and Death, etc. There were funny bits, but mostly I found...

1,994 words

Perspectives change in the weirdest ways. Who would have thought a mere week ago that I would find myself defending Klaus Schwab? Certainly not me.

Well, it’s not “defending” so much...

5,132 words

This is the first in a series of film reviews wherein I’ll be looking at works of cinema that were made when subversion—whether of expectations, morals, facts, or source material—was...