Commentary: Searching for Truth and Excellence in Youth Literature and Movies

A couple of months ago, a friend of my wife and of mine, a young Italian priest, was visiting with us. Our conversation veered toward youth books and movies. Our friend lamented what he perceived as a lack of substance in contemporary books and movies for young people. He said that the books kids read and the movies they watch should reflect the truth and impel them toward right living and virtue, instead of simply mirroring the symptoms of a wounded culture. Perhaps my friend was onto something.

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Commentary: Christmas Movies Without the Hollywoke Scrooge

Christmas tree, TV playing The Grinch and stockings on chimney

Hollywoke may be spearheading the War on Christmas, but three cable channels are mounting a far more effective counteroffensive, running traditionalist Christmas movies 24/7. And one of them, Lifetime, is a surprising beachhead. While HBO Max is showcasing the insufferable Seth Rogan’s latest bomb, Santa, Inc. (angry elf girl wants to succeed white male Santa Claus), the once male-bashing Lifetime “for Women” now boasts such romantic “heteronormative” fare as My Sweet Holiday, A Sweet Christmas Romance, and A Christmas Village Romance. Lifetime has joined the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries to reflect a realistic rather than fantastical vision of and for women, and their genuine desire for true love over a feminist-fueled man-light career pursuit.

Some Grinches criticize the films as bland, corny, and predictable. They’re certainly not on par with Yuletide classics by Ernst Lubitch (The Shop Around the Corner) or Leo McCarey (An Affair to Remember), and they do stress a secular more than spiritual Christmas magic. But normal viewers gleam from them values no longer found in the tiresomely “dark, edgy” mainstream series and feature films, such as beauty, sensitivity, warmth, uplift, and niceness.

Start with beauty. The movies are gorgeously photographed to resemble, yes, Hallmark cards. Many depict Robert Frostian villages and valleys in holiday winter, but even major cities like San Francisco in A Christmas Village Romance, Chicago in A Kiss Before Christmas, and New York in the majority appear as lovely metropoles instead of the crime-ridden progressive hellholes the Left has made of them.

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Independent Film ‘Gosnell’ DVD a Best-Seller on Amazon

by Courtney Joyner   Ahead of its Feb. 5 DVD release, the underdog film “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” is seeing success as it reaches No. 1 on Amazon’s best-sellers list in “drama DVDs.” “We have seen this all along,” said Phelim McAleer, the film’s producer, in a statement to The Daily Signal. “‘Gosnell’ is the movie that the mainstream media and Hollywood don’t want you to see, but the public really has an appetite for the truth.” Unlike mainstream studios, “Gosnell,” which tells the story of the infamous late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, was supported by a crowdfunding campaign that raised a record-breaking $2.3 million in 45 days. Released in nearly 800 theaters across the U.S. in October, “Gosnell” grossed $3.6 million despite the lack of support from mainstream media outlets. “The film has been suppressed—NPR and Facebook and The New York Times have shut down our advertising,” said McAleer. “They won’t take our money because they don’t want this story told because it shines a negative spotlight on abortion.” The movie depicts the controversial investigation, trial, and conviction of “America’s most prolific serial killer,” as described by ABC News, and the political establishment media’s efforts to…

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