Supporting the Indies. . .

I can't imagine living anywhere without a healthy dose of independent stores, no matter what they sell, be it butchers, bakers, bookstores and of course yarn shops (Liverpool desperately needs a good indie yarn shop).  So I was delighted when a friend told me about the Liverpool Independent Card.  For a small yearly fee, your card gets you discounts on all sorts of independent businesses. I've been very impressed with their website which is busy profiling all of them - some of which I already frequent - and it's made me determined to get out and visit as many as I can. I have several long breaks between shifts each week and so I spend a lot of time in cafes knitting, reading, writing letters and generally watching the world go by; the fact that coffee features large in this program is great for me.  Love the graphic design of the card too.

Then there's Amazon. I hate Amazon; I've been boycotting them for years.  I hated them when I was an indie bookseller.  I hated them when I worked in publishing. I hated them when they bought out the Book Depository which was a great online source for books. I hate the idea that they may be building a huge warehouse near Liverpool.  I hate that they don't pay their fair share of corporate taxes and get away with it.

I can order hard-to get books from UK independents like Foyles, or ask my local bookstore (which is also signed up to the Indie card) to order for me.  Music and DVDs have been much harder (the selection at HMV, really the only retailer around, is pretty poor).  But a mention on the Persephone Books website led me to Hive.  They have a very decent selection of books, music and DVDs AND they discount, AND they offer free shipping for a minimum order AND best of all, they donate a portion of each sale to a local independent that you can choose to support (I've chosen the shop in Liverpool's beautiful Anglican Cathedral).  They will also deliver for free to that indie and you can pick up your parcel there. Perfect! I tested them out (they have great customer service) and ordered Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe and a DVD that I've been dying to add to my collection since I saw the movie several years ago at a David Lean festival at Toronto's old Cinematheque.  The movie is Passionate Friends, based on a novel by H.G. Wells with a screenplay by Eric Ambler and starring Trevor Howard, Claude Rains and Ann Todd.  It's definitely not a sequel to Brief Encounter, but just imagine what would happen if Alec did come back into Laura's life nine years later.  That's more or less the theme of this movie. I've always had a huge crush on Trevor Howard so am looking forward to a swoonfest with this dvd soon.  I am so happy to have discovered Hive.

Testament of a Holiday. . .

I've been on holiday for the last two weeks, visiting the lad in Liverpool.  Spring had arrived.  There were flowers out everywhere.

It was my fourth trip to the city and I finally got a chance to ride the famous ferry over the Mersey where you get a terrific view of the historic and very beautiful city skyline.

And the city clearly has knitters - we stumbled on some yarn bombing around the pillars in Sefton Park.

There will be more on the scrumptious yarn goodies that I picked up in the UK but that's for another post.

It's not hard to find the HMV at Liverpool One, the shopping centre downtown.  You just look for this.

And while browsing the DVD section, I audibly gasped when I came across this:

I have been wanting to watch this 1979 mini-series of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth for over ten years as I had continually heard it was quite marvellous and it's based on one of my all-time favourite books. I immediately bought the DVD and the next day watched all five episodes in one glorious mini-marathon.  I was enthralled and incredibly moved. It was almost as powerful as the book yet never veered too heavily towards sentimentality. I thought Cheryl Campbell was terrific as Vera  and you just ached for what she went though.  One of the best episodes was the final one where she goes back to Oxford, meets Winifred Holtby, and participates in a university debate defending life experience over book learning. Openly laughed at as self-righteous because of her passionate opinions on the war, she returns to her flat and completely breaks down in tears, misunderstood and humiliated, and despite all the horrors of the war, for me, it was this moment that was the most emotional to watch.  It's a scene recounted in Brittain's first novel, The Dark Tide which, while not a literary masterpiece, is nevertheless a fascinating portrayal not only of women in academia after the war, (see also Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night for example), but of the various societal attitudes to their experiences and the post-war options left to them.  It's a novel that will make you wince at times, but it is well worth reading alongside Testament of Youth and makes for an interesting exercise in comparing how similar events get portrayed in fiction versus memoir.

Plummer Panache. . .

