Happy Birthday Pride and Prejudice!

As today is the 200^th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, I want to write a blog post wholly devoted to that lovely subject. No, really. This has been something I’ve been looking forward to for days. Two hundred years. It’s rather amazing when you think about it. First published January 28, 1813, a book, that two hundred years later is so universally beloved and appreciated. Let’s just talk about the amount of film adaptations that have been created from this book, shall we? They come out every few years.

 There is the black and white version that came out in 1940, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. I actually haven’t seen the entirety of this version, but I have seen several clips from throughout the film. What I did see I found enjoyable, even though this was partly because I found it amusing. What with the dresses that seemed more reminiscent of Gone With the Wind than the regency era and the exaggerated accents. Not to mention it beginning with a race between the Bennet family and the Lucas one, as they wildly try to get home first (and thus send out husbands/fathers to meet the newly arrived Mr. Bingley). Their mad disarray as they galloped homewards was amusing to say the least. It reminded me of the scene in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where they’re racing their wagon after kidnapping the girls. I thought Greer Garson made a lovely Elizabeth Bennet however, even if quite a lot of it verged on the ridiculous. It was the sort of thing that was amusingly ridiculous, and enjoyable because of that.

 Next we have the BBC mini-series with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, perhaps the most beloved of all the versions; it has Colin Firth after all. Everyone knows that he is Mr. Darcy. We really can’t accept any other actor as Mr. Darcy after him! We have been spoiled forever! After once having been introduced to Colin Firth, there was no going back. I love this version of course, how could I not? But I can’t say I think it absolutely perfect. I think the problem I have with this version is that everything’s a bit too exaggerated. Mrs. Bennet will of course always grate a bit on the nerves, but she’s almost unbearable in this. Mr. Collins, Lydia, etc are just the same. My other thing is I just feel that Wickham’s a little bit…obvious. He’s obviously the “bad guy,” and everything points to that. Now, when I read Pride and Prejudice I remember being truly surprised. Wickham is supposed to take us in; we are supposed to be entirely fooled by his good looks and his charm. Now, I usually wouldn’t make comment about an actor’s looks for a part, since that’s superficial and stupid, but it does sort of bug me when the “bad guy” is cast as looking definitely less handsome than the “hero” (unless of course, that’s they’re supposed to look like that.) Same with when the leading lady is cast as being especially beautiful in contrast to a lesser character (Jane) who is in the book supposed to be much prettier than leading lady. It just bothers me. Like “all our favorite characters must be beautiful and gorgeous but all the bad guys and less characters get to be plain and unattractive.” (That turned into a bit of a rant, didn’t it? But Wickham is supposed to fool us! He isn’t supposed to seem sleazy till Mr. Darcy reveals his true nature!) This might all seem a bit harsh considering it’s probably my favorite version, but you see if I didn’t talk about the things I don’t like I wouldn’t have quite as much to talk about. I can’t just babble “I love it. I love it. I love it,” for a blog post, when I very well might if I were just talking about it. It’s the most near to the book, and thus the most near to my heart. I’ve watched it so many times, and I never get tired of it.

I think the most recent movie version is the one that came out with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. What I always say about this version is that I like it as a movie but don’t like it when comparing it to the book. As a movie it’s the sort of thing I watch over and over because it’s nice and relaxing and the music is my favorite. That’s the best thing about that movie, the music. The music is beautiful.

 Now I want to talk about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which is a series I’ve been watching recently. I don’t know if it could strictly be called a “film adaption.” It’s actually a series of vlogs (video blogs) of about four or five minutes each, and they’ve been coming out for a couple months now (I think there’s a total of about eighty videos now). It’s a modern adaption filmed as if Lizzie Bennet is filming these videos herself and blogging about her life. I think it’s a really interesting take on the story, and I think the actors have done such a good job in bringing to life characters from a different century into this one without losing too much of their essence in the translation. It’s actually made me think a lot about what has and what hasn’t changed over the years. What has remained the same while the entire world around us has changed. I’ve gone back and looked up particular sections of Pride and Prejudice and compared them to seeing it brought out in a modern day and age. 

 Anyhow, happy 200^th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice! I hope everyone has a lovely day, and I wish to send you tea and many regency dresses!

After Night and Before Morning

I’m thinking:

This morning I got up quite early, lit a candle on the table and set the coffee pot a brewing, and started upon blank notebook paper with my sharpened pencils. I was determined to make some progress before the world woke up, and I hope that I can say I have made some at least. The funny thing about getting up so early is that it feels for a bit as if you’ve been transported to another world without time. A continuous dark has settled upon the world, a dark that does not seem to lift and stays pressed against the windowpanes. It is neither night, nor is it morning, but a time (or timelessness) in between. At times it feels like somebody has pasted blackened paper on the other side of the windows and if you could only get past it you would see a different world, but instead you continue to travel through a timeless space.  Perhaps it is what it feels like to be traveling about in a spaceship with no day or night by which to gage the passage of days. I can imagine those hours between night and morning as being somewhat similar to what it must feel like drifting about in a weightless, timeless orbit. I keep repeating the word “timeless,” don’t I? If I were listening to my inner editor I should immediately go back and erase the numberless usages, or quickly think of some other word that would be better fitting for my sentences, but at the moment I simply don’t mind. I don’t mind if I use the word “timeless” once or a dozen times in this paragraph, for I belong to a timeless word where time is too precious to be wasted fretting about silly things such as that- for time is so precious as there is no time at all.

