Where oh where has my ogre gone?

Kat Hein wrote:

> m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
>> Kat Hein wrote:
>>> m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage] wrote:
<snip>
>> And that P&P miniseries has converted more women to Austen fandom than
>> anything else in recent years. A friend of mine organized a public
>> viewing of it in a UCBerkeley lecture hall, years ago -- mass
>> conversion of people into fans! (Shown over multiple Thursdays. Not
>> all one night!)
>
> When I'm feeling blue, I will get out the DVDs and watch it all in one
> sitting. But it's not just women it has converted. Jesse gave me Looks
> when I told him that he'd enjoy Austen. He very relunctantly agreed to
> watch the mini-series with me. (then only owned on VHS LOL) We started
> it late-ish at night during the week, figuring that I could get him to
> watch an hour a night. When I wanted to stop after the first
> tape/episode so we could go to bed, he didn't want to stop!

Really? That's good to know. I think my brother watched it, but I haven't
dared ask him what he thought -- truthfully, I'm not certain he'd tell me
his honest opinion anyway. He knows how both his sisters feel about that
miniseries, and a strong temptation would exist to say he liked it,
regardless of whether he did or not. :>

>> The "Mansfield Park" that came out a few years ago is good, too.
>> Though they worked in some of Austen's own life, and tweaked the plot
>> a bit more than would have been tolerable in another Austen novel.
>> (They pepped up Fanny, the heroine, who is extremely passive by modern
>> standards.)
>> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178737/
>
> I've seen it. Yes, it was pretty good. In fact, I may like it better
> than the novel- Fanny did need a little pepping.

I've read that Fanny was one of Jane Austen's own favorites, of her
characters. But Fanny is about as far from modern sensibilities regarding
appropriate heroine behaviour as it is to get. I don't ever recommend
"Mansfield Park" to regular folks, when they ask what Austen to read.

> The 2005 version of P&P with Kiera Knightly was passable, as well.
> Obviously not as good as the mini-series, since they had to compress it
> all into a 2 hour movie, but entertaining. Donald Sutherland made for an
> excellent Mr Bennet.

Oh, yes! I liked it quite a bit. Massively compressed, of course, but I
didn't think anyone who had *not* read the book would have felt it choppy.
Hard for me to tell, of course.

Got that as a birthday gift for myself. ;>

<snip>
>> If memory serves, BBC made a version of "Emma", starring Kate
>> Beckinsdale, that I didn't like at all. Chicken thieves kept popping
>> up at odd moments -- that was just weird.
>
> I liked that one, but not as much as the Hollywood adaptation. The
> Chicken Thieves didn't bother me, since it set up for the end, which the
> Hollywood version glossed over.

Maybe I should re-watch the BBC version. I suspect it is the version PBS
will be re-airing sometime this month. :>

<snip>
>>> Like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe! Or the most recent
>>> version of Little Women- with Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, etc.
>>> What I loved about that movie was that where it deviated from the
>>> book- and I admit it added some things- it did so in a historically
>>> accurate way. The book was semi-autobiographical, and they took
>>> things from Louisa May Alcott's real life, or at least conversations
>>> that I could totally believe her having taken part in.
>>
>> I love that version of "Little Women"! One of the movies I like to
>> take out and watch in wintertime. So nice to see a movie about young
>> sisters who love each other (most of the time).
>>
>> Unlike real sisters, who spend most of their childhoods trying to tear
>> out one another's hair. :>
>
> I don't know, Jo sure did try to tear Amy's hair out after she burnt her
> stories! *GGG*

Oh, sure. That made the relationship more real. :>

Even so, those sisters were far nicer to each other than any under-age-20
real sisters I've known.

> It definitely is a good winter movie.

Yep, yep.

(I coulda sworn I was the one who paid for this couch. Why am I the one
squeezed on the edge of it? Four paws have a definite space-stealing
advantage over none.)

--
Megan
Journeyperson Dancing Barbarian
Keeper o' the FAQ: http://home.earthlink.net/~m_thomas3/abml/

Kat Hein wrote:

> Rhino 7 wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:23:40 -0800, "m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage]"
>> <"m_thomas[numBksInLastHrldMage]"@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Snip>
>> Both excellent. Austen is like Shakespeare in that she reflects
>> humans ver. 1.0 which is timeless.
>
> Yeah, but I've seen some really terrible versions of Shakespeare! That--
> thing ---with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, for one. Ugh.
<snip>

Oddly, that is my favorite movie variation of "Romeo and Juliet". I
thought it caught the impulsive, extravagant, over the top emotiveness of
the characters involved. A key idea to get across, since otherwise the
extreme solutions Romeo and Juliet chose at the end don't make sense, and
they have to make sense for the play to be a true tragedy.

--
Megan
Journeyperson Dancing Barbarian
Keeper o' the FAQ: http://home.earthlink.net/~m_thomas3/abml/