Fr. Joyce’s “Magnificent 7”
Favorite Movies
“everyone should see once and perhaps revisit every 5 to 10 years”
Summer 2007

• “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial ~ a young boy learns new values and the meaning of friendship from someone who is very different from him, an alien of all things.  What a concept! (1982)

• “Field of Dreams” ~ baseball’s mythic heroes return to describe “heaven” as “the place where dreams come true”; Baseball serves as a metaphor for salvation, forgiveness and getting “home”.  An evening playing catch finally brings father and son reconciliation. (1989)

• “Going My Way” ~ the Catholic and especially Irish Catholic answer to “What a Wonderful World”; Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald (a very elderly pastor at 69!) combine for “the best sentimental Christmas movie ever!” (1944)

• “Schindler’s List ~ a story of an ordinary man just doing “what little” he could.  Oskar Schindler, a greedy business man begins trying to make a wartime fortune by exploiting cheap Jewish labor and ends up penniless but saves 1,100 Polish Jews from certain death. (1993)

• “To Kill a Mockingbird” ~ Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), a noble figure, defends an innocent black man against a prejudiced town and jury and his children against prejudice: “You never know someone,” he teaches, “until you step inside their skin and walk around a little.” (1962)

• “The Grapes of Wrath” ~ a classic, yet very current, story of migrants/immigrants moving to feed their family and survive.  The American Film Institute describes it as one of the “most inspiring films of all time” (1940)

• “The Saint of 9/11” ~ a documentary on Franciscan Fr. Mychal Judge hero of World Trade Center, friend to homeless, AIDS victims and firefighters.  The best (and maybe only positive) film about the priesthood in years reminds us “that sanctity always makes its home in humanity”. (2006)
  
  

Fr. Dibble’s Favorite Movies
Summer 2007

Brief Encounter: Requited--but unconsummated--love story in England in the forties.   Stiff-upper-lip at its noblest…with the best background music in history of movies.

Vertigo: Hitchcock tells tale of lost love and trying to find it again.  Lush music, plot twist, San Francisco at its hazy-loveliest.  Second best movie music in all of cinema.

Dumbo: Baby elephant rejected by all except mama and a mouse.  Have Kleenex ready.

Miracle Worker: True story.  Blind and deaf child Helen Keller taught to communicate--by Irish Catholic nanny who can pack a punch-----as does the film.

Now, Voyager: depressed and boozing and lonely lady has a makeover, goes on a cruise, smokes a cigarette and Gets a Life.  Bette Davis at her peak and third best background movie music of all time.

In America: True story.  Immigrant family move into a NYC slum.  Broke, bewildered and scared, the mom and dad and two kids eke out existence.  Soon they meet some weird Manhattanites (a redundancy).  Then they go to a neighborhood fair/bazaar and face as suspenseful a short scene as ever filmed.  The two kids in this picture are blissfully unactorish and amazingly talented.

Strangers on a Train: Hitchcock in his prime.  One alarmed sane guy pursued by one chilling looney guy---and a trilogy of being-stalked by-a-killer-scenes which are famous in world cinema.

Moonstruck: Cher (fully dressed and endearingly human) and a sprawling Italian family in Brooklyn----brimming with Puccini arias on the soundtrack and smart, witty dialogue.  Maybe you want to applaud at the end: most attendees did---loud and long.  A family movie in the best sense.

The Heiress: Rich insecure woman wooed by calculating fotune-hunting dreamboat.  Aaron Copeland did the music in the background.  One scene in the middle of the film (climbing stairs at dawn) took 30 takes before the director was satisfied.  Final five minutes of The Heiress led, all over the world, to many stormy after-screening debates about WHAT DID HAPPEN AND WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED AT THE VERY END!!!???  Some college students went at each others’ throats and wrangled for hours about the conclusion of this famous 1949 movie.  

Father Joyce’s Booklist 2007

The Final Four

• Blessed Among Women by Robert Ellsberg
  Publisher: DARTON LONGMAN & TOD (May 22, 2006)

• Religion Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know-And Doesn’t
  by Stephen Prothero
  Publisher: HarperOne (March 13, 2007)

• The Best Catholic Writing of 2006 edited by Brian Doyle
  Publisher: Loyola Press (October 31, 2006)

• The Bad Catholic Guide to Good Living by John Zmirak & Denise Matychowiak
  Publisher: Crossroad Publishing Company (September 25, 2005)

Two More That Almost Made It

• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
  Publisher: Amber-Allen Publishing


• The Radical Peasant by Gerald F. Cox
  Publisher: Trafford Publishing (November 21, 2006)

Three Just For Fun

• Any Book by author John Lescroat
  Publisher: Dutton Adult (January 16, 2007)
  Publisher: Signet (February 7, 2006)


• Pope Patrick by Peter De Rosa
  Publisher: Doubleday; 1st ed edition (February 17, 1997)


• The Accidental Pope: A Novel by Raymond Flyer & Robin Moore
  Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (December 17, 2001)

Father Dibble’s Booklist 2007

• A Year With C. S. Lewis by C. S. Lewis
  Publisher: HarperCollins Entertainment; New Ed edition (October 18, 2004)

• Any Book with Jeeves By Woodhouse, P. G.
  Publisher: Dover Publications (July 10, 1997)
  Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 29, 1983)

• The Language of God by Francis S. Collins
  Publisher: Free Press (July 17, 2007)

• Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple Series, or anything by Christie)
  Publisher: Signet (April 2, 2002)

• Biblical Meditations by Carroll Stuhlmueller (several volumes available)
  Publisher: Paulist Press (November 1984)

• Two Theological Tales: Light Reading for Contemplatives by Frank B. Nieman
  Publisher: Outskirts Press (June 1, 2007)

• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff
  Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1990)

• 5001 Nights at the Movies by Pauline Kael
  Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston (1984)

• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  Publisher: Back Bay Books (September 1999)

• Crossword Puzzles! (Large Type & Easy)