New Jane Eyre? Ugh. It was nice to look at. I was with it all the way up until the end, actually; I mean, it was beautifully shot and sort of spooky enough that I could just ignore my fangirl reactionaryism any time they changed or skipped a line (to be fair it was one of the better "altered" scripts I've heard); it was a good and consistent vision of the book. Rochester being stripped of all his silliness wasn't the way I would have done it, but it did allow for things to be paced reasonably well, since his silliness takes up an awful lot of time.
But sheeeit. I know Michael Fassbender is really nice to look at himself, but giving him unseeing eyes and a beard is really not the same as chopping off one of his hands and cutting up that pretty face of his. What a bloody cop-out. Oh well. The film wasn't a waste of time and that's more than I can say for most such films. I'm going to try to sit through the BBC miniseries now, since I have a nasty flu and am not capable of much more than passive observation, which is making me feel really great about the Chinese test I'm gonna flunk tomorrow.
I usually deal with L--- pretty well but right now I'm bored enough to remember what it was like to be depressive. Since I'm running a temperature and have a nasty, chesty cough, there's a lot of things I just can't do - concentrate and run are two of them - and without them, there's fuck all to do in this shithole, since the F-word has taken the car to go working at some local markets, which cuts out the possibiities of driving somewhere, or having a nice mid-afternoon fuck.
It's times like this that I badly miss living in cities or other places you can actually enjoy having a little walk outside. And I don't think it's until today I've grasped the irony of that statement. But in small-town Australia, everything is far apart, and even if it wasn't, who gives a shit? It's all small-town shit, and ugly to boot. Usually I can keep busy with Chinese or exhaust myself with a run but at the moment neither's possible. I really have to give some serious consideration to how I'm gonna deal with being a heavily pregnant woman and a mother since the hormones, extra weight and exhaustion are probably gonna leave me feeling like this a lot. I think what'll do me is stopping the language courses and switching to history courses at Griffiths. History courses I could always manage, sick or well, high or sober.
giovedì, ottobre 13, 2011
martedì, ottobre 11, 2011
Ladyporn and 19th century domination
This looks like the ladyporn of all time. The fact of having a film version of Jane Eyre is always a minor event in Dread Pirate Jessica world, because of the importance that book has assumed for me (and my vocabulary) over the years - me and millions of others, which is why, I suppose, they always make new versions of it. I can practically recite the bloody thing backward so I get a pseudo-academic kick of seeing how film versions of it depart from my own internal vision of it.
I never expect to enjoy them as films or as a vision of the book. The book's unfilmable. Or rather it could be filmable as a 10-hour miniseries directed by David Lynch and starring ugly people, but you know who the audience for that would be? Me. I think the Charlotte Bronte and the David Lynch fans would be almost equally turned off. Which is one of the reasons I suppose it's never been done yet. Still, if I was a billionaire, I'd try really hard to persuade David Lynch to do it. I don't know another director who could communicate Jane's emotional life as it's communicated in the book.
Because the book is about Jane, of course. It's only about the romance and the melodrama as showcases for Jane's fucked-up brain, a brain that's only going to be able to really embrace the romance once Rochester's wings are viciously and painfully snipped; a Jane who only evinces signs of getting turned on when she's at least getting the illusion of control and equality - or domination - over her partner. Rochester's big sexy manliness, which has been much commented on, is I believe in part made so awfully big and so awfully sexy to show us the depths of Jane's happiness when she manages to fasten it to herself with a watch-chain, which by-the-by is a reversing motif Charlotte Bronte used to express possession between Jane and Rochester - I could cite pages but this is a blog and no-one is giving me credits.
Rochester didn't have to lose an eye and an arm in the fire when his wife offed herself to open the way for a legal and sexy reunion with Jane. Charlotte Bronte chose that for a reason, and for a very good one - because after so many hundreds of pages with Jane and her hallucinatory but strong internal monologues, the reader would understand almost as well as the writer that the only way someone like Jane was going to be happy with Rochester was with a tamed, dependent Rochester. It's actually all pretty psycho, when you think about it. Fuck, it's a good book. I really, really wish David Lynch would turn it into a miniseries.
Anyways, I don't expect the movie to be terrific, but it'll have Michael Fassbender emoting out Rochester's big sexy scenes, so it's gonna be hot. He's not ugly enough for me to think he'd do it in my David-Lynch-directed-miniseries-fantasy way, or indeed for me to imagine him acting out the Rochester who has become part of my brain from so many years - how many, nearly 20 now, of loving that book? - but that's not what ladyporn is about.
Ladyporn is about the odd times when it makes sense somehow that Mr. Darcy goes swimming in the middle of Pride and Prejudice so Elizabeth gets to see he's packing some heat under all those clothes, or when the director of the Great Escape chooses Charles Bronson to be having a shower during the inspection scene and not one of his skinny-ass little co-stars, or the scenes in the Nolan Batman movies where he's toplessly getting out of bed after a long night's fighting. Ladyporn is gratuitous. Usually it either comes in dribs and drabs or it's so poorly done I feel condescended to. But casting a man who looks like a Daniel Day Lewis who's got beat with the pretty stick, and who is actually, you know, good at acting - casting him as one of the most romantic Romantic heroes of all time, who's walking around with the biggest boner in 19th century literature - now, that is Ladyporn.
I never expect to enjoy them as films or as a vision of the book. The book's unfilmable. Or rather it could be filmable as a 10-hour miniseries directed by David Lynch and starring ugly people, but you know who the audience for that would be? Me. I think the Charlotte Bronte and the David Lynch fans would be almost equally turned off. Which is one of the reasons I suppose it's never been done yet. Still, if I was a billionaire, I'd try really hard to persuade David Lynch to do it. I don't know another director who could communicate Jane's emotional life as it's communicated in the book.
Because the book is about Jane, of course. It's only about the romance and the melodrama as showcases for Jane's fucked-up brain, a brain that's only going to be able to really embrace the romance once Rochester's wings are viciously and painfully snipped; a Jane who only evinces signs of getting turned on when she's at least getting the illusion of control and equality - or domination - over her partner. Rochester's big sexy manliness, which has been much commented on, is I believe in part made so awfully big and so awfully sexy to show us the depths of Jane's happiness when she manages to fasten it to herself with a watch-chain, which by-the-by is a reversing motif Charlotte Bronte used to express possession between Jane and Rochester - I could cite pages but this is a blog and no-one is giving me credits.
Rochester didn't have to lose an eye and an arm in the fire when his wife offed herself to open the way for a legal and sexy reunion with Jane. Charlotte Bronte chose that for a reason, and for a very good one - because after so many hundreds of pages with Jane and her hallucinatory but strong internal monologues, the reader would understand almost as well as the writer that the only way someone like Jane was going to be happy with Rochester was with a tamed, dependent Rochester. It's actually all pretty psycho, when you think about it. Fuck, it's a good book. I really, really wish David Lynch would turn it into a miniseries.
Anyways, I don't expect the movie to be terrific, but it'll have Michael Fassbender emoting out Rochester's big sexy scenes, so it's gonna be hot. He's not ugly enough for me to think he'd do it in my David-Lynch-directed-miniseries-fantasy way, or indeed for me to imagine him acting out the Rochester who has become part of my brain from so many years - how many, nearly 20 now, of loving that book? - but that's not what ladyporn is about.
Ladyporn is about the odd times when it makes sense somehow that Mr. Darcy goes swimming in the middle of Pride and Prejudice so Elizabeth gets to see he's packing some heat under all those clothes, or when the director of the Great Escape chooses Charles Bronson to be having a shower during the inspection scene and not one of his skinny-ass little co-stars, or the scenes in the Nolan Batman movies where he's toplessly getting out of bed after a long night's fighting. Ladyporn is gratuitous. Usually it either comes in dribs and drabs or it's so poorly done I feel condescended to. But casting a man who looks like a Daniel Day Lewis who's got beat with the pretty stick, and who is actually, you know, good at acting - casting him as one of the most romantic Romantic heroes of all time, who's walking around with the biggest boner in 19th century literature - now, that is Ladyporn.
Lizards, rainbows and shit
Back in L---. The frogs are singing, the bats are flocking, the plants are burgeoning, the lizards are scuttling (besides myriad little ones, we have two giants hanging around - one sorta iguana-looking thing and a bluetongue. If they were rats I'd try to have them killed, but since they're lizards I'm really enchanted, which I think is less because lizards are cool and more because my disgust receptors have alerted my brain to the fact that lizards aren't very closely related to me so they're less likely to give me diseases) and the rainbows are arching. It's all rather idyllic and bizarrely tropical springy considering my body was preparing itself for winter last week (which confusion probably explains my cold), and if it wasn't full of Australians here (besides my Australian of course, who would have made a homecoming to a giant pile of shit to be shovelled a happy event) I guess I'd be pleased.
I do miss my family though. Particularly when I hear this song, which is a favourite with Luke Duke's kids, who I miss so very, very much. It's hard to be so far away from them, and from the rest of the clan. After two months there the main conclusion I'm coming up with is that even eight weeks gives me barely enough time to catch up with them, and makes me neglect my friends, and once a baby comes out of me the odds are excellent I won't have time to speak to anyone anymore who can't donate bone marrow, which isn't exactly a nice feeling - but I also suspect that would be largely the case even if we lived back home.
Watched a fuckton of movies on planes - must have been around 15 - and none of them were memorable, with the exception of the Darjeeling Limited (the others, of course, I don't remember). Bridesmaids was one of them. I guess I was expecting Shakespeare or something, having heard from enough people that it was awfully funny and somehow important in terms of women in the movies, or something. I did smile occasionally. Which is more than I usually do at American comedies. Now, though, I can't remember when it was I smiled. Oh well.
I do miss my family though. Particularly when I hear this song, which is a favourite with Luke Duke's kids, who I miss so very, very much. It's hard to be so far away from them, and from the rest of the clan. After two months there the main conclusion I'm coming up with is that even eight weeks gives me barely enough time to catch up with them, and makes me neglect my friends, and once a baby comes out of me the odds are excellent I won't have time to speak to anyone anymore who can't donate bone marrow, which isn't exactly a nice feeling - but I also suspect that would be largely the case even if we lived back home.
Watched a fuckton of movies on planes - must have been around 15 - and none of them were memorable, with the exception of the Darjeeling Limited (the others, of course, I don't remember). Bridesmaids was one of them. I guess I was expecting Shakespeare or something, having heard from enough people that it was awfully funny and somehow important in terms of women in the movies, or something. I did smile occasionally. Which is more than I usually do at American comedies. Now, though, I can't remember when it was I smiled. Oh well.
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