dual personalities

Tag: Robert Duvall

August 14, 2015

Soul on fire

by chuckofish

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes I listen to Christian radio in the morning. Yesterday they played one of my favorites, “Soul on Fire” by Third Day, as I was driving into work.

Did you listen? Not a bad way to rev your engine for the day ahead.

Anyway, this song put me in mind of the great movie The Apostle (1997) starring Robert Duvall in the role for which he should have won the Academy Award.

apostle_ver3He also wrote the screenplay, directed the movie and financed it with 5 million dollars of his own money. It is pretty awesome as I recall. I saw it at the movies back when it was released and then when it came out on DVD, but not since.

The Apostle is an unflattering but realistic portrayal of Pentecostal minister Euless “Sonny” Dewey who is searching for redemption amidst personal torment and anger issues. I was impressed with Duvall and indeed everyone in the film–Farrah Fawsett, Billy Bob Thornton, June Carter Cash et al. I was impressed that he made this film with its Christian theme and that it was actually reviewed favorably by the mainstream media. Duvall’s minister is not perfect but he is not a fake. He is the real deal.

theapostle

So it is my Friday movie pick. “I’m a genuine, Holy Ghost, Jesus-filled preachin’ machine this mornin’!”

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February 5, 2013

“Here’s to the sunny slopes of long ago.”

by chuckofish

It snowed in our flyover town over the weekend!

SNOW2

As an antidote to the cold winter weather (and because I had no real interest in the Super Bowl), I watched Lonesome Dove (1989) on Netflix Watch Instantly on Sunday and Monday nights. I had not seen it in a very long time. I read the book about two retired Texas Rangers who decide to take a herd of cattle on a 3,000-mile trek north to Montana in 1876 when it came out in paperback back in 1988 and loved it. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. (Various sequels and prequels by Larry McMurtry are, in my humble opinion, unequal to the original, due to their being way over the top in grossness and violence. But the original LD got it just right.)

The miniseries I associate with the year after my mother died when solace in any form was welcome and hard-to-come-by.

lonesomedove

Gus McCrae and Captain Call were a balm to me–at least for the four days in February 1989  the series aired. Gus was even a bit of a philosopher, handing out good advice right and left, such as this:

Lorie darlin’, life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it’s likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.

Thank you, Gus and Woodrow. And thank you, Pea and Dish and Deets and Newt and July and Roscoe and Lorena and all the rest. It was nice to see you again.

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