Tag: entertainment

Park Ki-Young – Nella Fantasia

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The music is by Enrico Morricone from the film The Mission (1986). There it is entitled Gabriel’s Oboe, a musical piece I have posted previously here as an evening pause. Here it is sung to lyrics written by Chiara Ferraù, celebrating the joys that freedom brings. “I dream of souls that are always free,/Like the clouds that fly.”

Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who notes that this song is written by an Italian and sung by a Korean about the American aspiration of freedom. Seems to me that this illustrates two aspects of that American aspiration, one of which is freedom, the second of which is that freedom is something all people from all cultures aspire to.

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Two for a Penny – The Grapes of Wrath

6:01 pm

An evening pause: To help start out a new year, a scene from the 1940 John Ford classic, The Grapes of Wrath, based on John Steinbeck’s novel. While the movie tended to make government a saintly hero, which bothered me from the first time I saw it, it also captured the heart and generosity of the American spirit, as certainly existed in the previous century. Even if you are poor and desperate, if you insist on paying your fair share and don’t ask for a hand out, Americans immediately rally around you, in a quiet unassuming way, without wishing credit or accolades.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

Note that I am in need of suggestions for evening pauses. If you have made suggestions before, you know where to send them. If you haven’t and want to, leave a comment here and I will email you. Don’t include the link to the pause, however, as I want to schedule it, and that will blow the punchline.

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Buddy Greene – How Can I Keep From Singing

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Most people in the secular world today know this version of the hymn, but this performance of the original is so magnificent I think all should see it, whether you are Christian or not. And for those who are Christian, what better day but today to hear it.

To me, it was this performance from 1987 by Jean Redpath that is most meaningful, but in good will I — a secular humanist born a Jew — post the gospel version now.

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A Christmas Carol

12:01 pm

An daytime pause: For me, this version, starring Alastair Sim, remains the best of all the many adaptions of Charles Dickens classic short novel. Always worth seeing during the holiday season. As I wrote last year when I posted it, “I watched this again and felt like weeping, not because of the sentimentality of the story itself but because it is so seeped in a civilized world that increasingly no longer exists. There was a time when this was our culture. I fear it is no longer so. As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present, ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.’”

May all my readers have a wonderful Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

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Benjamin Shapiro – Theme from Schindler’s List

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live in 1996, when Shapiro was twelve years old. Note that this is that Ben Shapiro, the orthodox Jew and well-known conservative columnist whom leftists ignorantly love to call a Jew-hater and white supremacist. How they come to that conclusion can only be because they are willfully ignorant or so filled with hate and their ideology that they can’t look at reality with any honesty.

I think, during this holiday season, it is wise to also reflect on humanity’s tragic failures, one of the worst of which was the Holocaust during World War II.

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

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Aryeh and Gil Gat – The Sound of Silence

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I think this song is fitting for the last night of Hanukkah. For Jews, this verse well describes perfectly what it is like when they try to express their point of view in a harsh and hostile world:

“Fools” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

The two singers are brothers and rabbis, and are performing here for an Israeli television show modeled after American Idol called Rising Star.

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

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Julie Andrew – Impossible

6:01 pm

An evening pause: From the live television premiere of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella in 1957, their only musical written for television. Edith Adams plays the fairy godmother.

For the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don’t believe in sensible rules
And won’t believe what sensible people say
And because these daft and dewey-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes
Impossible things are happening every day!

I first posted this in 2011. Time to see it again.

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No Strings A Cappella – Past Three O’ Clock

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Though written as celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus, I think the lyrics really apply all newborns. As William Wordsworth said, we arrive “trailing clouds of glory.”

past three o’clock,
on a cold frosty morning,
past three o’clock,
good morrow masters all.

born is a baby
gentle as may be,
son of the Eternal
Father supernal.

mid earth rejoices
hearing such voices.
ne’ertofore so well
carolling nowell!

cheese from the dairy
bring they for Mary,
and, not for money,
butter and honey.

thus they: i pray you,
up sirs, nor stay you
till ye confess him
likewise and bless him.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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USAF Band – Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring

6:01 pm

A evening pause: This is almost a real flash mob event at the Air & Space Museum. It seems as if they sneak up on the holiday crowds, but at the same time I am not so sure. Too many cameraman around, as well as performers. Regardless, it is a great performance.

Hat tip Edward Thelen, and Tim Vogel (who suggested this a couple of years ago when I was especially dismissive of fake flash mob events. Since then I’ve mellowed). Also, as Edward notes, the schedule of events at the end of this video no longer applies.

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Portrait of Lotte, 0 to 18 years

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Somehow, to me, this seems a fitting introduction to the holiday season. From the youtube website, “Lotte from the Netherlands (Utrecht) becomes 18 years old in this film! Dutch filmmaker and artist Frans Hofmeester has been filming and photographing his children Lotte and Vince since birth. Every week the images are shot in the same style.”

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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