Girl Detective

It’s March 31st
Heavy, wet snow inches up
When will we see spring?

After my recent disappointment with the adaptation of the Guthrie’s Jane Eyre, I found the 1996 Emma, made for television, a pleasant surprise. I remember the Paltrow Emma as uneven, but I thought this version was paced well. I appreciated its depiction of class and living conditions. Beckinsale was convincing and girlish in the title role, and looked much more normal than what she’s morphed into over the years. There were several strong supporting performances: Mark Strong as Mr. Knightley (who I’ve seen and enjoyed recently in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Stardust), Lucy Morrison as Mrs. Elton, Samantha Morton as Harriet Smith, and particularly Olivia Williams as Jane Fairfax. The adaptation hewed closely to the novel; that, along with the casting, were what made it so enjoyable for me.

The Morning News announces the winner of The Tournament of Books. It’s one I haven’t gotten to yet, though on deck after Marianne Wiggins’s Shadow Catcher, which is at bat. The tournament, the judging and the commentary were lots of fun, and I’ve really enjoyed the books I’ve read because of it, and look forward to the ones I haven’t got to yet.

Twin Citians, we deserve a sweet escape from this dreadful weather. The new series from TakeUp, screwball romantic comedies from the depression, starts tonight at the Parkway. The snow will prevent me from going tonight, but those of you who are closer might check out Easy Living, which I’ve not seen.

A much better movie than Temple of Doom, Last Crusade does a good job of inserting Indie’s origins, and provides both humor and pathos with Sean Connery as Indie’s estranged father. It made me hopeful for #4. This was Spielberg’s favorite of the trilogy, though I still prefer the original.

The Guthrie Theater’s recent run of Jane Eyre was so well received that the show was brought back, and is running through Sunday March 30. I didn’t attend the first run because of a middling review, but couldn’t resist the second run’s media blitz and high praise.

The production had many good things about it, especially the lead performances and chemistry between Stacia Rice as Jane and Sean Haberle as Rochester. Also strong were supporting performances by Charity Jones as Bertha and Barbara Bryne as Mrs. Fairfax. The latter character was so funny and significant that she stood out in this stage version as she has not yet done in the book, for me.

The Wurtele Thrust Stage of the new Guthrie was well utilized. The sets were spare, fitting for the severe settings of the story. My seat was high up and stage right, but the view was excellent. While I saw rather more of the back of Rochester’s head than I would have liked, Haberle has an impressive head of hair, and I got compensating views of Rice’s expressive face. I thought her severe hairline well suited to the character of Jane, until I saw her from the side and noticed the bump where the actress’s real hairline was covered. Unfortunately for me, this brought to mind a Ferengi, hardly a beneficial mental image during Jane Eyre.

And there, my praise ends. I understand that details of the story must be cut or compacted to get the audience home before midnight. I missed many of my favorite scenes, such as Jane in the red room. I was disappointed in the staging decisions of others; I would very much have liked for Jane to have thrown a ewer of water on Rochester in his burning bed, if only for the sight of Haberle in a wet nightshirt. And I questioned a few of the casting decisions. Adele was a pale, freckled redhead, as was Blanche Ingram. I thought Bronte’s imagery of Adele as a blue-eyed blond and Blanche as a dark-skinned brunette were strong influences in my experiences of their characters in the book.

All of those quibbles I might have forgiven, but others went too far for me. While the burr of northern England and Scotland was a good reminder of the story’s setting, the accents came and went. Worst of all was St. John Rivers, whose accent often seemed more French than Scottish. With his characterization, this reduced him to a clown, rather than a proud, headstrong man to be pitied. Diana and Mary were simpering and played for laughs, not the intelligent, dignified characters of the books. The greatest problem I had, though, was that Bronte’s strong, beautiful prose has been changed in several places, and for no good reason. Several of my favorite lines were changed, most notably St. John’s statement while he proposes to her that Jane is “formed for labour, not for love,” and Rochester’s exclamation when he realizes Jane has come back to him, “what sweet madness has seized me”.

