Best. Acceptance Speech. Ever.

Emma Thompson accepts a Golden Globe for best screenplay for 1995's Sense and Sensibility.



Last Austen-related post for a while. Promise.

Just wanted to say...

that George Miller, the Oscar-winning producer of Happy Feet,


looks just like Dr. Caligari.

Becoming Jane, Becoming angry

Oh, my poor eyebrows. They've been raised so many times tonight at some rather disconcerting details about the upcoming Austen biopic Becoming Jane.

First, this imdb review in which the reviewer notes that the script and Hathaway fail to convey the intelligence that Austen must have possessed. One detail warranted my posting this at all:

she [Hathaway] looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping

Excuse me?

And then there's this excerpt from an article in the Telegraph:

When, in the film, Jane and Tom decide to elope to London, it is impossible not to think of Lydia Bennet making a dash for it with her charming, ever-so-slightly-caddish Wickham.

Elope to London? That is so inaccurate that to call it a lie would be understatement. Most Austen biographers (except for the one who was a consultant on the biopic) do not think Austen's relationship with Tom Lefroy developed beyond a clear attraction, much less to elopement plans.

For a long time, word was that the movie was based on Claire Tomalin's measured biography of Austen, but now it has emerged that it was John Spence's more problematic interpretation of Austen's life that was the source material (oh my god! there's a movie tie-in!!). I studied Spence's biography in a grad course and found it highly speculative in parts, especially the section regarding Lefroy. I'll post about the Spence bio some other time (what joy to look forward to!), but knowing how adaptation and movie-making can play with facts, I suspect that the movie will exaggerate or extend Spence's already tenuous claims even further.

The movie opens March 9 in the UK. Perhaps I'll be able to catch it when I'm there in April. Poor North Americans must wait until August. And on a slightly different note, the UK website has the trailer, which a) sounds odd with a British-accented Voice of God and b) uses the score from Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. What?

A poem is (not) a toaster

The Guardian's Comment is Free blog has an interesting post today about "hard" vs "easy" poetry. It's a post I think students who complain about poetry in English classes should read to understand that struggling through a difficult poem is rewarding. As the author notes:

A poem can wash over us without requiring much thought and then keep us awake at night wondering about what it really means. And we only understand the full meaning when we can recognise the references and untangle the allusions.

Poems take time. They take time to write and they should take time to read. If they're good, they can be broken up into components (rhyme scheme, meter, figurative language, symbols, allusions, tone, voice, etc.) that can each be appreciated individually, but then (importantly), reassembled to form a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. If a poem can withstand that kind of analysis and scrutiny, if the threads of references can be untangled but then rewoven, if it can reveal new insights on each reading, even if the readings occur months or years apart, then it's worth the work. Much like a tinkerer who takes apart a machine to see how it works, the reader of a poem must take it apart and then try to put it back together again. The light bulb moment, the moment that meaning is created, is worth the difficulty.

Incidentally, the "stop all the clocks" poem referenced in the post was made famous by Four Weddings and a Funeral. Interesting how the film's attempt to class itself up resulted in a sullying of the poem in some critics' eyes.

Don't look back in anger...

I suspect only former-Gauntlet people will find this funny... It's even better if you replace "do the crossword" with "read TLFs" at the end.

Former Editor Can't Believe Shit College Newspaper Is Printing

Clarissa: The Affair is Over

I have finished reading Clarissa. The last 200 pages were a total slog. As Jeff put it, thinking you have "only" 200 pages left is like driving the 1800 km from Vancouver to Calgary and thinking that you have "only" 300 km to go.


Granted, once Clarissa dies, the narrative slows down. Her death has its own odd momentum. Clarissa lets herself waste away, gradually getting weaker and weaker. While the heroine gets weaker, the suspense increases; you keep reading thinking that she's going to die any page now, and there are a couple of false alarms. Once she does die, Lovelace writes a mad letter demanding that Clarissa's body be cut open and her heart preserved in a jar for him. It's rather gruesome, but an apt continuation of the theme of bodily violation. Clarissa's will addresses this as well, stipulating that her body is not to be opened (autopsied?) in any way. Even past death she's concerned with maintaining bodily integrity.


And here it is in all its flagged glory. I still have to go through them all and make notes. What was I thinking?

