Rick McGinnis
Written on 17 Apr, 2013 at 16:06 in
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Rick McGinnis Anthony Quinn as Pope Kiril in the film version of Morris West's novel The Shoes of the Fisherman
When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires stepped onto the balcony at St. Peter’s Square last month, he helped provide a satisfactory conclusion to a ritual that – as we were told repeatedly in the thicket of media coverage – is watched with fascination both within and without the Catholic ... (Continue reading)
Written on 28 Mar, 2013 at 11:28 in
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Rick McGinnis Lena Duham
It’s a truism that every generation believes that the ones immediately following it will preside over the dismantling of every social, cultural and economic virtue that they took for granted, a rite of passage for senior generations that begins roughly when they realize that they’ve slipped out of the green vale of youth. There’s no objective way of proving this imminent decline, but since popular culture began to edge ... (Continue reading)
Written on 23 Feb, 2013 at 19:34 in
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Rick McGinnis While the political battle over abortion has hardened into a seemingly intractable stalemate, the pro-life side of the issue can take some small comfort in the fact that, at least on the cultural front, abortion remains a hard sell.
To be sure, secularized liberals whose support for abortion remains an article of faith almost wholly occupy the strategic high ground – the movie studios and production houses, performing arts and publishing. ... (Continue reading)
Written on 11 Jan, 2013 at 11:52 in
Movie Review, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis I doubt that I’m the only person who found the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALS last year unsatisfying, both as a skirmish in an ongoing war and, looking at it a bit more flippantly, as a dramatic finale. For all the counter-espionage resources that it took to find the man, and the undeniable military skill of the SEALS who did the dirty work, it had the ... (Continue reading)
Written on 18 Dec, 2012 at 8:43 in
Columnist, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis
Amusements Rick McGinnis
Thanks to laser-sharp marketing geniuses who regard the perfect moviegoer as a comics-reading teenager with no memory whatsoever of any film made before 2001, feature film production has slipped into only occasionally lucrative irrelevance. As if to compensate, the lowest end of the film production market – documentaries, made for little money with even less expectation of a profit – is managing to provoke and entertain with ever ... (Continue reading)
Written on 20 Nov, 2012 at 11:01 in
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Rick McGinnis St. Clement lofts Toronto
I’d like to take a break from the usual subjects of this column – movies, TV and books, mostly – to talk about something that might not seem at all related: real estate. I live in a city (Toronto) where real estate – buying and selling, house values, property taxes, neighbourhoods, amenities and development – are talked about far more than cultural activities like plays, films, books, ... (Continue reading)
Written on 25 Oct, 2012 at 14:54 in
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Rick McInnis I’m writing this column at the end of what has to be one of the least interesting summers in movie history. To make matters worse – if you work for a Hollywood studio – it’s also been one of the least profitable, but that doesn’t mean that movies aren’t important. As the Middle East erupted into bloody riots that took the life of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, among others, it ... (Continue reading)
Written on 22 Sep, 2012 at 6:22 in
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Amusements Rick McGinnis For most families, college is the acid test of their parenting, the point when independence is finally granted and the long years of helicopter parenting (hopefully) cease. In the aftermath of three generations that have embraced youthful rebellion as an inevitable stage of life – an idea almost unheard of a century ago – we send our children off to university (or its equivalent) resigned to seeing some, but hopefully not ... (Continue reading)
Written on 24 Aug, 2012 at 17:12 in
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Rick McGinnis
Growing up during the Cold War, I saw the Earth end many times over. Mushroom clouds bloomed in films and TV shows such as The Day After, Testament, Threads, The War Game, By Dawn’s Early Light, On the Beach, The Bedford Incident, Fail Safe and Miracle Mile. Looking back from today, they might vary in quality but they share a common tone – grim resignation – and I can recall with certainty ... (Continue reading)
Written on 23 Jul, 2012 at 6:41 in
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Rick McGinnis Culture matters. I would carve these words on stone slabs and hand deliver them to every conservative and pro-life organization in the English-speaking world if I thought that it would make a difference, but I’m no longer sure it will. We may, I fear, have absented ourselves from culture and the arts for so long that everything we do now is a rear guard action, fought on the outskirts of the ... (Continue reading)
Written on 20 Jun, 2012 at 18:21 in
Columnist, Movie Review, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis When The Hunger Games opened in theatres this past March it was a sensation, earning over US$150 million in its first weekend and becoming the third highest-grossing opening weekend of all time. Dealers in hindsight told us we shouldn’t have been surprised – 17.5 million copies of the Suzanne Collins’ original young readers sci-fi novel had been sold in the U.S. by its publisher, and over 36 million copies of the ... (Continue reading)
Written on 23 May, 2012 at 5:58 in
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Rick McGinnis The premise of the documentary The Other F Word is that there’s something outlandish, even implausible, in the spectacle of a man who’s made his living and his name as a punk rock musician taking on the role of a father. It’s an idea made visible by the image on the film’s poster and DVD packaging, of Lars Frederiksen from the punk band Rancid, with his hair dyed in leopard spots, ... (Continue reading)
Written on 23 Apr, 2012 at 12:12 in
Movie Review, Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis As a purely anecdotal aside, I’d like to mention that few of the people I know who’ve walked the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrim trail that provides the setting for Emilio Estevez’ film The Way, were actually Catholic, or even appreciably Christian. The Camino has become, in an age of widened horizons but jaded palettes, a kind of extreme tourism destination, much like Peru’s Inca Trail or the Kanchenjunga Trek ... (Continue reading)
Written on 19 Mar, 2012 at 5:05 in
Rick McGinnis | Author:
Rick McGinnis In the 2009 film Up In The Air, George Clooney and co-star Vera Farmiga were enlisted to basically make air miles seem sexy. In Higher Ground, the directorial debut in which Farmiga also stars, she’s set herself an even more difficult task – making an intelligent, general interest film about religious faith.
In a featurette included with the film’s DVD release, Farmiga reflects that, right now, there are films made for Christians, and ... (Continue reading)
Written on 23 Feb, 2012 at 10:36 in
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Rick McGinnis I spent one night of my holidays watching the new Bluray re-issue of Meet Me In St. Louis, a film that might be the pinnacle of the MGM colour musical, and is very probably the zenith of Judy Garland’s career. I enjoyed it even more than the last time I saw it, but like almost anything from what’s called Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” it made me wonder at how gradually the world ... (Continue reading)
