Hamlet: Shakespeare Part Three

Lawrence Olivier's 1948 film version of Hamlet was in stark contrast to the other two we have watched this week, being a traditional rendering of the text, and it is the only Shakespeare to have won the best picture and best actor Oscars. It was interesting to find that though I had only the vaguest notion of the story (from minor references to it in Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters) I had little difficulty in following the language and the plot. I enjoyed spotting the many, many quotes that have become a ubiquitous part of english usage: lots of timeless advice, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and "to thine own self be true" and a selection of  literary and film titles: 'Infinite Jest' and 'Undiscovered Country'. If you check this Wiki page Hamlet is pretty much the most mined of Shakespeare's plays for inspiration for other creators. If you are looking for a version to help you with academic studies you really need to go with the 1996 Kenneth Branagh version which is the only film using the full text, and running to four hours. Experts however seem to agree that the 1964 Russian film, with the text translated by Boris Pasternak, is the definitive performance.

Much Ado: Shakespeare Part Two

I am on leave this week so, having bought tickets to see Twelfth Night, we decided to have a week of Shakespeare experiences. Monkey is a huge fan of Joss Whedon and thus we continued with his 2012 version of 'Much Ado About Nothing'. It sticks with the original language but the setting and style of filming does much to make the play very accessible to a 21st century audience; Shakespeare can often come across as people standing on the stage talking, whereas in this version the action feels much more naturalistic. It was filmed, apparently, at his home in California and as such feels something like Hollywood movie, rich people hangout out in their very beautiful home and agonising over who loves who, the sexual tension between Beatrice and Benedick muted somewhat by the use of words like 'woo' and 'thine'. In the same way as Baz Luhrmann's 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet this play counterpoints the language and atmosphere of Shakespeare with the modern setting, and yet it never feels incongruous. Maybe that just serves to remind us how universal and timeless are the stories that he tells.

Milestones and Mubi

I spent a pleasant afternoon after christmas folding the pictures from old calendar into these fun little boxes, using the instructions here. I had been thinking about it since the year before and had saved the 2011 calendar as well. They are pretty but I don't have anything in particular to use them for.

Creature and I have been working on the hexipuffs while watching films together the last couple of days and we have reached the 200 milestone. Laid out it measures 130cm by 90cm. There are a couple of very odd shaped ones, which of course Creatures is obstinately attached to just because I want to leave them out, but mostly we are thrilled with how it is turning out. 

We have been watching films online on a service called Mubi, that Dunk discovered. It is like Lovefilm or Netflix, but not. You subscribe for, I think, £2.99 but then have a selection of thirty films; a new one is added each day and the oldest one is removed (though I think some popular ones do come round again on a regular basis). They have an eclectic mixture of the well known, cult films, old 1950's or even black and white, films in foreign and worthy documentaries. So we watched part of Sin City, but had to stop because I found the violence a touch gratuitous (and Bruce had been killed off anyway), so we then watched Chocolat and then Heathers, then Incendiary on lovefilm, which was really enjoyable and more subtle than it at first appears. This morning I watched Two Lovers on Mubi and when Creature came down Mirror Mirror on lovefilm. I have been a bit disappointed with Lovefilm Instants, it promises much and delivers little; their selection to watch online is very limited and mostly crap or soft porn. Creature left me to it again so I will probably pop back to Mubi and watch Bend it Like Beckham.

Moonrise Kingdom, doughnuts and camel yarn

So Creature and I have had a busy couple of days since she finished her exams. On Dunk's recommendation we went to see Moonrise Kingdom at The Cornerhouse. It is a wonderful quirky story, set in an isolated island community, where a young boy escapes from scout camp and a young girl disappears from her home, and they set off along an ancient native american trail with a suitcase full of books, a record player and a cat. Bruce Willis is the local policeman who leads the hunt for the missing children and Tilda Swinton is very creepy as 'Social Services'. Suitably uplifting and life affirming, the power of young love and all that.

