Merry Christmas from The Movie Snob!

Movie review:

Chicken Little (C+). This holiday season has not gone according to plan at all. By now I should have seen and reviewed both the new Narnia movie and, of course, the new King Kong. But I walked out of Narnia last weekend and demanded a refund because the theater's sound system was messed up. And to my greater surprise, my little sister, who was a great fan of Lord of the Rings, balked at seeing Kong while we're home for Christmas. Too long, she says. So somehow we wound up seeing this little trifle (not even the Wallace & Gromit movie that got such critical acclaim, because she objected to that one too). Actually, this movie turned out to be kind of cute. In a town where all sorts of animals live harmoniously together, Chicken Little is a nerdy little kid who becomes a laughing-stock when he sounds the alarm that the sky is falling. If you've never seen a movie before, you'll be surprised to learn that the misfit is more or less right and all the normal people (including his disbelieving father) turn out to be wrong. Some nice homages to other sci-fi movies contribute making this a bearable moviewatching experience.

Book review:

The Edge of Sadness, by Edwin O'Connor. This is Loyola Press re-issue of a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. It's the story of about six months in the life of a Catholic priest, Father Hugh Kennedy. The 55-ish priest has been assigned a dead-end post in a dying parish in or near Boston, but he accepts his assignment willingly, even gladly, as a quiet refuge after spending four years away in treatment for alcoholism. He is gradually drawn out of his seclusion by the Carmody family, including his two best childhood friends Helen and John, and their ruthless entrepreneur of a father, Charlie. Author O'Connor was not a priest, but his portrait of the life of the Catholic clergy in the last days of the old pre-Vatican II Catholic culture rings true. Well-written and very interesting.