It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

This time vampire is one that I will never repeat (if I can help it).  Truth be told, I knew it was a bad idea.

Once upon a time, a dude named Kevin Sullivan made two fabulous miniseries portraying much of the Anne of Green Gables series.  It was not completely true to the books, but the creative license taken was forgiveable.

Then came a third series.  We try not to talk about this one.  It diverges to far from the actual books as to make it a travesty.  Rather than use the plethora of material in the books and bring to life the characters we knew and loved, this third installment utterly screwed the timeline (moving Anne a full generation later) and had no characters or plot remotely resembling the real thing.  I own the DVD ONLY because I could not obtain the original two mini-series without it.

So, when I found out that Mr. S was making a prequel to Anne, I knew this would be a train wreck.  After all, the pre-Green Gables period in Anne’s life is summed up in a chapter in Anne of Green Gables and a tiny pilgrimage in Anne of the Island.  In order to build a prequel, we would again be subject to completely non-canon material.

I avoided this one like the plague for several years.  But, when I stumbled on it at the library today, it jumped out at me.  After all, I’d gone through the other travesty and survived.  I might as well complete the full cycle, right?

ZOMG.

WRONG.

The scenery is gorgeous (as one would expect–it’s the same parts of Ontario as featured in prior productions).  And the cast is quite good (Shirley MacLaine is always awesome, of course, but there’s no weak link in the cast–even the kids do a good job).  But no amount of scenery and acting makes up for the weakness in the material.  The timeline is still screwed up, it’s full of anachronisms and multiple key moments in the show are clearly cribbed from either prior Anne series or Jane Eyre.  Even the relationships themselves are clearly shadows of those in the real Anne series (Mrs. Thomas and Anne is a poorly drawn Marilla and Anne).

If I was able to completely set aside everything I know about Anne and treat this as a true stand alone story, it might not be too horrible (other than the anachronisms, but even those could partly be overlooked).  A family-friendly kind of costume drama.  The trouble is, they throw the Anne part in your face so much with those cribbed moments and copied snippets of dialog (and the care to cast the same Mrs. Hammond).  It’s like  Anne is being used as a marketing tool to sell something that someone wasn’t sure would stand up on its own (when, really, without that, it may have done better).

More than two hours hoover’d outta my life to see one of my favorite literary universes subjected to a Mary Sue prequel.  This is to Anne fans what Star Wars I-III were to those of us who grew up in a world that started with Episode IV.

I have a very crappy memory about some of the strange mental exercises Kristy and I collaborate on.  Thankfully, Kristy is more inclined to recall our more creative moments (and save documents) than I am, so she was able to dredge up our attempt to a dream cast for the musical Into the Woods.  We had a few minor holes to plug in tonight, but we managed to figure out those final few  (the Steward, for example) to bring you the cast that we’d assemble if we could.  This list involved a lot of thought–weighing Willie Nelson against members of ZZ Top, evaluating what artist would be most likely to be the embodiment of a tree, splitting roles to accommodate just the right people.   And here we have it:

*Originally we had Lindsay Lohan cast here, but this was before her most recent bout of drinking, drugs and flaunting judicial orders.  Much as we know that she once had the talent to rock the part, until she can sober the fuck up, she is off the list.

** We realize that some people might have a time with a black Red Riding Hood who has a painfully white, red-headed grandma but A) we embrace diverse families because we both have them and B) if Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington could be brothers in Much Ado About Nothing, this is just as plausible.

***If Reba really doesn’t work as Grandma in workshop, we’ll swap Patricia Belcher in and make Reba the Giantess.

****Ardilla Voladora is a story for another post.

I am visiting Texas right now. Apologies for any typos–even after so many months, I am still no touch-screen expert, and for the first time in years, I am traveling sans laptop.

I have a Texas battery that requires charging now and then.  This trip partially fulfills that need, but I have come to accept that my need to return here is not just an over-active case of state pride.  It is also a realization that within these borders, and most particularly to Fort Worth, I have the greatest concentration of friends and family of any place on Earth.  The links may not be as strong as between my parents and my brother, but they are close.  And they are time-tested, and they are constant — both in terms of the relationships themselves, and in terms of geography.  And geography is something my closest relationships (immediate family in particular) are far from consistent on.

