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.
Around the time Guppy was born, I spent a fair amount of time participating in online reading challenges. I soon discovered that these interfered with the spontaneity and enjoyment of my reading. Sometimes, though, the challenges are enough in line with what I want to read anyway, or they give enough leeway to choose, that they still draw me. Such was last year’s From the Stacks challenge, which I read about at one of my favorite book blogs, Pages Turned.
I set out the books I wanted to read. Instead of the suggested five, I chose ten–five graphic and five prose novels. I took several pictures, trying to get the book ambience just right. (Does it strike anyone else that the shelf pics of book blogs are something akin to book porn?) I then found I can’t post pictures on my blog, which is just as well. I’m hard put enough to post regularly without something else to obsess nerdishly over. It is also just as well, because of those ten, I read only five. Of those, I loved only one; several of the others I didn’t even much like. Additionally, I veered off my list to read seven others from the shelves, nearly all of which I liked a great deal. (Several of which were quick-read graphic novels, in case this sounds more impressive than it is.)
I am reminded once again that online book challenges aren’t for me. I’ve begun using Gurulib to log my books and my considerable to read/watch/listen titles. 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. I count over 100 shelf books (gulp) so even if I manage my hope, I still will reduce my home stash by less than a quarter. But this is my annual memo to self that I hope to shop and select from the home shelves as I can, rather than haring off after every challenge and alluring coupon.
Next up: locusts, heavy at times, followed by blowing and drifting frogs.
(I’m tired of this winter; can you tell?)
In a grievous lapse in taste, this week’s Project Runway episode, Raw Talent, challenged the designers to make wrestling costumes for women of the WWE. Absurd and entertaining, yes, but a showcase for the contestants’ ability to design a women’s fashion line? No. Just no.
Like the avant-garde challenge, this one was suited to Chris. Also like that challenge, he and Christian fully embraced it and produced spectacular ensembles. Jillian’s was good, Sweet P struggled, Rami thought that draping an ample bosom in brightest pink was an OK idea, but Ricky missed the mark by creating a bathing suit, not a wrestling costume.
Five are now left. Most fans I talk to predict that the final three will be Rami, Christian and Jillian. The latter’s utter lack of emotion (last night’s example, the flate restatement of her client’s exuberant reaction, “She loved it.”) does not have me looking forward to that. Sweet P and Chris are far more vibrant and interesting, though probably not as skilled as Miss J.
Check out Project Rungay, and Manolo’s recap for more snip-sniping.
“Baby” Guppy is two today. He is a sweet, good-natured toddler with a sturdy build, and already has lost a great deal of his baby roundness. Like his older brother Drake, (or more likely, in imitation of him), Guppy loves cars, music and books. Unlike Drake, though, he loves to color. He’s long been talking, and does a pretty good job of making himself understood. I cherish the mispronunciations that I know will pass so soon, like buh-bloon, senk oo (thank you), fots and big pi-yuh (big pile), which signifies a large amount of any item (cars, milk, mac and cheese, books, etc.) Two years ago our lives developed new depth when Guppy arrived to complete our little family.
The last issue, #60, of Brian K. Vaughan’s series Y the Last Man was just released, so I thought I’d go back to the beginning with Volume 1: Unmanned and read through to the end. Y is Yorick, literally the last man on Earth when a mysterious plague wipes out every male mammal with a Y chromosome. Yorick, along with his last monkey, the male Ampersand, go undercover to track down his mother and sister. He meets up with Agent 355, a member of the covert group The Culper Ring, and she is reluctantly pressed into protecting him. Unmanned sets the stage for the series with strong characters and a good mystery.
For other books I’ve read, and for the ridiculously long list of books I think I’d like to read, visit my library at Gurulib.
Rucka’s Queen and Country comic-book and novel series is at a temporary stopping point, so I thought I’d go back to Whiteout, the excellent graphic novel that contains the first appearance of British intelligence officer, Tara Chace. Chace is undercover, helping out U. S. Marshall Carrie Stetko, who’s been exiled to Antarctica because a former assignment went wrong. Members of a science expedition team keep turning up dead, and the investigation is slowed by the brutal weather, and sabotage. Stetko is a powerful heroine, and Chace (aka Lily Sharpe, in this book) is a good complement. Whiteout is a good story, well told in words and pictures, that will please fans of mystery and spy fiction.