Came home from work today and Creature had made lemon cake, and having spent over an hour yesterday morning cleaning out the deep fat fryer (the least popular job ever) I made a batch of 'doughnut holes'. These came about from a previous occasion when I made doughnuts and then fried the bits that I had chopped out to make the rings ... and it was generally agreed that the holes were more yummy than the doughnuts, so now we just have holes instead.

Hexipuff knitting has been continuing apace and this evening I made another four, including this lovely hairy prickly one from camel yarn. 

I stayed up rather late last night, deeply involved in 'Before I go to Sleep' by S.J. Watson, about a woman with amnesia, gripping stuff and apparently due to be made into a film. Review to follow tomorrow as I sat and finished it when I came home from work this afternoon.

Films and all that

In no particular order, some films I have actually paid attention to recently (as opposed to the ones on Movies 24, which are laughably bad and not to be confused with the real thing.)

Me and You and Everyone We Know by Miranda July, requested from the library because I had heard of her (reviewed here two years ago) and was reminded recently about her most recent book called 'It Choses You'. This is a rather self indulgent and esoteric film (she's the one in the stripy top in the picture), weird little vignettes of characters who are loosely connected. Peculiar, would be the word that comes to mind most. I might watch it again just because of the lovely little boy who reminded me so much of Jacob.

I went with Claire and Nat (sister and niece) the other week to see George Clooney in 'The Descendants'. If you're thinking of a trip to the cinema this is definitely the one to go for. Part of it's charm is that Clooney is allowed to be middle aged, not a glamourous film star. Two stories run alongside each other: the nuclear family, watching and waiting for their mother (Clooney's wife) to come out of a coma, and the vast extended family who own a vast tract of virgin land in Hawaii just ripe for tourist development. Nice also because, although set on Hawaii, the weather looks somewhat stormy and overcast much of the time and there is a complete lack of shots of scantily clad young women on the beach. Definitely see it again when the DVD comes out.

Treacle Jr we got from Lovefilm, probably after seeing it previewed on another of their films. Tom runs away from his ordinary life (only really explained by one of the out-takes that we watched), and he ends up in hospital where he meets Aiden (me and Creature both enamoured of Aiden Gillen, me for Queer as Folk and she because he is in Game of Thrones) a slightly odd young man who seems to be bumbling through life with a wonderfully naive optimistic world view. A nice little film about friendship and the redemptive power of caring about someone else's problems. Oh, it's named after the cat by the way.

Skeletons was another from Lovefilm. This is so brilliant, the ultimate quirky cult film. Simon and Bennett are psychics, who go around sorting out the metaphorical skeletons in people's wardrobes (I know, but it did seem to be mostly wardrobes). The film gradually draws you to their weird world, though there is little explanation about their mysterious business. They come across a family where the father has disappeared and the daughter has not spoken for three years. Convinced he is dead the mother has been digging random holes in the woods in search of her husband. There ensues a crisis all round, and everyone is forced to confront their hidden history and make some life changing decisions. Just a wonderful collection of characters, brilliantly put together and acted. See it if you get the chance.

Rite of Passage

The other week M and I had a bit of a film day after we had been talking about The Green Mile, which is one of her favourites that I had not seen, and boy did that film turn out to be not at all what I expected. Anyway we noticed that it was based on a story by Stephen King and so, since we like having themes to our watching, we decided to watch Stand By Me. I have seen this film so many times it is like an old friend. Every time I watch it I enjoy again the gentle unfolding of the story and the relationships within it. It contains all those romantic notions about childhood that adults hold so dear, but that are not so far from the truth, except you only appreciate them with hindsight, never while they are happening. I hold an ongoing fondness for Wil Wheaton whatever he appears in because of this film.

Ever since the last time we watched it I have been thinking about reading the Stephen King story 'The Body' on which it is based, so I ordered the book 'Different Seasons' from the library which contains four novellas, including this story, and the story on which The Shawshank Redemption is based. I am not sure quite what I expected but it was really excellent and I have had to rethink everything I ever thought about writers like Stephen King (not that I am tempted to rush out and read 'Carrie' or anything, ghost stories is one thing, horror quite another). The story is exactly like the film, in that you have a narrator's voice talking as the film does, so you are very conscious of the fact that someone is looking back and telling the story of the past; he keeps making little asides about his current life to remind you this is also his adult's perspective on the events in question. I found myself anticipating scenes from the film and noticing little details where they had used the exact words that are in the story. I liked it partly because it did not spoil my appreciation for the film because it is so faithful to the story.

