Category: Catholic Herald
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Aretha Franklin, witness to the Gospel
Deal W. Hudson May 16, 2019 Amazing Grace is one of the greatest concert movies of all time In January 1972, Aretha Franklin travelled to Los Angeles to join her good friend Pastor James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir to record a gospel album. That album, entitled Amazing Grace, went on to become the…
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When Elgar turned to the Druids
Deal W. Hudson April 11, 2019 The conductor Martyn Brabbins and Hyperion have given us the second complete recording of Elgar’s 1898 cantata Caractacus. It’s been more than 25 years since the first recording by Richard Hickox on Chandos (1994). Caractacus is an uneven work but possesses enough moments of raw power and pastoral beauty…
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You need to watch this German masterpiece
Deal W. Hudson February 28, 2019 Never Look Away tells kind of the story that invites superlatives and deserves them. Based upon the life of painter Gerhard Richter, it tells the story of an artist who lives through the Nazi horror and the communist stranglehold, then escapes to West Berlin where, after much trial and error,…
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Films that take you into the wilderness with Jesus
Deal W. Hudson March 14, 2019 It’s hard to understand why any director making a film about Jesus would ignore the face-off with Lucifer. Cecil B DeMille has his mind elsewhere in his 1927 King of Kings. Himself succumbing to carnal temptation, DeMille opens his film with a barely clad Mary Magdalene, now a prostitute…
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A painter of pure, radiant happiness
Deal W. Hudson February 14, 2019 Ali Cavanaugh’s figurative art has deep spiritual roots, discovers Deal Hudson Ali Cavanaugh is a painter in pursuit of the miracle of human existence. A Catholic convert who was received in 2002, she says this of her faith: “The Blessed Mother is my constant and helps me with every…
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Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ is badly misunderstood
Deal W. Hudson February 7, 2019 Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, recently condemned the New York Times for using a picture of “a nun in habit standing behind a jail-like façade” to accompany a review of Jacques Rivette’s 1966 film La Religieuse (“The Nun”). Based on a novel by Diderot, it depicts the…
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The extraordinary power of ‘transcendental’ films
Deal W. Hudson January 24, 2019 Deal Hudson on the shattering effect of movies that defy our expectations In 1971, Paul Schrader, a film student at UCLA, published a book called Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Although he was only 24 years old, his theory of “transcendental style” – expressed in formal academic language…
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Tim Kaine must not get away with styling himself a ‘Pope Francis Catholic’
Deal W. Hudson August 9, 2016 With the nomination of Senator Tim Kaine, American Catholic voters once again face a decision about whether to send a pro-abortion, dissenting Catholic to Number One Observatory Circle, the official residence of the Vice President of the United States. For the past eight years Vice President Joseph Biden has…
Deal W. Hudson 