How lovely for Christopher Plummer winning his first Oscar last night and what an elegant and touching speech.  I was really happy for him.  His memoir, In Spite of Myself, which came out a few years ago remains one of my favourite celebrity autobiographies, because the guy can really write!  This is such an enjoyable, intelligent read for anyone who loves the theatre or film world. It has a wonderful portrayal of Montreal in its cultural heyday, filled with fantastic anecdotes of working with all the theatrical greats, and Plummer's very honest, charming and quite funny observations about just how much fun and naughtiness he's had throughout his career.  You can picture a twinkle in his eye or a mischievous grin on virtually every page. He loves his work and it shows, and now there's this lovely Oscar coda to add.  I was so pleased that he got a standing ovation.

The BBC recently released a DVD of Hamlet at Elsinore which I simply must get my hands on.  It was filmed at Kronborg Castle and Plummer's performance is supposed to be one of THE definitive Hamlets. I've been lucky enough to see him live as Prospero, Lear and John Barrymore,  and I have a wonderful CD of him doing speeches from Henry V accompanied by Walton's score.  His presence is so commanding and I just love that deep and powerful and very sexy voice.

My Weekend With Terence. . .

Friday night I went to see the new movie, My Week With Marilyn, directed by Simon Curtis, about a young assistant's infatuation with Marilyn Monroe during the shoot in England of The Prince and the Showgirl, written by Terence Rattigan, based on his play The Sleeping Prince.  Though the story is slight, I really enjoyed the movie, both for Michelle Williams' mermerizing performance, the atmospheric soundtrack, and for the wonderful cast of British theatrical royalty that peppers the film.  Kenneth Branagh has a large and juicy part as Laurence Olivier (and wouldn't it be ironic if this was the part that won him an Oscar?) and the great Judi Dench plays Sybil Thorndike.  But in one delightful cameo appearance after another, up pop Michael Kitchen, Dougray Scott (excellent as Arthur Miller), Simon Russell Beale and Derek Jacobi.  Tiny roles, but they kept me thoroughly engrossed. Dominic Cooper and Emma Watson round out the cast.

By coincidence, I had stopped off at Bay Street Video en route to the cinema - always a dangerous detour as I am a hopeless DVD addict.  And yes, I had to control myself and put back several new releases. But there was one I couldn't resist - The Terence Rattigan Collection, recently released by the BBC.  Terence Davies' new adaptation of Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea was my favourite film at TIFF and so I HAD to buy this five disc collection of television adaptations of several of his plays from the last few decades. Ensconced on the sofa with a pot of tea and my knitting, I watched five of them this weekend, one after the other.  I just couldn't stop myself - the casts were just superb.  

I started with my favourite Rattigan play, After the Dance, one of the most moving plays I've ever experienced about the inter-war generation. Gemma Jones was excellent as Joan, the party-going wife who has to watch her husband succumb to a younger and idealistic Imogen Stubbs.   Then it was on to Ian Holm, Judi Dench (wonderfully acid and bitchy) and a young Michael Kitchen in The Browning Version.  Penelope Wilton gave every bit as good and poignant a performance as Rachel Weisz, in The Deep Blue Sea with Colin Firth here as her younger lover.  By this time I was quite emotionally drained, so thank god for the fun and farce of French Without Tears with a fetching Anthony Andrews (not far off his Brideshead Revisited days) and the lovely and flirtatious Nicola Paget (remember Elizabeth from Upstairs Downstairs?).  And you'll barely recognize a slim and dashing Michael Gambon as a befuddled sea captain. This was followed by Geraldine McEwan and Eric Porter in Separate Tables.   I have the 1958 Deborah Kerr and David Niven movie version in my collection, but the play was originally designed to have the same actors play the main characters in both story lines, and this is what occurs in the BBC version with McEwan and Porter also taking on the roles played by Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster. Terrific stuff - I still have 2 discs to go, including Sean Connery taking on Alexander the Great in Adventure Story. Honestly, this would make a great Christmas gift for any theatre buff on your list or a fan of any of the above actors.  I'm so thrilled the BBC is going through their archives and releasing this gems - the picture quality of everything I've seen so far in this collection has been as excellent as the acting.

Now I suppose I should round out my Rattigan revivial and rent The Prince and the Showgirl, a film I've never seen.  Actually I'm thinking a Marilyn Monroe marathon might soon be in the works.

Guess Who's Coming To My TV Screen?. . .