So, in a nutshell, four boys set out on an 'adventure' to find the body of a young boy who has gone missing and who they learn has been killed by a train. They walk, they talk, they run away from a dog, nearly get hit by a train, sleep in the woods, get sucked by leeches and generally face their fears and learn all you need to get by in life. You like them all for their honesty and their loyalty to each other. The main character is Chris Chambers (played in the film by River Phoenix) and his story of one of struggle and endurance, against a world that has already branded him a failure, a no-hoper, but he has this spark in him, fighting against a family, a school system and a society that wants to keep him in his place. Gordie (the narrator) comes from a nice middle class family, but is ignored and neglected in favour of an older brother, unfortunately recently deceased, so he can do no wrong. The relationship between the two of them is respectful and mutually supportive, Chris encouraging Gordie to pursue his story writing in spite of parental disinterest, Gordie determined not to let Chris be dragged down by everyone. I liked the fact that where the film leaves off the story gives some of the future to their relationship, so you see the bond between them as ongoing, important in shaping both their lives.

The line that ends the film, about the friends you have when you are twelve, is in there, but not at the end, and it is scattered through with the most colourful of insults and abusive language. All the atmosphere is there, from the jokey banter of pre-pubescent boys to the beautiful descriptions of the environment they pass though, and the adults voiceover reflecting on the meaning of it all. It is a story about a rite of passage, about childhood and growing up. The scene where they find the body is graphic, not because of the description of decay but because of the description of Gordie's loss of innocence, his realisation of what death really means (the middle of this quote went on for another half page about all the things he would never do):

"He had been knocked spang out of his Keds. The train had knocked him out of his Keds just as it had knocked the life out of his body.

That finally rammed it all the way home for me. The kid was dead. The kids wasn't sick, the kid wasn't sleeping. The kid wasn't going to get up in the morning anymore or get the runs from eating too many apples or catch poison ivy or wear out the eraser on the end of his Ticonderoga No 2 during a hard maths test .... The kids was dead, mister, ma'am, young sir, little miss. I could go on all day and never get it right about the distance between his bare feet on the ground and his dirty Keds hanging in the bushes. It was thirty-plus inches, it was a googol of light-years. The kid was disconnected from his Keds beyond all hope of reconciliation." (p.543-4)

Then there is this lovely scene in the film where Gordie wakes early and sitting on the train rails alone has an encounter with a deer. It typifies why the film is so good... because the story is so good:

"I don't know how long I sat there on that rail, watching the purple steal out of the sky as noiselessly as it had stolen in the evening before. Long enough for my butt to start complaining, anyway. I was about to get up when I looked to my right and saw a deer standing in the railroad bed not ten yards from me.

My heart went up into my throat so high that I think I could have put my hand in my mouth and touched it. My stomach and genitals filled with hot, dry excitement. I didn't move. I couldn't have moved if I wanted to. Her eyes weren't brown by a dark, dusty black - the kind of velvet you see backgrounding jewellery displays. Her small ears were scuffed suede. She looked serenely at me, head slightly lowered in what I took for curiosity, seeing a kid with his hair in a sleep-scarecrow of whirls and many-tined cowlicks, wearing jeans with cuffs and a brown khaki shirt with the elbows mended and the collar turned up in the hoody tradition of the day. What I was seeing was some sort of a gift, something given with a carelessness that was appalling." (p521-2)

I think this book has been an object lesson in overcoming your prejudices. I will read the other stories too now and let you know.

