The window rattled and I wondered if you'd just passed over
It is beautifully sunny outside, but I have slept three hours a night at most this week and consequently feel kind of like dropping dead. This morning ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I were awake at what choco_frosh once memorably dubbed the ass-crack of dawn to wait for the handyman who was supposed to fix and/or replace our bathroom door. Go on, guess if he's here yet. Several hours ago I gave up and made myself lunch instead of breakfast. I am about to e-mail the property manager and go for a walk.
I am having trouble feeling that I am not out of time in all ways: that I had time before the world fell apart and I wasted it. I'm sure it would be easier to deal with this feeling if the news were not so constantly apocalyptic. I suspect it would also help if I were in less pain and if the MBTA had not fallen over spectacularly so as to prevent me from seeing my therapist yesterday. I spent the evening withrushthatspeaks and Fox who has just started to identify objects by color and shout about them delightedly (they seem to have blue, green, purple, and pink down cold; they have more difficulty distinguishing red, orange, and yellow, which fascinates me; and they consistently mix up the white and black crayons, possibly because both are wrapped in the same shade of grey paper) and with gaudior when they got home from work. It was low-key and nice. Putting Fox to sleep involved Rush singing them "Scarborough Fair" and me singing "Oy Dortn, Dortn" and then gently closing the door on their heartbreaking wail of "Sing!" Then I got home and saw the news about Israel's nation-state bill, about which I had an instant detonation of feelings ranging from well, this will do wonders for the local anti-Semitism to we are right around the corner from Tisha B'Av, the day of remembering and grieving destruction, exile, dispossession, loss; this is not the way to observe it to that space rock probably never is going to hit Netanyahu. Just the previous night, I had read a recent article on a peace plan that looked like a real idea. I suppose there is no chance of it now. I wrote on Facebook that it is strange to feel betrayed by a country that never was mine, but here we are. I point to this post and I'm waiting to see if David Schraub weighs in.
I rewatched the 1986 LWT A Little Princess last night; it's currently, if a little patchworkily, on YouTube. Unlike the 1987 Hallmark A Secret Garden with the post-WWI frame story that I keep meaning to rewatch to see if I like it as an adult, it was not one of my childhood movies.nineweaving screened it for me just about ten years ago and I loved it. It's the most faithful adaptation I've run into: it does very little in the way of compression except for time and the places where it expands on Burnett are all to the three-dimensionality of the characters. Amelia Shankley who had just played the young Alice in Dennis Potter's Dreamchild (1985) brings some of the same unsentimentality to the role of Sara Crewe, not to mention the thin serious face and heavy dark hair of the novel; her vivid imagination and her half-acting poise are a lifeline, not an occasion for schmaltz. Nigel Havers makes a better-looking Carrisford than the jaundiced Indian gentleman of the book, but I like his interpretation—alcoholism feeding on depression makes him interestingly more Colin-like in his convictions of illness: he's not as sick as he feels he deserves to be—and I like his relationship with Tariq Alibai's Ram Dass, who is not above faking quotations from the Bhagavad Gita to puncture his employer's fretful moods. I have never seen Natalie Abbott in another role, but I love watching her downtrodden Becky become a co-conspirator in Sara's fantasies as opposed to just an audience for them. And the Misses Minchin are Maureen Lipman and Miriam Margolyes and they play off each other as classically as comedians or cartoons, one tall and thin and imperious and the other short and round and apologetic, but they too are three-dimensional and it pays off in their climactic confrontation. Lipman in particular gets a brief, piercing gesture which put me in mind of Peter Cushing or Peter Blythe—with her coldness and her pettiness and her self-justifying spite toward a defenseless child thrown unexpectedly in her face by the foolish, frumpish sister who has always tiptoed so submissively around her, Maria Minchin left alone in her office shuts the door hard behind her, turns to her desk with her usual expression of pinched exasperation, and all in one sudden motion pulls off her gold-rimmed spectacles, the frames crumpled in her hand as her face crumples behind them. Blink and you'll miss it; it works. It left me thinking inchoately about unsympathetic female characters, actual rather than antiheroic. There is a character I love in The Bletchley Circle (2012–14) even though she's present for maybe five minutes and two scenes because I don't usually see her female. This is Anastasia Hille's Angela Barker, a former contact from Electra House: tall, fair, blandly polite, with an impenetrable quizzical look and a plummier accent than any of the Bletchley women; worked for SOE, ran a sideline in the black market, "fiddled" the ration books. She's blackmailable. Jean blackmails her. I have seen that embarrassed genteel façade starting to slip and it is always, always male. I keep meaning to write about Caged (1950) because it is a masterclass in kinds of characters women don't usually play. I should probably see Ocean's 8 (2018) on the same principle.
