Girl Detective

There Will Be Blood was part of my pre-2008-Oscar shortlist of films to see before the show. It’s a stunning character study of Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a self-proclaimed family man and oil man. It’s beautifully shot, in bleak desert sets. There’s fire, gushing oil, danger, death, lies, and betrayal. As impressive as the acting and the visuals are though, the music takes the film to even more impressive heights. There are long stretches with no dialogue, and the music, composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, is almost a character as it advances the plot and the film. That the music was disqualified for an Oscar is a travesty. The whole, brought together by director Paul Thomas Anderson, goes over the top at times, but is such a compelling work that I wouldn’t do without it.

Watching the film, though, was a mixed experience. I had a couple in front of me and another beside me that whispered continually, until I asked both at separate times to please stop talking. Both couples did stop talking. As the fifty-ish woman in front of me exited at the end of the film, she hissed, “Bitch!” at me, which took me aback. I know it is off-putting to be shushed, but I paid $7.25 for a matinee, and I asked her politely to stop talking. A reminder, from New York magazine:

Can I talk during the movie? We’d like to say, “No, no, never, no, absolutely not.” But the days of respectful silence are gone. During the pre-film ads, speak as much and as loudly as you like. Whispers and derisive yelps are permissible during trailers. During the feature, you must limit yourself to the occasional whisper. Silence is preferred, but a hushed “Wait–didn’t she die in that car wreck back there?” is okay. There is one exception to these rules: the brilliant, brave comment in the terrible movie. For us, it was at I Know What You Did Last Summer, in a particularly histrionic scene of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s emoting that a guy shouted out “Oscar clip!” and provided the high point of the night.

Persepolis the film is an adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s comic-book memoirs, Persepolis and Persepolis II. It’s the rare adaptation that takes its origin material and turns it into something similar, yet new and wonderful. The two-volume memoirs are favorites of mine, so it would have been easy for the film to disappoint. Yet Satrapi’s collaboration on this work shows. It retains the books’ engaging, simple artwork and adds movement, yet contrasts it with still illustrations as well. The film mirrors the books’ humor, and Satrapi’s young girl in early 80’s war-torn Iran is engaging, as in the book. This film is visually arresting; the story is both particular and universal, as in the best memoirs.

I wrote last year of Mothering Sunday, the antecedent to Mother’s Day. Mothering Day is Sunday 2 March 2008. Here is an excerpt from a recent email by the delightful Persephone Books:

‘Mothering Sunday? I never heard tell of that.’

Anna smiled at the intent look on his face.

‘”Those who go a-mothering find violets in the lane.” That’s a very old saying. I believe the custom dates from the days when the children went away to work at a terrible age, poor little things, especially the girls into service. On mid-Lent Sunday they visited their mothers and on the way picked her a bunch of violets and the mother made them a cake. The cake was half boiled and half baked and was called a simnel cake. You must remember simnel cakes, Mr Pickering; delicious they were, usually with little birds on them.’

–from Noel Streatfeild’s 1950 novel Mothering Sunday

There is a recipe for Simnel Cake in Florence White’s Good Things in England, Persephone Book No.10 Order three Persephone books this week by Friday 29 February and receive Good Things in England for free.

‘Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.’ –Catherine Morland

‘The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. –Henry Tilney

A few years ago, I bemoaned how I didn’t re-read books, and made the decision to change that. As I’ve become a re-reader, I’ve also become a better reader. The first time through a book, I’m feeling my way in the dark; I read quickly to find out what happens. On subsequent readings, I can relax and focus on examining the craft, since I know the major plot points, and how it ends.

This was the second time I read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, which was her first-completed and last published novel. Last time, I didn’t much enjoy it. Since then, though, I’ve read the six Austen novels, re-read Karen Joy Fowler’s Jane Austen Book Club, seen several screen adaptations of the works including the 2007 Northanger Abbey, done online research about Austen and her novels, and become a regular reader of Austenblog. This reading of NA was very different, because I was a different reader, made more aware from all those experiences.

On this read, I “got” the comprehensive irony that characterizes this novel. NA became much more sophisticated to me because of this. The first time, I felt it was a kind of middle-school romance, and I found Henry Tilney condescending. This time, I saw Austen’s signature incisive social commentary. The book wasn’t a critique of people who took trashy novels too seriously, as I thought before. I also didn’t find it the diatribe against popular novels it’s often assumed to be; Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho is praised by Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who are the characters of discerning taste. Instead, it’s an indictment of social hypocrisy, when people say one thing and do another. Novel reading is an example of something people denied doing, or liking, when the reality was opposite. Novels as a reader’s only object, as they are for the naive Catherine, are problematic. As part of a well-balanced reading diet, as the Tilneys have, though, popular novels are to be championed.

