Thursday, December 31, 2020

Short Film: "Christmas Anti-Fable" (2017)



Christmas Anti-Fable

Directed by: Efthimis Chatzis
Script Adaptation: Fr. Constantinos Stratigopoulos
Short Story: Ilias Voulgarakis / “A Decent Trinity”
Music: Evanthia Rempoutsika
Executive Production: View Master Films
Produced by: TECHNAVA s.a.
Genre: Sci-fi/Drama
Running Time: 26 mins
Initial Release: September 19, 2017

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Charles Dickens, Marley's Chain and Theophylact of Ochrid


By John Sanidopoulos
 
When Jacob Marley makes his ghostly visit to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens describes him as a transparent spirit bound by a chain. He describes the chain specifically as follows: "The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." When during their conversation Scrooge asks trembling why he was fettered, Marley replied: "I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?” Then Marley reveals to Scrooge that the chain he bears is much more ponderous: "Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"

Friday, December 18, 2020

Chris Farley and his Demons

 

On December 18, 1997, one of the most famous and beloved comedians Chris Farley was found dead inside his rented 60th-floor high-rise apartment on Chicago’s Miracle Mile. He was only 33 years old, like his hero John Belushi.

In the days before his death, it is said that he would have put Nero to shame, binge eating, binge drinking, binge everything. He was seen drinking at a bar called the Crobar and at a bar called Karma, at the Cheesecake Factory, at the Berghoff Cafe and at the Hunt Club with his brother John, where he did a Wolfman Jack impression and let strippers drape themselves over his body.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

An Interesting Comment by Francis Ford Coppola on Orthodox Christianity

 

 
Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, in the director's commentary of his movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), as he is watching the stars of the movie Winona Ryder & Keanu Reeves being married, which was actually filmed at Saint Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church in Los Angeles, makes the following comment (transcribed from the audio):

"The Orthodox religions - Greek Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox - is [sic] in fact the original Christianity and, for my part, I think the most beautiful expression of Christianity. That Roman Catholicism is Christianity having been fused with the Roman Empire and really I think has more to do with the Roman Empire than it does with Christianity."