—Just as I made the decision to send the e-mail, the property manager's husband who is the handyman arrived. Our bathroom door will need replacing, but in the meantime it is no longer sagging dramatically off its hinges in the way that suggests it might just fall on someone like a T. rex devouring a lawyer in Jurassic Park (1993). The brave cats who scrambled when the doorbell rang have been rewarded with treats, even Autolycus who tried to scramble past the handyman into the wide world of the stairwell. I am still going for a walk.
spatch and I were awake at what choco_frosh once memorably dubbed the ass-crack of dawn to wait for the handyman who was supposed to fix and/or replace our bathroom door. Go on, guess if he's here yet. Several hours ago I gave up and made myself lunch instead of breakfast. I am about to e-mail the property manager and go for a walk.I am having trouble feeling that I am not out of time in all ways: that I had time before the world fell apart and I wasted it. I'm sure it would be easier to deal with this feeling if the news were not so constantly apocalyptic. I suspect it would also help if I were in less pain and if the MBTA had not fallen over spectacularly so as to prevent me from seeing my therapist yesterday. I spent the evening with
rushthatspeaks and Fox who has just started to identify objects by color and shout about them delightedly (they seem to have blue, green, purple, and pink down cold; they have more difficulty distinguishing red, orange, and yellow, which fascinates me; and they consistently mix up the white and black crayons, possibly because both are wrapped in the same shade of grey paper) and with gaudior when they got home from work. It was low-key and nice. Putting Fox to sleep involved Rush singing them "Scarborough Fair" and me singing "Oy Dortn, Dortn" and then gently closing the door on their heartbreaking wail of "Sing!" Then I got home and saw the news about Israel's nation-state bill, about which I had an instant detonation of feelings ranging from well, this will do wonders for the local anti-Semitism to we are right around the corner from Tisha B'Av, the day of remembering and grieving destruction, exile, dispossession, loss; this is not the way to observe it to that space rock probably never is going to hit Netanyahu. Just the previous night, I had read a recent article on a peace plan that looked like a real idea. I suppose there is no chance of it now. I wrote on Facebook that it is strange to feel betrayed by a country that never was mine, but here we are. I point to this post and I'm waiting to see if David Schraub weighs in.I rewatched the 1986 LWT A Little Princess last night; it's currently, if a little patchworkily, on YouTube. Unlike the 1987 Hallmark A Secret Garden with the post-WWI frame story that I keep meaning to rewatch to see if I like it as an adult, it was not one of my childhood movies.
