The Secret Thread: Literature & Spiritual Life: Resolutions, 2006

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Resolutions, 2006

"I invite my partner in this initiative and sounding board for all things literary, Mutt Ploughman, to post on some of what he'd like to see for the blog in 2006." - Duke, see below

Thus summoned, the gauntlet forcibly hurl'd, I now contribute what "I'd like to see" on the blog, which to me means more like "what I'd like to post for YOU to see". In the year 2006 on this blog, you can expect from Mutt, if you're looking, the following:

1. Continuous entries charting the development of my new fiction project, and the writing thereof when it begins, in the feature titled 'Journal of a "Novel"'. Entry #4 is coming soon.

2. More posts concerning spiritual reading, which I plan to increase my efforts toward in the year ahead. Right now as I am reading the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, I plan to post on that some time soon. But, they will not be ambitious analyses: they will be journal-esque in nature, musings prompted by the readings, etc.

3. Continued commentary on books read throughout the year. Since I average around 40 per year, I will probably post frequently on books I'm reading, but certainly not on every book read. Look for commentary on Dickens' 'Martin Chuzzlewit' in a few weeks.

4. Comments and reactions to Duke's exceptionally enriching series, his Poem of the Week feature. This is an excellent poetry series which I highly recommend to those who don't want to read the long posts on here, but do want to take a few morsels of the best stuff on this proverbial plate, so to speak, from time to time.

5. In general, I hereby resolve to read as many books as possible, to write as often as possible and as well as I can throughout 2006, insofar as I am not neglecting the Lord, my beautiful wife or my two precious, adorable daughters.

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Duke Altum's Recommended Films

Monsters (2010) – As many have already said, calling Monsters a movie about an alien occupation of Earth seems to do this fascinating, original film a disservice. Certainly the fact that huge, bioluminescent squid-like extraterrestrials are running amok through the jungles of Central America is an important (and entertaining) element of the plot, but anyone coming into this one looking for non-stop, Aliens-style action or special effects eye candy a la the concurrent alien invasion flick Skyline is going to be sorely disappointed. Instead, what you have with Monsters is an intriguing and meditative hybrid of road movie, post-apocalyptic thriller and surprisingly believable human drama. Director Gareth Edwards wrote, edited and created special effects for the film on his own, which gave him the freedom to make exactly the kind of movie he wanted to make - that is, a love story that just happens to feature alien life forms ominously howling and lurking in the background (this approach, by the way, gives the film its pervasive suspense and intensity, as you are as in the dark as the characters are about when the next encounter with a pissed-off, tentacled alien might occur). The many scenes of unscripted, natural banter between the lead actors as they trek across the "infected zone" and get to know one another help you, crucially, to identify with them enough to care by the final act - which provides an unexpected, subtle twist that gives the entire story added poignancy and irony. I am sure that a great many viewers of this unusual film will come out feeling somewhere between perplexed and downright cheated, and Edwards does provide so little backstory about the aliens and what they might be up to that one may well wonder why they were in the movie at all (and, justifiably, why the film was ever called "Monsters"). But I found that their mysterious, vaguely menacing presence gave the entire story a kind of haunted and other-wordly atmosphere that reminded me a bit of the best bits of James Cameron's The Abyss. I guess you could say that early encounters with new life forms - like those with potential lovers - can be both exhilarating and weirdly disconcerting at the same time.