I just bought this fabulous DVD set of all nine movies that Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn made together - some of which, like Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? I've previously seen, though not recently - and others which are new to me. I'm dedicating this week to watching them all in chronological order. I started tonight with the documentary that was included as an extra - The Spencer Tracy Legacy, made in 1986 and narrated by Hepburn. She doesn't talk about their personal life, but at the end she reads a letter that she felt compelled to write one night to Spencer, eighteen years after his death. It's loving and affectionate but full of questions - still - about the personal demons that haunted him. There are tears in her eyes as she reads, and I needed the kleenex as well. I'm looking forward to a marathon of this magical movie duo.

Knopf U.S. is publishing a huge biography of Spencer Tracy this fall, by James Curtis. It's over a thousand pages and to be honest, I don't know that I need such a detailed portrayal, but I am absolutely mesmerized by the cover. This is definitely not the first image that comes to mind when I think of Tracy, but the photo completely draws me in with its claustrophobic intensity.

Jazz and Jealousy. . .

I do love a movie with a good jazz score. I think of Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows with that great score by Miles Davis, Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder with music composed and played by Duke Ellington and his orchestra, and Elmer Berstein's score for Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm.

So I was looking forward this afternoon to watching Basil Dearden's 1962 movie All Night Long. My DVD is part of Criterion's Eclipse Series #25: Basil Deardon's London Underground, a set of four movies by this British director. It's a retelling of Othello set among jazz musicians as a party is held for the first year anniversary of married couple Delia and Rex. He's the leader of a successful jazz band; she's a former singer who gave up her career for marriage. Johnny Cousin is the Iago in this film; a jealous drummer who wants a band of his own with Delia as its star, and who tries to break the couple up by feeding Rex's jealousy. You know the story; the ending won't quite be the same. It was all a bit melodramatic (thunderclaps at portentous moments) and the acting isn't terribly good. The party seems quite devoid of guests except for the main characters (no budget for extras, I suppose) and there's an awful lot of going in and out of rooms whenever Deardon needs some quiet for two characters to talk. Still, the music is terrific and the musicians include Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus and Tubby Hayes with enough camera time on them to let them rip. Their scenes are definitely the best bits of the movie.

I haven't given up on this set or Deardon though. I quite enjoyed Victim, a 1961 film about homophobia in England starring Dirk Bogarde, and next up will be 1960's The League of Gentlemen, a heist movie starring Richard Attenborough and Roger Livesey which looks like fun. 1959's Sapphire, about a murder that stirs up racial unrest, rounds out the set.

Chaplin's 1920s Paris. . .

I watched a wonderful movie last night, A Woman of Paris, the first drama that Charlie Chaplin directed. It premiered in 1923 and apart from a brief cameo, Chaplin chose not to act in it. In the DVD extras, Chaplin's biographer David Robinson introduces the film - which, though a critical success, flopped at the box office - and I was touched to learn that when Chaplin was 86, he went back and wrote a new score for the film that he had loved so much. Edna Purviance plays Marie St-Claire, a young woman who travels to Paris alone after her fiancé Jean fails to show up at the train station. A year later, she's the mistress of Pierre, a millionaire playboy, suavely portrayed by Adolphe Menjou. When Marie unexpectedly encounters Jean, now living in Paris as a struggling artist along with his disapproving mother, she has to re-evaluate what she really wants from life: love or luxury? There are so many clever and marvellous moments in this film. It's terrific at capturing the immoral, partying decadence of Paris in the twenties, the touching and humourous relationship between Marie and Pierre, the catty female friendships (a precursor to The Women?), and the ultimate tragedy and Marie's final decision. The costumes are absolutely gorgeous and despite the melodrama, there's a warmth, wit and sophistication between the characters that makes this a completely different type of film from G.W. Pabst's 1929 Pandora's Box, for example.

The DVD set also has a great documentary about the making of the film that includes an interview with Liv Ullmann talking about the film's innovations. It also includes a much later 1957 Chaplin film, The King of New York which I think I will be watching tonight.

A Total Eclipse of the Heart. . .

I admit to being totally addicted to Criterion DVDs much to the dismay of my pocketbook. Which is why I love their Eclipse Series so much - these are very resonably priced sets of films organized around a similar theme or director. They don't have all the extras in terms of interviews or commentary that the regular Criterions do, but the films have been restored and are a joy to watch. I own several of these - The Lubitsch Musicals is my favourite. If you've never seen Maurice Chevalier charming his way through either The Love Parade (1929) or The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), you are really missing a treat. I just bought George Bernard Shaw on Film which consists of 1941's Major Barbara starring the imperious Wendy Hiller, 1945's Caesar and Cleopatra starring Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh (which I've never seen and I'm a huge Vivien Leigh fan!) and 1952's Androcles and the Lion.

