Canter Bridge

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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 »

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Trisha Yearwood has one of the big, bad female voices on the country scene. Better yet, she can work it in a full menu of directions. Continue Reading »

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There was a time when it seemed there would be no getting past Celine Dion’s overwhelming voice. Vocal music would end, then and there, along with the 20th century and the millennium. No higher musical peaks worthy of scaling appeared on the horizon. Continue Reading »