Author Archives: davetcourt

It’s been nearly a week since I finished the new series by Mike Flanagan, Midnight Mass, and it would be an understatement to suggest many thoughts and feelings after watching this show remain. To its credit I suppose, except that those feelings come with a good deal of tension and frustration. I don’t think I’veContinue reading “Midnight Mass: Where Faith Meets Doubt”

Film Birdman of Alcatraz (1962, Directed by John Frankenheimer) You might not expect a story about a man and his birds to be this powerful, this astute in its observations on life, hope and redemption, or this aware of both nature and humanity. And yet here we are, finding our way into this particular man’sContinue reading “Month in Review: Memorable Reads, Watches and Listens for September, 2021”

I wrote a reflection piece on the 2017 film My Life as a Zucchini. The reflection piece accompanies a recent podcast episode I participated in for the podcast. The piece is linked here, and the podcast episode can also be found through this site: https://www.thefearofgodpodcast.com/blog/afterthoughtszucchini

I had a slightly disorienting experience this week with one of my current reads (Eugene Peterson’s final book, This Hallelujah Banquet, and a recent podcast episode from Bookmark: Ologies (episode 97) and featuring an interview with Neil Pasricha, the author of The Book of Awesome/The Happiness Equation and the 1000 Awesome Things blog. The episode,Continue reading “The Happiness Equation and This Hallelujah Banquet- What Does it Mean to Be Happy”

During some recent attempts at house cleaning, I uncovered some old pieces of writing from years ago. Some of them are from when I was very young. One of them was a piece I wrote when I was 15. It’s not something I have ever shared. I wrote it, filed it away, and never returnedContinue reading “A Rough Draft of a Forgotten Story: Recovering the Pages of My Teenage Years”

Film Pig (Directed by Michael Sarnoski, 2021) A briliant subversion of revenge film tropes forms the foundation for this studied character drama lead by Cage in what I would argue is a career performance. If you ever find yourself wondering how it is Cage became so iconic, this will function as definitive proof that itContinue reading “Month in Review: Memorable Reads, Watches and Listens for August, 2021”

As a considered fan of the Conjuring universe, it is too bad this third entry has been getting such a bad rep as it is actually a pretty strong entry in what is, I would argue, a really strong franchise. It isn’t quite as technically strong as it’s predecessors, but that shouldn’t take away fromContinue reading “The Conjuring, The Devil and the Curious Question of Peronhood and Existence: Parsing Out the Problem of Human and Divine Justice”

I counted 5 walk outs in my viewing of David Bruckner’s The Night House. Of course I have no way of knowing why they walked out, but afterwards it was fun to speculate with my viewing partner as to why. Not the film they expected? Too slow? Frustrated with the ambiguity of the working metaphorContinue reading “The Night House and the Power of Nothingness- Learning How to Live with Depression and Anxiety By Telling Our Stories”

Still one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Arriving in Ukraine for our adoption, unaware that it was their Independance Day and walking out of our apartment in the Maidan Nezalezhnosti to this. As someone who lives in the heartland of Canadian Ukrainian immigration, which stems largely from here in Winnipeg down theContinue reading “Ukrainian Independence: 10 Films or Books to Consider for the 30th Anniversary”

Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience and author of the book Being You is at the forefront of seemingly surging interest in the subject of consciousness, with a barrage of books, articles, blogs, emerging studies, advances, ect making headlines in the last number of years. There is likely a number of reasons forContinue reading “Being You, Peronhood and the Mystery of Consciousness”