Month: August 2022

Midweek Myers Movie Review: Finding Neverland (2004)

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It is perhaps a sad commentary on our times—or on my own twisted imagination—that when I saw the title of the film Audre Myers‘s reviewed this week, I thought it might have something to do with Michael Jackson’s troubled, unusual relationships with minors.

Fortunately, that was not the case (which would have been quite incongruous for Audre), and instead she offered up a lovely review of what sounds like a lovely film.

There seems to be a whole genre of these films now, something that might be called a “whimsical biopic.”  They tend to focus on harmlessly eccentric Brits who lived quirky lives and created memorable children’s book characters or the like.

Well, I’m all for them.  Give me a rose-tinted view of historic Britishness any day!

With that, here is Audre’s review of 2004’s Finding Neverland:

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Chapel Lesson: Listening

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Now that The Age of The Virus is pretty much over, my school has resumed its normal schedule of weekly events, most of which were shuttered during those two, long, pointlessly fearful years.  Part of that schedule is Chapel on Thursday mornings.

Years ago, we had a regular chaplain, a crusty ex-Marine and Episcopal reverend whom I loved dearly (his widow gave me several of his shirts and a leather bag, which I still carry to this day).  After his passing, we went through a parade of youth pastors of various stripes and backgrounds, and briefly brought in a charismatic black man who shouted inspirationally at the students (and frequently showed up late, or not at all).

We now have a young Spanish teacher—a very sweet, unassuming fellow, who is probably six-and-a-half-feet tall—who will serve as our chaplain.  However, he’s a shy man—a gentle giant—and wasn’t quite ready to dive into Chapel this year.  As such, the administration asked me to deliver the first little lesson of the year.

It’s a responsibility I took seriously, but also willingly.  I prayed about what I should cover, and while flipping through a devotional from The Daily Encouraging Word, I found a good lesson from James 1:19 about listening.

It was a good, broad message that is applicable even for non-believers, and I thought it’d make a good, quick lesson for students, who often need to be reminded to listen closely and not to jump to conclusions (many adults—myself included!—need to be reminded of this lesson, too!).  The five tips are directly from the DEW devotional, but I added in some verses I’d been mulling over from Proverbs.

It was remarkable to me how the Holy Spirit placed these related verses in front of me as I was putting this little talk together.  I’ve been reading and rereading Proverbs, reading one chapter a day for each day of the month, and it’s really deepened my understanding of the wisdom contained therein.  It just so happened that there was a great passage from Proverbs 25 the morning I was to give the chapel lesson, so it fit in nicely.

To God Be the Glory!

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Best Films: #10: Better Off Dead (1985)

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After nearly five months of going through the worst films, Ponty and I have decided to launch a list of what we consider the best films of all time.

I don’t know about Ponty’s list, but for me, I’m treating this list partially as my favorite films of all time.  As much as I love writing movie reviews, I’m no professional critic, so what I consider to be the “best” might also just happen to coincide heavily with what I consider to be my “favorite” movies.  I’m sure there are technical and artistic grounds on which films could be deemed “better” than others, or the “best” compared to other films, but I’m not necessarily diving into those flicks.

Which brings me to this week’s pick for the #10 ten slot (although, honestly, it could be higher; ironically, it’s here at #10 just because I watched it recently):  the 1985 absurdist romantic comedy Better Off Dead:

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Lazy Sunday CLX: More Movies, Part XXIII: Portly’s Worst Films, Part I

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We checked out the #10, #9, and #8 picks from Ponty last Sunday, so here are my same picks from our Top Ten Worst Films countdown, which we’ve been doing since March (and which we finally finished earlier this week).  With the exception of my #8 pick, I actually kind of enjoyed these films, but they were just very poorly executed:

That’s it for this Lazy Sunday!  Stay away from these films (but maybe pick up the soundtrack to Rocktober Blood).

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Unreality

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

There is a distinct sense of unreality hovering over the West lately.  I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this sensation—if you have, please leave a comment—but the Zeitgeist of our age seems to be a sense of alienated disconnection from Reality itself.  We’re living in a profoundly unserious time, led by unserious people, debating unserious problems.

Men can have babies.  Children can choose their gender.  Everything is just a social construct, after all; in such a world, anything imaginable is possible.  And while there is no fixed morality, we’re told, questioning the social construction that everything is a social construction is an assault on a truth that doesn’t exist—but it’s still bad, so don’t do it!

The pretzel logic of nihilistic relativism twists us into macabre perversions of ourselves.  Such is the consequence of embracing the unreal and rejecting Truth and Reality.

But Truth and Reality are there, whether we accept it or not.  And they hit hard.