 I’m reading:

 Actually, I’m in-between books. This of course shan’t last beyond a couple hours more before I go digging into my stacks and fishing up a new one to read. I just finished reading “Daddy-Long-Legs” and also “The Lioness and Her Knight” the second a book I read fully over a couple days worth of breaks at the library. It was an easy (yet really quite enjoyable) read, in which I could finish a full fifty pages over a break, so it didn’t take me long at all to finish.

I’m creating:

Well, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before or not but next Monday is the 200^th anniversary of the publishing of Pride and Prejudice, so I rather thought I’d write up a series of blog posts about various screen adaptations, but we’ll see how far I get. I have a couple starts to them, a few sentences at the top of the great many word documents I have open at this moment. The problem never is the beginning though, it’s what comes after that is tricky. I’m also at work on another knitted hat, exactly like the one I just finished, because that one turned out so nice.

 Outside my window:

It seems impossible that morning’s are ever stormy (of course they are and that statement’s simply ridiculous, but at the moment it seems impossible) for the pond is so glassy still, the trees all standing still and motionless as well, not a single breeze to be seen. Everything is still, as it seems like it ought to be in the morning time. Night and darkness is the time for wild winds and rattling of windows as raindrops hit them in a fury, but morning is a time of stillness, of awakening. You never see a thing wild with any great emotion just as it first wakes, would it make sense for the world to be so? For the morning to come roaring to life? To my mind it makes far more sense for it to wake gradually, coming more and more to life as the minutes pass, but very still just at first. Very still.

 I’m listening to:

 Celtic music. I’ve had it playing just about as long as the coffee pot has been brewing, so rather a  long time indeed.

 From the kitchen:

 On the topic of coffee, it won’t be long before I shall be needing to make another pot. The other one has grown quite cold by now, and Mom still needs to have her coffee so another pot I shall make.

 I’m hoping and praying:

 For snow. I really want it to snow. Well, perhaps I’m not exactly praying about snow, but I’m most certainly hoping. Other than that I am praying that I can stop fretting so much about things and trust that things will turn out exactly as they were meant to. It’s no help fretting and worrying, and I shouldn’t, and I know that, but the problem is I still do. So I need to stop.

 A few plans for the rest of the week:

 

Well, I suppose just continuing doing what I'm doing. Starting with finishing up this journaling page and getting back to work on Algebra. I'm planning on going to see Les Miserables again on Thursday though! Which will be a lot of fun! Oh and I'm also quite excited about Cabin Pressure on Wednesday, yay!

 

 

Beauty and the Beast and Knitted Hats

I'm thinking:

It was rather funny this morning. I wrote something up for my journaling page and then went to preview it and see how it would look formatted on the blog and it turns out I had been writing on my other blog. I hadn't been on that blog in a while and it made me laugh because it felt like I was going back in time somehow. Slipping back into last year. It's funny how that can happen sometimes. You open a book, or a blog that you frequented almost every day in years before, and it feels like you are simply stepping back in time.

I'm reading:

So, it's January. I want to start keeping better track of the books I read in the next few months (hopefully all year, but we'll see how I do). I just finished reading my second book for the month (reading book number three and four at the same time right now). Beauty is the book I just finished (it was a Christmas present) and I have to say, it was one of the best retellings of fairytales that I've ever read. You never can tell with retellings of fairytales. Some turn out to be rather good, others not so good. The trick is, I think, keeping the strain of the original fairytale and not losing the essence of the story. Sometimes the author gets so caught up in creating their own idea of the character that they lose who that character really was, because it is all there to begin with. Even though fairytales are often written without an over abundance of words, there is still a strain of a character that needs to be caught onto if the retelling is going to succeed. I think Beauty was so well done because it felt like it was simply adding more to the story in descriptions and such, but never straying for long from the story's real beginning. Not to mention that the Beast actually seemed rather frightening to begin with, which I liked quite a lot. Nomally he isn't, and he's supposed to be. Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite fairytale, actually. I just love it so much. After finishing Beauty I went and found my CD from the Broadway musical, and listened to some of the songs from that. I shall probably be obsessed with Beauty and the Beast for a little while now.

I'm wearing:

I rather look like a ragamuffin today. A tear in the knee of my jeans (put there by myself, thank you very much), a shirt that really was a dress but I wear it as a shirt because it's much too short to wear as a dress, and a ruffled shirt beneath that. Ah well, it's home I stay today, so I can enjoy looking like a ragamuffin and dance about the room in bare feet.

I'm listening to:

Songs from Les Miserables on youtube. I want to buy the soundtrack eventually. I'm just not getting tired of all these songs. They are perfect. Really, really perfect.

I'm creating:

I've almost finished knitting a slouchy hat with my Christmas yarn. I'm excited about it because the colour will just match the red scarf I have and the red mittens my grandparents brought back from Canada for me. So now I have a full set. Or almost. I just have to finish knitting this hat.

On the topic of creating I really need to start working on my NaNoWriMo story again. I haven't made much progress since November ended and I would still like to finish it. So there's another project waiting for me.

A few plans for the rest of the week:

Did I mention I ordered a Latin book? That's what I'm most excited about this week. I read the introduction yesterday and I'm going to start on chapter one today. Yes.