But browsing the Criterion site today, I was excited to see that Eclipse will be releasing Presenting Sacha Guitry, a series of four French films released in the 1930s. I've never even heard of this actor/writer/director but the description of him as a "Gallic counterpart to Noel Coward" has me immediately sold. How can one resist this description of The Pearls of the Crown:

Sacha Guitry plays four roles in this multilingual whirlwind of pageantry that investigates the fate of three pearls missing from the royal crown of England. Pearls rockets through four centuries of European history with imaginative, winking irreverence.

Can't wait but will have to. The set isn't out until July.

Finally!

This amazing movie is finally available on DVD. The New York Times did a review of the package and lauds the restoration of the film and the deep colours it now has. Oh, how can anyone forget that wonderful scene of Hepburn and Bogart trying to push that boat through the swamp. Can't wait to watch it again.

A passionate weekend: Lorca and Flamenco. . .

I love weekends that aren't necessarily planned around a theme but just end up that way.

I'm a season subscriber to the Tarragon Theatre and often go with my friend K. We'd booked a Saturday matinee of their latest production - Rocking the Cradle - a few weeks ago, but being busy, I didn't really read up on the play ahead of time and didn't realize it was an adapation of Federico Garcia Lorca's Yerma. And then I happened to buy a ticket for Toronto's Esmeralda Enrique Spanish Dance Company which coincidentally just happened to be offering a program of flamenco dancing inspired by Lorca's life - on the evening of my matinee. It was perfect serendipity. Then Tarragon called to let me know there would be a pre-play talk by a York University professor who had directed a student production of Yerma. I went to that too - he gave some good background on the playwright and stressed the importance of the poetry, primitivism and social commentary in Lorca's plays.

I hadn't previously read or seen any productions of Lorca, so in preparation, I spent the morning reading three of his most famous plays, all written during the 1930s - Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba. I loved them - the poetic language, the intensity of the emotions, and all these powerfully strong, yet pained and desperate women characters. In the introduction to my collection, Lorca's brother Francisco writes about how Lorca drew on classical Spanish theatre traditions for his own plays: "Our ancient theatre is a holiday - a great holiday for the spirit, for the eyes and for the ears," writes Francisco. "No modern playwright has made the musical and the plastic share in the theatre to the extent that Federico did."

Unfortunately, all these poetic and passionate elements seemed to be missing in Rocking the Cradle, an adaptation that creatively tried to re-imagine the story in Newfoundland, but suffered from a rather weak cast, and a distracting and unnecessary stage scrim. So disappointing because I really was in the mood to see a powerful production.

The Flamenco dancing was terrific though and had my toes tapping throughout. Great musicians, and fiery feet combined with beautiful control from the dancers. Coincidentally, I had recently purchased Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy DVD set as I loved his movie Tango. I watched all three movies this weekend as well - Blood Wedding ( a filmed rehearsal of a ballet based on Lorca's play), Carmen (in which life intersects with art as the choreographer of a flamenco version of Bizet's opera falls in love with his leading lady) and El Amor Brujo, about a man in love with a woman who can't stop mourning her dead but unfaithful husband. All three were wonderful - heart-pounding and seductive. They made me want to wear a red dress with flounces and rapidly stamp my feet. I also have his later film titled simply Flamenco and will watch it soon. I can't wait - no one films dance better than Saura. The office is going to seem completely colourless and dull by comparison tomorrow morning.

The Little Tramp Goes to War. . .

I've been reading and enjoying Glen David Gold's new novel Sunnyside, which follows three Americans - one of them Charlie Chaplin - during the last years of the First World War. The novel begins with a surreal event - hundreds of apparent Chaplin sightings are reported all over the U.S. including one by a lighthouse keeper, named Lee who tries to rescue him in a storm.

Chaplin spent part of the war touring America to help raise money for liberty bonds, but he also made the silent movie Shoulder Arms in 1918. Having enjoyed Blackadder's take on the trenches, I was curious to see what an early comedy would make of the war. The movie is packaged with other shorts from those early days - including Sunnyside - on a DVD entitled The Chaplin Revue. While studio execs worried that the movie would be negatively perceived as making fun of the soldiers and the carnage, Chaplin was such a star that he could pretty well do whatever he wanted. And I quite enjoyed the movie's portrayal of the absurdity of war. There are scenes of Chaplin trying to keep pace with the marching soldiers while in tramp shuffling mode, scenes dealing with all the rain and mud in the trenches and a hilariously silly episode where he is sent to infiltrate enemy lines disguised ridiculously as a tree. In his dreams he captures the Kaiser and saves a beautiful woman.