This post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Ponty’s Friday Morning Video Game Review: Canis Canem Edit (Bully)

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I’m blessed with many contributors to this site, and their efforts have really lightened my load, especially as school has resumed.  One of my most regular contributors is the indefatigable Pontiac Dream 39, also known as Always a Kid for Today.  Here, we call him “Ponty.”

Like myself, Ponty is a gamer.  I don’t have much time for games these days, but I do enjoy the occasional round of something fun with friends—or just playing casually alone.  So it was a pleasant surprise to receive this review from him.

I actually pitched the idea of making Friday video game reviews a regular/semi-regular feature, but Ponty demurred.  That said, I’m hoping he’ll continue contributing video game reviews (he wrote a good review of a game developer for the site some time ago), although as we’re about to kick off our competing lists of the Top Ten Best Films, he may need a bit of a break from all this scribbling!

I never had the pleasure of playing this game, which was released here in the United States as, simply, Bully, before the usual band of moral scolds got the name changed to Canis Canem Edit, Latin for “dog eat dog.”  I do remember seeing it advertised, and finding the premise—a boy fighting against all the hierarchies, social and institutional, of a boarding school—an intriguing premise for a semi-sandbox-style game in the mold of Grand Theft Auto.  Based on Ponty’s review, it sounds like I missed out!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of Canis Canem Edit, or Bully:

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TBT^4: Back to School with Richard Weaver

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We’re back into the swing of things with the new school year, and as of the time of this writing, I have not yet made my annual dip into the introduction to Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences.  That’s due in part to my morning Bible study, which has taken precedence over other, non-work-related reading, and because I’m weary with how accurate Weaver’s prophetic scribblings are.

I’m by no means black pilled, though.  Sure, things are not good at the moment, but life goes on and God Is in Control.  The solution is not to embrace the black pill, but to take the Christ Pill.

Regardless, we can take some joy in our daily lives while recognizing the real dangers facing liberty and civilization.  Being a Christian shouldn’t have to mean accepting the erosion of religious liberty and the secularization of our culture.  Indeed, we’ve probably been too complacent, especially on the latter point.

As such, Richard Weaver’s insights are still worth pondering today.  Studying the diagnosis could suggest a cure, or at least a course of treatment.

With that, here is 20 August 2020’s “TBT^2: Back to School with Richard Weaver“:

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Midweek Myers Movie Review: King Kong (1933)

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Good ol’ Audre keeps delivering the goods with these film reviews.  Of course, all these movie reviews make me wonder if I should just morph The Portly Politico into a film review blog—maybe re-brand as “A Portly Night at the Movies” or something.

But there’s just too much other good stuff to bloviate about.  Still, there’s something magical about a good movie, and few movies are quite as magical as 1933’s King Kong.  There’s something whimsical—completely captivating—about this film:  the stop-motion Kong; the iconic scenes; the mighty ape fighting a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  It’s all so… cool!

So I was thrilled when Audre—quite out of the blue!—contributed this review of the film.  She captures that whimsy and magic and adventure so beautifully here.  And for a woman obsessed with Bigfoot, well, it makes sense she’d like movies about giant apes.

With that, here is Audre Myers’s review of 1933’s King Kong:

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Loomer and Liz

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Today Laura Loomer—the most censored woman in America—is taking a stab at the Republican nomination for her congressional district in Florida, which includes The Villages, the massive retirement community.  She’s running against incumbent Daniel Webster, who skipped the Trump impeachment vote and is therefore, according to Loomer, complicit in it, as well as some swarthy nobody who might get a couple of percentage points.

Laura Loomer’s election—if she wins the primary, she’ll very likely win the very pro-Trump Florida 11th congressional district—would be a major boon for the America First movement, and would be yet another repudiation of the Establishment Republicans who are content to fiddle about an “insurrection” while the nation burns.

That very same Establishment suffered a major defeat last week, when busybody and daddy’s princess Liz Cheney fell to a Trump-endorsed candidate in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s single congressional district.  Cheney’s defeat was a drubbing of epic proportions:  she only garnered 28.94% of votes cast, with her opponent Harriet Hageman winning with 66.33% of the vote.  Talk about a “repudiation of the Establishment Republicans,” am I right?

It’s a tale of two candidates.  Liz Cheney represents the ossified, corrupt, dynastic, moralistic, staid, boring, ineffectual, kabuki theatre style of politics that has haunted our dear Republic for the last century.  Loomer, on the other hand, is the bold, persecuted, spicy, fun, energetic, bombastic future.

If she wins today, it’s icing on the cake of Cheney’s defeat.

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