So I have been asking myself: am I a fool to want to move here for the friends?  I know it is not–nor could it ever be–all my friends.  This is the downside of the wonderfully diverse group of people I have befriended over the years.  But the friends here are numerous,varied, blend well with my other circles, and this set has remained in one place for more than a decade in a city I like and which has great potential–some of which the outer level of this circle is influencing.

Right now, I live where my only real friends are those I made at the bill-paying-job.  The job itself has made opportunities to expand that circle difficult.  I know I am lonely, and I know that loneliness is inherently unhealthy.  I find myself very, very drawn finding a job here as much for the social connection as to escape from the stagnant and unhealthy job situation I am currently facing.

But, I come from a family that has moved because of the job–which I respect.  This past of work-defining-place rather than place-defining-work is making it hard to judge whether my own feelings are wisdom, or folly.

Would we drink coffee with Charles Dickens?

Cammy:  A co-worker was praising Dickens the other day which led me to put him under consideration for coffee.  I’m going with a tentative yes.  I’m not sure what to make of his mistress on the side, and I just have a sneaking suspicion, I wouldn’t be a great fan of his personality.  But, what better way to find out than coffee?  Worst case scenario, I get up and walk away.  Best case, I get the 4-1-1 on the personal life.  I’d also relish the chance to talk about writing soap operas.  Because, let’s face it, those serialized novels he’s known for?  Totally soap operas.  I’d like to see just how much plot he established in his head early on, and how much he left to the moment.  How does he feel about the serialized format for stories–was he just doing it because of the media style of the times, or would he talk some real value for it.  And, he and I could talk copyright, too.  Dickens actually lectured in the US, pushing for copyright laws since, at the time, US Copyright offered no real protection for foreign works (in stark contrast to the utter fuck-up we just got handed by the 9 in the Golan case).  In his case, there was definite need for more stringent copyright, but I have to wonder how he’d feel about the creeping reach of copyright today in terms of duration, over-extension, etc.  I doubt he and I will see completely eye to eye, but it could be a spirited discussion.

Kristy: You know, I think I’m gonna decline. I just feel like I’m going to have a hard time drinking coffee with the man and not saying something which will cause the conversation to take an unpleasant and unproductive turn. It’s hard to read anything the man wrote and not come away thinking he had a screwed up view of women. Based on my limited Dickens reading it seems like his women are either psychologically fucked up or victims or both. And then there’s the whole racism thing… from him constantly reminding you that Fagan, the criminal mastermind, is a Jew to his discussion of the Eskimos the man just keeps irritating me. And yes, I know he’s a product of his time and I’ve probably already had coffee with other racists and sexists. But with him I know about it. And I’m just worried I’ll say thin wrong thing and Cammy won’t get her copyright talk.

Being an L.M Montgomery fan, I had heard about the Emily of New Moon TV series years ago, but only recently have I had the opportunity to finally see the show (it’s been off the air for years now).  I was by no means expecting something completely accurate to the trilogy of books that I grew up reading, but I really wasn’t prepared for the level of “WTF?” I’ve encountered.

Now, at least in my mind, Emily has always been the oddest and most fanciful of the major L.M. Montgomery heroines (those with more than one book).  There was always more of a supernatural/second site element to Emily than there was to Anne or Pat or Sara.  But that element of the odd, eerily-other-worldly does not account for the acid trip I’ve been on in my marathon viewing of the first three season of this show.  If you are expecting the kind of look and feel of the many Kevin Sullivan interpretations of other LM Montgomery tales, you are not going to get it.  It’s got a darker, closer, eerier feel, from the music to to the many tree-enclosed scenes.

If you know the books,  forget them or just don’t watch.  The first season bears a passing resemblance to the source material.  You get most of the characters (Emily, Aunt Laura, Aunt Elizabeth, Jimmy, Perry, Ilse Burnley, Dr. Burnley, Rhoda Stewart….) all of whom seem to fit, at least generally, into their proper places.  Some of the sites and incidents are alike (The death of Mr. Starr, Emily’s letter writing in the garret, there is a Disappointed House…) but larger plots and themes that unwound over a long period of time in the books are truncated to nothingness (the extended period before Emily is allowed into and eventually given the room that belonged to Juliet).  The scads of smaller incidents that make up the episodes of the book (the soured friendship with Rhoda Stewart, various adventures in exploration with Ilse, day to day battles with Aunt Elizabeth, friendship with Dean Priest) are absent, replaced with incidents that are decidedly NOT in the original books (or any other part of the large body of LM Montgomery literature–like the whole Maida Flynn illegitimate baby thing.  WTF? And Ian Bowles and the whole doll mess?).  And that’s just season 1.

