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Media Matters | Dark Wednesday

Media Matters | HUGO

Looking forward to seeing the film everyone's been talking about on Tuesday, by way of celebrating the end of the semester:

Media Matters | Phantom of the Opera 25 Anniversary DVD due out November 14

 

 

How I wish a film of the full stage production had been done back in the day with Michael Crawford, who originated the role of the Phantom in the late 1980s, because he cannot be equaled.  I was so fortunate to have seen him multiple times in the Los Angeles production AND to have appreciated how lucky I was at the time as well!

But I saw this live broadcast of a slightly scaled-down version of the show that streamed into theatres on October 2 from the Royal Albert Hall, and it's pretty damn good. Ramin Karimloo is probably the second-best Phantom I've seen, and I've seen quite a few.  Further, he originated the Phantom who haunts the sequel Love Never Dies (whom I think of as the original Phantom's younger, better-looking brother, somehow, even though LND is supposed to take place after the first story ... whatever).

Anyway, I like Ramin Karimloo because he actually returned a tweet of mine recently.  Cracked me up.

By the way, this anniversary edition of POTO is so much better than the theatrical release film from 2005 based on the show which was beautiful to look at but emotionally inert. If you've never seen Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera but want a sense of what the show is like, watch this, not that.

Already preordered my copy!

Media Matters | Andrea Arnold's WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2011)

It's hard to know what to make of Andrea Arnold's new film Wuthering Heights, which I saw yesterday afternoon at the Venice Film Festival, and maybe that has something to do with me: the dialogue was so stripped down (yes, even from the novel) and incomprehensibly articulated by the actors who played young Cathy and young Heathcliff that I found myself looking to the Italian subtitles for translation.

And here's the thing: I don't speak Italian.

This isn't to say that these first-time actors were bad:  they weren't, necessarily. It's just that their scenes depended less on dialogue and more on the cinematic rendering Arnold tries to give the relationship between them and a natural, if both brutal and beautiful, order of things, and that choice makes it difficult to judge the acting. I've always found Heathcliff a brutal character and the world of Wuthering Heights a strange and somewhat frightening one, and so there are ways in which Arnold's countless shots of dead game, plucked fowls, insects, mud, and muck are spot-on. They permeate the film, sometimes almost to the point of abstraction. Shot on location, the landscape is omnipresent, as it should be, and Cathy's and Heathcliff''s love of it is evident.  

But if you're waiting to hear Cathy's immortal "Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" or Heathcliff's profane prayer that Cathy haunt him because he cannot live without his soul, well ... don't. They're simply not there. It's as if Arnold's film is a kind of palimpsest that evokes Bronte's novel and performs a reading of it but tells its own story on top of it, right next to it, adjoining it, instead.

To a degree, it's a story of racism.  Arnold cast Solomon Glave and James Howson as the young and adult Heathcliff, respectively, recasting the tale of Bronte's "gypsy beggar" as a story of a black man who faces unrelenting bias and cruelty at the hands of different strata of white society (Hindley Earnshaw, Edgar Linton). It's not an unreasonable transformation -- Bronte's Heathcliff is clearly positioned as a cultural outsider as well. However, in defining Heathcliff's otherness almost exclusively in social and cultural terms, Arnold also strips him of that indefinable aspect of otherness that has always exceeded explanation and forned part of his bond with Cathy. Self and other, self as other ... this is the tension that Bronte's novel has articulated so forcefully and that has gone missing in Arnold's treatment.

Don't go to Wuthering Heights looking for romance because it's almost wholly absent (translation: this is not your grandmother's Wuthering Heights, or William Wyler's 1939 adaptation of it with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the leading roles). The camerawork is often hand-held, there's no musical soundtrack (though the sounds of nature form an aural backdrop that's compelling), and the narrative and character through-line are provided mostly by one's working knowledge of the novel, against which I was always glossing the film, which is otherwise mostly inscrutable.