Lives of Others

I put 'The Lives of Others' on the Lovefilm list ages ago, and as usual had forgotten why I thought it was interesting or even what the story was. It turned out to be in German (took us a while to get the subtitles on) and set in East Germany a few years prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. It follows the tale of a member of the secret police who is charged with surveillance of a popular playwright and his actress girlfriend. The man starts off as a hard line party man but as he observes them he becomes more and more sympathetic to their efforts to hold on to a sense of integrity in the face of state control of all aspects of people's lives. And as he changes I found myself becoming more sympathetic to him too. It wasn't that he changed his attitudes but that he came to understand that an alternative viewpoint was not necessarily a damaging thing. Although it was quite hard work to watch it was very interesting in terms of the picture it portrays of eastern europe and the political oppression that was so invasive. Dreyman, the playwright, struggles with the balancing act of what he is permitted to write and to support his friend who has been blacklisted, while his girlfriend Christa-Maria has to tussle (quite literally) with the unwelcome attentions of a senior politician who can end her career with a word. The film is a good balance between the human drama and the political situation, and the impossible decisions such an environment puts on people. It ends with the fall of the wall and the changed fortunes of all the characters, and the politician points out to the playwright how hard it is to write when you have nothing to rebel against.

It made me reflect on the only occasion that I visited East Germany, coincidentally in 1984 when the film is set. I went with my college course and we were only visitors so did not really have any contact with local people. My impression was one of the distinct contrast between West and East Berlin, but that East Berlin was very clean and tidy, no rubbish in the streets or grafitti, very few cars, well kept blocks of flats contrasting with piles of rubble that remained from WW2 bombing, and long queues of people waiting to buy newspapers. I always felt it had been an important experience to go the 'the east', it was somewhere viewed during that period with suspicion and fear, and in reality it was quite ordinary. The film gave me a view of an aspect that you can't see on the surface, but that whatever role people might have had in the system they were still human beings.

Away We Go

I have been wanting to see Away We Go ever since we first saw a trailer months ago. It came via Lovefilm over a week ago and I finally sat the family down last night to watch. And I was pleasantly satisfied. Dunk's reaction was that it was 'episodic' and somewhat clichéd, which was true up to a point, but I loved the central characters, Bert and Verona, they were very real and very warm, there was lovely chemistry between the actors.

So, this expectant couple are wondering what to do with their life, where to live to raise their child, and so they travel the country, visiting friends and family, trying to find a spot that suits them. What they experience along the way gives them much food for thought as they discover the upsides and downsides of family life. The people they visit are the 'clichés', each a representative of a different attitude and approach to parenting: the jaded mum of tweenagers, thoroughly disconnected from the lives of her children, mostly concerned with her own life. Then the 'continuum' crazy distant 'cousin', who is so swept up with the correctness if her own beliefs that she became excessively judgemental of anything outside. (Though I do love Maggie Gyllenhaal and her performance was brilliant.) This bit did annoy me because I read The Continuum Concept when I was pregnant with the twins and what was presented in the film was a westernised perversion of the ideas, turning them into something that confined and controlled children rather than freeing them. I also hate the way that any kind of 'alternative' ideas about parenting are presented as extremist and kooky by the media. I commented on a blog the other day that was arguing for more 'mean' parenting, that it was the only way to keep your children safe from harm and make them responsible contributing members of society, and I really got someone riled up. Anyway, then we had the lovely college friends with a huge adopted family, whose happiness is blighted by their inability to have their own child, and Bert's brother, who's wife has abandoned him to raise his daughter, and he is left overwhelmed and frightened by the prospect.

In the end of course Bert and Verona find their own path, and a place that is right for them, and you have no doubt that they will make wonderful parents. It was just a warm and content film, safe, about dealing with the uncertainties of life, and how important it is to work at it together. I regret the lack of baby at the end, but perhaps that would have tipped over into the sentimentality which it successfully avoided.

Saturday haul

We had our habitual trawl of the charity shops over in Evesham this afternoon, and certainly had a very successful trip. M found a copy of 'Chocolat' (on good old fashioned video for 20p) that we have been searching for for several months now, and Tish blew some more dosh in La Senza, on pretty but totally superfluous items of underwear. I came home with a few books:

• 'Notes from an Exhibition' by Patrick Gale, a title I have read about in several places, enough for it to stick in my mind.
• 'A Quiet Belief in Angels' by R.J. Ellory, on my 'to find at the library' list, but I had failed to write down the author so could not find it, and there it was for a mere £2.
• 'Mary Reilly' by Valerie Martin, picked out because of 'Property', that I read and reviewed back in February
• 'The Clothes of their Backs' by Linda Grant, picked out because of 'When I lived in Modern Times', that I also read and reviewed back in February.
• Finally, 'Uncommon Reader' by Alan Bennett, because I have nearly bought it on numerous occasions, I like the idea of someone writing a story about the queen, making her more real, and it was only one pound.
• The other book in the stack is 'The Rehearsal' by Eleanor Catton that arrived by post this morning from my mum, for me and M to read together.