By season 2, names of characters are about all you have left.  Aunt Elizabeth, a featured character throughout the books?  Drowns at sea at the beginning of season 2.  And it’s all downhill from there.  Aunt Laura spirals into a laudanum addiction and the Murray’s of New Moon are less the upstanding family of Blair Water than a train wreck of epic proportions.  And while the Stewarts in the books passed as a little tacky, they don’t hold a candle to the white trash version we get on the TV show.  Random new cousins from Scotland bring some kind of interest, but only derail this thing further from the trilogy.  In the mean time, Emily’s hallucinations and visions are increased in frequency–sure she has a few episodes in the book, but that’s just a few very key and critical moments.  In the show it’s almost old hat and probably  sign the kid needs meds.  And in trying to blend Emily’s imaginings with the real-world plot, such as it was, things wind up feeling odd and disjointed.  More than once I thought maybe I’d been drinking while I was watching.  Especially with the final ep of the season which does a total sci-fi number on me with what basically amounts to a multi-verse version of one particularly relevant day at New Moon.  I give that props, but it was HIGHLY unusual for a period costume drama and I was thrown for a loop at first.

The feeling that I must be drunk only increased with season three.  Jimmy does a Flowers for Algernon thing, more infidelity and unwed pregnancy than you could shake a stick at (Maud would have been SHOCKED).  Cousin Isabel and Uncle Malcolm from Scotland have a dynamic that may have been interesting if it weren’t so incredibly manic-depressive.  Aunt Laura, having finally kicked the laudanum problem, has moved on to Stockholm Syndrome.  The one thing I always read into the novels that never really got addressed (Aunt Laura + Dr. Burnley) is given a star-crossed lover’s treatment of painful proportions.  Random plagues of smallpox along with an adorable black boy with a painfully Scottish name (Robbie Burns) are actually the most coherent parts of the series, but certainly don’t resemble the books.  Emily is seeing everything from the embodiment of death to God (and having conversations/arguments with both).  Honestly, if you would have landed the Millenium Falcon in the middle of a Blair Water potato field it really couldn’t have made this season feel any less weird.

There’s still a 4th season that I’ll have to get ahold of to finish out the madness.

As a fan of the books, I’m horrified.  And as a general fan of a good yarn, particularly in TV form, I’m just confused.  Despite the (needless) divergence from the material available in the books, the kind of drama and character relationships introduced had some potential–it just wasn’t executed quite right.  For one thing, the character relationships were all running hot and cold.  While there is some value to be had in focusing on the conflicting feelings of a character and how that impacts events around them, we never got that focus.  Instead you are kind of left feeling like the interactions of the characters are dependent on what was needed for the episode (or even the scene), not out of any true inner source.  For example, just about everyone’s relationship with Cousin Isabel ran hot and cold.  It could have made for a great running theme, but there seemed to be no reasoning behind the moments when they decided they were OK with her (the moments when they despised her were usually supported in the moment).  Aunt Laura’s weak spirit might have explained her inability to commit to her Stockholm Syndrome or rebel against it, but nothing in the show gave the proper focus to her internal struggle with indecision and we were again left with that feeling that whether or not Aunt Laura hated her husband was more a factor of what was needed to move a scene forward than out of her feelings.

And would it kill these writers to make one person happy?  Tragedy is good in small doses, but I didn’t see a single happy romance in this whole tangle.  The closest thing to happy is the friendships of Perry, Ilse, Emily and Jimmy, and they are continually being beat down from the outside.  Without at least one example of success and happiness, nothing in this series gave you much hope.  The town of Blair Water is gossipy, small minded and unwelcoming, and the New Moon family is the heart of dysfunction.

