DAILY CALL SHEET: NOVEMBER 8, 2025

Magic (1978) Let's get this straight. We've got the director of Ghandi and A Bridge Too Far, the screenwriter of The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the composer of the scores to Patton and Chinatown, and a cast full of award winning actors like Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, and Burgess Meredith, and they all came together to make a movie about … a mentally ill ventriloquist who wants to find a way to be free of his murderous, trash-talking dummy and thinks true love will do the trick? Yeah, that's exactly what they did, and they were all dead serious about it, too. Hopkins even learned ventriloquism so his performance would be authentic. Yes, the plot is better suited to some B-movie schlock fest rather than the typical prestige films this crew is associated with, but go with the flow and you'll be rewarded with some top tier acting.

TIL: Not all Saints were genteel stoics. St. Simeon Salus, aka Simeon the Holy Fool, often feigned madness to bring attention to Christ's teachings. Some of his tactics included tripping strangers in the street, pelting women with nuts, and dragging himself around on his bottom. And don't even bring up the dead dog incident. Nobody seemed to mind, though, because when there was no audience, Simeon was busy feeding the poor, exorcising the possessed, and teaching the Gospel. One of the more memorable things Simeon liked to do was carry around a puppet which would harangue passers-by about their sins and shortcomings, at least that's what it did when it wasn't busy insulting Simeon himself. If it sounds like modern ventriloquists ripped off Simeon's act, they did, which is why he's now considered the patron Saint of ventriloquists and puppeteers.

Frightmare (1974) If you think your family has problems, imagine being poor Jackie. Both her father Edmund and stepmother Dorothy have just been released from the mental asylum where they've been confined for almost 15 years, Dorothy for being a cannibal, and Edmund for covering up his wife's diet. Dorothy's not quite cured, though, so Jackie has to start slipping her animal brains to munch on. However, that may not be enough satisfy Dorothy's hunger for human flesh, nor that of Jackie's stepsister Debbie, who it turns out might just be a chip off the old block. The Times of London called this flick "nasty, foolish and morally repellent," so naturally it's something of a cult classic these days.

TIL: With her little brown packages full of animal brains, Jackie means well, but you can't just let family member's problems slide. As the Catechism notes, "charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction." This means if you truly love a family member, you won't have a passive tolerance of their sins but an active concern for their spiritual well-being, particularly when grave (mortal) sins that could endanger their soul are involved. I'd say cannibalism falls into that category. That being said, fraternal correction doesn't always mean direct confrontation in every instance. Use a little prudence, keeping in mind that correction must serve amendment and healing, not judgment or conflict.