It's like some broken fascination—I can't make it go away

[sovay]

I have not seen many films by Ang Lee. Based on Lust, Caution (2007), which I saw this afternoon with Naya, perhaps I should. This one was tremendous. It is an old-fashioned movie, in many respects: I think its closest cinematic cousins are Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) and Vertigo (1958), which the film acknowledges with occasional clips of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, a poster for Suspicion (1941) in a movie theater's lobby; an onscreen murder is as ugly and inefficient as anything in Torn Curtain (1966). It also contains the kind of sex scenes that most people only write, by which I mean that the characters make love like actual people, not like carefully cropped sculptures, and integrally to themselves. And to the story, which is the farthest from gratuitous as possible—without their detail and physicality, the audience would have only the characters' words to rely on: and this is the kind of movie where dialogue is almost always deception. I might not watch it again anytime soon. But I would certainly wait for whatever comes next.

It is cold and raw outside, like real October; the wind is full of wet leaves. I have nuked the sheep.* Having finished Phyllis Gotlieb's Birthstones, Emma Bull's Territory, and ellen_kushner's The Privilege of the Sword, I am reading Andre Norton's Witch World for the first time since high school. (I meant to post about Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, which I picked up and finished last week, but now is not the coherent enough moment.) If only I don't have to get up early . . .

*The amazing herbal hot-pack from my brother and his girlfriend, which is heated in the microwave. The name is inherited ultimately from a hot water bottle I had as a small child, which came in a sheep-shaped cover, complete with fleece and ears and a woolly tail; it has since become the default term for anything that can be used as a bed-warmer, no matter that the current object resembles a sheep only in the sense that it contains some vegetation. I love family dialect.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What were your favorite Andre Norton books?

And you've reminded me that I wanted to read Ada. I had a friend who absolutely raved about it.

[sovay]

What were your favorite Andre Norton books?

Of the Witch World books, The Jargoon Pard (1974) and the collections Spell of the Witch World (1972) and Lore of the Witch World (1980). Otherwise, probably The Zero Stone (1968), The White Jade Fox (1975), and Perilous Dreams (1976), or at least so I remember. I haven't read anything of hers in about ten years.

I had a friend who absolutely raved about it.

It's worth raving about.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I remember I read bunches of Andre Norton (I knew I could count on a story I liked), but now I can't remember which ones they were :-| --Except for Here Abide Monsters, which had a great beginning but whose ending I didn't get, and Lavender Green Magic, which I loved. I reread it as an adult, and still loved it a lot, but saw a few things that could have made it problematic for readers.

I remember picking up The Jargoon Pard, but can't remember whether I actually read it. Foolish brain.

[sovay]

and Lavender Green Magic, which I loved. I reread it as an adult, and still loved it a lot, but saw a few things that could have made it problematic for readers.

I have not read that one. (Steel Magic / Grey Magic, yes. It was probably one of my early exposures to Arthuriana.) How so?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Steel Magic! I remember that one too! by which I mean, I remember the title, and I know I read it--sadly, I don't remember the content...

The problem withLavender Green Magic--which wasn't a problem for me as a kid--was that the famiy was black, and as an adult reading the book, I felt uncomfortable that a white author was writing a story about a black family. Silly, huh--or, I don't know. I guess it felt presumptuous. But whatever--I mean, the story I just wrote is about Japanese people (but then, I lived in Japan--but maybe it's a similar thing).

I don't know; I don't think things should ever be off limits--I mean, men can write about women and vice versa and so on... so I wish I hadn't felt uncomfortable as an adult, noticing that fact, but anyway.

The story was still great, really great. And as I say, as a kid, I just didn't even notice or pay attention to the race thing at all--I guess that's part of why I was surprised when I read the story as an adult.

...so I guess that's not "a few things"; it's just one thing.