african queen

Last night I watched The African Queen for the first time. I am a big Bogart fan despite only having seen a few of his movies before this one: Casablanca, of course, The Barefoot Contessa, and The Big Sleep.

Loved it. I was expecting a rollicking adventure but I had no idea it would be so funny. I didn't know Bogart could be so hilariously undignified, and I thought Hepburn was incredible, with a few fantastic one-liners: "I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!" Then there's the Captain of the Louisa: "By the authority vested in me by Kaiser Wilhelm II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution."

It's such a strange movie - it doesn't seem at all likely to work - but somehow it manages to combine Africa, suspense, war, romance, comedy, in a completely charming and exciting way.

Then I tried to go to sleep and kept waking up from dreams about crocodiles and rapids and being stuck in a papyrus swamp and arguing with Mr Allnut. It was most frustrating.

ten of the mostest

About three years ago, on my old blog, I made a list of ten of the mostest. And here are ten more of them.

1. Most uncomfortable, crazy honeymoon ever?
This one would be it. Or at least it would be in the top five.

2. Most fun I will never have?



Sigh... if only I could dance.

3. Silliest, most pointless new law?

France's decision to ban the burqa/niqab/etc. As appalled as I am at the idea of wearing full body covering in this way, and as much as I feel that it's probably quite a repressive thing to make someone do, I am even more appalled at a society that thinks it can decide who can and cannot wear what is essentially just another item of clothing. The only effect such a law can have is to make wearing a burqa seem rebellious and therefore attractive.

Go Kenza Drider and a whole bunch of other Muslim women in France for sticking it to the French authorities.

4. Quickest homemade chocolate fix?

Three minute chocolate mug cake. Highly recommended if you are lazy and hungry. Make sure you include the chocolate chips.

Also, on a food- and chocolate-related theme, the recipe I am MOST tempted to use for our Singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party?

Bavarian Decadent Chocolate Cake. [I did some internet research on Bavarian and Bulgarian food - figuring these are close enough to Vulgaria to be acceptable. More on this on some other occasion.]

5. The thing I am most looking forward to about having a job/career?

Money. Even a job that is not paid particularly well could more than double my current income! It sounds incredibly materialistic of me, and partly it is - it will be nice to buy new clothes etc. again - but I am trying to plan for this change wisely, budget well, keep a modest lifestyle and put a sizeable portion aside for savings and charity. Start well, so that I don't get used to squandering too much, and yet buy myself some nice things and enjoy them.

6. Most dreaded sentence?

"Hey Allie - it's Friday." (In a significant tone. Followed shortly by "And Saturday comes afterwards." Followed by mental anguish.)

7. Movie most recently seen?

Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and some guy whose name I forget. I don't regret seeing it - it was good - but I wish I had read the book first, and as films go, it was very intense. Any one read the book, or anything else by Kazuo Ishiguro?

As for DVDs, my flatmates and I watched 27 Dresses last night. It was pretty funny. I was pleasantly surprised.

8. Most enthusiastic musicians?



9. Three things I am most looking forward to over the next month?

(a) Perfecting all the little details of my thesis. Printing it off and getting it bound. Handing it in, getting the photo of this crucial moment, and releasing it into the unknown.

(b) The royal wedding. I feel silly to admit this. I feel like I should be an anti-royalist. But I remember my sister telling me about how exciting it was to watch Charles and Diana's wedding back in 1981, and feeling jealous that she got to see something like that. (I also felt jealous of my dad, that he got to watch the first man landing on the moon, but this isn't in quite the same league.) Now I get a chance to see a royal wedding - it should be fun! I think it would be even more fun to have friends over with whom to watch it, to serve tea and scones, and to ooh and aah over the clothes and to judge every single last detail. Sounds like a plan, Stan.

(b) Our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. Of course.

10. The place I would most like to visit, currently?

Israel. I know it seems like a dangerous place to go, but when is Israel ever going to be safe? I want to wander the streets of a place sooooo oooooold. I want to imagine. I want to do my own little pilgrimage. (I want to visit some of the places nearby, too. Damascus. Petra. Tripoli. Cyprus. Et cetera.)

voyage

I finally went to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the other day. My expectations were low, having seen the trailer and dreading what they were going to do to the book, and they were basically fulfilled. I wasn't disappointed but my expectations were not exceeded by much.

They didn't hack the plot to pieces quite as much as I thought they would. Except they just couldn't resist Hollwoodifying the story. It apparently needed a more compelling overarching storyline than a simple quest. So they invented an evil green mist. Very cinematic. And apparently Every Single Character needed a personal journey, or some personal demon to overcome. Painful! Not to mention cheesy. And waaaaay too busy. The movie just did not flow well, what with all these subplots.

Almost everyone knows the partially allegorical nature of the Narnia Chronicles - and I was surprised to see they had left some things in that were almost explicit in their allegorical sense. But these things often betrayed the signs of fiddling, of the fiddling of people who don't understand religion but think they can speak for the religious. I was particularly annoyed by the conversation between Lucy and an entirely superfluous character, a little girl whose mother has been taken by the green mist: [paraphrase approaching]
"How do I know I will ever see my mother again?"
"You just need to have faith."
"But Aslan didn't stop her being taken."
"Just have faith. I promise we'll find her."
Again, painful! Faith in what, precisely? That life on earth is fair? That Aslan prevents anything difficult ever happening? Argh! It's such a distortion of the concept of faith!! But it's a nice cliché that Hollywood likes and at the sound of which C. S. Lewis would have torn out his hair in frustration.