I am left with the question of why adapt works for the stage and screen if it is necessary to remove so much that is good about them. Perhaps this was enjoyable to those who hadn’t read the book at all, or for a long time. Perhaps it will inspire people to seek out the book. Those are all fine things. But I’m coming to the conclusion, based on this and on the Masterpiece Austen adaptations, that I am not the target audience. I am too familiar and have too much affection for the source material to appreciate adaptations for themselves. And yet, I know I’ll continue to see them, if only for the brief moments that they bring to life wonderful parts of the books, like the humor in Jane Eyre that is so often overlooked in its reductive description as a dark, gothic tale.

Today is the first “zombie” match in the Morning News Tournament of Books–critical darling Then We Came to the End, which I just finished and loved, goes up against Remainder, which I’ve not yet read, and which one reader of this blog hated. Can Ferris continue his march to the final, or will he be defeated by a zombie, hungry for brains, and notoriously hard to kill?

From the Consumerist, 8 Worst Foods in America. (Link from The Morning News.)

From Best Life, 8 Foods You Should Eat Every Day (long-ago link from Blogenheimer.)

As Drake approaches age 5, and Guppy advances past 2, I’ve considered returning to the corporate world. There are many benefits: intellectual challenge, salary, healthcare, an excuse to get dressed in clothes that won’t get smeared with snot or drool, people to talk about Project Runway or Top Chef with, and not least, the ability to eat and go to the bathroom by myself.

Yet there is one aspect of stay-at-home-hood, one I’m fortunate to have, that I’m unwilling to give up: my afternoon nap. While Guppy naps, I lie down, read a chapter in my book, and take a short nap. Drake hasn’t napped in years, but he kindly plays quietly while I do this. More often than not, my nights are interrupted by the needs of one child or the other, so I began to nap after having kids out of need and desperation. I am still needy and desperate, but I nap by choice. I can tell it’s a healthy habit, like eating well and doing yoga, and scientific evidence continues to support naps, like this recent piece on power naps in Scientific American (link from The Morning News.)

When I was younger, I thought I couldn’t nap. I was always too busy and had too much to do. Such is the life of an anxious person. I don’t think I was incapable, though. I think napping is a skill, and I just needed more practice.

Few things are more pitiful than the thin, constricted croup-y wail of 2yo Guppy, who is usually robust in both body and voice. I think this is his third bout this winter. I’m hoping we may again be well, and have uninterrupted nights, until whatever the next crisis is.

Before I had kids, I assumed that sleep deprivation was something that was terrible at the beginning, and that got better and eventually disappeared. I didn’t expect it to come and go, waxing and waning like the moon over the years. No wonder so many mothers have sleep disorders.

Every few years, I come up with a perfectly valid and defendable reason for getting new glasses. Last time it was that my prescription had changed. This time it was because 2yo Guppy had broken both my best pair and backup pair. I got both repaired, but decided to visit the optician to get a sturdier, around-the-house frame. My current “best” pair were still great for when I go out or am among only adults , so I didn’t need anything special.

There’s nothing, however, guaranteed to show how shabby and out of date and just plain uncool the glasses I got five+ years ago are than going shopping. A new, inexpensive pair of beater frames for backup? Nice try; forget it. Once the current frames have been seen and tried, the result is always the same. I ordered a new, expensive, albeit sturdier, pair that will be my new go-tos, and that (I hope) Guppy can’t punch or dismantle into submission.

Fortunately, we have eyecare benefits and a pre-tax health account, both of which make this just a bit more justifiable.

A bit.

So, in a few days, I’ll be sporting these in olive green.

Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing (link from Bookslut and Morning News.)

Stretching for the fanciful – writing “he crafts or pens” instead of “he writes”; writing “he muses” instead of “he says or thinks” – is a sure tip-off of weak writing.

Harris mentions one of my personal non-favorites, limn, at the end, but he missed brio. It’s a musical term hijacked by the pretentious. I’ve only seen it in book blurbs, never actually IN a book, and I’ve never heard it used in conversation.

While I agree with Harris, I must shamefacedly admit to using his deadly words in reviews on this blog. I am duly chastened.

What was funny about breast cancer?

We didn’t have an answer, and it was making us nervous….One crap ad could make the difference between the person they kept on and the one they let go….But it wasn’t just our jobs at stake, was it? When we had trouble nailing an ad, our reputations were on the line. A good deal of our self-esteem was predicated on the belief that we were good marketers, that we understood what made the world tick–that in fact, we told the world how to tick….

