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The comment thread on the main Picayune Sentinel on Thursday needs a boost from those of you who are patrons of this enterprise. Many of you are writing to me directly rather than posting comments, which is fine but I’m getting so much email these days that I’m finding it hard to respond to often very thoughtful letters that deserve wider consideration and a bigger audience
I’d like the Thursday comments, in particular, to be places of lively and respectful exchanges. And today? Well, you’ll see what I’m searching for today when you read my testy response to having spent two hours over the weekend watching “The Lost Daughter”
Your spit-take for the week: The Coalition for Canceled Priests is endorsed by Mel Gibson
Tribune reporter John Keilman’s front-page story Monday about a group of some 20 area Catholic priests who say bishops have unfairly removed them from their ministries notes that vile Hollywood celebrity Mel Gibson is standing with the group.
A September rally in Chicago’s Lincoln Park (for the group) included a video message from Mel Gibson, the movie star known for following a stringent form of Catholicism. He suggested the priests’ removal had an ideological motive.
“(Bishops) passively sit by and tolerate any kind of nonsense, but if one of their priests utters something that resembles orthodoxy, well, then they spring into action,” he said. “They reprimand him and they bully him and do their best to cancel him.”
What is this dreaded orthodoxy to which Gibson refers? Keilman explains:
One of the priests (in the Coalition), the Rev. James Altman of La Crosse, Wisconsin, was removed in July after making numerous inflammatory statements. In one video, he bashed Democrats and progressive organizations, called climate change a hoax and ridiculed fellow clergy as “gutless cowards.”
Another priest, the Rev. Paul Kalchik, lost his post at Chicago’s Resurrection Catholic Church in 2018 after he burned a rainbow banner that had hung in the parish, calling it sacrilegious. In November, speaking at a Baltimore rally organized by conservative media outlet Church Militant, he condemned tolerant views of homosexuality as “one of the worst evils” to befall the church and society.
That the church doesn’t want people spewing such poison and nonsense in its name is perfectly understandable. And their offenses are compounded by accepting help from Gibson, whose religiosity is more sickening than “stringent,” as this recent article in the Atlantic reminds us:
In 2006 … Gibson was pulled over on Malibu’s Pacific Coast Highway and detained for drunk driving. In the back of the police car, Gibson reportedly went on an anti-Semitic tirade, prompted by his (correct) suspicion that his arresting officer was Jewish. “Fucking Jews,” Gibson said. “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” …
In 2010, recordings of voicemails and phone calls between Gibson and his then-girlfriend (and mother of his child) Oksana Grigorieva were publicly released. …What these recordings show … is that in addition to being a rabid anti-Semite, Gibson also has deep malice toward women and people of color in his heart. Lowlights include Gibson’s telling Grigorieva, “If you get raped by a pack of (vile racial slur), it’ll be your fault” and “Shut the fuck up! You should just fucking smile, and blow me! ’Cause I deserve it!”
You get the idea. Let me remind you also that Gibson pleaded “no contest” to a charge of domestic battery against Grigorieva in 2011.
Yet Gibson is still a headliner in the film industry, prompting Variety to ask in a 2020 headline, How Does Mel Gibson Still Have a Career? And it prompts me to ask how he dares to complain on behalf of those ostensibly canceled when he himself has so easily avoided the cancelation he so richly deserves?
In fact, the writer of the Atlantic piece — actor Joshua Malina — is at greater risk of being drummed out of polite society for spelling out the slur Gibson used for illustrative purposes than is Gibson himself for deploying it in anger.
If these putatively pitiable priests had the decency and moral intuitions that their positions demand, they would be denouncing ugly bigots and renouncing Gibson’s support. That they’re not tells me all me all I need to know.
Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses
Meg B — The death of the actress who played Truly Scrumptious in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (last week’s PS-Extra) brought back a childhood memory of a truly nasty neighbor we had in the 1960’s. She’d moved into a house 3 doors from us on a block teeming with children. My parents were very strict about us respecting our elders but she even pushed their buttons when she turned a hose on my 3 year old sister and her friends who were riding their trikes on the sidewalk past her house. We weren’t allowed to call her bad names so we referred to her as Truly Scrumptious. Even my parents. To this day, decades later, I don’t remember her real name. When we moved away, my brothers left a gift wrapped frisbee in her yard to commemorate all the balls and frisbees she took when they accidentally sailed into her yard. My sibs and I still tell stories about our very own Truly Scrumptious.