I don't expect the film to do well at the box office, precisely because of some of the elements I've just discussed. For me, it doesn't entirely cohere, even on its own terms. But it's an intelligent film, a film with thought behind it. and for that reason alone it's worth seeing once.

Media Matters | Venice film festival 2011: the full program

The 68th Venice film festival runs August 31 - September 10. This article contains reported to be screening and will be updated as official announcements detailing the full line-up are released this week.

via www.guardian.co.uk

Media Matters | Bernard Herrmann's score for THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947)

At 12 I thought this was the most beautiful and appropriate score composed for any film -- and I still do. If you haven't seen the film, rent it.

Media Matters | Controversial Documentary About Diana's Death Set To Premiere This Week At Cannes - Jezebel

via jezebel.com

 

Um, I think the prestige of the Cannes Film Festival just took a dive with this announcement. Really, people?

Media Matters | Candid videos show rare view of unkempt bin Laden - Yahoo! News

On Saturday, the U.S. released a handful of videos, selected to show bin Laden in a much more candid, unflattering light. In the short clips, bin Laden appears hunched and tired, seated on the floor, watching television wrapped in a wool blanket and wearing a knit cap. Outtakes of his propaganda tapes show that they were heavily scripted affairs. He dyed and trimmed his beard for the cameras, then shot and reshot his remarks until the timing and lighting were just right.

via news.yahoo.com

So far I'm finding the media's commentary on the five video excerpts of Osama bin Laden released by the U.S. government singularly naive and two-dimensional. 

The fact that bin Laden actively participated in the construction of a given image of himself as powerful is ... news?

Of course he did.  That was already a given, prior to the release of these taped excerpts. No one just sits around in fatigues with automatic weapons criss-crossed in the background and chats with the media without having set the scene beforehand.

So the man dyed his hair to look younger and carefully crafted his public image. So he delivered scripted speeches and thought about things like lighting and backdrops. So the private bin Laden -- grey, older, covered in a blanket, sitting on the floor in unglamorous surroundings -- did not always look like the powerful, public self that he aimed to project.

What is so surprising about this, people?

And what is so unusual about a discrepancy between public and private selves? I'm not a public figure or a terrorist, but when I'm at home, working, I sure as hell don't look as pulled together in sweats and a t-shirt as I do when I go to work and speak in front of classes. Take off my make-up, take away the red hair coloring, take off the make-up, and put me on the floor, and I'm not going to look that great, either.  I'll look pale, older, tired ... 

For a generation that's saturated in media, the running commentary -- today, at least -- is remarkably lacking in insight or information. Maybe the talking heads need to take a media literacy course in college or something. I should tell them to drop on by a class taught by me or K!

Media Matters | Source: Al-Qaida head bin Laden dead - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, is dead, and the U.S. is in possession of his body, a person familiar with the situation said late Sunday.

via news.yahoo.com

Media Matters | Papal pomp

Well, yes, given who I am and what my habits are, of course I'm watching the beatification rite and mass for John Paul II live from the Vatican and St. Peter's Square.

Such an odd experience to follow it as a lapsed American Catholic with a fixation on live news coverage. Parts of the experience I find moving, parts I find absolutely pre-medieval or downright bizarre, and parts of it I connect with.

A pity I didn't care for the previous Pope.  Or the current one.

But for me, that's hardly the point right now.  I feel kind of like an anthropologist at the moment, one with a rather person connection to the culture s/he is observing.

Odd.  Odd, odd, odd.

Tuesday -- counting down

Update: The trapping of feral kitties has not yet occurred.  See Twitter post in the lefthand sidebar. We'll hope for better things later this week.

But not today, as it's my long day on campus, preceded by a hematologist's appointment to see where my ferritin levels are at and to have a preliminary consult about whether she would support a prophylactic hysterectomy (my mother may have died of ovarian cancer, my two older sisters have had to have hysterectomies for benign tumors and cysts, I'm chronically anemic, and I. Want. Those. Parts. Gone).  I know, I know: some women want to hang on to them for dear life.  Different strokes for different folks. Not I.  