nineweaving screened it for me just about ten years ago and I loved it. It's the most faithful adaptation I've run into: it does very little in the way of compression except for time and the places where it expands on Burnett are all to the three-dimensionality of the characters. Amelia Shankley who had just played the young Alice in Dennis Potter's Dreamchild (1985) brings some of the same unsentimentality to the role of Sara Crewe, not to mention the thin serious face and heavy dark hair of the novel; her vivid imagination and her half-acting poise are a lifeline, not an occasion for schmaltz. Nigel Havers makes a better-looking Carrisford than the jaundiced Indian gentleman of the book, but I like his interpretation—alcoholism feeding on depression makes him interestingly more Colin-like in his convictions of illness: he's not as sick as he feels he deserves to be—and I like his relationship with Tariq Alibai's Ram Dass, who is not above faking quotations from the Bhagavad Gita to puncture his employer's fretful moods. I have never seen Natalie Abbott in another role, but I love watching her downtrodden Becky become a co-conspirator in Sara's fantasies as opposed to just an audience for them. And the Misses Minchin are Maureen Lipman and Miriam Margolyes and they play off each other as classically as comedians or cartoons, one tall and thin and imperious and the other short and round and apologetic, but they too are three-dimensional and it pays off in their climactic confrontation. Lipman in particular gets a brief, piercing gesture which put me in mind of Peter Cushing or Peter Blythe—with her coldness and her pettiness and her self-justifying spite toward a defenseless child thrown unexpectedly in her face by the foolish, frumpish sister who has always tiptoed so submissively around her, Maria Minchin left alone in her office shuts the door hard behind her, turns to her desk with her usual expression of pinched exasperation, and all in one sudden motion pulls off her gold-rimmed spectacles, the frames crumpled in her hand as her face crumples behind them. Blink and you'll miss it; it works. It left me thinking inchoately about unsympathetic female characters, actual rather than antiheroic. There is a character I love in The Bletchley Circle (2012–14) even though she's present for maybe five minutes and two scenes because I don't usually see her female. This is Anastasia Hille's Angela Barker, a former contact from Electra House: tall, fair, blandly polite, with an impenetrable quizzical look and a plummier accent than any of the Bletchley women; worked for SOE, ran a sideline in the black market, "fiddled" the ration books. She's blackmailable. Jean blackmails her. I have seen that embarrassed genteel façade starting to slip and it is always, always male. I keep meaning to write about Caged (1950) because it is a masterclass in kinds of characters women don't usually play. I should probably see Ocean's 8 (2018) on the same principle.—Just as I made the decision to send the e-mail, the property manager's husband who is the handyman arrived. Our bathroom door will need replacing, but in the meantime it is no longer sagging dramatically off its hinges in the way that suggests it might just fall on someone like a T. rex devouring a lawyer in Jurassic Park (1993). The brave cats who scrambled when the doorbell rang have been rewarded with treats, even Autolycus who tried to scramble past the handyman into the wide world of the stairwell. I am still going for a walk.
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Yes, quite. I am less surprised perhaps because I've been following some of the #blackandjewish activists on Twitter who've been reporting on Israel's abominable treatment of the black Jewish refugees and asylum seekers lately. But less surprised does not mean less heartbroken.
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Also, I love, love, love Maureen Lipman and Miriam Margoyles under any circumstance, but I clocked Margoyles as lesbian even when I was nine years old and watching the VHS from the library.
I read that book when I was four and have read it every year since, and I know and can point to you how Hodgson is a colonialist imperialist bullshitter, but that book saved my life. I will never beg anyone's pardon for thinking.
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I understand that. I have been following the racist stupidity with the Beta Israel and I know that in some ways this law is only codifying the already existing treatment of Arab Israelis; I still think that it matters to change something from practice to law, especially in a culture where the lawfulness of things—written, oral, day-to-day—matters so much. I hadn't known this step was coming from Netanyahu's government, but I am not surprised in the sense that it's consistent with all their past behavior. I am just upset. I live in a country already that is narrowing its definition of citizens and people. I don't need to see it happen anywhere else and I don't need to see it happen especially in a country that was founded to know better. And the chances are very, very good that people I know—in this country—will be hurt for it, if they haven't been already.
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I'm glad you watched it.
Also I told Spatch your apartment was a singularity centered on your cats and I damn well mean it.
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EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Oh, my God, are there grown photos of her? Are we lucky enough to have them in period costume? Can we make photosets with Gemma Whelan?
Also, I love, love, love Maureen Lipman and Miriam Margoyles under any circumstance,
I couldn't believe they've made no other movies/TV together. I even asked IMDb. They should at least have played a couple sometime!
but I clocked Margoyles as lesbian even when I was nine years old and watching the VHS from the library.
