It seems as if everyday a new viral video is being made. Whether it's a distraught young man crying behind a sheet to 'leave Britney alone,' or a poptart cat flying through space to obnoxious music, it's probably safe to assume that weíve all seen at least one YouTube smash hit. However, YouTube is a…
Category: Reviews
Juggling jobs and emotions in Toronto
Aubrey MaloneCan friends who become lovers preserve their friendship or are the two circumstances mutually exclusive? This was a theme that was explored to some acclaim in When Harry Met Sally. Here it acquires a somewhat different spin. Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) is a medical student drop-out who's trying to recover from being rejected by his girlfriend.…
An Irish Jesuit in the Great War
Mary KennyFrancis Browne has been best known to the public as the extraordinary photographer who took the last pictures aboard the doomed Titanic – he had the luck, or perhaps was given the grace – to alight at Queenstown (Cobh) before she began her final trajectory across the Atlantic. But Fr Browne SJ, also had another…
The Spirituality of Married Life
Courtney McGrailBy J. Anthony Gaughan It is often stated that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage. On reflection and taking account of the human condition one realises that this is a truism. But there are successful marriages. In this timely book John Cogavin provides advice, cautions and suggestions to enable couples of all ages to enjoy such marriages.…
An innocent abroad, happily
"He who searches for God," they say, "has already found him." Or in the words of Christopher Plummer from this whimsical movie: "The pursuit of happiness isn't as important as the happiness of pursuit." Hector (Simon Pegg) is a London psychiatrist. Like T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, he has his life measured out in coffee spoons. He's good…
20 years standing by Nelson Mandela
Zelda La Grange was Nelson Mandela’s factotum and confidante for almost 20 years during and after his presidency, and recalls their unlikely friendship in this affectionate memoir. An ‘uninquisitive’ Afrikaner, from a Calvinist conservative background, she had grown up to distrust black people, and had learned not to touch them. She regarded black political leaders…
Society and its prisoners
Peter CostelloEveryone deplores the state of our modern prisons. But grim though they are, they are a great deal better than, say, those in Peru or Indonesia. In any case they are, ironically, enough the product of 19th Century Christian-inspired reform. The move to abolish the death penalty in part or totally has for many made…
The nomad meets the architect
J. Anthony Gaughan This “interview” features Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) and Eileen Gray (1878-1976). In 1972 it was reported that Chatwin, then still a journalist writing for The Sunday Times Magazine, had interviewed Eileen Gray, the celebrated furniture designer and architect, in her Paris salon. This was quite a coup for Chatwin in those pre-fame, pre-nomadic days. Shy by nature,…
Miracles as a matter of fact
We live these days in a scientific age which rejects miracles and deprives history of a metaphysical dimension. This view can be traced back in part to the writings of David Hume (pictured) the Scottish philosopher of the 18th Century, an age when Edinburgh regarded itself as "the Athens of the North"; it was the…
Our Lady on the big screen
The depiction of Our Lady in films has usually been in a secondary capacity to that of Jesus for obvious reasons but there have been a few where she has indeed occupied centre stage, as it were. This was most apparent in The Song of Bernadette (1943) which featured Linda Darnell as the Virgin Mary. This…