The appointment will be followed by a meeting on campus, four hours of office hours with students who are becoming increasingly freaked out by their grades as the semester starts careening to a close (classes will be over in just under four weeks now ... thankyoubabyjesus), and then teaching in the late afternoon and evening.  While my students watch a film tonight after lecture, I'll be doing some last-minute grading for my graduate seminar tomorrow.

I'm usually trashed by the end of Tuesdays.

This is the time in the spring semester when I escape -- in no particular order -- into film (usually viewing one obsessively, as has been the case with the new Jane Erye), or novels (ditto, only Bronte's original novel --my god, Mr. Rochester is a shit sometimes -- not a news flash, I realize), or Second Life. Mostly I don't have time for these entertainments and distractions so they occur late at night after a full day's work. 

No wonder I'm tired this morning!

Border Crossings

From a set of brief remarks I gave recently that were more of a blog entry than an academic presentation. Originally there was more to them than this, but when technological issues interfered with a PowerPoint presentation I had prepared on women in film history, I went with this very preiiminary, embryonic spiel as a kind of discursive bridge between the academic talk that preceded it and the presentation that followed by the authors of A Feminine Manifesta.  

Had the PowerPoint worked, it would have been a more substantial piece ... right now it's just some suggestive thoughts strung together in an essayistic, non-academic voice. Perhaps I'll do something with it later.

I have self-identified as a feminist since I became an adult.  Quite a change from the 10-year old child I used to be who declared to her older sister that it was wrong for her to keep her own last name when she got married, to work outside the home, and that she should “stay home and love George.”  (Those were my exact words, and they’ve been passed down in family lore ever since. My nieces, now adults, have heard this story that happened long before they were ever born and tell it with glee.)

My brother-in-law was a grad student in English at the time, and my sister tartly observed to me that if she stayed home to love her husband, they wouldn’t have food to eat.

But today I want to talk about a passage in the book A Feminist Manifesta that addresses something the autnors call “shadow qualities.”  These “are the traits we’d rather not admit we possess because we believe they make us unlikable or even unlovable.”  And I want to talk about them, as the authors do, specifically in relation to women,  and also about the way that these traits have become culturally encoded and represented in women in the media.

From their book:

 “Imagine standing with a microphone before an audience and announcing[AS I DECLARE TO YOU NOW] I am…  desperate, insensitive, insecure, slutty, weird, stupid, perfectionist, weak, backstabbing, bossy, lazy, bitter, stingy, phony, egocentric, sloppy, fearful or – a real zinger for us gals – bitchy, and you’ll no doubt experience an internal shudder of horror.” The Feminine Manifesta, p. 76. 

We all are all those things from time to time. I am all those things from time to time.

To that list of shadow qualities I would add “vain” – in my family culture it’s Not Okay for women to display interest in their looks.  Any interest in clothes, make-up, hair, nails, or appearance generally meant that you were shallow, trivial, stupid, and possibly on your way to becoming a slut.  At the same time, you were expected to fall within some culturally accepted definition of “normal” appearance.  It was most definitely NOT OKAY that I weighed almost 300 pounds by the time I was 18. Why not?  Was it bad for my health? Was that the problem?  No, it apparently was the fact that I Might Not Have Any Friends When I Went to College.  They might not like the way I looked.  (Actually, I made a lot of friends in college.)

It’s worth noting that I began to take an interest in clothes on the exact day my mother died when I went shopping for a dress for her memorial service. I have worn make-up since the 8th grade, have colored my hair continuously since I was 16 and watched in horror as it turned orange for the first time,  and have worn artificial nails for the past 25 years because my own break off.  Artificial nails are impractical, expensive, and involve chemicals that I suspect will cause me to grow a horn in the middle of my forehead one day.

“You don’t look natural,” my sister, who is 17 years older than I, a child of the 1960s, once told me when I was in my teens. 