Young Catherine’s overactive imagination is contrasted with her inexperience of people; at the beginning of the novel she thinks life is very like what she reads in novels. As NA progresses, however, she learns painful lessons about the world and her understanding of it. With that comes the knowledge that, while real life may not be as dramatic as in novels, it can be as cruel and punishing, or sweetly rewarding, as author-created fiction.

On this read, I quite enjoyed NA. It was very funny, though not an easy read because of the pervasive irony; I had to read closely to catch all the “only”s and “but”s. I still found Henry Tilney a bit supercilious; he doesn’t hide that he thinks he’s the smartest person in a room. But I liked him better this time, and suspect that he often spoke with Austen’s own voice.

From Sesame Street, that is. Mine used to be Oscar, but Cookie Monster’s charm has increased along with my Sesame Street viewing time as my kids get older. I think he may be the funniest of the monsters, and is certainly the one who gives the most nods to parents, with his impeccably timed injections of advanced vocabulary.

See an example of that in this NPR interview with Cookie Monster (link from ALoTT5MA). FYI pusillanimous means cowardly; I had to look up both the spelling and the meaning.

Remember that long ago date, what was it, ELEVEN DAYS AGO, when I wrote

My hope for this year (I prefer hopes to goals; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a simple transposition makes them gaols) is to read two shelf books a month, to continue my library patronage, and to keep book buying to a minimum.

The shopping goddess thought it was time for my uppance to come. I broke that vow within 48 hours. I broke it again three days later. And again, five days after that. Curse you, Half Price Books. Herewith are the books I bought, and how I came to rationalize buying them:

Four volumes from The Gresham Publishing Company’s Complete Work of Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Villette, Shirley, and The Professor. Me: Gasp! I was just thinking I wanted to read more Bronte books, and here are these lovely old editions in good shape with photo and illustration inserts! Wait, I’m not supposed to buying books. Wait, it’s my birthday at the end of the month. Happy birthday to me….

Pride and Prejudice, Norton Critical Edition. Me: I was JUST thinking that I’d like an edition of this with notes. And here it is!

Wuthering Heights Barnes and Noble Classics edition. Me: I am really craving notes right now, and these look pretty good.

Jane Eyre, Penguin Classics. Me: Look, notes!

Wide Sargasso Sea, Norton Critical Edition. Me: I can take this off my amazon wish list now. It’s cheap! And full of notes so I can understand the book this time!

Ironically (or pathetically; you decide) the reason I’d gone into the bookstore was that they were holding a mass-market paperback (MMPB, i.e., portable) copy of Little Women. But in the excitement of rationalizing EIGHT books, I forgot to pick up the one on hold. So I had to go back, three days later.

Little Women, Signet MMPB. Me: I really want to re-read LW before I read Geraldine Brooks’ March, and I don’t want to lug around my big HC even if I love the illustrations.

Ken Follett, Pillars of the Earth MMPB. Me: Ha! Who needs to buy the expensive TPB Oprah edition! This is much more portable for when I read it again, which I’m sure I’m going to do soon.

Then, five days later, I’m in the bookstore again. (It’s near where I have doctor appointments; I did have legitimate reasons for being there.)

Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho MMPB. Me: I am loving Northanger Abbey, and have to read this, since it’s mentioned so often.

Caleb Carr’s The Alienist $1 MMPB. Me: Becca just commented that this was a thumping good read, and since I’m so into Victorian literature lately, I’m sure I’ll read this soon.

Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics UK HC. Me: Ooh! Pretty textured cover! So much nicer than the US editions!

There you have it. I expressed a hope to keep book buying to a minimum, and within ten days I bought thirteen books. Better get reading.

Did you know that the little plastic spatulas in Play-doh sets are excellent for loosening cakes, brownies and muffins from “nonstick” pans?

Blogenheimer, then Becca, two of my well-read friends, have found the book I was wondering about yesterday: The Dark Clue by James Wilson. (No, not the character from television’s House. Or is it? He does have an affinity for noir; see his office posters for proof.)

For bonus points, Weirleader came up with a more recent book, The Minotaur by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.

Many thanks for your sleuthing. They’ll be added to my crazy-big “shelf” of books to consider in my library at Gurulib.

Perhaps one of you can help me. About ten years ago, I read a good review of a book, probably a mystery title. It was described as either a sequel or an homage to Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White. That’s how I became aware of WiW, and I told myself I wasn’t allowed to buy that new book till I read the Collins book; that didn’t happen until recently. Google searches have turned up nothing. I even emailed Uncle Edgar’s, where I remember seeing and not buying the book. They didn’t know what book I was thinking of.

