Canter Bridge

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As I settle in to write this review, perfectly suitable used copies of this early Naxos CD are going for a dollar on amazon.com. Where do you find value like that? It’s like scratching around for an affordable one-room apartment and then stumbling on a tidy mansion whose owner will turn it over to you for $199/month. Continue Reading »

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Harrison Ford shines in this lingering over the close-quarter differences between Pennsylvania’s Amish people and the ‘English’ life that by contrast seems so rude in this 1985 screen gem. Yet twenty-two years later, it is the young Kelly McGillis who nearly melts the screen with this early performance as Rachel, the Amish widow who takes in Harrison’s ‘John Book’ and grows into love with a fugitive from ‘the city’ whose own heart grows entwined with the Amish way. Continue Reading »

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One longs for a movie that treats a great artist’s life as something other than the ravings of a madman. Continue Reading »

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Some people hear things others never do. Of these, a few write them down. Of these, a small number create a theme and variations upon it that cohere and enthrall. Continue Reading »

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Although the UK-released EMI version of this twenty-track album that I own is subtitled ‘Music for Pleasure’, I must confess that I approached the task of this review with less than pleasure-filled thoughts. I came away from it with the same mixed bag of sentiments. Continue Reading »

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The math tells a story.

The 20 songs on this UK EMI anthology add up to 49 minutes and 41 seconds of music. That’s 2 minutes and 48 seconds, just over half of length of today’s average rock, pop, or folk offering. Could it be that 2 and 3/4 minutes was about all a listener could take of tunes like ‘Surfer Girl’ and ‘I’m so Young’?

Maybe. Continue Reading »

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Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is simply the finest motion picture ever made. Continue Reading »

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The same gentle irony that Karen Blixen brought to the interplay of faith and human experience in Out of Africa is to be observed in full flower in this delightfully quirky film adaptation of her short story called Babette’s Feast. Blixen found the French fathers in Kenya a bit rigid and self-interested, yet she expressed this with kindness and patience. She does the same here with her Lutheran Danes. Continue Reading »

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There’s only a handful of words you hope never to catch yourself saying without a due period of reflection: ‘I love you.’ ‘That dress makes you look fat.’ ‘Have you put on a few pounds?’ ‘Nobody will notice.’ Continue Reading »