The other kids and I referred to the stern, unfriendly woman on our block back in the 1960s as “Mrs. Crabapple,” and this was well before the teacher of the same name appeared on “The Simpsons.” We never did so to her face, of course, and in retrospect I doubt she was truly mean. She simply lived alone and barked at us when our games of hide-and-seek and “Secret Agent Man” spilled over onto her property.
Over the years I’ve heard so many stories like yours about neighborhood scolds that I wonder if they’re not mostly creations of young, fervid imaginations. They tend to be elderly, their homes partially engulfed in untended vegetation and their blinds usually drawn. Their gruffness is in part a response to neighbors showing almost no interest in them and children plainly avoiding them.
Mrs. Crabapple had certainly lived a long, interesting life, in other words, and probably could have been brought into the community if we’d all showed her more kindness. Or maybe not. Your Truly Scrumptious does sound Truly Dreadful.
Jim McL — Regarding Joe P’s letter last week — “A good test of whether the Anjanette Young settlement was excessive would be to poll 100 people and ask them if they would be willing to stand naked in their own apartment in front of a bunch of cops for $2.9 million. I'd be surprised if you got a single no" — Young was not asked if she would be willing.
The proper phrasing of his question would be, “Would you, upon being surprised during dark of night by some powerful force uninterested in you willingness about anything, submit to being demanded to stand naked before it not merely for a brief period but for more than an hour; and, further, to live with the trauma of that invasion for the rest of your life, which would include having the spotlight of vast national media attention shined upon it for several months?"
My point is that, all monetary consideration aside, willingness is both the culmination of and inclusion in some prior human decision-making process. Not only was Young not willing, she was not consulted in advance as to whether or not she was willing. Her willingness was deemed irrelevant. Which rendered her psychologically having to submit, forever, to the traumatic experience of having been denied (by a force far more powerful than herself) the opportunity to consider and decide about her willingness to do something.
This leaves her with the scar of having been given less than what human dignity requires every law-abiding human being be afforded. In sum, Joe P’s comment is a not only a groundless, apples to oranges comparison. It’s heartlessly unsympathetic to the trauma that Young was unwillingly subjected to and will have to live with for the rest of her life. The $2.9 settlement was insufficiently generous.
News reports say that Young was completely naked for 16 seconds before first a jacket, then a blanket were draped around her shoulders, and that it was 10 minutes before she was allowed to go to her bedroom to get dressed. Which doesn’t at all excuse what happened to her but is a reminder not to exaggerate for effect — saying she stood naked “…for more than hour" — when making an argument.
That’s 16 seconds / 10 minutes too many, obviously, and her lack of consent to this humiliation is an aggravating factor. But the general point is that when people literally die due to police mistakes it often results in lower settlements than $2.9 million. And the contention is that the settlement here was a political decision meant to take the heat off Mayor Lori Lightfoot rather than a gimlet-eyed calculation about what would be in the best interests of the taxpayers.
Owen Y — Regarding the word “Ebenezer” in the hymn “Come Thou Fount” discussed in last week’s letters, some current hymnals actually ditch “Ebenezer” for a no-explanation-needed "Here I raise to thee an altar."
Feh. Is it not enough that modern sensibilities have changed the title from “Come Thou Font” to “Come Thou Fount”?
The Lost Two Hours
What a suffocatingly dreadful, annoying movie “The Lost Daughter” is!
Critics love it, of course. A meandering 121 minutes spent with mostly unlikable characters behaving in peculiar ways with numerous scenes and plot developments that take forever to unfold and (spoilers ahead!) go nowhere particularly interesting.
Critics give this new Netflix offering a 96% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, gushing all over the slow-pan banality and moody manifestations of the obvious — it’s hard to be a mother to demanding pre-schoolers and have a career! — gleaned from a novel by the pseudonymous Italian writer Elena Ferrante. The public, smartly if a bit generously, gives it only 43%.