There's another connection between Hollywood and the First World War that is revealed in this entertaining novel: the original Rin Tin Tin was rescued from a bombed building in France during the war by Lee Duncan, an American serviceman (and character in Sunnyside) and brought to America where the dog also became a huge Hollywood star. I'm always interested in contemporary fictional takes on the war and Gold's novel was original, well-written and fascinating in terms of its look at American war propaganda and the part that the rising film industry played.

Women Writers, Women's Lives. . .

Coming soon are three new biographies that I'm extremely interested in reading.
Once upon a time, I had grandiose notions of writing a PhD thesis on Storm Jameson (abandoned alas, because a gal has to pay the rent). I'm always fascinated by writers - particularly women - who lived through, and wrote about both world wars and Jameson's additional work in publishing and for PEN made her all the more fascinating to me. So I'm very excited about Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life by Jennifer Birkett. I've read Jameson's own memoir, Journey From the North, but while beautifully written, it's a bit coy about her personal life and doesn't focus as much on her books as this biography promises to.

I've dipped into Frances Partridge's diaries from time to time and have come across bits of her story as a minor figure in the biographies of Carrington, Lytton Strachey and various other members of the Bloomsbury Group. But I'm delighted she'll take center stage in Anne Chisholm's upcoming book, Frances Partridge: The Biography. I first heard about it listening to this delightful podcast from the Guardian, interviewing the indomitable Diana Athill, whose latest book, Somewhere Towards the End, is also on my to-be-read pile. At one point Athill talks about her love affairs with married men and mentions she is reading a proof of Chisholm's book. She admires Partridge's tolerant attitude to her husband's affairs and her disdain of the "geometrical approach to emotional relationships". This, Athill contends, closes one to the "tender curvaceousness" of life and love that is everywhere in the world. I love that phrase and as Athill acknowledges, "there was plenty of tender curvaceousness going on in that set!".

And finally, I can't wait for Nicola Beauman's biography of writer Elizabeth Taylor, being published by her own Persephone Books. There's no information yet on the Persephone site, but The Other Elizabeth Taylor is coming out in April, so I imagine one will be able to order it soon. I've read a few of Taylor's novels - Blaming, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, and At Mrs. Lippincote's - and have several more on my shelves. In particular, I want to read Angel, as I just saw the movie version, directed by François Ozon and starring a rather stunning Romola Garai. The story follows the rise of Angel Deverell, a poor girl with a vivid imagination who finds fame and fortune writing bestselling romances, but who lives in her own fantasy world, constructed like one of her plots, and face up to the reality that surrounds her, particularly turning a blind eye to her philandering husband who has only married her for her money. Ozon filmed it completely over the top - Anne Shirley meets Scarlett O'Hara - but I thought it worked wonderfully as a visual metaphor for the type of books Angel inhabited. And the costumes and make-up were incredible. If you liked Ozon's 8 Women, you'll enjoy this; it has some of the same - almost camp - humour. I find Ozon to be a very interesting director who clearly is fascinated with the ongoing relationships and resonances of the written word. I love his movie Under the Sand (the wonderful Charlotte Rampling plays a professor who teaches Woolf, trying to cope with the grief of her husband's disappearance) and The Swimming Pool (Rampling again, playing a thriller writer who escapes to a French house to try and write her next novel, but encounters more than she'd bargained for). Rampling also has a role in Angel.

Recently watched: Our Man in Havana. . .

Despite also being directed by Carol Reed, this doesn't come close to the brilliance of his Third Man, but regardless, there are certainly worse ways to pass a couple of hours. I'd never seen this film before and always wanted to, if only because of Noel Coward's appearance as Hawthorne. The scenes between him and Ralph Richardson are delicious - especially a moment towards the end when Coward is trying not to insert vacuum cleaner puns into the conversation. And I always enjoy Alec Guiness in whatever movie he appears in. Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, based of course on his novel. Good fun.

A Glamourous Night with Novello. . .

