Monthly Archives November 2022

Quick Take: Stephen King’s FAIRY TALE

I was a teenager when I first read Stephen King. The book was Salem’s Lot and the damn thing scared me so badly I didn’t pick up King again for two decades. Then came The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower series, pressed upon me by friends whose opinions I trusted. I fell in love. See, I’m not a straight-out horror fan. I can’t bear slasher stories and maniacal clowns, but I do enjoy fantasies that grapple with the (to me, obvious) darkness in the world. Any world. So it was inevitable, I suppose, that I should give King’s latest, Fairy
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ANDOR, Random Thoughts: Politics and Character Arcs

War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means. ON WAR, by General Carl von Clausewitz To be honest, Disney's Star Wars spinoff Andor was initially a bit of a slow burn for me. I was, however, deeply impressed from the first by the seriousness and sophistication of the writing, acting, directing, and production values.
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Wrestling with the Fallen Angel: Midnight Mass as Catholic Horror

Two men—a priest and a recovering alcoholic— sit in a church rec center on folding chairs discussing the nature of God and the paradox of evil. It could be a scene out of Dostoevsky, but it’s a centerpiece of the Netflix limited series, Midnight Mass, an arrestingly strange and deeply affecting exploration of faith, sin, guilt, addiction, and grief. It’s a passion project for writer/director, Mike Flanagan, a highly-regarded horror auteur known for hit Netflix series, The Haunting of Hill House. Horror, for Flanagan, is a genre suited to themes of guilt and sin, faith and free will, buried secrets
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