What then, to make of an empty sketch pad or blank computer screen? …. Our souls were as screwy and in need of guidance as all the rest. What were we but sheep like them? We were them. We were all we–whereas for so long we had believed ourselves to be just a little bit above the others. –Then We Came to the End

I appreciated last year’s much-hyped first novel, Then We Came to the End, a great deal. Such hype could easily crush the tenuous first novel of most authors, but Ferris is tough. The book is funny, sad, wise and true. It manages the impressive feat of first person plural narration, which hardly ever bugs. Further, it drew this reader in, and reminded me fondly and painfully of my own time in advertising. I was actually a non-creative creative (see the book for explanation of this term), but I dwelled in a cubicle among the creatives after the dot-coms burst. I knew this world, and Ferris gets it dead on.

What struck me most, though, was how he pulled off a non-angry, non-small book about work. This is a compassionate book about working, but also about people. I truly miss the characters now that the covers are closed, and I still wonder–”Where’s Joe Pope?”

The Nonist has posted lovely images from Candida Hofer’s book of photographs, Libraries. (Heads up thanks to Becca.) I had a hard time choosing which to post, since they’re stunning. While the Nonist jokes that it’s like porn for book nerds, I beg to differ.

Sexy? Yes. “Porn”? No. Art, baby, art.

While pregnant with now-4yo Drake, I read about possible links between vaccines and autism. I also read about negative effects of vaccines. So I did my own research. I asked not one doctor, but several. From the doctors and from the research, I found no hard science that proved vaccines to be harmful. Again and again, the proven, duplicated studies showed that vaccines were effective not only in preventing diseases in individuals, but in populations. And mercury-containing thimerosol is no longer used as a preservative in children’s vaccines, and hasn’t been in some years.

This NYT article reports an outbreak of measles in California, where many parents have exercised their right not to vaccinate. My research, but also my own medical history, led me to choose to vaccinate my kids.

When my sisters and I were young, my father chose not to vaccinate us for mumps. He was trained in pediatrics, and didn’t feel the vaccination was effective. For my sixth birthday, I got mumps. I have vivid sensory memories of heat, and pain. Family pictures show me smiling feebly in front of a cake with huge cheeks. I had no party that year. A month later my sister Ruthie got mumps, just in time for her 4th birthday. Dad promptly got 2yo Sydney vaccinated. She was the only one of us not to get mumps.

This story is an anecdote. It’s not statistically significant. But along with the science, it’s part of why I think not vaccinating kids is short sighted. I also find it troubling that parents would choose to subject their kids to a chicken pox or measles “party”. Yes, there’s _some_ good science behind that–getting the virus would build a stronger, more natural immunity than that from a vaccine. But suppose you’re a kid–would you choose to be deliberately exposed to something that means high fever, severe discomfort, and possibly serious complications, up to and including DEATH?

Not me, and therefore, not my kids.

Still another 2007 book inspired by The Morning News’ Tournament of Books, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England was on my TBR list already, based on the strong review in Entertainment Weekly:

One little mistake, and Pffft – your life goes up in smoke. Ten years after Sam Pulsifier accidentally burns down Emily Dickinson’s childhood home, he becomes Suspect No. 1 when other scribes’ homes get flamed. Who’s really to blame? This absurdly hilarious mystery, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England about a bumbler’s guilt-consumed life skewers the whole memoir thing and offers a fact/fiction-blurring meditation on the risky business of self-deception: ”Sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them.” A killer line in Brock Clarke’s searingly funny book. A-

Sam is an engaging guy, whose bumbling sometimes induces cringes, and sometimes demands sympathy. It’s a funny book, and the clever, quotable lines come fast and furious. But it sometimes felt a little too meta, at the expense of real, human emotion.

If you find lines like this funny:

She thought for a while, her forehead wrinkled, as if I were an especially difficult passage in a novel and she were trying to unpack me.

you’ll likely enjoy the book. Arsonist’s Guide didn’t win its match, but its blend of smart, funny, and sad made it well worth reading.

