8 Walt Disney Quotes That Are Actually Fake
Remembering Mister Rogers: 10 Heartwarming Quotes (Photos). Happy Birthday, Fred.
Martin Lloyd-Jones as an Evangelist
Jeff Robinson says many people who praise Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones seem to forget his strengths as an evangelist who prayed earnestly for revival. Pastor Tim Keller says he was wonderful influenced by Lloyd-Jones style of preaching to unbelievers, such as what Robinson describes:
In an age where it sometimes seems that John 3:16 is the earliest verse in the canon that ought to be marshalled for winning lost souls, Lloyd-Jones’s approach to evangelism might seem curious. But [Iain] Murray lists three primary reasons why the Doctor chose to use the Old Testament so often in seeking the conversion of sinners:
1. It reveals sin in its true nature. Murray writes, “Lloyd-Jones believed that the true difference between moralizing preaching on the Old Testament and true evangelistic preaching is that moralizing deals only with sin in terms of symptoms and secondary features. The essence of sin, the true seriousness of sin, can only begin to be understood when it is seen in terms of a wrong relationship and attitude to God himself.”
How True Crime Tales Affect Their Subjects
True Crime stories don’t live in isolation. They purport to tell the truth from recent history, and sometimes their authors become players in the story. Here are five True Crime accounts that have stirred up the cases they describe.
No single case has probably generated more quality standalone volumes in true crime than that of Jeffery MacDonald. MacDonald was an Army doctor whose pregnant wife and two daughters were murdered in their home in 1970. According to MacDonald, Manson-like hippies attacked him and his family. After a military court failed to make the charges stick, MacDonald returned to civilian life but was eventually indicted in 1974. Then, following a lengthy appeals process over the sixth amendment that went all the way to the Supreme Court, he was tried and convicted of the murders in 1979. Before the trial, MacDonald had granted nearly unrestricted access to writer Joe McGinniss in the hopes that McGinniss would write a sympathetic book that argued his innocence. The result was 1983’s Fatal Vision, which squarely pointed the finger at MacDonald and was adapted into a TV movie. In 1987, MacDonald sued McGinniss for fraud and, after a mistrial, they settled out of court. The dispute between them was the subject of Janet Malcolm’s 1990 classic nonfiction media meditation, The Journalist and the Murderer. In 2012, [True Crime author] Errol Morris published his own investigation into the MacDonald case, A Wilderness of Error, and argued in favor of MacDonald’s innocence.
Ken Priebe on “Song of the Sea”
Jeffrey Overstreet talks about Tomm Moore’s animation. “This time, I invited animator and author Ken Priebe — a man whose imagination seems to exist in a state of perpetual invention. Ken literally wrote the book (books, plural, actually) on stop animation, and we have found that we have very similar passions for the works of Jim Henson, Pixar, and, yes, Tomm Moore.”
Moore’s movies, Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells, are visually arresting, magical animations that stand apart from everything else out there. Priebe says, “The one difference is that in [Song of the Sea], the song itself is almost another character in the film, and a recurring motif that is woven through the story (even the title). In Kells, the song is a highlight of one particular surprising moment in the story.”
Comparing it to another recent movie: “Big Hero 6 also dealt with loss of a family member as a theme, but not with the same level of resonance and beauty as this film does. I’m still trying to figure out why, but I think it may have something to do with the mystical elements, connection to nature, and mythological motifs vs. a story that is driven by lots of fast action and technology, which we are all too bombarded with these days.”
The Inspector Skelgill mysteries, by Bruce Beckham
This is spring break week in my graduate courses, so I thought I’d be able to slow down a bit (since of course there’s still class work to catch up on), and do a little blogging.
But lo, I have a translation job to do which is just large enough to maybe fit into the time I’ll have.
But blast it, I’ve been meaning to write this short review, and I’ll write it.
The Inspector Skelgill mysteries, set in England’s Lake District, are another in the currently fashionable sub-genre of the Difficult Detective. The Difficult Detective is brilliant but hard to get along with. Sherlock Holmes was the prototypical Difficult Detective, but Inspector Morse and TV’s “House” (who was indeed based on Holmes) are popular iterations.
Inspector Skelgill is a police detective who might be called “good in the field” — quite literally, since he’s an outdoorsman who resents any minute spent indoors. His favorite spare time activities are fishing on the lakes (he rows his own boat) and “fell running” — that is, running in the mountains. As a result he’s generally running a calorie deficit, which leads him to constantly steal other people’s food — “Are you going to finish those chips?” He also almost never picks up a check. He appear to be moderate on the autism spectrum, a little callous to the feelings of either crime victims, criminals, or his colleagues. He also generally ignores the orders of his superiors, but his success in solving cases secures his job for him — a little past the point of credibility.
The best thing about this series (I’ve read the first three, Murder in Adland, Murder on the Edge, and Murder in School) is the descriptions of the Lake District scenery, lovingly portrayed.
The worst thing, all in all, is Skelgill himself. I got kind of tired of his act after a while, although in the third book he showed some signs of moderating his selfishness. Still, I’ll probably give him a rest for a while.
The usual cautions for language, violence, and adult themes, though nothing excessive by contemporary standards.
Film: Where We Started
“Where We Started offers a reminder of how prosaic sin frequently is: it’s neither murderous villainy nor forbidden secret pleasures, but simply broken people breaking themselves a little further. . . . It’s also a picture of what Christian cinema could be, if only Christians had a bit more imagination.” Luke Harrington reviews an indie film that doesn’t try to topple the Golden Gate Bridge with CGI.
‘Not Surprising,’ the Insensitivity at Wheaton, Moody
Barnabas Piper, who studied at Wheaton and worked at Moody, says it’s sad but not surprising to hear of racial insensitivity at both institutions. “The American church has never been ahead of society when it comes to race,” he says. “The white church has remained silent on race, comfortable in our majority culture and the benefits of it. And what should we expect?”
‘Heaven Hunts Round’
What’s It Feel Like to Be Irish?
The Irish Independent has gathered response from several Irish young people who love to talk about being Irish. The Irish on YouTube are flagging themselves with #WhatItMeansToBeIrish, both there and on Twitter.
James Mitchell says they have a great sense of humor. He “discusses how much everyone wants to be Irish – and how much the Irish hate it. ‘I once had someone tell me they were Irish… (because) they loved the colour green… Seriously.'”
Writing is Hard
The author of Making Nice, Matt Sumell, talks about why writing is hard, how autobiographic his fiction is, and the fact he almost dropped out of his MFA program many times.
Every story is different, and every story comes with its own specific difficulties, so every story also comes with its own specific anxiety and panic until it’s done. Only—as they say—it’s never done, just abandoned. Cycle through that for a few years, a couple decades, and maybe you’ll develop a base level of frustration. Maybe you’ll get depressed. Maybe you’ll chuck a chair, or a candle, or punch a wall. If you’re like me, maybe you’ll punch a wall and then get mad at your pants when your swollen hand doesn’t slip into the pocket easily.