I am impressed. My gaydar was nonexistent when I was nine. (I say that as though it has gotten better in the intervening years, when both it and my straightdar are honestly still pretty frail. I would have died in a Guess culture.)
I read that book when I was four and have read it every year since, and I know and can point to you how Hodgson is a colonialist imperialist bullshitter, but that book saved my life. I will never beg anyone's pardon for thinking.
I am glad you had it. I still have the copy I was given when I was eight, which is when I first read it. It was important to me, and transitively, since it saved your life, in more than one way it improved mine.
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It's free on the internet and it's really good! I commend it to three hours of your time!
I have the sense that I have seen some parts of the Shirley Temple Little Princess, but not the entire thing and I really have no desire to, presence of Ian Hunter notwithstanding; ditto the 1995 film, which seems to resemble the 1939 film more closely than the book.
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Good for her! Also, you totally did.
I'm glad you watched it.
Thank you. It just seemed like a good idea.
Also I told Spatch your apartment was a singularity centered on your cats and I damn well mean it.
It's true. I've been trying to leave this apartment since about four o'clock and the gravity of Autolycus makes it impossible.
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(And I am 37 and still believe the magic won't let the worst things ever really happen, but the core principles of Stand Up to Adults if You Are Smart, Save Yourself on the Inside Even If the Outside Is Being Repeatedly Kicked, and Tell a Good Story Set in Gaslamp London basically built my present self from scratch.)
*hugs*
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I also can't figure out how to formulate arguments for the essential survival of Israel as a state (a proposition I fervently believe) when those in control of that state are doing all they can to wipe others out. The Facebook post you linked made this point well, I thought.
Sunday I'll be joining the T'ruah rabbis in a protest at ICE offices in Burlington.
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/allcaps
Never be shy with the girls, they take fifteen years too long to watch the good films if you do, apparently.
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113670/?ref_=nv_sr_1
It was only a couple of years after the Agnieszka Holland "Secret Garden," which made us take a spontaneous several hundred mile detour to Yorkshire in our previously planned trip to Wales, to see some filming sites.
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https://ifnotnowmovement.org/about-us/
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I assume it's a sort of diluted effect of the world-controlling conspiracy theory, but it continues to amaze me how many people casually assume it's all right to hold non-Israeli Jews responsible for Israel's policies. I used to get quizzed on the subject in grad school and I would explain every time that I had frankly no idea. Not even by people who were otherwise anti-Semitic. Just people who naturally thought I should, as a Jew existing somewhere in the world, know.
I also can't figure out how to formulate arguments for the essential survival of Israel as a state (a proposition I fervently believe) when those in control of that state are doing all they can to wipe others out.
I don't think that question differs from the question of why any state should survive when those in control of it act badly. Do you feel the need to formulate arguments for the essential survival of the United States?
Sunday I'll be joining the T'ruah rabbis in a protest at ICE offices in Burlington.
Thanks for telling me. I don't know if I can make it, but I appreciate knowing it's happening.
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I mean, child actors have every right to grow up and decide they don't want to keep acting, but phooey!
(Wait, you have Regency Gemma Whelan? And haven't shared?)
(And I am 37 and still believe the magic won't let the worst things ever really happen, but the core principles of Stand Up to Adults if You Are Smart, Save Yourself on the Inside Even If the Outside Is Being Repeatedly Kicked, and Tell a Good Story Set in Gaslamp London basically built my present self from scratch.)
It's a good self. It's served you well.
*hugs*
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As I understand it from summaries, its textual fidelity is very not, but I am glad you enjoyed it.
It was only a couple of years after the Agnieszka Holland "Secret Garden," which made us take a spontaneous several hundred mile detour to Yorkshire in our previously planned trip to Wales, to see some filming sites.
I've heard very good things about that.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/interview-the-secret-garden-bears-fruit-once-she-had-to-cope-with-communism-and-anti-semitism-now-1510654.html
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I remember liking the 1987 TV version; I just look at it now in memory and think the frame story might have been overkill. I'd also like to rewatch the 1949 film which I haven't seen since childhood. It has a good cast.
