The Grey is a thoughtful, tough-minded little tale of survival and attrition that sets its sights a bit further than its firepower takes it.

Its assets include a sweeping Alaskan canvas as breathtaking as it is punishing, a consciousness of mortality and meaning rare in an action film, an uncompromising story-arc—and, crucially, the haggard face and haunted eyes of Liam Neeson, who balances indomitable toughness and brittle brokenness better than perhaps any other Hollywood star today. Neeson plays John Ottway, a burned-out wolver employed by an oil company to protect the drilling team from wolves in northern Alaska.

Its liabilities include some plodding dialogue and lapses in...READ MORE

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Ottway’s own concern is more practical: He collects the wallets of the victims, hoping to bring them to civilization for their families. In the absence of religious ritual, the wallets become almost a sort of sacred trust; with their pictures of loved ones and the memories they represent, they are all that is left of the victims’ identities.

The circumstances are dire. Perhaps too dire. The wolves are not only extraordinarily large and powerful and ferocious, but uncannily cunning as well. In one sequence the remaining humans go to astonishing lengths to move on from the wolves’ territory—but as soon as one of them missteps, the wolves are right there to pick him off.

For...READ MORE

Hat tip: The Anchoress.

Update #2

Well, it’s on. No more nonsense about “compromise” or “backing down.”

ABC News reports: Senate Democrats Say Obama ‘Reinforced’ His Stance on Contraception Mandate at Democratic Retreat. What’s more, they’re backing him up. 

President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said…

Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.

“It is our clear understanding from the administration that the president believes as we do, and the vast majority of the American women should have access to birth control,” Sen....READ MORE

As far as I can tell, the real story at the center of this week’s Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation / Planned Parenthood debacle is not that Komen cut off Planned Parenthood from existing funding. (They didn’t. Existing grants were to be honored for over a year.)

Nor is it that Komen excluded Planned Parenthood from any possibility of future funding. (Again, they didn’t. Rather, they suspended future funding pending the outcome of a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood. Critics charged that the investigation was a fig leaf and Komen was actually responding to pressure from pro-life groups. It is worth noting that new Komen senior vice president Karen Handel is...READ MORE

Prince Philip battles Maleficent in dragon form in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Transforming into a dragon is really evil.

An intriguing question posed to me in another forum:

Who is the worst Disney villain? Mother Gothel in Tangled is bad (kidnapping, brainwashing). The evil Queen from Snow White?

For me, I think it’s Scar in The Lion King. He kills his brother and sets it all up for Simba to be screwed up for life. His minions are also pretty bad.

Most people overlook Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, but he is pure evil. Frollo in Hunchback has no redeeming qualities either. Just thinking out loud (obviously).

Hm. Some thoughts:

To start with, Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty not only declares herself to be the “mistress of all evil,” but transforms into a dragon embodying “the powers of hell”—and the...READ MORE

How about that, CBS did notice some pro-life demonstrators after all, as this belatedly added image now in their photo gallery illustrates.

Sometimes, occasionally, shouting loud enough about outrageous behavior gets results.

In that connection, I’m pleased to report that a few hours ago, responding to vociferous criticism from many quarters of the Internet, including this blog, CBS belatedly updated an odious photo gallery from Monday’s March for Life—captioned with verbiage referring vaguely to “activists on both sides of the abortion issue, but originally displaying only photos of the tiny pro-choice counter-demonstration, without even a single photo of the March for Life—adding numerous photos of the March itself.

Although criticism of CBS’s original photo gallery ranged far and wide, the earliest whistleblower I’m...READ MORE

Sarah & David, Ben & Theo with our homemade signs from last year. The rain ruined them; next year we'll make new ones.

Final Update

Rounding out my coverage of the 2012 March for Life, I’ve added photos (taken by my companion at the March, Rob, father of Ben and Theo in the photo to the right). Rob has a good eye and captured some nice images; enjoy them. (Also, shout-out to my home-office blogging assistant Suz for managing my texts from the field, doing some necessary clean-up and fact-checking, and handling the actual posting.)

In a strange echo of John Boehner’s comments about the defense of life and the defense of liberty, Rep. Rand Paul was prevented from speaking at the rally—when he was detained by TSA agents after refusing an enhanced pat-down and missed his flight as a result. While TSA...READ MORE

At last, a horror film for disaffected Catholic traditionalists embittered against the Church for post-Vatican II changes; who see the Church itself, not just the larger culture, as compromised by modernism, and impeding orthodox clerics from carrying out true spiritual work.

Not, of course, that that particular demographic was clamoring for a horror movie to call their own. Other than Mel Gibson … and E. Michael Jones … I’m not sure how many disaffected traditionalist Catholic horror-movie fans there are out there, although as worldviews go radical traditionalism does seem eminently suited to the perverse paranoia and melancholy permeating the genre. At any rate, if I considered Pope...READ MORE