Apart from 'The Rehearsal' these will all be going to the bottom of the TBR pile as I am working on some blokes at the moment. I confess to tending rather heavily towards women writers, so when Gerry (at book club) suggested Philip Roth I was definitely up for the challenge, and we are reading 'American Pastoral' (currently very slow going). I also have J.P. Donleavy's 'The Ginger Man' next in the heap.

Then this evening M and I had a nostalgia evening and watched 'The Breakfast Club'. Well nostalgia for me anyway, since it is a very 1980's film. For those of you unfortunate enough to have never seen this film it follows one Saturday in the lives of five disparate young people, obliged to attend a tedious school detention, for disparate reasons that are revealed as the day progresses. From their scattered corners of the adolescent universe they find themselves colliding with each other as they share thoughts, change attitudes and discover new experiences. There are some wonderfully funny moments, and the resident teacher is as foul and objectionable as they are permitted to portray, and apart from the terrible makeover Molly Ringwald gives to Ally Sheedy, you get a very satisfying ending. (DVD available from any decent charity shop near you.)

And finally I have to just send you over to The Felting Needle, where my blog title has inspired some wonderful creativity .... it's nice to think that people get their food for thought in all sorts of different ways.

ipods and Johnny Depp

I spent yesterday afternoon putting CDs on to the laptop to load them on to my *new* ipod. I think I may be a convert. I have, up to now, not really seen the appeal; all these people walking along, oblivious to what is around them, plugged in to their MP3 machines. But today I really enjoyed having this little purple pod in my pocket, being able to have music as I delivered. This is my entire music collection, about 15 CDs, so plenty of room for all the other fun stuff that the ipod can do, like taking videos and recording voice notes.

Anyway, we went to see Alice in Wonderland on Tuesday and I was not that impressed. Some idiot (the screenwriter) took Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky and turned it into the plot for a film. It was a very flimsy plot, and Johnny was the saving grace of the film (not that we're prejudiced in our house). The girls both hated Anne Hathaway but loved Helena Bonham Carter. The writer had plainly either not read the poem or not even tried to understand it. In a way it is the perfect poem, because you create the meaning for it inside your own head. It has an obvious story line, wonderful rhythm and rhyme, and even though so much of the vocabulary is invented it flows off the tongue beautifully when you read aloud. It is interesting to find that some of the words Carroll created for this poem are now in the dictionary and in common usage. I always thought 'galumphing' was a real word, use it all the time. But in the film the references to 'vorpal sword' and 'frabjous day' becomes 'Vorpal Sword' and 'Frabjous Day' (with capital letters), a thing and a day both with a purpose, not the mere adjectives that they are in the poem. It just all irritated me, sorry. Was all very pretty so go anyway if you like that kind of thing. Here's the poem, which is much better than the film.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree.
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came wiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

You know it's a bad day at work ....

.... when you have 'bath wrinkles' on the tips of your fingers. In my seven years in the job I have only experienced a few days as thoroughly, disgustingly wet as today.

But last night was so lovely I would rather write about that. I went with my book group to Chipping Norton Theatre to see 'Bright Star', the story of John Keats and Fanny Brawne.