I'm feeling rather wistful this morning. Last night I attended a concert by the Toronto Operetta Society - an evening devoted to the songs of Ivor Novello, many of which I had never heard before. I absolutely adore the music from this period, and Novello's tunes (like Noel Coward's) are so beautiful and romantic and catchy too. Some of the selections such as "And Her Mother Came Too" or "I Can Give You the Starlight", I was familiar with from the soundtrack of the movie Gosford Park where the fetching Jeremy Northam plays Novello and does wonderful renditions of his songs. And on the whole, I think much of Novello's work sounds better sung by men rather than soprano women - the male vocal range seems to suit the style, and the articulation of the lyrics is often improved at a lower octave (although one of the best male singers from last night embarrassingly forgot the words to not one, but two songs and actually had to start one number over again from the beginning. He recovered well but one was worried about him every time he appeared on stage - I think he did a cramming session over the intermission; no flubs in the second act) Still, many of the selections were taken from Novello musicals (Glamourous Night, Perchance to Dream, The Dancing Years) and written specifically for a female soprano and certainly "A Violin Began to Play" or "Love is My Reason" works in that regard. And it doesn't matter who is singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning" or "We'll Gather Lilacs" - hearing those two songs always chokes me up. There were CDs available for sale in the lobby and I bought this compilation sung by soprano Marilyn Hill Smith. It's very enjoyable to listen to, but I'll also be searching out collections recorded in Novello's lifetime.

Novello was also a screen idol, and another of my weekend purchases was The Ultimate Hitchcock Collection - a 6 DVD set of twenty of Hitchcock's earlier works, including many of his silent movies. One of these is 1926's The Lodger - starring Ivor Novello -which I'm really looking forward to viewing as I've never seen any of his films (Novello that is, not Hitchcock). The set also includes the 1928 film of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue which will be fun to compare with the recent version I saw at the Toronto Film Festival. This was a fairly cheap set given how many movies are on it, and so I wasn't surprised to see that the prints are quite grainy and scratchy - Criterions these are not - though they are still easily watchable. And it's filled with tons of interesting stuff I've never seen and which doesn't appear to be available in better quality DVDs. There's a 1930 version of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock (he's one of my favourite Irish playwrights). And 1939's Jamaica Inn, based on Daphne du Maurier's novel is also included. Then there's Secret Agent (1936) based loosely on W. Somerset Maugham's spy novel Ashenden, starring John Gielgud and Peter Lorre. Not to be confused with Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent which is also included under its 1936 film title Sabotage. What a bargain at $25.00 - enough goodies to keep me occupied for weeks.

Four Firth Films. . .

It was a week of Colin Firth; after Easy Virtue, I also saw him in Michael Winterbottom's new film, Genova which was a rather disturbing movie to watch - Firth plays a father who takes his two girls to Genova for a year to recover from the recent death of their mother in a car crash. The focus of the story is on Mary, the younger eight-year old, who feels guilty for having caused the accident and who believes her mother still appears to her when she's alone. There's a constant unease that permeates the movie as Mary gets lost among the dark, narrow, twisting streets of the old city, and a scene set amidst the noise and confusion of ten lanes of traffic is also harrowing. It reminded me a little bit of Kate Winslet movie, Hideous Kinky. I could appreciate what Winterbottom was trying to do with the movie, but having recently been rear-ended myself (fortunately no one was hurt - I was just a little shaken), this was probably not a good movie for me to see right now.

To shake it off, I saw two more Firth movies that have recently come out on DVD. Helen Hunt's directorial debut, Then She Found Me, has Firth also playing a father who has been abandoned by his wife and though he loves his kids, he's frustrated and angry that he has had to take sole responsibility for them. He falls in love with Hunt's character whose life is in turmoil - husband has just left her, her adoptive mother has died and her birth mother has suddenly appeared in her life. And she's pregnant with her husband's child. It's quite a sweet little film exploring themes of abandonment, longing and family and Firth is once again given the type of romantic lines that would seem corny delivered by any other actor, but somehow come across as sincere from his lips.

My fourth Firth was a filmed stage production of D.H. Lawrence's play The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, starring Zoe Wannamaker, Stephen Dillane and Firth, who plays the brutish, alcoholic coal miner husband. Not the best acting I've ever seen from him; his Northern accent was not terribly convincing and he spent most of his time thumping tables and shouting. However, he made a lovely, almost angelic corpse, even covered in coal dust. The DVD also comes with a version of Lawrence's The Rainbow, starring Imogen Stubbs, which I haven't yet watched but will soon. And I have a hankering now to dig out Ken Russell's movie Women in Love. Haven't watched it in ages, but I loved Glenda Jackson in it. Oh dear, I certainly don't often get into a D. H. Lawrence mood.