The Big Two-Eight

My birthday always falls on Reading Week, as does the birthday of my friend Jenn, and for the last two years we've celebrated together, always on the first Friday of Reading Week. Most people are still in town that day (including the birthday girls) and everyone's up for a well-deserved night out. Also, we go to a bar where birthday boys and girls get $50 bar tabs each, though any communal food or drink does not count.

This year was no different.

Me and Jenn, collectively turning... um... 40. The night's theme was "barely legal."


Those who have gone drinking with me before might wonder how I went through a $50 bar tab without a) falling over b) throwing up or c) both. The key was to stay away from the beer and to pace myself. The total for the night: one burger, one Alabama Slammer, two Singapore Slings, five shots (Liquid Cocaine, bourbon, B52, China White, Crispy Crunch), an order of chicken wings, and then an Electric Kool-Aid. And lots of water. Money-wise, I'm not sure what that added up to (other than a good time, I mean). Everything was fine, except that I had to get up for 9 a.m. on Saturday to catch my ride back to Calgary. I slept all the way to Calgary, and then slept some more in the afternoon.


It was an eventful, fun evening that included Trina doing her first shot, Orion spilling a pint into his lap when he gestured too broadly as the waitress was putting the drink onto the table, a startled Jenn informing us not to use the ladies' room downstairs because two people were having sex in one of the stalls (and, oddly, the other, empty stall was locked from the inside), and someone underpaying on the tab (we know who you are, even though you might not).

For more photos, click on the "28th Birthday" album here.

Year of the Pig

The Year of the Pig starts Sun., Feb. 18. Happy Chinese New Year, everyone.

Photo from CuteOverload.com.

List: My Funny Valentines

Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) The thinking woman's sex god. Sure, he's been letting Colbert steal his thunder, but you never forget your first love.













John Oliver (The Daily Show) Never underestimate the power of a line delivered in an English accent and a wry tone. I still have a soft spot for his frenzied rant about the new no-liquids policy on airplanes: "What about yogurt? We all know there's fruit on the bottom, but what else lurks there?"




John Krasinki (The Office US) Okay, apparently men on television named Jo(h)n are funny. Watch the US version of the office (rent the DVDs, if you must) and be prepared to laugh and swoon. Not particularly in that order.


Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

My (half) day at the Passport Office

My passport expires April 12 and my research trip to England starts April 25. I've been dreading braving the long lines at the passport office for a while now but had to go before the wait got too long. I finally got all my documents together and armed with knowledge from a friend of a friend who works in the same building, planned an early and long day. Neither turned out to be true.

7 a.m.: Alarm clock goes off
7:15 a.m.: Get up
8:00 a.m.: Catch bus downtown, and then walk to Canada Place, home of government offices
8:10 a.m.: Am one block away from government offices when I realize that I do not have my current passport with me. Must have current passport. Turn around to catch bus home.
8:20: Surprised I am not crying or berating myself for being forgetful. Opt instead to be philosophical. Specifically, stoic. Stoic stoic stoic.
9 a.m.: arrive at Canada Place, finally.
9:05: Find the end of the line, which has snaked around the atrium inside. Thankful that I don't have to wait outside.
9:06: Strike up conversation with lady in line in front of me, who (along with her husband) needs a passport to go to Taiwan for her son's wedding reception. I learn that to travel to China, you need a passport that's valid for at least six months after the trip.
9:10–11:42: Wait. Chat with neighbours in line. We all keep an eye on a woman in line across the hall with her son, charting our progress by hers. We also calculate that once we get into the office proper, it's still a two-hour wait, minimum.
11:42 a.m.: Enter Passport Office. Go into pre-screening line.
11:48 a.m.: Get pre-screened. Am giving a number starting with "C", a result of having filled out my application online and printed it out. My number is C73. When I find a spot to wait and check out the electronic signs above the wickets, I see that C72 (along with A116 and B08) are currently being served.
11:53 a.m.: I am served at wicket #5. My application goes through and I pay a lot of money.
11:59 a.m.: I'm done! I'm actually done!
12:00 p.m.: I walk to the bus stop and hear church bells tolling noon.

He went to St. Mary's?!