Here’s what I know, or rather, what I remember, whether correctly or not. It probably came out sometime in the late 90’s or early 00’s. It might have been a New York Time Notable Book of the year, since I subscribed back then. It was related in some way to Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White, so I think it was a mystery. And it may have had a black and yellow cover.

Some girl detective I am. Any ideas, anyone?

A reminder: Semicolon hosts the Saturday Review of books. I found this through Mental Multivitamin, and I enjoy the community of reviewers. It’s interesting to read differing and similar views of books I’ve read, and check out reviews of books I want to read.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped is another from the GQ lesser-seen guy-movie list my husband and I have been checking out lately. It’s a modern noir-ish tale about a charismatic young criminal who becomes haunted by his good past as a pianist, rather than by some dark secret, though that element emerges, too. Romain Duris as Thomas is magnetic and marvelously fluid; his appearance shifts as he weaves in and out of the different roles of his life: thug, son, out-of-practice musician, and lover. Perhaps the film is a little too cool, at the expense of some emotional truth, yet it was still very enjoyable, as was director Jacques Audiard’s thriller Read My Lips. His previous films, See How They Fall and A Self-Made Hero, have been well reviewed, too.

Nathan from TeeVee dishes on his geek love for Austen and the PBS Masterpiece’s The Complete Austen, which I’ve been (mostly) enjoying. I agree that Olivia Williams was great in Miss Austen Regrets, and that the series as a whole is well done and enjoyable. I don’t, though, think Gillian Anderson is doing herself any favors revisiting Scully-red hair, and I found the Mansfield Park production in general, and Billie Piper in particular, wanting.

Last week I was struggling to put on 2yo Guppy’s fuzzy snow suit.

Me: I do this because I love you! You want love, right?

Guppy: No!

Me (puzzled): What do you want, then?

Guppy: Tooh-tees! (Cookies)

I must admit, sometimes I want a cookie instead of love. Especially if it’s a Thunder Cookie from Positively Third Street Bakery, or a McVitie’s Milk Chocolate HobNob, which one of our grocery stores now carries. (I prefer plain chocolate to milk, but I’ll take what I can get.)

One of the few books I bought during the November to January “From the Stacks” period was The Illustrated Jane Eyre. I could think of few things to better spend holiday gift money on; I’d “promised” it to myself for my next re-reading.

The story of Jane, and Bronte’s prose, is more stirring each time I read; this is my third time, I think. I came to this classic late in life, but immediately embraced it as a favorite. The Illustrated Jane Eyre is a lovely edition, from the faux weathered-leather binding, to the gatefold cover, to the thick, rough-cut pages. Most beautiful of all are Dame Darcy’s illustrations: on the cover, in full-page painted color glossy tip-in pages, and full and partial page pen-and-ink drawings. Darcy clearly embraced the task. Her illustrations are numerous and reflective of the text. They manage to capture both the dark passion of the book as well as the more ephemeral inner thoughts of its characters.

Bronte’s strong language and passionate tale were daring at the time, even though she wrote under the pseudonym Currer Bell, who was assumed to be male. Many critics might have echoed the words of the character St John to Jane:

Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem inexcusable;

Jane noted something like this of herself in an earlier conversation with St John:

He had not imagined that a woman would are to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.

Indeed, both Jane and Charlotte have earned their places by mine.

For more Bronte-related goodness, visit the excellent Bronteblog. (Apologies for lack of umlauts throughout; writing this post has exceeded the nap time of 2yo Guppy.)

Added later: This is an unadorned edition of the text. There is a fascimile page of the first edition, and the book is divided into three volumes, which are then subdivided into chapters. The Dame Darcy edition includes the preface to the 2nd edition, as well as its dedication to Thackeray that was later removed–he had a wife who was institutionalized for madness. It also includes CB’s note to the third edition. There is no scholarly introduction or afterward, and there are no notes. This lets the story and the art shine, but I did still crave some explanatory notes, and bought the paperback Penguin edition to get some.

The Last Detail was another film from the GQ little-seen guy-movie list, and another one recommended by our friend The Big Brain. Jack Nicholson and Otis Young are two “lifers” in the navy, selected to escort a young sailor, Randy Quaid (resembling a young Peyton Manning), to prison. Quaid got an eight year sentence and a dishonorable discharge for a trifling event; this endears him to his captors, who decide to show him a good time before he starts serving time. Nicholson is magnetic, and Quaid sympathetic, in these roles. Carol Kane is given a brief but poignant role. Gilda Radner appears briefly, and I struggled to place a non-speaking Nancy Allen, who later starred in Carrie and Robocop. It’s thankless work, being a girl in a guy movie.

