X-Men: Apocalypse

You may not know this but there are two big houses responsible for the non-stop stream of Marvel superhero movies: Disney handles the likes of Captain America and the Avengers, while 20th Century Fox has the rights to the X-Men franchise. Thankfully, there’s not much to pick between them, so I enjoyed X-Men: Apocalypse as much as I enjoyed Civil War, and for much of the same reasons. In this outing, the on-off bromance between Professor X and Magneto takes a decidely dark turn with the awakening of En Sabah Nur, the first mutant. Having lived for a few thousand years, Nur has amassed an irresponsible level of power and knowledge which he intends to use to cleanse the Earth (because, you know – he has to) of the weak. I’ve always praised Disney for keeping their characters vulnerable. Fox has no such compunction, so we see Nur and his horsemen wreaking the kind of global havoc we haven’t seen since Dawn of Justice.

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But somehow, they just about manage to get away with it, and I’m not really sure how.

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Christina’s World

I’ve been reading about a painting called Christina’s World. The woman featured in the painting is Anna Christina Olsen who was the subject of several paintings by Andrew Wyeth.

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Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth

Christina suffered from a neurological disorder that crippled her from the waist down. Wyeth painted this picture as he watched her making her way across a field to a nearby house.

To be honest, I’m not really into art. I can go to a gallery, stand in front of any picture and not feel a thing aside from a mild cheesecake craving.

This picture is different. It’s not just the beauty and detail of the landscape; it’s her. I look at this picture and I wonder how far she’s travelled. Does she do this journey every day? How long does it take? I look at this picture and it makes me think about about the kind of hardships that people suffer every day without so much as a sigh or a word of complaint.

And so this picture makes me feel profoundly grateful.