The Year I Kept the Holy Three-Day Fast at the Beginning of Great Lent

When I was fifteen my grandmother in Greece told me how she once met a monk who ate or drank absolutely nothing for the entire first week of Great Lent beginning on Clean Monday until after the Divine Liturgy on the first Saturday of Great Lent. The only other ascetic feat I remember her telling me about this monk was that every time it rained he would go up to the roof and stand outside with his face upwards towards the sky until the rain stopped. I was fascinated by this, and it was the first time I ever heard about the tradition of keeping a strict fasting rule for the first week of Great Lent. It was then that I also learned about the tradition of keeping a three-day fast from Clean Monday, or more specifically from Forgiveness Sunday Vespers, till after the Presanctified Liturgy on Clean Wednesday, during which time absolutely no food or even water is permitted. When I asked my pious grandmother if she ever did it, she replied no, because of its great difficulty.

Thoughts on the Academy Awards

Watching the Academy Awards every year usually diminishes the exciting films I enjoy watching throughout the year. It's long, mostly boring, and it takes itself too seriously at times and not serious enough at other times. No wonder every year its ratings get worse and worse. I'm not arguing in favor of a short and fun Academy Awards ceremony, but I am arguing in favor of it being more interesting. Of the 3.5 hours or so last night, I think only about 3 or 4 minutes was interesting. In order for the Academy Awards to be great, at least half of it should be interesting. I've studied many films, I know what makes them interesting, but you never get the sense that films can be interesting by watching the Academy Awards. Many critics argue that the reason the Academy Awards tanks every year is because they talk about boring subjects and films no one watches. They think the answer is to get rid of certain segments, make the show more fun, and reward films people actually see. I sort of disagree with all these approaches. The answer is to get people so interested and excited about the films nominated and awarded, that they will want to go out and see the films as soon as humanly possible, and if they have seen them they should inspire them to want to watch them again.

The Birth of Sci-Fi Cinema

I just realized today that it's been a month since I wrote anything here, so I figured I should write something. It was a busy January and didn't have much time to write anything for this website. My last post was on my favorite films of 2019. To continue the movie theme, two things I did in January was begin a seminar at Harvard University on the Nine Silent Films of Alfred Hitchcock, which is still underway for the next two weeks, and the other seminar that I just completed Thursday was on the Birth of Sci-Fi Cinema. The nine silent films of Hitchcock can easily be looked up, and I highly recommend them all if you're a Hitchcock fan, but below I will list all the films I saw this past week on the big screen related to the birth of sci-fi cinema, all of which were excellent films and highly recommended, especially if you can catch them some time on the big screen. So if you're interested in sci-film films and were interested in the origin of them, check these out: