It's Always More Complicated

Something I hate: waiting around.

Something I love: WOMBATTS.

Somewhere I have been: Wagga Wagga, New South Wales.

Somewhere I would like to go: Wellington, New Zealand - I had a lovely visit to the South Island but never made it to the North Island.

Someone I know: a bit spoilt for choice here: wordweaverlynn, ah, Wiscons long ago.

Favorite movie: I'm not sure it's an all time top favourite, but in my teens West Side Story was a movie I'd seen bits of on the telly and really wanted to see but in those days it was hoping for a re-release somewhere, and I finally came across it at a (in retrospect) perhaps a bit dodgy fleapit near Charing X station when I was in London for some really worthy educational purpose and took it in before the last train. Watched it more recently on DVD and I'm not sure all of it holds up but there are still some stunning sequences there.

A few weeks ago we watched the Kenneth Branagh Love's Labour's Lost (2000).

Which is rather a weird mashup.

It sets it in 1939 with the King of Navarre basically turning his back on the outbreak of European conflict to do the whole celibate oath of study thing (you know where Navarre is? what has the guy been doing during events in Spain?)

But it also makes what is a not entirely wrong decision to mix it up with songs from the musicals of the period (Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Jerome Kern), and I thought, actually, that sort of works, because one could envisage a 1930s musical based on a similarly batshit premise. I.e. same starting from artificiality.

Though it might work even better if the actors were somewhat more stronger at song-and-dance.

However, I wasn't sure this entirely meshed with the very much cut text of the actual play.

Maybe it really needed to go the whole Clueless etc type hog, and just turn it into a 30s-style musical.

And I am really not sure about the frame narrative. (Which ends up with them, yes, going off to war, even the ladies, in their ATS and WREN and so on uniforms.)

A little feelgood for the end of this week:

BAAAAAAABY SLOTHS!!!!

Derek the baby wombat

A hedgehog's history of Britain

There are badgers in Kew Gardens!

Ginger says Let Yourself Go

Very unrave review in today's Guardian of the new musical about Dusty Springfield just opened in the West End.

You would think that in 2015 that such an enterprise might bring itself to mention, and even use in interesting ways, one very salient fact about the late great Ms Springfield, i.e. that she was a lesbian and widely at least rumoured to be such even in the 60s. Perhaps this is coyly concealed under this phraseology: 'embrace the outsider, break rules'?

(Yes, if I were to be making a musical tribute to Dusty, I would set it in the Gateways Club, do you need to ask?)

Have this seasonal work by her:

As regular readers may know, when I go off to Grayshott I tend to take some DVDs with me for evening relaxation watching. Last week I watched the following.

Dirty Dancing, which I have managed never to see before. And while I can somewhat concur with the essay on the movie by Kathi Maio [?sp] in which she points out that there is whatever is the classist version of 'what these people need is a honky' going on in the plot, there are few enough movies that have an empowered young woman with agency driving that plot and one which doesn't, it seems to me, close down her story.

As with Gidget, is this actually a romance plot or the one in which the rather geeky heroine finds a form of physical activity that is fulfilling and fun (no, no! I mean dancing, not shagging P Swayze!)? Also, at the beginning it seems to me a tad moot whether she is interested in Johnny or in Penny.

While my headcanon for what might happen next is not that Baby becomes a performing arts major rather than doing international aid and development, I do sort of envisage her (given moreover all the civil rights, anti-war, etc stuff about to explode) perhaps looking rather closer to home and in a more politicised than philanthropic missionary spirit with her activism.

Although: okay, we do get an abortion story in which nobody dies or is permanently harmed and the impregnator is a villain who reads Ayn Rand, but wouldn't it have been nice if there could have been some mention of contraception?

I Capture the Castle. Rather thumbs down, and I don't think this was entirely due to the slight defect on the disc leading to stuttering in some of the earlier scenes. There seemed to be made-up bits of voiceover, Thomas was far too young (in the book he's 15 and reading Freud, right?), Mrs Cotton was suddenly malign, and they completely bungled the 'breaking Mortmain's writer's block' sequence.

I realise that I am somewhat allergic to Bill Nighy doing manpain unless this is well-concealed by facial tentacles, and am not at all sure that this was the right choice to go with Mortmain. In the book he is not all about sobbing guiltily about how badly he treated the children's mother.

Also, you know that whole 'Rose is going off with Riley???!!!' thing that strikes the Buffy-watcher.

Two movie versions of Much Ado About Nothing - I took the Joss Whedon version with me, and, finding that one of the DVDs I had with me was unplayable, borrowed the Thompson/Branagh version from Reception.

Yes, I can sort of see giving it a b&w 30s screwball comedy feel, because of how much of screwball comedy basically reprises the B&B plot, but unfortunately, the actual play plunges into noir, pretty much.

Plus, the 1993 version has (mostly) actors who are clearly a lot happier speaking the lines and making them sound natural. Also, Emma Thompson, totally born to play Beatrice, no?

Curious costuming decision, though. The civilian population around Leonato's estate were all dressed in a sort of generic Early Modern style and most would not have looked out of place in a Breughel painting, but the Prince's forces appeared to have time-slid in from Ruritania c. 1900.

Was having thoughts about these rulers who think it is yay fun to play these games of masquerade and deception (though this theme is pretty pervasive in MAAN): this really takes a turn into the bleak with Measure for Measure but seems foreshadowed here.

And instead of ringing them out and in, I will face the music and dance, even if I am pretty sure that 'there may be trouble ahead' is something that one can pretty well always say and be correct:

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The usual statistics, roundup, etc:

Up to 7,901 Journal Entries; 57,253 comments received, 7,247 posted.