We meet Leda (Olivia Colman) a scholar on a working vacation at a seaside resort in Greece where she develops an arms-length relationship with an annoying family of tourists from Queens. Leda ends up stealing, hiding and doing odd things to the beloved doll of one of the children in the family because, I don’t know, she’s a weird, damaged, selfish, unempathic person.
In flashbacks we see her 20 years or so earlier when she was an alternately cold and very warm mother to two attention-starved little girls, sweet kids whom she abandons — literally doesn’t have contact with them for three years — apparently in order to pursue an affair with an older professor. Yet these daughters, now grown, still have warm relations with her.
Here are some enthusiastic takes from the pros:
Leda's questionable behavior is fascinating, and Colman makes her absolutely captivating. (Director Maggie) Gyllenhaal closes in tight on Colman's face so viewers can scrutinize her and try to understand what she is thinking …."The Lost Daughter" certainly raises as many questions as it answers, which is why it is so gratifying….Colman does not strive to make Leda likable which may be exactly why viewers root for her. (Salon)
One of the year’s very best movies – a spookily complex character study of a woman who’s either a terrible mother or who can’t forgive herself for not being a better one… .The movie confronts and explores the ambivalences of motherhood with a nuanced scalpel (Ty Burr)
Only a superficial reading of “The Lost Daughter” would describe it as a meditation on the twin tugs of children and career. It is, instead, a dark and deeply disturbing exploration of something much more raw, and even radical: the notion that motherhood can plunder the self in irreparable ways. …Equal parts troubling and affecting, Leda epitomizes a type of woman whose needs are rarely addressed in American mainstream movies. We can dislike her, but we are never permitted to revile her. (New York Times)
Yeah, no. It’s easy to dislike and revile Leda. I’m doing it right now!
Let’s listen to the average moviegoers at Rotten Tomatoes:
“Terrible movie. A whole slew of unnecessary scenes and characters, nonsensical decisions by pretty much every character, and I didn't care a lick what happened to any of them.”
“Tedious, ponderous, pointless, pretentious and boring. I had to watch this but you don't. Hard to decide which character was most repellant. Awful. Seriously awful. Might be the worst movie I've ever seen.”
“This movie was specifically made for the movie snobs who like plotless movies with ‘artistic’ undertones. I spent two hours waiting for something to happen. But no. Nothing. Nothing happens.
“The synopsis should be ‘dysfunctional woman goes on vacation and runs into an obnoxious family. The family brings back memories of what a terrible mother she was. She wallows in her self pity, and then the movie ends.’"
My guess is that some of what explains this disconnect — seen in reverse in the obtuse hatred the cinematic cognoscenti have for the fun, star-studded satirical sledgehammer of “Don’t Look Up!” is that professional critics see too many movies. They’re jaded and too easily seduced by that which seems “different” into seeing highbrow artistic subtlety in what’s actually plodding mediocrity.
Am I still mad that a Roger Ebert rave persuaded me to rope my family into paying good money for the execrable “Legend of Bagger Vance”? Perhaps I am, reader, perhaps I am.
In comments below I will entertain defenses of “Lost Daughter” and pans of “Don’t Look Up!” Also tales of movies where you think the critics got it all wrong.
Ya’ gotta see these tweets!
I often run across tweets that are too visual in nature to include in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template for the poll does not allow the use of images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently.
The ad writer was groping for “Condensing Tumble Dryer.”
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Ahh "professional" movie reviewers... I do like your explanation - of seeing so many movies that the outlier movie must be great for simply being different. I've long passed on reviews before deciding to see a movie. I still prefer big theater experiences vs home viewing. Too many reviews and other online resources - if not the actual trailers - give too much of the movie away. Those would be my 'go to' places if I want to read what a movie is vs seeing it. I'm not sure when it began. The English Patient comes to mind. (Is he dead yet?)
Maybe things are changing - but it's almost awards season and a list of "must see' movies will be out. Most I haven't heard of and few are the ones I have seen. Many I have no interest in - well directed, acted, produced. I will watch bad movies with good plot, and bad movies with good film-ology but I don't watch movies to be depressed, shocked, or someone's interpretation of an event. The world has enough of that. That leaves more than just Marvel movies - although they are good escapism films
I would have lost two hours watching “The Lost Daughter” had I not started to fast forward through parts. I was so disappointed after my initial interest when I saw it starred Olivia Colman.