Easy Virtue at Toronto Film Festival. . .

I'm going to try (and will most likely fail - sigh), to get tickets to the movie version of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue that is playing at the Toronto Film Festival. It stars Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas. Good enough for me. Hopefully it won't take too long for the film to be released in the cinemas. No trailer available online yet, but you can read more about it here. Firth was also in the film of another Coward re-make - Relative Values, starring Julie Andrews, who, love her as I do, just wasn't right for the part. Still, I own the DVD and it's a pleasurable way to pass an hour or two. And Sophie Thompson is terrific in it.


UPDATED: Whoo-hoo! This thing has been sold out, but someone must have returned a ticket because while checking the website this morning, the Gala screening was up for grabs! And I grabbed. I don't know if Colin Firth might be in the audience.... I'll report back. I'm so excited!

Modern Architecture. . .

As a relaxation exercise, I oddly find documentaries or movies about architecture to be just the thing for a flop on the sofa type of evening. There's something soothing about cameras lingering on the worn face of a stone carving or the vaulted roof of a church. And I'm grateful to be able to see in close-up the fine details that one would not be able to see with the naked eye, or would miss in the tourist shuffle. I've been watching Antonio Gaudí, by Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara - a documentary described as more of a "visual poem". I had thought of Gaudí as being more modern; it was a surprise to learn he died in 1926. The DVD also comes with a BBC documentary on the architect's work, narrated by art critic Robert Hughes, which was a good introduction. Barcelona and the famous Park Guell is definately on the list of places I want to visit someday.

I also have enjoyed the PBS documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright, by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. I watched this after reading Nancy Horan's captivating novel Loving Frank - a fictionalized account of the architect's relationship with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, who left her husband and children to be with Wright. The novel explores many of the emotional and societal conflicts facing women at that time as Mamah struggles with her love for Frank against her own need for intellectual fulfillment and her guilt over abandoning her children. I didn't know how the relationship ended (and I won't give it away here) but it's quite shocking. The documentary was extremely interesting on Wright's personal life after Mamah, which was just as rocky. Of course, there's an awful lot about his buildings and houses as well.

Votes for Suffragettes. . .

When I was recently visiting Niagara-on-the-Lake to take in some plays at the Shaw Festival, I wandered into the British shop on the main road, to stock up on Jaffa Cakes and Twiglets. The store also has a good selection of DVDs and I picked up The Suffragettes. It's only about an hour long and thus basically just skims the topic. Still, it shows how ghastly the force-feeding was in the prisons, and it's quite difficult to watch Emily Wilding Davison's death when she throws herself in front of the horse at the Derby. Actresses play the Pankhursts and other suffragists and there's a tiny bit of scene from Shaw's Press Cuttings. A good introduction to the topic - I imagine it would be useful for students. Much more powerful is the Upstairs Downstairs (one of my favourite television series) episode in the second season, when Rose the maid, tries to stop Elizabeth - her naive upstairs mistress who is dabbling at being a suffragette almost out of boredom - from getting into trouble with the law and ends up being arrested instead. Rose's experiences in prison are frightening and heart-breaking.

These brave women are true heroines of mine - discerning readers may have noted that the colours I've chosen for this blog reflect the purple (for justice), white (for purity) and green (for hope) of the flags of the Women's Social and Political Union - one of the main organizations in the fight for women's votes.

There would definately be a section in my bookstore devoted entirely to histories of the suffrage movement, biographies of the main players and plays and novels that explored the issues and/or were written by suffragists. Broadview Press has kept a lot of these books in print. They've published a wonderful anthology entitled The Literature of The Women's Suffrage Campaign in England, edited by Carolyn Christensen Nelson, that includes articles making the case for and against suffrage, eyewitness accounts from the memoirs and writings of the suffragists themselves and selections of suffrage poetry, drama and fiction. They also specialize in New Woman fiction of the era, having also published The New Woman Reader also edited by Christensen Nelson, and novels such as Suffragette Sally by Gertrude Colmore. At the end of this month they are bringing out Prisons and Prisoners - the memoirs of Constance Lytton, a member of the aristocracy who pretended to be a working class woman to call attention to the differential treatment that women of different classes received in the prisons.