 “Who said I wanted to?” I asked her in return.

 This “internal shudder of horror” toward  shadow qualities in women that the authors talk about is one that the media have often played to and evoked as they’ve portrayed women over the years.  Indeed, these traits in women have occasionally been most powerfully rendered in horror films. 

Remember that traits culturally encoded and represented (by the media, in this case} as negative in women are often positively reframed and identified with the masculine. 

 But it’s important to realize and claim the power that they represent as intrinsically feminine as well so that men and women alike can recognize their strengths and weaknesses and collaborate in building better worlds – and images of the world – as we move forward into the future.

Gold star for procrastination

I should have several such stars, really.  Even for the tasks that are pleasant!  I don't know what my problem is recently, except that I've been sick and I'm very tired, and I don't seem to get to the things I both do and don't want to do. 

I did go see the new Jane Eyre again for a third time yesterday, and now I think I've had that experience and don't need to see it again.  For a while anyway.  I'll probably buy the DVD when it's released, but I don't need to keep going to the theatres to see it.  

The first time I simply reacted to the film, absorbing it and the differences from the novel.  The second time I viewed it more or less on its own terms, and the third time I looked for certain things I wanted to notice and keep track of.  This is a pretty common viewing pattern for me and probably for anyone who teaches film and media.  However, I realized that when I found myself thinking about what the next shot would be and which sequences must have been filmed at the same time, due to location, I had satisfied my desire to see it for the present.

I still haven't gotten to the flea market this weekend, as I wanted to, and god knows I haven't touched any grading. The flea market is always there, however, while the grading has time constraints, so I know where some of my limited energy needs to go today.  

Really, it shouldn't be too painful: the grading I'm working on is commenting on some graduate papers which is connected to some work my students did that I enjoyed; it's just that it's connected to my work, too, and these days, post-spring break, I'm really all about simply finishing out the school year with a minimum of stress.

That was the realization I had from spring break, you see: all the toxic angst and dysfunction of the past year around administrative decisions involving our college, our department, the budget, personnel? They're not worth it. It's not that these things don't matter -- they quite obviously do -- but to allow the fallout from them to impact the quality of my life and my peace of mind?  That's insane. Just because I work within a dysfunctional environment doesn't mean I have to replicate that dysfunction inside my head, and that's what I had been doing.

There are six weeks of classes left this semester. Advising is heating up once again, with incoming students and graduating students both in need of some hand-holding. But the end is in sight: we're getting those notices in our boxes about how to administer student evaluations of courses at the end of the term; students are inviting me to the Honors Convocation (they don't know I go every year, and it's nice to be asked); questions are coming in about department graduation ceremonies.  All the signs are there that soon not only the semester but the school year will be over. And after the year we've had, it can't come soon enough for me.

Last but not least, there's the whole tenure issue.  I just checked the Faculty Affairs calendar, and sometime around April 15 the University tenure committee's and Associate Vice-Provost's recommendations on tenure and promotion are mailed out to the candidates. (That would be me.) That's pretty much the third and final level of review for this year-long process, though it ain't over til it's over: candidates have a chance to rebut, and even if they don't and all is well, the University President still needs to sign off on the decisions, which won't happen until late May.

But really?  The mid-April date is when I'm expecting to be able to know where I stand.  There were no warning signs at the department and college levels of review, so if something weird happens at the university level, I'll be really surprised (that's not all I'll be, but I'm not Going There in my head because it's a waste of energy). 

By mid-April, I think I'll be tenured and promoted. By mid-April, I think I'm going to be able to look at the remaining time in the semester and say, "Whatever ... I'm going to do the best I can do by my students in my present condition, but I'm Letting Go for the duration."

And then my husband is going to have to take me out for a serious dinner celebration, that's all I have to say.  

Rise-and-shine Saturday

After pulling my Elizabeth Barrett Browning routine for the past few days, languishing in fatigue and bed periodically because of exhaustion brought on by godknowswhat, I'm up early today.  