The film is by turns funny and sad. It’s most certainly a guy movie; this is not one I would have enjoyed by myself or with girlfriends. The ending can only be abrupt and unsatisfying, which points to an underlying theme in many of these guy movies: it may be fun to be a guy, but after a while the Peter Pan syndrome wears thin, and the illusions of fun and cool are stripped away.

For Guppy’s birthday, I chose to make an old-fashioned double-layer chocolate cake with fluffy chocolate frosting. I’d not used the recipe before, and it was not easy. Things were further complicated because I was baking with the boys (”Drake! Don’t lick the spoon till AFTER it’s in the oven. Guppy, stop eating the flour! Get your hand out of the egg whites!”), an activity much better suited to simpler recipes that don’t have so much hanging on the finished product.

Only after the layers took forever to bake did I realize I’d used the wrong size cake pans–the recipe called for 9″; I only have 8″. I let the long-baking layers cool overnight, then attempted the frosting in the morning. The recipe called for it to be cooled in an ice bath to 70 degrees F, then whipped to a fluffy consistency. This all went fine until I stopped the mixer. The frosting immediately seized, because the room temp was about 65 degrees, as our 1917 boiler struggles to keep pace with the below-zero outside weather.

What to do? The cold, unyielding mess would tear apart the tender layers if I attempted it. A birthday cake with no frosting? I asked G. Grod to take the boys out of the kitchen so I could think. I then replaced my ice bath with a hot water bath, and asked G. Grod to get me the hair dryer. With a frosting spatula in one hand and the hair dryer in another, I frosted Guppy’s cake, while Drake watched quietly. The cake was saved; we all enjoyed it soon after that.

W H Smith is a British book retailer best known for news stands on major city streets, train stations and airports, like an English version of New York’s Hudson News. From 1992 to 2002, the W H Smith Thumping Good Read Award was chosen by a panel of WHS card-carrying customers, and given to books considered more “accessible” than those nominated for the W H Smith Literary Award.

Thumping Good Read has entered the vernacular, especially in the blogosphere, for books that are fun to read. Diane Setterfield’s Thirteenth Tale and Wilkie Collins’ Woman in White were recent TGRs for me. Astute reader Gretchen commented on a previous post that

when a book describes itself as “dreamy,” or “elegiac,” or mentions the prose at all, it’s usually not a thumping good read.

Can a book be both a Thumping Good Read and Literary? I’m re-reading Jane Eyre, and I think a good case can be made for that work. Additionally, the 2006 W H Smith Literary Award went to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince; Entertainment Weekly chose the last Harry Potter as it’s book of 2007. I think it’s possible, but infrequent. I think it’s also what most book groups hope for–a book that entertains and enlightens.

Rescue Dawn is Werner Herzog’s fictionalized film based on Little Dieter Has to Fly, the documentary he did on Dieter Dengler, a German-born American airman shot down in Laos and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Though it features some gruesome torture and survival scenes, it’s a stirring tale, all the more for the performances of Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, who were snubbed this award season. This movie shoot had to be gruesome–heat, jungle, starvation, bugs. Everyone involved deserves credit for this overlooked film.

For all the films I’ve seen, and for those that I think I want to see, visit my library at Gurulib.

12:08 East of Bucharest was one of the New York Times‘ film critic A.O. Scott’s top ten films of 2007. Scott is a critic I trust, but I didn’t connect with this satiric film that wonders whether a revolution took place or not in a small Romanian town. I found it more dead than deadpan. My husband fell asleep, and I had to struggle not to. I don’t find alcoholism funny, so many of the film’s jokes at the expense of a main character fell flat with me.

Point Blank–not to be confused with the Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze Point Break–is one of GQ’s top ten little-seen guy movies, and it’s recommended highly in the back pages of Ed Brubaker’s excellent comic series, Criminal. Lee Marvin is Walker, the man done wrong. In what is perhaps one of the best movie opening sequences ever, we see Marvin double crossed by his partner (John Vernon) who later played Dean Wormer in Animal House. This was the first movie filmed at at Alcatraz after the closing of that prison. Angie Dickinson is sultry and lovely as Chris, the sexy sister-in-law; Marvin is scary and intense as a man whose old-school revenge is curiously ineffective in the new, credit-card age. Here’s how badass Marvin was–in a rehearsal, he hit Vernon so hard he made him cry. My favorite exchange of the film:

Chris: What’s my last name?
Walker: What’s my first name?
[silence]

Point Blank was remade as Payback, which is widely denigrated by noir snobs. About 30% of it was reshot for the theatrical release when the director, Brian Helgeland was replaced. The director’s cut is supposed to be an improvement, and something of a redemption.