My best friend forwarded me some info about our ten-year high school reunion this morning, and I've been reading through some of the profiles on the renunion website. I'm feeling a little ambivalent towards the concept of a reunion: many of my peers are married with/without kids, or have glamorous-sounding jobs, or have travelled far and wide, and I'm currently working on my third degree in Edmonton.

It's interesting, though, to see how many of my classmates I do and do not remember. For example, I had no idea that St. Mary's was affiliated with Bayside High:

It's nice to know that while there are many aspects of high school I want to leave behind, there's still a little part of me that will always find this funny.

Clarissa: musings on sex and death

I have 220 pages to go.

Clarissa has finally escaped from Lovelace and has begun the long, protracted process of gradually wasting away. She hasn't died yet, but she is very ill and eats and drinks little. At this point, Lovelace genuinely wants to marry her because she has passed his trial—she never gave into him (which is why he raped her). All of Clarissa's supporters, including her best friend, think she should marry him, since it would be the only way to preserve her reputation in society. She disagrees on the grounds that it would be legitimizing all that he's done to her up to this point, she does not believe that they would make each other happy, and she believes she's going to die soon. For a 21st-century reader, it seems mind-boggling that the societal "solution" to rape is either marriage or legal prosecution (which Clarissa also refuses, for various reasons). Richardson understands the disjunction and presents a third, tragic path: death. It's ironic. Lovelace's elliptical description of the rape ends with the declaration that "Clarissa lives", but instead, the sexual violation means that narratively, Clarissa must die. It is her death sentence.

Je veux aller à Paris

Today in film lab we watched Breathless and Cleo from 5 to 7. Both are highly important to the French New Wave movement, both are worth renting from the video store and watching in a fit of self-improvement, and both have characters who talk. A lot. Usually while travelling through Paris in various forms of transportation.

Watching these movies makes me want to go and wander the streets of Paris. Paris in the summer. In the early '60s. In black and white. Hm. This might not be feasible.

Attention budding Shakespeares and Petrarchs:

Poetry for Feb. 2

In honour of the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading, I give you one of my favourite poems of all time:

The Cinnamon Peeler
by Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
— your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers . . .


When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

                    this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume
                                    and knew

                   what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

Anthony Lane on Pride & Prejudice (2005)

I have been rewarded for my microfilming efforts (see post below). The review I so effortfully extracted is bitchy and hilarious.

In Anthony Lane's review of the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice film adaptation for The New Yorker (14 Nov. 2005, pg. 101-102), he asks,

"What would Mr. Bennet make of the film? He would be left wondering, I suspect, why God gave him only two eyebrows to raise."

And of Lady Catherine's surprise visit to Longbourn:

"And whence this knocking at the door after dark, which brings the night-shirted Bennets downstairs with quivering candles? It is Lady Catherine, come to bawl and bark at Lizzie in a surprising reenactment of the drill-sergeant routine from Full Metal Jacket."

Though I do think Lane hits a little low in comparing Keira Knightley to another movie icon:

"Like the queen in Aliens, she extends her famous underbite and gets down to business. Widening her eyes to maximum chocolaty hue, she stares into his..."

Lane concludes by noting that

"Any resemblance to scenes and characters created by Miss Austen is, of course, entirely coincidental."

Microfilm

Today I struggled through yet another session with a microfilm reader at the library. Factors working to my disadvantage:

1. I had 25 minutes before an important meeting.
2. I was lugging around my winter gear—heavy coat, thick scarf, big tuque. Anyone who's ever had to find stuff in a library while wearing/carrying clothing designed for -20 C weather will understand.
3. Thanks to the magic of PDFs, I infrequently use microfilm, which means I forget how to use the reader in the ensuing six month gap. As a result...
4. I couldn't get the roll of film to load into the machine, so had to ashamedly ask for help from the circulation desk and
5. When I couldn't remember how to zoom in, a nice older gentleman at the machine next to mine showed me how.

The kicker? All this effort went to printing out a two-page review from the New Yorker. That's right: two pages. Two pages that I could have printed out in an online version, except that the html print-friendly version did not indicate the page break, rendering it useless for citation purposes.

And 6. Due to a dark ad at the top of the second page, the first four lines of said page did not print out. Rather than print another (which I knew from experience would produce the same result), I copied the missing words by hand onto the paper. So old fashioned.

Thankfully I had enough change on me, or that would have been set back #7. I hate technology that makes me feel incompetent.