A Tale of Two Movies

Now Playing: Partners in Rhyme - Teri Meri

Before we get to the main course, ladies and gentlemen, let me draw aside the curtain of my mind (is that a song lyric?) and give you some insight into my train of thought:

• Stephen and I are chatting.
• Stephen remarks on the catchiness of Bhangra, having just been introduced to it.
• I refer him to the Bend it like Beckham soundtrack, which has some very catchy bhangra tunes on it.
• I remember one non-Bhangra tune on the album that I like, a Partners in Rhyme' remix of a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song called tere bin nahin lagda.
• I decided to see what Partners in Rhyme have done since then.
  
• I stumble across a track called teri meri (literally, yours and mine).
• I press play.
  
• The song is ridiculously addictive. It's like musical crack.
• I can't stop playing it!
  

Which is why I've always said Bhangra is dangerous. No good can come of it, ever.

Anyway, saw two movies adapted from novels recently; loved one, was utterly meh about the other.

any guesses?

The first one I saw was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I have to admit that I was completely psyched for this one up front. The trailer looked amazing, the book has arguably the best twist in any of the HP books so far, and there was going to be an amazing bouncing ferret!!! So Linda, my brother & I trooped down to Paramount to watch the movie. We figured that if we waited till its second week of playing, we'd miss most of the crowds - a fairly logical idea, except that most of downtown Toronto came up with the exact same thing, and so we had to toss stray children out of the way in our over-zealous quest for good seats. After all of this, the movie has to be awesome, right? I wish.

In their quest to streamline the movie, Newell et al threw out whole chunks of the book, thereby junking some of my favourite scenes from the book. We don't get to see Skeeter being a complete bitch and Hermione figuring out her secret - and frankly, with what little screentime they did give Miranda Richardson, I'm surprised they didn't just cut her out entirely), we don't get any of the comedic gold that was S.P.E.W, and then they overextend the first task by having Harry be chased all over Hogwarts by that crotchety Hungarian Horntail. Pshaw. Also left out is the Defence Against the Dark Arts class where we find that Harry is mostly resistant to the Imperius curse, which is probably one of my favourite Harry-scenes from the book. Then finally, the confrontation with Not!Moody at the very end - they don't show the spyglass! Why go to all the trouble of pointing out the nifty little magical device in which you can see your foes approaching you - if you're not going to actually show the foes approaching in the damn thing??? That scene in the book always struck me as one that would look cool on film - three faces slowly growing clearer, until finally Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape burst through the doors of Not!Moody's office - and they left it out! In all fairness, I should say the movie is really not half-bad, especially for those who haven't read the books. That first sight of the dark mark towards the beginning of the movie was effectively and entirely creepy, the acting was good, etc - but I have to ask: Why are the filmmakers shoving Harry & Hermione down our throats? I mean, c'mon anyone who's read the books know that Ron 'n' Hermione are the canon couple, so what're they playing at?

Anyway, the other movie that I saw - and loved - was Pride and Prejudice. Now, it's no secret that I adore this book. It's the one book that I have found impossible to "read-out" - whereby I read a book so often that by the end of the whole process, it's as if I've drained the thing dry, and there's nothing left on those dog-eared pages for me anymore. This is what happened with Oliver Twist, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre even - I can't read those books anymore. Not Pride and Prejudice. I have read the book any number of times, seen all the assorted film versions - of the list on that page, I've seen all of them except the Mormon version & the assorted BBC versions pre-1980, and I'm here to tell you, this new version more than holds its own.

Where to start? Okay, it's not a romantic comedy, a la the Olivier and Garson version; this one is a romance, from start to finish. But before my male readership decamps in alarm, they should know this movie is really well made technically - long, lovely tracking shots a la Serenity, and wonderful piano music by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. And the script - now, this is how you condense a novel well. Gone are the Hursts, the little Gardiners, the sundry Lucases (Charlotte, obviously is indispensable, but the only other Lucas one sees is Sir William at the Assembly Ball, and only in passing), Mrs Phillips, etcetera - the story and the cast is pared down to the barest essentials. The acting is wonderful - I really hadn't expected Keira Knightley to be able to pull it off as well as she did, but how glad I am to be wrong. Her Elizabeth is clever, irrepressible and girlish - something that could not be said of her predecessors in the role, Jennifer Ehle and Greer Garson. Matthew MacFadyen is perfect as Darcy - taciturn, intrigued & passionate by turns. Comparisons to Colin Firth are inevitable, but MacFadyen more than holds his own. The supporting actors - Donald Sutherland, Brenda Blethyn, Rosamund Pike, et al all do justice to their parts. Quite seriously, it is a wonderful movie, and one you ought to watch.

Wow, I've really run on here, haven't I?

Yours garrulously,

Sharon