I'm heading to campus this morning for an all-day seminar on global citizenship and the international rule of law.  It's an event associated with the Salzburg Global Seminar of which I was a part in summer 2009 -- once a participant, one is considered part of that community for life -- and I'm looking forward to seeing a few acquaintances and yes, even some of the networking that inevitably goes on.

The full schedule runs from 8:15 a.m. to 7 p.m., and I think I'll attend only the morning sessions; that should be about all I can handle and leave room for other activities.

What other activities?  That's the question, isn't it? I have plenty of grading and almost no desire to do it, as well as course prep and plenty of administrative work.  But it looks as if I will not need to go into campus on Monday (I don't teach and no meeting was called), so I'd like to have something of a real weekend. It'll include some work, but I'd like to do some other things as well.

• Like going to the local flea market where I took my brother and his family last week. We cruised past some stands that I'd like to examine more closely.

• And rereading Jane Erye.  I know. I'm obsessed.  I bought yet another copy the other day with a gift card, simply because I wanted to read a fresh version. I know whole sections of the novel by heart, and this is a way of making it new to me atgain.

• And possibly seeing the new film version Jane Eyre again.  Ditto re: obsession. I downloaded the score for the film, and I'm realizing how dreamlike both it and the film as a whole are. I'm rereading the novel in light of that interpretation. Certainly it's full of dreams, but I've always thought they were more of the nightmare variety. I'm thoroughly enjoying revisiting the novel that is dearest to my heart.

• And going for a bike ride, if the weather is warm enough. I want to go for another spin on my husband's battery-powered bike. 

• And beginning to investigate Adriatric, Aegean, or Mediterranean cruises.  To my stunned surprise, my husband -- the man who now loathes traveling because it is, let's face it, a drag these days in the post-9/11 world and who saw many places that I have not in his youth -- suggested yesterday that he and I might travel together to those areas sometime in the future by ship.  

Really?  

Well, not this year, he added hastily. Maybe for our 25th anniversary.  Oh, give me a break.  Try, say, 15th, I said.  That'll give us time enough to research, to save for, and to plan a wonderful trip while we're still relatively young.  I mean, that's only 4 years away.

Right now it's just a pie-in-the-sky thought.  But it's real enough that it gives me a good excuse to start perusing travel brochures and online options, which is always fun.

Anyway, as with most things, I'll probably feel most satisfied if I achieve a balance, in this case between some relaxation and getting some work done.  

Here's hoping that the worst of my exhaustion is over.  I'm going to try to do without allergy meds today and see if that helps.

Jane Eyre (Fukunaga, 2011)

Verdict?  Worth seeing for (tolerant) fans of Charlotte Bronte's original novel but probably not everyone's cup of tea.  

It's an earnest attempt at telling the story cinematically, though one gets the impression that a fair amount ended up on the editing room floor (e.g., whole scenes between Rochester and Jane, which are hinted at in the trailer but missing from the final cut).  

In fact, that's my chief complaint:  insufficient Rochester-and-Jane screen time. Also watered-down dialogue, no doubt in fear that Bronte's occasionally awkward conversational exchanges might not translate well to a 2011 audience. I suspect the filmmakers had a fair amount of trouble with the editing, and not simply because of the flashback structure that begins but is not well-sustained throughout the narrative.

What's good about it?  Its set, cinematography, costume, and sound design, and its acting are all good.

Because I'm a Jane Eyre addict, I may have to see it again. But really, it merits only a single viewing.

Added 4/3/11:  Saw the film again and liked it significantly better on the second viewing: I stopped comparing it to the novel and evaluated it on its own terms.  Er, may have to see it again -- but I repeat, I'm a Jane Eyre addict.

The common cold redux

It's baaaack!

Either that, or it's sent its evil twin, which is probably the more likely case. Earlier this week my husband came down with a nastier version of the cold I had a few weeks ago, and just as he's beginning to recover, I appear to be going down for the count. Again.

