Entries in the Category "jane austen"
Movie Reviews: Talented Teens and "Actresses of a Certain Age" edition
This is kind of sick, but one night I was on Netflix Instant looking for a short movie to watch before bed, and I had read on the Internet that day about a girl who was killed by an Amtrak train. So, uh, I decided to watch Stand By Me, a great coming-of-age movie which is about, among other things, kids getting hit and/or almost getting hit by trains.
I’ve never read the Stephen King story on which the movie is based, but I’ve heard it’s great. The movie definitely charms with its 50s detail and foul-mouthed little boys. What’s really distracting, though, is looking at all those young Hollywood actors and thinking about how none of them ended up where people expected. Like, the fat kid slimmed down, is now a regularly working actor (I may have watched his former show, Crossing Jordan, a time or two) married to a former model. The kid who actually seems to have a future as an actor is the one who didn’t (instead he died from drug addiction). The smartass who was already a pretty big star is in the reality TV doldrums now. I especially like that the kid who, in the movie, grows up to be a writer, actually did. Wil Wheaton, one of the few teen Hollywood success stories.
More movies follow!
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Strange Connections
It's always been fascinating to me how easily connections can be drawn between completely disparate fields of study. As an undergrad, I was always getting shocked when the same concept came up in lit class and sociology class, or in physics and women's studies, or whatever. Right now I'm taking two courses, and although both are literature-based, they cover different subjects and eras. And yet, everything I'm reading right now is strangely connected to everything else.
Firstly, I'm in the middle of The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is kind of the seminal Gothic novel, full of castles, mysterious portraits and people hearing noises in the next room, creeping in and finding it strangely empty. For the same class, I am also reading (actually just finished) Northanger Abbey. The connection between those is relatively clear: Jane Austen wrote Northanger as both an homage to and a parody of the Gothic novel. The main character, Catherine, reads Udolpho:
'But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning?--Have you gone on with Udolpho?'
'Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.'
'Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?'
'Oh! yes, quite; what can it be?--But do not tell me--I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina's skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.'
The joke of the novel is that Austen took this particular comic tone in narrating it; she writes as though Catherine's ordinariness is continuously overthrowing her expectations of Gothic happenings. For example, while traveling, Catherine is surprised to reach her destination without a crash or being harassed by bandits.
So, already there was tons of crossover appeal between those two books. Then, yesterday, I started Ian McEwan's Atonement for a completely different class. Imagine my surprise when I opened it to the beginning and discovered that McEwan opened it with a quotation from Northanger Abbey!
Weird, man. Weird.
Ah, To Be This Clever
From McSweeney's (the sometimes too too clever hipster publication which in this case got it just right):
Famous Authors Narrate the Funny Pages
Beetle Bailey
by Ernest Hemingway
"It's a mighty sorry business, Sarge being blown up like that," Beetle said. The other soldiers in the café nodded silently. He ordered another bottle of vermouth and drank the vermouth. It was a good vermouth.
Check out the others, including Peanuts by Jane Austen and Dilbert by Charles Dickens. Garfield by James Joyce is also a highlight.