The acting is actually fine.  I love that all the kids looked like realistic kids instead of show pieces.  I totally loved that they let the kids scuffle and yell the kind of insults only kids can yell (Ilse’s are the best).  The adult cast is impressive (I really loved Susan Clark as Aunt Elizabeth–so it totally sucked when they killed off the character).  If the storylines had been more coherent, they honestly would have knocked this outta the park.

But the entire experience has left me feeling disjointed.  I can’t say I’m regretting having watched, but I’m not going to run out and suggest this to anyone else.  In fact, I think I mostly feel like I just want to take the good stuff and shake it into place.  The pieces are there if they just put them together a little different.

Or, maybe I’ll just go drink a beer and lie down.

I have nothing I want to write about tonight.  Not a thing.  It was a pretty long day at the bill-paying job today and I mostly want my acetaminophen-pm and my pillow.  But, since it’s my turn to post (and I’m all kind of resolved to be better about that this year)….here are things that I considered and discarded:

1) The Job.  One day, when I have other means of income, I will write a fabulous tell all about my way not glamorous job.  It will be a fantastic mix of tragedy and comedy.  I will be hailed a genius and the world will be changed.  Until then, I like paying the bills.

2) Politics.  Not touching that with a 10-foot f-ing pole.  To quote Josh from The West Wing, “I’m so sick of Congress I could vomit.”  If I hear about one more damn Republican Primary….

3) The Idiot Who Nearly Ran Me Into a Ditch This Morning.  He made my day start out sucky and since he didn’t actually manage to run me off the road and to an early grave, you’re stuck reading this sub-standard post.

4) The Weather. I’m not talking about it because ours has been fantastic and I don’t wanna jinx it by saying more than that (having written this much, we’ll get 6 inches of snow and -15 temps tomorrow)

5) The Cat.  She’s being bitchy and a little attention whore and paying attention to her will only make it worse.

And on that note, my little painkillers-o-wonder are standing by to cure the pounding in my head and whisk me off to the land of Nod on 25mg of Diphenhydramine.

In case you aren’t catching onto the theme here, you can pretty much guarantee that we’re going to be talking Downton on Sunday nights from now until Series 2 ends later in February.  Apologies to those who don’t give a damn (or are avoiding spoilers)

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Title: The Girl (Original Swedish Title: Flickan) (2009)

Director: Fredrik Edfeldt

Writer: Karin Apphenius

Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytrma

I stumbled across this one at my local library.  Having not watched a foreign film in a while, I decided to give it a whirl.  I didn’t really expect much more than a little variety to shake up the string of BBC offerings I’ve been checking out from the library’s DVD section lately.  What I got was a visually beautiful, moving film.

You might notice that I noted the cinematographer above.  That’s because the way this film was beautiful visually.  That’s not to say it was full of sweeping vistas or shiny dance numbers or incredible costumes.  It was the composition of the shots, the way light was captured.  If had a greater experience with visual art, I’d be better at describing it, but the long and short of it is that reading the English subtitles is not the only reason I couldn’t tear my eyes from the screen.

The story follows The Girl (never named), whose parents and brother leave for an African aid mission.  She was supposed to travel with them, but a last minute notification of restrictions due to age (she is 9 and a half) results in The Girl being left at home in the care of a somewhat unstable Aunt Anna.  Singularly unimpressed with this woman-child that she barely knows, The Girl is more than happy when Aunt Anna leaves her alone to go off sailing with a boyfriend.  The Girl begins a summer of freedom.

But, before you start to think this is a summery, Swedish version of Home Alone, be assured, it’s not.  The Girl’s freedom devolves into a loneliness and isolation that comes right up to the borders of madness before a meeting with a stranger pulls her back into society and reality.

And The Girl herself is remarkable.  Little Blanca Engström does a very impressive job of conveying the complex emotions involved in The Girl’s isolation.  She has a unique look with her red hair and skinny form–she stands out in every shot she appears in.  And for such a little girl, she can be intense with just one glance, almost to the point of creepiness.  You really don’t need the subtitles to pick up on the emotions and follow the path of this story.  If this young actress doesn’t do any more movies, we are all losing out, I’m telling you.