Scratchy throat, sniffles, achey eyes.  Blah blah blah.

It's not a big deal, especially as I remain optimistic that last month's go-round with the bug will give me a little immunity (we'll see how I feel tomorrow and the next day).

It is, however, rotten timing. I'm jurying a film festival and I have a shitload of films to watch in the next five days.  Like, a lot. Achey eyes don't lend themselves well to such circumstances.

If my optimism proves unfounded, I shall whine. Loudly.

In the meantime,  getoutoftheway. I have a film festival to go to tonight!

YES! The King's Speech

O happy day!  Colin Firth won Best Actor for The King's Speech, a film I was almost certain to love:  a period-piece, based on real events, about a man who finds unknown strength and purpose within himself, and finds his voice. And as a former stammerer myself (who still stumbles under intense stress), he won my heart.

As a matter of fact, the film won Best Picture, but that wasn't the award I cared about.  I cared about Firth's.  And, true to this year's predictions, he took home the Oscar.

Best speeches? HIs, the older screenwriter of The King's Speech, and the young filmmaker from NYU who won for best live action short.  

Otherwise?  The program was something of a yawn.

But when it is not, really?  I rarely tune in because I think it's going to be good. I watch because I always have, because I like connecting (however tangentially) with the history of film through the Academy, and because sometimes one still has a chance to see folks like Eli Wallach and Kirk Douglas.

Thank god there were no production numbers.

P.S. The party was great, by the way. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Oscars!

Looking forward to tonight and tonight's Oscar party!

Script Frenzy 2011

I've officially signed up for Script Frenzy -- which you can do for free, by the way -- because I figure that, despite the fact that I've read very few scripts, taken no classes in screenwriting, and have never particularly wanted to write a film -- nothing ventured, nothing gained. At least I'll have the opportunity to learn exactly what I don't know, so to speak, and to decide from there if I want to learn more.

Just as November is devoted to NaNoWriMo, April is devoted to Script Frenzy.  I tell myself that I'll read a couple of books by then on screenwriting, just to have them under my belt, but that's pretty unlikely once the semester starts.  The most I'll probably do is poke around on the Script Frenzy website and see what resources they have (and they do have some).

100-page script in 30 days.  Three pages a day.  Doesn't sound that hard until I remember that a) fictional story-telling is not my forte; b) I suck at dialogue.  Right.  Eek!

However, I have a one-line idea for a script already germinating.  I think I'll look into Celtx and other free screenwriting programs and see what my options are for taking some notes ...

Wrapping up Venice

I'd mentioned in one of my pre-departure posts that I wanted to find the spot where Katharine Hepburn fell into the drink (deliberately) while filming a scene in David Lean's Summertime, and though it took me a couple of hours, find it I did.

This is a shot showing the bridge she crossed over and the building where Rossano Brazzi's shop was located, just next to the bridge. It's clear to me they took over the shop and shot through its front window, but it's also clear that a couple of the interior shots of the shop must have been constructed on a set.

The corner looks a little shabbier than it did in 1955, and the shop is, of course, not an antique store (as it was in the film but probably never in real life) but rather a toy store. I was tempted to go in and buy something, simply to say that I had bought something from the shop that's in Summertime. And you know, if I knew any small children, I probably would have.

And here, shot from the bridge pictured above, is the area of the canal into which Katharine Hepburn fell, though it was clear of boats during the filming of that scene.  She was helped out of the water up those stairs you see  about halfway down the canal on the left.

Because I'm such a film freak and have seen this one any number of times since my teenaged years, when I finally walked into the Campo St. Barnabas, at the far kitty-cornered end from the shop and bridge, I gasped in recognition. "That's it!" I exclaimed aloud, albeit softly, and started snapping pictures.

The locals didn't mind. They're used to us tourists taking pictures of the oddest things. Some folks were taking photos of famous sights. I was taking photos of no where in particular in a working-class area of Venice.

