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

A Month Till Christmas...

... and the tree is up!

Update, I must!

Now Playing: Serenity - End Credits

I've had another birthday! Woohoo! Over the penultimate solar sojourn (Steve, I know you'll get this one) I've grown even more decripit and useless! Yay!

*sigh*

I'll just go off into this corner and die, shall I?

Anyway, Linda, Julia, Mimmie, Steph and I met up on a Saturday to jointly celebrate both Linda's birthday and mine. But what was to be done? The cinemas were bereft of quality viewing (NB - this was before Pride and Prejudice opened) and we were at a loss. Bowling? For a lark, I say, "hey, why not karaoke?" and am horrified when they take me seriously (honestly, don't you hate when that happens?) and soon we are on our way to Echo Karaoke in the middle of Chinatown.

Chaos ensued.

By which I mean, we spent six hours at the Karaoke place, screeching our lungs out. :D To be entirely fair, I was the only one screeching; Linda, Julia and Steph were remarkably tuneful, while Mimmie (oh, wise, sage, most august Mimmie!) refused to sing at all. In any case, it was a delightful time, despite my incessant mike-hogging and yowling. We only stopped because the place was closing, and also towards the end, my vocal cords were tap-dancing in an attempt to get me to shut up. Oddly enough, the next day, I was still in possession of my voice, though attempts to sing in Church failed miserably.

Before that, though, the frater and I went to see Serenity. For those five of you who've been living under a rock (heeey! what's it like down there?) Serenity is the movie continuation of Joss Whedon's untimely cancelled TV show, Firefly. The movie is pretty damn awesome and the fact that it did poorly at the boxoffice is, I think, a damning indictment of the tastes of moviegoers in North America today. I mean, you know the universe is fundamentally unfair when the Scooby-doo movie gets a sequel (wtf? seriously, wtf?), and this movie tanked. Anyway, if you get a chance and it's still playing at a theatre near you; you really ought to watch it - it's different, daring and pretty gorram entertaining.

Really, really want to watch Pride & Prejudice, but alack, have no one to see it with me. It's really odd how none of my female friends here have read the book. (Hem, I'm going to assume you have?) I mean, this is quite possibly my favourite book ever, and yet I am surrounded by people who have never read this seminal text! My anthro prof over the summer, Ivan Kalmar, pinpointed this book as the ancestor of all those romance novels in which Guy meets Girl, they hate each other and then fall in love and roll around in haystacks, or whatever it was people did before the internet. Its TV descendants include tropes such as "Will They Won't They" and the niftily named "Slap Slap Kiss." What's particularly funny to me is how guys recoil utterly from the idea of watching this movie. To wit:

Guy: I want to see Pride and Prejudice this weekend.
Me: *goggling in shock*
Guy: It doesn't seem to be playing at any of the big theatres downtown
Me: *even more shock*
Guy: Yeah, my girlfriend wants to see it, not me.
Me: Ah.
Guy: Yeah.
Me: All is made clear.

I don't think there'll be the same paucity of companions when I go to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I was dismayed at first to read that there had been significant cuts to the novel, but my fears have been assuaged - they left the ferret scene in! How awesome is that? The amazing bouncing ferret is in!!!

*ahem*

must be off,

Yours distractedly,

Sharon

Irony and Incompetence

Now Playing: Depeche Mode - Precious

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is holding a disciplinary hearing for a Toronto gynecologist. A medical expert testified that there were problems with 37 out of 70 hospital cases administered by the gynecologist. Some of the more stunningly egregious errors include performing a tubal ligation on a woman who was already pregnant & nicking a patient's bowels during surgery. This isn't the first time this gynecologist has been in trouble; in 2001 he had a disciplinary hearing in which he was accused of mis-prescribing mistoprol and missing the diagnosis of a ruptured uterus & falsifying records among other things. All in all, the man seems fairly incompetent.

So why do I bring this up, you wonder? There was one detail about the case that struck me as being deliciously ironic. The doctor in question is a Sankar Vaidyanathan, a name that seems fairly innocuous until you consider the etymology of his name. In Sanskrit, "Vaidya" means physician, as it does in Hindi.

Yours in inappropriate chortling,

Sharon

Material Girl

Now Playing: Ivy - Ocean City Girl

In their November issue, Toro Magazine ran a feature comparing headphones, and now me want. I mean, I was doing fine with the earbuds that came with my mp3 player, but now I really crave/want/desire/need a pair of good headphones. This Denon one is the most affordable of the lot, but it's still not what I'd term a casual purchase. The Bose headphones are much pricier, but just so pretty. In the just-plain-outrageous range is this one from Grado Labs; honestly, who needs hand-crafted mahogany headphones? According to Toro, though, the sound is like a pair of hi-fi angels cooing in your ear, so I suppose you get what you pay for.

*sigh*

Yours in fiscal inadequacy,

Sharon.