For other books I’ve read, and that I hope to read, visit my library at Gurulib.
The ice is the windiest place on earth. Katabic winds blowing from the Polar plateau down to the ocean. Fast.
320 an hour kilometers fast, sometimes. With that sort of windchill, the temp plummets into the triple-digits.
Wind kicks up snow that’s lain on the Ice for thousands of years, tosses it through the air. Destroys visitbility, you can’t see six inches in front of you, can’t tell the ground from the sky.
That’s called a whiteout.
Miss Austen Regrets, this past Sunday’s entry in the PBS Masterpiece series, The Complete Jane Austen, received decidedly mixed reviews. I enjoyed it, though. Like the better adaptations, it made me want to learn more.
Those who didn’t like the production, like Maureen Ryan, said it relied too much on details of Jane’s life. This would help explain why MAR seems to have been better received by the readership at Austenblog, who name Olivia Williams’s performance and the letter-burning scene at the end as particular high points.
I enjoyed Gillian’s Anderson’s prefatory remark that so little historical record remains of Jane that we can only imagine her life. I thought Olivia Williams made an interesting and complicated Jane, and I really liked the scene where Miss Austen sees her books on display at the Prince Regent’s, and where she tells her niece that the only way to have a man like Mr. Darcy is to make him up. I also appreciated how the adaptation highlighted how Austen’s novels are more than romances–they’re each a different investigation into the social and financial pressures to marry, among many other things.
I did dislike some things, as well. There was shaky, handheld camera work, which should have stopped being in vogue, and is hardly needed to convey life in Austen’s time. There were long-held shots on domestic and outdoor images, which indicated to me that the creators were hard-pressed to extend the few known details of Austen to 90 minutes. This is an interesting contrast to the recent versions of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park, which tried to long, complex novels into an all-too-brief hour and a half.
I’m noticing a trend that the adaptations Janeites like are not liked by critics, who don’t get all the details that were right, while the adaptations that take the most liberties annoy those who know better, but end up delighting those who don’t. In Entertainment Weekly this week, Becoming Jane gets a B+ while The Jane Austen Book Club, based on Karen Joy Fowler’s well-detailed book, only gets a C+. This was the reverse appraisal of Richard Roeper when the films came out, and he seemed rather more well informed on Jane than I would have thought.
Miss Austen Regrets seems to have been better received by lovers of Jane than by critics in general, perhaps because it was attentive to details like the order of the novels, if not her hats.
I was putting together tea and a snack for our family, when Drake called out, “Mom, I want toast with butter and honey.”
Since I’m trying to discourage “I want” and encourage asking politely, I didn’t answer immediately.
“MOM! I want toast with butter and honey! I want toast with butter and honey!”
Pause, as he waited for a response that didn’t come.
“MOM! DO YOU HEAR ME?”
My husband G. Grod and I started to laugh. I’m sure half the block heard him, at that volume.
“Yes, Drake.” I said. “I heard you before, but I didn’t hear you asking nicely.”
Drake’s voice dropped to a normal level. “Oh. PLEASE can I have toast with butter and honey?”
“Yes, dear, it’s coming.”
But by that time, 2yo Guppy started a refrain. “Buddah an’ hunny! Buddah an’ hunny!”
I looked at G. Grod. We sighed in tandem.
The groundhog saw his shadow, so we’re in for six more weeks of what feels like the longest, coldest, darkest winter ever. To bolster my flagging spirits, I have a new bulb in my sun box, a new journal to write in, and a new edition of a favorite book to re-read.
The suicide-awareness billboards are everywhere in the Twin Cities. Take care of yourself. If you’re feeling blue, check out an online screening test like the one from NYU Medical Center, and contact your health care provider if you’re worried. And if you’re worried about someone else, say so, or ask if you can help.