Ensemble casts behaving weirdly? Outlandish things being said by people who don’t seem to think they’re outlandish? Cartoon-like characters cast adrift in a comic book world? Yes, folks, it has to be Wes Anderson. When Robert Altman died, I wondered where I’d go for my fix of familial dysfunctionality. There was no need to worry.…
Media stories go through several phases – at first a story can make a minor impact (the slow-burn phase); then it gets legs (the leggy phase); then the controversy gets intense and finally there’s the fizzling out phase. Other stories just blow up unexpectedly scattering news shards all over the place. Controversy The controversy over…
The hate crimes legislation was discussed in the Seanad last week, with spirited contributions circulating on social media – especially from Senators Rónán Mullen and Michael McDowell (both raising serious concerns) and Senator Pauline O’Reilly (Green Party) supporting the legislation on the grounds of the common good. This didn’t get much coverage in regular media,…
Shaping the Assembly: How our buildings form us in worship, ed. by Thomas O’Loughlin (Messenger Publications, €25.00/£23.23) Thomas O’Loughlin is a distinguished scholar who has taught at several institutions in England, retiring as a professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham. This book brings into focus several of his long standing concerns. It is a…
Comments on the margin By the book’s editor Changes are coming to Saudi Arabia, some of which may have interesting outcomes for all those interested in the past, present and possibly future of Christianity in the region. As is well known, the central desert of Arabia, where the capital Riyadh is located, is only part…
June brings its quota of music festivals. Among these Dublin International Chamber Music brought a number of home and visiting artists to its various locations while the current Pipeworks Organ and Choral Festival opened at the National Concert Hall last Tuesday and continues at selected venues until Sunday next June 25 at St Michael’s Church…
Spectral Mansions: The Making of a Dublin Tenement, 1800-1914, by Timothy Murtagh (Four Courts Press for Dublin City Council with aid from the Heritage Council, €30.00/ £26.00) To those familiar only with the ever-rebuilding Dublin of today, there is in this book a strangely prophetic cartoon from a Dublin comic paper of July 1914, captioned…
Kerry Memories, by Bertha Beatty, edited by Pádraig de Brún (North Kerry Literary Trust, Listowel, €15.00; copies from the Kerry Writers Museum, 24 The Square, Listowel, Co. Kerry, V31 RD93; Tel: 068 22212; kerrywritersmuseum@gmail.com.) Local memories are always a delight to read. They are of human interest, of course, but also always a revelation of…
The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State, by Anna M. Grzymała-Busse (Princeton University Press, €98.00/ £84.00; also in paperback) They read the roots of the European state in a positive way, and as an endorsement, so to speak, of Augustinian City of God. But that is not quite what the author had in…
Iver (Liam Carney) has motor neurone disease. He wants to die. Maria (Maureen Beattie) is the carer entrusted with the task of ending his life. As she’s about to do so, a visitor arrives. Leon (Barry Ward) has had a heroin problem in the past. Now recovered, he’s trying to get a music career going.…
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello