3.   Feather on the Breath of God

    ~ Hildegard of Bingen, Doreen Muskett, Emily van Evera (Audio CD)

    Original Release Date: 1986

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From Amazon.com: This is the record that started the Hildegard craze back in 1982--and you need only listen to Emma Kirkby glide and soar through "Columba aspexit" (the opening hymn) to understand why. Gothic Voices performs the music very simply, either alternating soloists and unison choir over a drone or using a single unaccompanied voice. The singers render Hildegard's extravagant poetic imagery and melody not with the rhythmically fluid, ecstatic approach favored by Sequentia, but with equalist rhythm and a calm, meditative quality. Gothic Voices' straightforward approach is less likely to send you into a rapturous trance than is Sequentia's, but in the hands of such fine singers as Kirkby, Margaret Philpot, and Emily van Evera, Hildegard's extraordinary texts and melodies are captivating--and clear enough to linger in the memory as melodies rather than just sensations. This record is still Hyperion's bestselling title by far--try it and find out why.

  Movies

1.   The Sea Inside

     Starring: Javier Bardem

     (2004) ~ DVD

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From Amazon.com: Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2004, The Sea Inside is a life-affirming film about a man who wishes to die. That may seem like a massive contradiction, but in the hands of director Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes, The Others) and actor Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls), this fact-based Spanish drama concerns the final days of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic poet who waged a controversial campaign for his right to die. He was denied this right for 30 years, and ultimately arranged for his own assisted suicide, but this remarkable film--and Bardem's keenly intelligent performance--examines the hotly-debated issue of assisted suicide with admirable depth and humanity, just as Sampedro did until his death in 1998. For Sampedro, death was preferable to severe paralysis (he even refused to use a wheelchair), but the film does not suggest a disposable attitude toward disability. Instead, it's a thoughtful meditation on life and love as gifts to be cherished, and a challenging drama that begs each viewer to examine their own personal beliefs about what makes life worth living. You may not agree with Sampedro and his ultimate denial of life, but The Sea Inside will urge you to ponder how you would react under similar circumstances, and that makes it a profoundly meaningful film.

2.   Wit

     Starring: Emma Thompson

     (2001) ~ DVD

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From Amazon.com: Deservedly hailed as one of the best films of 2001, Wit makes it clear why top-ranking talents seek refuge in the quality programming of HBO. Unhindered by box-office pressures, director Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson turn the most unglamorous topic--the physical and psychological ravages of cancer--into an exquisite contemplation of life, learning, and tenacious, richly expressed humanity. In adapting Margaret Edson's compassionate, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Nichols and Thompson open up the one-room setting with a superb supporting cast. But their focus remains on the hospital experience of Vivian (Thompson), a fiercely demanding professor of English literature whose academic specialty--the metaphysical poetry of John Donne--is the armor she wears against the cruel indignities of her cancer treatment. While losing all that she held dear, she reassesses her life as an aloof intellectual, and Wit illuminates her bracingly eloquent and deeply moving struggle for dignity, meaning, and peace at life's ultimate crossroads.