It was wonderful.

Venice - 2 days and counting

Once I survived my teaching week this past Wednesday night (we had a holiday yesterday for Veterans Day), I began to get excited.  Only two more days to go until I leave for Venice ... I'm so lucky!

That's the location of my hotel pictured on the left.

Yesterday I finally began to deal with the logistics of finding my way from the airport to where I'll be staying and determined that, even with the hotel's map, I'm certain to get lost.  That's life.  I'll deal.  You're supposed to get lost in Venice, and if all goes well, my flight will arrive around 5 p.m.  It will be dark or nearly so but I'm now armed with not only the hotel's directions but Google maps and Rick Steves' directions as well. Among the three of them, I'll get there, though I'm certain it will take me an hour or two to walk what should be a 5-15 minute route.

Of course there's always the option of a water taxi instead of public transportation, but a taxi costs 90 euros while public transport costs 13 euros.  No contest. I choose to blow my money on $20 lattes at Florian's instead, weather permitting.

You can get to my hotel approaching from either St. Mark's Square or the Rialto Bridge, and I've decided on the latter: I want my first view of Venice to take me along the Grand Canal; I want to save my first view of St. Mark's for daylight, and the route looks a little easier if I come in at the Rialto Bridge stop.

I've begun to flag certain things I want to see in the course of my stay, but as gauche as it is, I'll be starting with a few sites from David Lean's film Summertime (1955).  Yes, I do want to see where Katherine Hepburn fell into a canal (Campo San Barnaba), and I want to figure out if Rosanno Brazzi's shop was really on that square, or if Lean used a little creative editing to create the impression that it was there.

After that, I'll do high art. :D I still need to download .mp3 podcasts of Rick Steves' audio guides to certain sights in Venice, which customers recommend, but I've already downloaded a talking phrase book to my iPhone.  Yay.

My intention is to travel light -- my MacBook Pro (which is older and actually heavier than shit) and a gym bag that I will not check. That's it. I don't see myself rolling a bag across bridges and down tiny streets -- or dragging a suitcase up 47 steps in a hotel with no elevator, either.  I'm packing crushable clothing, very little of it, and most black with a few scarves as accessories.  That's going to have to do.

With two days to go, I still have student appointments this afternoon and a set of assignments to grade tomorrow.  It will all get done.  My presentation is in reasonable shape; I'm going to tweak it once more before I go and then leave it until I'm there.

So I think I'm good right now, and I'm relieved that I'm finally getting excited.  It was about time!

Going to the movies

Tomorrow it's back to putting my nose to the grindstone -- not teaching, but research and writing for the next couple of months.  This means creating a schedule for myself in the absence of an internally imposed set of events, but that's okay.  I'm grateful to have that opportunity.

But today?

This film professor is going to walk into a movie theater for the first time in (literally) months and watch a chick flick. For the pure pleasure of the experience.  Big screen, comfy chairs, popcorn. 

And no, it's the not the same experience when you watch a movie at home, no matter how nice your set-up is.  I have a pretty nice sound and image system at home myself, as a matter of fact. But movies that were designed for theatrical release ought to be seen for the first time in theaters.  Period.

And yeah, I know they cost a lot now.  That's why I go to bargain matinees. ;)

(Call me old-school.)

Jacket Copy | Marilyn Monroe, in her own words | Los Angeles Times

 
"She was a great reader and someone with real writing flair," editor Courtney Hodell told the Associated Press. "There are fragments of poetry that are really quite beautiful, lines that stop you in your tracks."

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

I'd heard that Monroe was a big reader, or at least that she read a lot in order to improve herself (as the saying goes) and also out of interest.

I hadn't heard that she had any gift for writing.

I'll wait for the reviews.

And ... there are still some never-before-published photos of Monroe out there? Seriously?

BrontëBlog: Great literature demands continual reinterpretation

The Times publishes an article about the Brontë movies in the making and includes a first picture of Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre. Credits: Laurie Sparham. Picture Source.

via bronteblog.blogspot.com

Fabulous image!  I see all adaptations of Jane Eyre, being a JE freak, and I can't wait for this one!