Now I am not particularly fond of romantic poetry, at least I have never read much, but the whole film was just so beautiful. It was pure atmosphere, because in reality very little happens in the story. The two of them get to know each other, then over time fall in love, events and illness conspire against them. All you have in the film is the passing of time, marked by the seasons changing outside the house that Fanny's family shares with Keats and his best friend Charles Armitage Brown. Fanny's mother and Mr Brown try to thwart their developing relationship; she by constantly reminding Fanny that Keats has no income and cannot marry, and he by blatant disapproval and attempts to keep them apart. But eventually they both have to admit defeat. The romance is quite chaste but there are some wonderfully sensual scenes, my favourite was where they have both pushed their beds against the wall of their adjoining rooms and they lie and press their hands against the wooden panelling, the shots passes back and forth between the two of them, just lying, thinking of each other.

So the two hours were punctuated by his poems, providing the auditory atmosphere, and her fabulous dresses, providing the visual one. She sews. There is the wonderful opening show of her needle and thread, blown up to full screen, going back and forth through the fabric, and her first meeting with him is marked by her assertion that poetry is a bit pointless and at least she can make money with her skill. She then comments that he needs a new jacket, and I was thoroughly disappointed that, in spite of her remarkable talent, she does not make him a new jacket. And she referrs to him as 'Mr Keats' through the entire film, it felt kind of important, as if it says something about them, until the final moment when she learns he has died and she calls him 'John'.

It was probably the only time I have seen the entire audience sit through the credits, a poem was being read as they rolled up the screen and we all wanted to hear to the end. A deeply romantic and heartbreaking tragic tale, though I was left wanting to know more about Fanny and how she passed the rest of her life.

Oranges and Lemons

There seem to have been an awful lot of book reviews and family chat recently, and to be honest I haven't been doing much creating anything. I knitted a lovely top in raspberry silk that has yet to be photographed, and fits M much better than me, as usual. I have pretty much finished the baby cardi for Julie, which I will photograph asap. So I did sit down and do a bit of spinning last week, having not done any for ages. I had some roving bought at Rav day. We wandered round and looked at everything twice, and by the time I made my mind up people were packing up their stalls and so I bought something else on the spur of the moment as I did not want to go home empty handed. I spun this variegated orange yarn, it's quite pretty but I'm not much of an orange fan. It came in a mixed pack, and I like the other colours better.
M has been nagging all week for Lemon Meringue Pie. It is a bit of bother to make and pastry is not my strong point (probably the too-warm hands) but I dragged myself away from blog browsing this morning to make it. The girls did assist, M grating the zest and Tish whisking the egg whites.

And this afternoon we are going to see 'Dorian Gray'. Always a risk when you like the book but it looked exciting, and maybe I can persuade M to read it afterwards. We went to see 'The Time Traveller's Wife' the other week with Julie, Al and the kids. It was a lovely film, pretty faithful version of the story, the main characters well played, but then they go and spoil it by changing the ending. And don't get me started on 'The Golden Compass' ... what a travesty!

Benny and Joon

M and I sat and watched Benny and Joon last night. It is such a lovely film and one of the few that I will watch again and again. I like it because it is a quiet film about people, and there is such a neat interrelationship between the four central characters. Joon is so enchanting but awkwardly introverted, she observes others but doesn't seem to know how to reach out to them. She lives in this safe little cocoon that her brother Benny has created for her, but that also seems to confine her. Benny has made it his life's work to protect her, but has come to be almost dependent on her need for his protection. Then along comes Sam and he upsets their security and creates minor mayhem. In my opinion this is Johnny Depp at his best. He was 30 when it was filmed but comes across much younger, and it is the kind of offbeat character that he seems to play so well. What is so good about the film is that it is not trying to create a fake drama/crisis between the characters; what happens to them is a believable extension of who they are, where they are in their lives and the interaction between them. Too many films merely take characters and make something happen to them to manufacture a storyline, all of which is lazy and makes for singularly unsatisfying films. Because the characters here have real caring relationships the drama is overcome by genuine reactions to the new situation. Benny cares enough about Joon to know he can't hold her hostage to his view of her needs, she must move on and make her own life. It also makes you think that quirky people probably do need other quirky people, that they are more understanding of unconventional behaviours and reactions and would work harder to really understand the other person. I like films that have an insight into human nature in all it's weird incarnations. No-one ever says that either Joon or Sam should try and be more 'normal', the film accepts them as they are and seems to be saying that life should be able to accommodate people however they might chose to be.