“Where’s the album, Frank?” That’s the question Frank Ocean fans have been asking since 2014, when he announced his second album, “Blonde.” A far cry from his 2012 debut, “Channel Orange,” which was a quirky and endearing R&B pastiche, “Blonde” makes Ocean inaccessible to the public. False release dates, misleading Tumblr posts, and...
If Christian Wiman’s life story is a journey, then “Once in the West” is the road map, drawn in a riot of color that seems to take on a life of its own. The poems rush by like signposts on the roadside in a blast of blurring imagery and syntax: “icequiet,” “stabdazzling,” “flashlit,” “slaughterhospice,”...
The silence of God can be suffocating. The modern God, whom Wiman refers to as his “Bright Abyss,” is not an unquestioned cornerstone. We find ourselves bereft of a habitually stated vision of God. No longer do we have the rituals or rhythms to spiritually cope with tragedies, the death of a daughter, a diagnosis...
With a pairing as strong Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks, it’s not a surprise “Sully” is already generating Oscar buzz. After sweeping six Oscar nominations with “American Sniper,” Eastwood’s highest-grossing feature to date, he tackles another tale of American heroism with his newest feature, “Sully.” Hanks leads the film as Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the...
A sputtering flame casts shadows over the scholar’s face as he pores over the Scriptures, his bent body forming the perfect image of a studious disciple. It’s late, and the words blur on the page. Saint Augustine snuffs out the candle and falls into his concubine’s arms. In “The Confessions of X,” Suzanne M. Wolfe...