'Jane Eyre' adaptation attracts cast

via www.hollywoodreporter.com

By HD Silversmith

I will watch any and all adaptations of Jane Eyre. O happy day.

BrontëBlog: Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender to star in new Jane Eyre (?)

According to Variety (and other news outlets afterwards), it looks as ifthings are moving on with Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre: Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are in talks to play Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester (respectively, of course!).

via bronteblog.blogspot.com

By HD Silversmith

This is why I love the Bronte Blog: it alerts me to all things Jane Eyre-related, which is my particular Bronte obsession.

Writing as anxiety and comfort

I woke up around 4:00 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. 

I wanted to write.

I didn't particularly want to say anything wise or witty or even worth reading.  I just wanted to  ... write. I wanted to feel my fingers moving over the keyboard (as in yesterday's writing exercise, actually), and to experience the sense of familiarity and -- safety? -- that this activity brings me.

Maybe "safety" isn't the right word. 

When I'm writing academic pieces or creative nonfiction, it's not about being safe.  It's about finding the right words to express an argument or a theme. It's about working with language (and letting it work upon me) to give shape to my own unique voice and ideas.  It's about expressing something that's real and true to me, with intellectual and emotional integrity.

And that involves risk-taking.  Hell, it doesn't just involve it.  It demands it. And it can be challenging, intimidating, and even downright scary sometimes.

But this morning's writing -- right here, right now, as I sip my first cup of coffee -- is very much about safety.  It's about still being in my nightgown, watching the brightening of sky through my study window. It's about  listening to the slow, soft music that's streaming through my computer's iTunes program  and a chance to contemplate the day ahead of me.  It's about the sense of peace that writing here brings me, knowing that in the back of my mind I'm processing the upcoming tasks and projects of the day at the same time -- but I don't have to give them my full attention quite yet.  They're simply percolating for the present.

Writing is my challenge and my sanctuary.  And if that sounds just a wee bit melodramatic, it absolutely is, because as I was typing those words, the final line of My Cousin Rachel (Henry Koster, USA, 1952) with Richard Burton and Olivia De Havilland, sprang into my mind ... 

As I recall, there's Richard Burton in a billowing cape at the edge of a churning ocean, back to the camera, sea-drenched boulders in front of him. Agonizing over whether his cousin Olivia De Havilland, whom he loves, is actually evil or if he's misread her and caused terrible things to happen (see how I'm avoiding spoilers?), he speculates inconclusively (and in voice-over, soliloquy-fashion), finally intoning, "Rachel ... my blessed, blessed torment!" as the film fades to black.

Or something like that.

I wouldn't say that writing ever my torment, though, even in my most blocked, angst-ridden moments. In fact, this morning it feels like a blessing, a sort of quiet space where I can come to write who I am and get in touch with that before the craziness of my day begins.

A blessing, indeed.

Mail-order

At least the order is tax-deductible -- though one of the books I need most urgently for an article is apparently arriving last, despite my annual "free" two-day shipping membership at Amazon (presumably because it's coming from Powell's):

Total for this Order: $71.04

The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) Cormac McCarthy; Mass Market Paperback; $7.99
Delivery estimate: June 8, 2009

Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction Carol Bly; Paperback; $10.10
Delivery estimate: June 8, 2009

The Old Curiosity Shop (Dover Thrift Editions) Charles Dickens; Paperback; $5.00
Delivery estimate: June 10, 2009

Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium (Suny Series, Horizons of Cinema) Kirsten Moana Thompson; Paperback; $25.95
Delivery estimate: June 8, 2009

Disaster Movies: The Cinema of Catastrophe (Short Cuts) Stephen Keane; Paperback; $22.00
Delivery estimate: June 11, 2009 - June 26, 2009

Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema Kim Newman; Paperback; $4.20