By Steve Beard

One of the memorable scenes in the quirky 2003 British romantic comedy Love Actually is a dialogue about a school Christmas play. Actress Emma Thompson plays Karen and her daughter Daisy (played by Lulu Popplewell) proudly announces her upcoming role in the nativity story.

Daisy: I’m the lobster.

Karen: The lobster?

Daisy: Yeah.

Karen: In the nativity play?

Daisy: Yeah, “first” lobster.

Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?

Daisy: Duh!

The nativity play ends up being the climactic conclusion to the film. Not only is the lobster on stage, but she is joined by an octopus, a few penguins, Spiderman, and an assortment of other peculiar creatures.

That surreal scene came to mind a few years later while I was visiting the set of The Nativity Story, a charming film about the birth of Christ filmed in Matera, Italy ­– 120 miles east of Naples. As we were checking out the cave-like location for the manger scene, a five-foot black snake slithered through as though he owned the place.

As alarming as it seemed, it should not have been terribly shocking. Matera is an ancient city known for its neighborhoods that are literally carved out of rock. It is an ideal home for slinky, slithering, and creepy animals of all varieties — perhaps a little like Bethlehem.

Along with a lobster and Spiderman, a snake is an unlikely character for a nativity scene. We are far more comfortable with cattle lowing and sheep curling up and hens laying eggs in the manger. Nevertheless, the serpent’s appearance seemed strangely fitting to the incarnational reality of Christmas. After all, at the precipice of hope and redemption, evil lingers and looks for a way to corrupt. Sometimes we lose sight of that reality when we watch our cute Christmas pageants with shepherds wearing bathrobes, the Three Wisemen draped in silk kimonos, and the Virgin Mary lugging around a retro Cabbage Patch doll.

In reality, it is difficult to downplay the seemingly raw scandal involved with the birth of Christ; but somehow we have managed. Perhaps we have anesthetized the story’s sting, since it took place long ago and far away. Continue reading →

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been around long enough to honor a long list of the artists whose music fed into the genre’s roots. Now that we’ve entered an era in which the rock stars of the ’90s have become eligible for induction, it can be all too easy to assume that the most important names of the past have already been honored. That’s a faulty assumption, however — and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the pioneering singer, songwriter, and guitarist listed among this year’s potential honorees, is a perfect example of a rock ‘n’ roll forbear who definitely deserves to be enshrined in the Hall.

She’s far from a household name, particularly among younger generations of rock fans, and you aren’t likely to find any of her recordings on the radio dial — on rock stations or otherwise. But even if she’s never really received her commercial or cultural due, there’s no escaping Sister Tharpe’s fundamental influence on generations of artists who came after her, and any institution dedicated to honoring rock history is incomplete without a space reserved for honoring her legacy.

To read entire article, click HERE.

“The Ramones, Elvis Presley’s Sun sessions, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Time Out by Dave Brubeck, something done in Owen Bradley’s studio like Patsy Cline or Brenda Lee, Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry … how long is this supposed to be? This could go on for a long time. I have a long list of required listening. I think people should have a better sense of history so they would have a better understanding of how things got to be the way they are. Just in general, because I think if people understood how things got to be the way they are, things would be different..”

-Billy Zoom, guitarist from X (According to Billy, this is only a partial list)

King Oliver, King Oliver Stomp

Bix Beiderbecke—anything with Frankie Trumbauer

Le Quintette Du Hot Club De France (Django)—all 1930’s sessions

Benny Goodman Orchestra, Sing, Sing, Sing

Glen Miller, Greatest Hits

Andrews Sisters, Greatest Hits, but make sure it’s the original recordings.

Johnnie Ray—anything about crying

Hank Williams—everything

Elvis Presley—Sun Sessions, and first RCA album with the cover the Clash copied

Jerry Lee Lewis—EVERYTHING!!!!

Continue reading →

By Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble

The practice of remembering that you will die helps you to keep in mind that your life will end, and that it has a goal: heaven.

Visual reminders — often called memento mori, the Latin phrase for “Remember that you will die” — are one way we can keep our impending death in mind. Saints Jerome, Aloysius, and Mary Magdalene, among others, are often depicted in classic paintings with skulls. Saint Francis of Assisi once signed a blessing to Brother Leo with the tau cross and a small drawing of a skull. Pope Alexander VII commissioned Italian artist Bernini to make a coffin that he kept in his bedroom along with a marble skull for his desk to remind him of the brevity of life. Blessed James Alberione, the founder of the Daughters of Saint Paul, also kept a skull on his desk.

Inspired by this Christian tradition of memento mori, I recently acquired a ceramic skull for my desk. I have been chronicling my spiritual journey for over a month on Twitter. And it has changed my life.

To read Sister Theresa’s entire article, click HERE.

U2 singer Bono had a “brush with mortality” last year that has shaped the band’s new album. Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

By Brian Boyd, Irish Times

Bono has written about a “brush with mortality” last Christmas that inspired at least three songs on the new U2 album Songs of Experience. On the liner notes of the record, which is out today, the singer writes: “Last winter I was on the receiving end of a shock to the system, a shock that left me clinging on to my own life.

“Lots of us have a brush with mortality, it was an arresting experience. I won’t dwell in it or on it. I don’t want to name it. But these songs have that impetus behind them and it would feel dishonest not to admit the turbulence I was feeling at the time of writing.”

The “near-death” experience happened sometime between Christmas and New Year. The singer won’t go into the precise details of what happened but speaking to The Irish Times in London last month before their Trafalgar Square concert, The Edge confirmed the incident. Asked about Irish poet Brendan Kennelly’s advice to Bono, to write his songs as though he were dead, the Edge referenced Bono’s incident.

“It was a very serious scare he had and it did affect the way he was viewing his writing for this record,” he said.

“Where he ended up was taking Kennelly’s advice . . . a lot of these songs ended up being letters to people he cares about. Some were his and our children, some were the U2 fans, Ali [Hewson, Bono’s wife] featured obviously, and there was a lot directed to America and the current political situation.”

The Edge added that while Bono was writing he was thinking “If this is the last song I write, what do I want to say?”

To read entire article, click HERE.

By Manuel Betancourt

For many of us, “Remember Me” (which is played for laughs and establishes the dashing musical icon Ernesto De La Cruz as the kind of cartoonish Pedro Infante of Coco’s world) is precisely what we worried would happen when the Emeryville studio greenlit a “Día de Los Muertos” film – and even tried to copyright that title! Wouldn’t the studio that made toys come alive no doubt fail at capturing what it is that makes this Mexican holiday so special? Wouldn’t it just dress it up in culturally tone-deaf representations that signal “Mexicanness” all the while betraying the fact that it was made by and for Anglos? Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth.

And not just because we can point to the large number of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans that poured their hearts into the film. Coco knows very well that the story it’s telling – of a young boy who finds himself stranded in the Land of Dead and needs to get a blessing from his ancestors in order to return to the land of the living where he’ll have to give up his dreams of following in De La Cruz’s footsteps – is rooted in the spirit of the celebration, on family and destiny, on one’s originality and devotion. Shaded with an attention to detail that remains astounding (the deep-cut Frida Kahlo jokes are A+ as is the playful use of alebrijes), Coco is not (just) the flashy mariachi version of “Remember Me” but also its pared-down, family-sung rendition – a lullaby that will bring you to tears by the sheer power of its emotions and the beauty of its message.

To read entire article, click HERE

By Carol Zimmerman

For the movie, Father Paul Keller gave four homilies and a small portion of one was used in the film, but he also led the “congregation” of actors in prayer and distributed ashes for an Ash Wednesday service that made the cut.

He explained to the cast how they should do certain things at a Mass, such as hold their hands for Communion and make the sign of the cross. His day on the set started with his homilies, all culled from previous ones he had given, especially from his six years working at a Catholic high school.

In the movie credits, Father Paul Keller (Claretian Missionary Fathers) is listed as playing Father Paul Keller, a priest who is never actually named in the movie because his role is celebrating four Masses, shown in quick cuts during the movie’s school year.

He addressed the actors and extras, who were wearing Catholic school uniforms, as if they were truly getting this homily since this wasn’t a script. For the first homily, for the movie’s Mass at the start of the school year, he spoke for 12 minutes instead of his usual 10 for homilies. When he was done, the congregation stood up as if to say the Nicene Creed and someone on set yelled: “Cut!”

“It was deadly silent for two beats and then there was applause,” the priest said. The movie’s writer and director, Greta Gerwig, came running up to him with tears in her eyes and told him, “That was so perfect.”

It turns out, he said, his sermon’s message about fear and love and how most people are motivated by one or the other in the choices they make was essentially a summary of the movie.

Father Keller said “Lady Bird’s” characters are not always moral, but they are human, not caricatures.

To read entire Catholic News Service article, click HERE.

Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf play a daughter and mother who clash and connect in Lady Bird.
Merie Wallace/ Courtesy of A24

By Eloise Blondiau, America Magazine

In “Lady Bird,” I saw for the first time in film a Catholic girls’ school as I remember it—brimming with kindness, weirdness, friendship and rebellion….

Although this is a film saturated in Catholic imagery and language, Ms. Gerwig is not Catholic and never has been. She did, however, attend Catholic school and wanted to make a film that reflected her joyful experience there.

“There’s plenty of stuff to make a joke out of [in Catholic schools], but what if you didn’t? What if you took it seriously and showed all the things that were beautiful about it?” she asked.

To read Blondiau’s complete story, click HERE

Roy Orbison once said, “people often ask me how would I like to be remembered and I answer that I would simply like to remembered.” If Orbison could look back these almost-30 years now after his death (on Dec. 6, 1988), he’d discover that he’s been more than simply “remembered.” As Roy Orbison Jr., once wrote: “There is only one Roy Orbison. And there are many. Blue-haired Rockabillys, Japanese leather rockers, All-American college girls whose favorite movie is ‘Pretty Woman,’ Elvis-lovers, country music fans … Ramones punk rockers … and good old-fashioned Roy Orbison diehards who have stood by him from the beginning. They all see a different Roy Orbison. They all see their own Roy Orbison.”

To read entire No Depression interview, click HERE.

X display at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. (Photo: AP)

Nice profile of the legendary Los Angeles punk band X “We know exactly who we are; we know exactly what we’ve done and why we did it,” Exene Cervenka asserts. “We know what all the mistakes were, we know what we did that was good or bad, and I think we’re just glad to all be alive and being playing music together. … I can’t believe we survived all that and that we’re still together. It’s surreal. It’s a very surreal feeling to get this award from the city of Los Angeles and the Grammy Museum. And I think, in some ways, we’re more popular now than we’ve ever been.”

As for why X were never as commercially successful as some of their ’80s punk and new wave peers, John Doe shrugs, “Maybe we were just a little too weird. Maybe our lyrics were a little too weird. And I’m proud, at this point, of that identity. And I’m proud of the fact that even now, even though we’re getting a certificate from the city or we’re at the Grammy Museum, we’re still a little too weird. We’re still not quite ready for prime time. And you know what? That’s beautiful.”

To read entire story from Lyndsey Parker, click HERE.