Numbers of comments seemed down this year: the top posts for comments were:
7/5 In the Huxley/Wordsworth cage-fight smackdown, I am rooting for Aldous*
3/3 Has God's supply of tolerable husbands/ Fallen, in fact, so low?
6/3 What people actually eat when
1/7 Counterintuitive culinary challenge
10/1 Is today Anachronistic Historical Notions Day, or what?
14/9 Is this entirely wise?
15/9 'Serious issues around young people entering the modern workplace'
9/6 1066 and All That: failure to read and take note of
6/9 Don't think the trope really reverses...
27/8 Why didja havta be a rule-breaker
But, as ever, stats of views suggest this isn't the whole picture.

First lines (excluding birthdays or filtered posts):
Jan: Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Feb: I was inspired by reading in Winifred Holtby as I Knew Her that WH, in her book about V Woolf pointed out that several characters from previous books by Woolf were at Mrs Dalloway's party
Mar: London in literature is a huge subject, and I'm not going anywhere near Dickens.
Apr: You know, at my age I should probably stop expecting there to be a world out there in which the people who write in literary periodicals are sophisticated and knowledgeable and tolerant and so on and so forth.
May: Currently on the go Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Dragon Ship (2012), on the e-reader.
Jun: Happy 100th birthday, Barbara Pym!
Jul: When discussing the problem of travelling when vegetarian in the comments to an earlier post, I suggested that one does not go to X place in order to eat in the restaurants of other cultures that may be there (I really do not go to Prague for Thai food) but that sometimes these are the only places that do not centre their menu on great hunks of animal flesh (&/or cheese).
Aug: Article in today's Guardian G2 section on the absence of women from time travel movies.
Sep: Dept of, channelling Barbara Pym: last night's conference dinner.
Oct: 'In my experience, high-profile male columnists jump on a subject like Syria regardless of what they might have to contribute, simply because it's a hot topic and they have to be seen to be addressing it.'
Nov: Was wondering, following [livejournal.com profile] slemslempike's lead, about outfit blogging.
Dec: Okay, I realise that I already missed Stir-Up Sunday, which was last week, but it's more than high time to switch over to my bah humbug seasonal icon, right?

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I'm not doing that huge list of questions, except to say that there were no deaths in my immediate circle and I acquired a new great-nephew.

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I read 205 books logged in my GR account but that doesn't include the volumes ingested for Sekkrit Projekt.

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Furrin parts visited: USA, Germany, Czech Republic, the Netherlands. UK travel (overnight stays only): Glasgow, Exeter, Manchester, Sheffield, the family residence.

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Publications that actually appeared: 1 article, 1 book chapter.

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Were it not for this cold dragging me down, I would say I am probably in better health than this time last year, when I was recovering from Dental Abscess Hell (this took longer than I thought it would).

Right, ( Let's Have a Party )

Inviting the usual suspects such as
( Lucille )

So,
( Let Yourself Go )

In fact, ( Let's Face the Music and Dance )

I think I discovered some years ago that I was wrong in thinking that 21st December was St Lucy's Day, having been led astray by John Donne, who clearly seems to be under the impression (I think this can be textually supported) that it's the shortest day (I'm not sure whether or not this is the result of later calendrical reform): but even so, listen to Richard Burton reading the Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day.

The other Donne poem that springs to mind is the Holy Sonnet What if this present were the worlds last night?

Even supposing that it is correct that today marks the end of the Very Long Cycle in the Mayan calendar, isn't that, like the winter solstice, a time of 'pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again'?

Sam Wollaston is right (bluuuuue mooooon, you saw me standing aloooooone) to be less than completely convinced that 'there really is "a new breed of women" as we're told', who practise 'rinsing', or women getting blokes to give them stuff, often really expensive stuff, for no return.

I give you Miss Adelaide (the Famous Fiancee) doing her act at the Hot Box in Guys and Dolls with 'Take Back Your Mink':

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In other news, I went to collect my new glasses this week and was told that they'd been delivered nearly 2 weeks ago (having been told a deliver date of this week), but Boots Opticians no longer contact people to let them know their glasses have arrived. I think they could at least suggest that people ring themselves... the situation is not satisfactory.

Anyway, these are the new specs. Still adjusting to new prescription.

Watched DVD of The Barkleys of Broadway last night.

Fairly hmmmmm about it.

Massively disappointed that the Astaire character talking about his two partners while taking curtain call was not leading to some amusing 'Design for Living' scenario, they were just partners in the process of Putting on a Show, so there. (Shame! Shame!)

Although there was a dance sequence behind the credits (which, hello, titles rolling over, could not see very well), it was rather a long way into the plot before there was a dance sequence: in an Astaire-Rogers movie. Duh.

Also, o dear, they have lost the amusing stock company of subsidiary characters from the older b&w movies.

Maybe Oscar Levant could tickle the ivories (though I am always rendered suspicious by close ups of hands on keyboard), but my feeling on the two extended scenes in which he did so approximated to Groucho Marx's suggestion, in whatever Marx Bros movie it was, when Chico or Harpo was about to wax soulfully musical, to take the opportunity for a smoke in the lobby.

Wow creepy stalker plot device represented as Troo Love. (How often does this work? Pretty much never, to my taste: the point in Much Ado About Nothing is that B & B's mates realise they fancy one another rotten under the continual snarking, not that one of them connives to get the other to admit it.)

However, I will add some points on the positive side for the Rogers' character's dramatic ambitions not being punished by failure and humiliation.

Also, Evil Shoes Dance Sequence great fun (we note that this movie appeared the year after The Red Shoes...), but, while this worked as a cinematic device, in the world of the actual movie, wasn't it supposed to be taking place on stage? Which rendered it a bit problematic.

Not quite frothy enough.