I did think, however, that it wasn't entirely bad. Fiddling with the plot produced some fairly okay results in some areas - for instance, extending the appearance of the dragon was fun. I think that Ben Barnes is very pleasant to look at. Some of the cinematography was pretty cool. And I also think that the kid who plays Eustace Scrubb is very promising. My hopes for The Silver Chair have not been left shattered.

the hills will be alive

We are having a Sing-along Sound of Music at out flat next week! Finally!

There'll be crisp apple strudel and pink lemonade and Austrian beer. There'll be costumes! (Eek - still haven't thought of a really killer idea for me!) There'll be singing, shouting at the TV, booing the Nazis, hissing at the baroness, and a goody bag filled with things to do during the film - edelweiss to wave in the air as we sing; party poppers to let off when they kiss; a whistle to try our hand at calling the children. It's going to be awesome!

In preparation, we are turning our flat into Austria. We're thinking pine-scented air fresheners, we're thinking Christmas tree sans decoration, and we're PAINTING. I found some really cheap poster paint at a bargain store, and I borrowed a huge roll of plain newsprint paper from my father. My flatmate R. has painted a huge mountain and lake scene, probably about 3 metres by 1 metre, and I have been painting these scenes:

Recognise this? The hills are alive!
That was my first scene and I'm really quite proud of it. My second was taken from a background from the Lonely Goatherd puppet show scene, including the puppet prince.

Step 1: Paint the scenery - mmMm, lovely sixties' browns and greens. (By the way, the stripey material under the paper is one of the super-cheap shower curtains we bought to protect the carpet/table from paint soaking through cheap newsprint paper!)
Step 2: the prince.
Step 3: the castle, a few little touch-ups here and there, and here is the finished product:
I am particularly proud of my puppet-prince: (A prince on the bridge of a castle moat heard, lay ee oh a lay ee oh a lay EE OOO)

It is SO MUCH FUN painting again. I haven't really painted since I did Art at school when I was fourteen-ish. And the size of the paper we're using is very forgiving, because you stand back at a distance and everything looks grand. It is so relaxing coming home in the evening and doing something as therapeutic as pushing paint around on paper.

My next scene will be one of the frames in the opening credits of the movie, I think - something architectural from Salzburg - while flatmate R. is planning a scene from the abbey.

I can't wait until the night!

North & South

I watched North & South, the BBC miniseries based on Elizabeth Gaskell's book (which I have not yet read). I bought it on a Thursday night, watched half of it before I went to bed and then woke up at 6.30am and watched the rest of it because I couldn't bear to go to uni and have to think about other things before I'd finished it.

I think that's a pretty good sign of how good a miniseries is. I mean, it's so obvious what's going to happen - but I was hooked and the suspense was killing me anyway.

The story is of a young middle-class woman, Miss Margaret Hale (played by Daniela Denby-Ashe), who moves with her father and mother from the south of England to Milton, an entirely different place. Her father has left the Church as a profession, and with it their steady income, and must find students to teach in this industrial, mostly working-class town in the north. Margaret befriends some of the workers, but as the possessor of high ideals cannot stand the mill-owners, especially John Thornton (played by Robert Armitage), who is a stern and unbending master of working class origins.

The blurb on the back of the DVD says it is like "Pride and Prejudice with a social conscience", and I would agree with that, although I did find the strike scenes, especially the speeches by Nicholas Higgins, an emotive working-class "firebrand", very reminiscent of every working-class-anger film that has ever been made (although it is hard not to like Nicholas as a character).

Margaret is a quite delightful character; brooding John Thornton makes me feel all light-headed; his mother is excellently played by Sinead Cusack; his sister Fanny is rather amusing. Other supporting characters are all believable and well-acted, which is a pleasant hallmark of BBC films.

Now, I've heard a lot about North & South, things that convinced me I'd like it a lot, but one of the things I heard from a certain flatmate was that it was "better than Pride and Prejudice"! This, I feel, is a claim that must be addressed.

The two films are both very, very good, but different. Except for Fanny Thornton, North & South is pretty humourless. This is okay - it has darker themes, a passionate love story - and a better comparison in this sense would be to the recent, wonderful Jane Eyre miniseries by the same screenwriter starring Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson. I just can't compare it to Pride and Prejudice, and it seems like a false comparison to say that just because something is set in the nineteenth century it must therefore be inherently similar or comparable. We wouldn't do that to the twentieth century. Even though the love stories run along the same lines - ie the bones of the story are not dissimilar - the flesh on those bones is very different.

I do think North & South is easier to watch in one sitting, being only four episodes, compared to the six of the BBC Pride and Prejudice. In this sense the film is better structured, and I do sometimes wish that Pride and Prejudice were shorter. North & South's screenwriter has done an excellent job, but I suspect, without having read the book, that Elizabeth Gaskell does not give a screenwriter as much to work with as Jane Austen gave Andrew Davies of Pride and Prejudice. That is a speculation, of course, but I'll definitely be interested to read the book and find out if I am correct.