You might like this interview
She certainly sounds interesting to me. I don't think I've seen any of her films.
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The Agnieszka Holland Secret Garden is more faithful, and is absolutely stunning. I very much think you would like the cast.
I must admit I didn't like the Hallmark version at all.
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I've heard of her! (I've heard most about Europa Europa, The Secret Garden, and In Darkness.) I just knew almost nothing about her personal life and have seen none of the movies I've heard about.
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That is some of the textual infidelity I've heard about! I'm glad it holds up as a thing of its own; I'm not sure if I'd be able to separate it.
I would be very interested to see the version you speak of here, though I can't watch anything for long online. I'll have to see if the library has it.
It should at least be interlibrary-able; there's a Region 1 DVD. I hope you can get hold of it, and I hope you enjoy it!
The Agnieszka Holland Secret Garden is more faithful, and is absolutely stunning. I very much think you would like the cast.
I don't know any of the child actors, but I see John Lynch and Maggie Smith!
(I discovered John Lynch with The Secret of Roan Inish (1994): "I may be daft, girl—but I'm not blind." That was enough.)
I must admit I didn't like the Hallmark version at all.
Because of the frame story or for other reasons?
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so you have the info.
it continues to amaze me how many people casually assume it's all right to hold non-Israeli Jews responsible for Israel's policies
I don't know. Every time i try to formulate an understanding it slips through my mental fingers like drops of mercury. I think I get it but it doesn't hold together.
Do you feel the need to formulate arguments for the essential survival of the United States?
Only when talking to Native people. Israel, as a modern creation (compared to many other states) is closer to its origin actions and original sins than many others. In my lifetime I remember that there were debates (which I don't pretend to understand) about Bangladesh, and Eritrea, and South Sudan and that the existence of these nations is also fiercely contested by some.
Perhaps none of those is a relevant parallel. I don't know, honestly.
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Oh, but I really like/admire your turn of phrase! ^_^
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(I have a feeling that must have been the version of A Little Princess that I tried to watch with my sisters once, when I was an obnoxious teen and couldn't refrain from at least pointing out every change from the book. You will be glad to hear that my Little Sis (who must have been about 12), who is generally one of the sweetest-natured souls I know, stood up and demanded I left the room and let her enjoy it in peace. So, I did. And have tried to be more reasonable since!
I should watch it again some time. I'm a lot less pedantic about book changes than I used to be!
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0056803/mediaviewer/rm3828817408
GOOD MORNING, I AM SHALLOW. POSSIBLY TAWDRY. BUT ALSO WROTE TWO SEPARATE COUPLES' CONSENT NEGOTIATIONS IN AS CLOSE AS I COULD SHOOT AT PERIOD TERMS THIS AM, SO.
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And poor old Dickon! Dead in the trenches!
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That's fair. It is a beautiful film, but that's difficult to enjoy if you're distracted by the psychic dissonance of competing narratives.
I don't know any of the child actors, but I see John Lynch and Maggie Smith!
John Lynch and Maggie Smith are excellent, as ever, but it's the kids who have to carry the movie, and they are definitely up to the task. They are all very, very good, but Mary just blew me away. She is so very Mary-ish. This scene with Martha toward the beginning of the movie gives you a good taste of what I mean, as well as how perfectly the interior shots of Misselthwaite are framed. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the whole movie available on Youtube; there are files claiming to be so, but they are misnamed uploads of the 1987 Hallmark version. Any clipped versions start with the scene I linked, too, rather than at the beginning. I suspect rights enforcement.
Because of the frame story or for other reasons?
Well, any frame story with an end game of not!cousins Colin/Mary in a romantic clinch and Dickon dead off-screen doesn't help. I recall objecting to the young cast, though, particularly the Mary and her arbitrary, indifferent attempts at an accent.
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Yes. Which I didn't know for years, in the same way that I had to see I, Claudius before I recognized Archibald Craven as Derek Jacobi.