Degree of Difficulty: Easy

Q: Mom, is this a berry?

A: No, that’s rabbit poop. Please put it back on the ground.

Degree of Difficulty: Medium

Q: Mom, why couldn’t the old man get up in the morning?

A: Because if you bump your head, you need more sleep.

(Not a word about how drunk he must’ve been to bump his head AFTER he went to bed. Wow, I don’t know anyone who got so drunk they fell and got a concussion. Oh, wait, yes I do. Ah, college. Good times. And no, it wasn’t me. You know who you are if you’re reading.)

Degree of Difficulty: Hard

Q: Mom, what is ‘killed’?

A: Um, where did you hear that? Oh, the Disney movie we watched yesterday? (Grrr.) It means your body gets hurt so badly that it can’t get up.

(Hmm, maybe the old man wasn’t just sleeping it off.)

Entertainment Weekly’s article ( part of which is here) on the Indiana Jones movies said, “Relive Raiders.” I did, and I enjoyed it. It also said, “Stop Underrating the Sequels”:

Doom is one of cinema’s greatest sequels–and one of Spielberg’s most underrated efforts–precisely because it’s so black and daring.

Fair enough, I thought so I revisited Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.. I had only ever seen Doom once, in the theater 24 years ago. I didn’t like it then, but things change. Alas, I feel about the same as I did the first time I saw it; Doom is overlong and repetitive, plus Kate Capshaw is a shrew.

Karen Allen’s Marian was hardly portrayed as a strong woman in Raiders–yes, she owned her own bar and won a drinking contest, but she also trusted a monkey who betrayed her, failed to escape from the villain, and spent much of the film shouting for Indie to save her. Capshaw’s Willie Scott was even worse; hardly the characterization I’d hope for from a future husband. She was shrill, foolish, greedy for diamonds, and worried about breaking her nails. Some critics believe this role killed her career.

EW is right that the dark humor and daring child-labor plot are points in the film’s favor, as are its winks at the Bond films, given that Spielberg had initially envisioned this series along that line. What sinks the film are its tired stereotypes and poor filmmaking. There’s too much repetition, e.g., cutaway shot after shot of alligators chomping down bad guys at the end. Also, its timing is off. The underground mine ride toward the end goes on so long that I went through all the Kubler-Ross stages of grief:

1. Denial: this isn’t so bad; it’s kind of fun
2. Anger: why is this going on so long; why can’t it end?
3. Bargaining: maybe if I stare at the ceiling and yawn, it will end
4. Depression: nope, still there. I wonder if this was conceived from the get go to be a ride at Universal Studios?
5. Acceptance: oh, thank goodness, the scene is over. I’ll never have to watch it again.

In conclusion, Entertainment Weekly was wrong. This isn’t a strong sequel. For that, see The Bourne Supremacy, or The Godfather II, or Aliens. Or even The Empire Strikes Back. But you can skip this. Any fun, dark moments are completely overwhelmed by poor character, story and editing choices.

In anticipation of the May 22 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I re-visited Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in a long time. Entertainment Weekly did a good feature on the series, and had this to say:

Raiders obliterated those wheezy old rules [of beginnings, middles, and ends] by plunging headfirst into the good stuff. In fact, it is a movie entirely made up of good stuff–115 minutes of unrelenting climaxes stacked up on top of one another.

It was good in the theater when I was thirteen; it’s good at home now that I’m forty. This is such straightforward, pure entertainment that Spielberg and Lucas made it look effortless, though this is belied by its near inability to be duplicated.

Alas, the film, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, is not as wise and funny as the excellent book from Persephone Books, but it is nonetheless entertaining.

The film starts off hyperkinetic, and only when it settled down about twenty minutes in did I begin to enjoy myself. Adams is charming as the American “actress” in London with three boyfriends, and McDormand is utterly sympathetic as a down and out governess who shows up for the wrong job. The sets and costumes are pretty and fun, but I think the director was a bit too enamored of them. There were far too many circling shots; take some Dramamine if you are prone to motion sickness. And there is a decidedly naughty homoerotic subtext for the women. But the quiet performances by McDormand and Ciaran Hinds, plus the hints of the looming war, provide an anchor that doesn’t let this fluffy film completely float away.