By the end of this movie, I had the same kind of feeling I have after reading a really excellent book that I know I’ll never forget even if I never manage to read it again.  Usually I withdraw from foreign films that are too “arty” but in this case, it struck the right chord–stable plot, deep emotion and beautiful shots.  I give it 4.5 out of 5 jars of peanut-butter.

I am not a singer.  No false modesty, I don’t have a good voice and I find it a very frustrating instrument.  I sing along to the radio in the car, but the music is so loud I can’t hear how bad I am, so it’s okay.  When I don’t have something to drown me out, put it to you this way: my cat howls at me.  But, this week I realized that the small shower here at home has these awesome acoustics that are just too good to waste.  Since the piano won’t fit in the shower and it’s not good to get a wood oboe soaking wet, my only way to exercise the sounds of the space is with those pesky vocal chords.  After many attempts to reproduce any number of songs, I have found exactly one song that I can sing even moderately well without the assistance of a radio to drown out my weak points:

“New San Antonio Rose”

This signature song of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys ought to be familiar to serious country music fans.  If you are interested in rounding out your musical education with the high-points of all the major genres and sub-genres, this song ought to be somewhere on your to-listen list as a grand example of Western swing.  If you are from Texas I suspect that you might be like me where one day you hear this tune playing and you begin singing along, never realizing until that moment that you knew the words…

It was called “New” San Antonio Rose because the “old” version Bob Wills originally put together didn’t have lyrics. With the addition of words, they called it “New San Antonio Rose.”  Allegedly, the tune was, at least in part, developed when Wills decided to play the tune “The Spanish Two-Step” backwards.  FTW?  For shits and giggles I sat down and tried to play something backwards on the piano.  Um.  Fail.  So points to Bob for being some kind of crazy genius with his fiddle.

It’s been covered more times than I can count (I can name at least 5 renditions off the top of my head) by a plethora of artists and in multiple languages.  It helped rocket Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys into the national spotlight back in the day.

In the grand tradition of country-western music (and plenty of other musical genres, but this one gets the most shit for it) it’s about a lost love.  In the grand tradition of Texas, it’s dance-able.  And it’s about Texas.  All these elements have made it a favorite of mine for years.  The shocker was the part about how sing-able it is.  Maybe I should have suspected it with the number of artists who’ve performed the song, but I didn’t.  And I sure didn’t expect it to be the one song that I can maintain in tune start to finish.  Maybe it’s that the spread of the range is just right.  Maybe the tempo makes it easier to control the changes.  I don’t know.  All I know is that I usually sing it through 3 times in the shower–and the cat’s okay with it.

Would we have coffee with…Erma Bombeck?

Cammy:  A resounding YES.  Bombeck was held out as the benchmark for humorous newspaper writing by my journalism teacher (who didn’t generally encourage us to write humor in her class, but had no problem with us reading and appreciating it).  Reading her column was the first time I really realized that people wrote funny shit for adults, too.  Before there were “Mommy Bloggers” venting about the housewife life, there was Bombeck.  Not only did she write about the absurdities of suburban moms and their families, she wrote it in a way that anyone could snarf their Dr. Pepper over.  It’s been more than 10 years since I first read one of her books (When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time To Go Home), but I still recall clutching at my sides laughing.  For that alone, I owe her a thank you cup of joe. I’d like her take on the Mom blog phenomenon mentioned above–I have to imagine she’d have something humorous to say about that one.  I think it would be interesting to get her take on women and humor in general (more than once I’ve heard that women can’t be as funny as men–something that women like Bombeck render totall untrue).  And if nothing else, I once read she was twice as funny in person as she was on paper, so as long as I’m careful when I take a sip, this should be a riot.

Kristy: Sure. I’ll shamefully confess that although I’d heard her name for years, I didn’t really know who she was until tonight. But you know I like people that bring the funny, and a quick google search for quotes reveals that this woman could indeed bring the funny. So while I lack Cammy’s passion for journalism, I share her passion for spending time with smart funny people. Like Cammy, I’d also like to hear her thoughts on the “Mommy Blogger” phenomenon. I’d also like to ask her about her forays into television, even though they were largely unsuccessful. Perhaps even more to the point, I’d be interested to know what she thinks about the dearth of female writers in television, particularly on comedy shows. Is this just social prejudice or something else? Does she think there’s any thing that can be done to help? I will also be careful when I sip my coffee.