And poor old Dickon! Dead in the trenches!
I can't remember if Mary and Colin are de-cousinified, but Dickon having died in the trenches is one of the few pieces of this version I remember clearly, therefore one of the reasons I can't tell if I will actually enjoy rewatching it, because while historical statistics are against them, the shape of the story is that they survive!
[edit] See
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Thank you!
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Oh, wonderful. I will try to find it.
Well, any frame story with an end game of not!cousins Colin/Mary in a romantic clinch and Dickon dead off-screen doesn't help.
That answers the question
This is reminding me of how much the musical of The Secret Garden annoyed me with "Lily's Eyes," because the whole point was that Colin has his mother's eyes—agate-grey and fringed round with black lashes, looking gaily out of her portrait as his look unhappily out of his face and his father can't bear to meet them. Change that and you change the whole dynamic between them.
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You're welcome! I'm glad to have been inadvertently able to find it for you again.
And you're right about that moment with Miss Minchen--it was very, very good.
It just leapt out at me. I think I had better comparisons for it now.
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Thank you! I slept almost eight hours last night! I had weird nightmares for most of it, but it was still very nice!
I should watch it again some time. I'm a lot less pedantic about book changes than I used to be!
I think the experiment's worth trying. Does the version I linked on YouTube play in your country?
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YOU'RE A GENIUS AND YOU SHOULD SEND ME THOSE SCENES TO READ AND THAT IS AN EXCELLENT PHOTO WORTHY OF FURTHER STUDY, THANKS.
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Oh, it wasn't the World War I framing I had an issue with, just the decision to, as you say, fridge one and canonically entangle the other two in an exclusive romantic relationship. As a child, I knew them all to be best friends, and as an adult I recognize them as an OT3. If I were inclined to seek out futurefic in the fandom, I'd be looking for them as a threesome. I would still have been cross had Dickon lived and Mary and Colin been paired off, but really, Dickon was the wound and Mary/Colin the lemon juice, there.
This is reminding me of how much the musical of The Secret Garden annoyed me with "Lily's Eyes," because the whole point was that Colin has his mother's eyes—agate-grey and fringed round with black lashes, looking gaily out of her portrait as his look unhappily out of his face and his father can't bear to meet them. Change that and you change the whole dynamic between them.
Hmm. In that case, I'd best warn you that the 1993 movie goes the route of Mary looking like the mothers, and Colin's father not being able to look at him because he doesn't look a thing like their mothers. It's a rather odd choice, because Colin looks exactly as he should, and Mary's just a bit darker than the book, and the actress playing the mothers is a brunette we barely glimpse, so telling us Colin has her eyes and Mary has her mother's face shape and coloring would have worked fine. Or, y'know, casting a fairer actress as the moms (or putting a wig on her). The dynamic functions the same in the movie, however, so it's not as big a change as it could have been, and John Lynch and the young actor playing Colin really make their scenes work (and John Lynch's reaction to Mary due to the resemblance is note-perfect).
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Entirely understood. I'm not actually sure I've seen anyone write post-war fic where they all survive, but I'd want to read it. It's not like the theme of healing and returning to life would be irrelevant in the wake of World War I.
[edit] HEY REMEMBER THIS CONVERSATION I FOUND EXACTLY THAT.
The dynamic functions the same in the movie, however, so it's not as big a change as it could have been, and John Lynch and the young actor playing Colin really make their scenes work (and John Lynch's reaction to Mary due to the resemblance is note-perfect).
I appreciate the heads-up. I think I will be able to stand it.
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And I think it must have been the film that my sister was watching (although her point still stands). I'll have to look out for the other some time, but watching TV on the internet is difficult for me. (I can do it sometimes, but it's a bit variable. My TV-watching time is off the internet; my productive/social time is on the internet & if I mix them up too much my routine goes haywire and I don't function properly. I always link everyone else to YT things, though!)
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Cool! I will see if it's still playing anywhere around here. Thanks for the data point.