Austenland

found these pictures when cleaning up.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I guess she's "trending" at the moment... about time.

Kedi

Kedi was a beautiful and heartwarming documentary about the street cats of Istanbul that I thoroughly enjoyed as a general person and a cat lady.

 I loved this little explanation for their attitudes they presented in the film (also in the trailer!):

Love & Friendship: Lady Susan

Whilst there was much to love about this movie - the scenery; set design; costumes; humour- I couldn't get past my dislike of Lady Susan herself. Her machinations and manipulations just irritated me and ruined what was otherwise very enjoyable. Nevertheless, you can enjoy some of the comedic and costumic (not a word, I know, but it works for me) delights from its trailer.
I have enjoyed putting together this post and it makes me want to watch it again and maybe reconsider my opinion.

Some commentary from articles because I am too lazy to form my thoughts into prescient prose:

Unserious Austen - Adam Thirlwell - New York Review of Books 

Jane Austen’s Lady Susan (written around 1794, when she was eighteen) is an epistolary novel, and a balletic farce of sex and money. Its plot centers on the recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon, “the most accomplished Coquette in England,” and her attempts to marry her daughter Frederica to Sir James Martin, a wealthy if charmless aristocrat, while she conducts affairs with two younger men: Lord Manwaring, and Reginald De Courcy. 

It’s a quieter, English-country-house-version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses—where a ruthless woman is humiliated. 

This adaptation is really a rewrite. And maybe that’s a particularly attractive mode, when the novel to be adapted is in epistolary form. The game of the epistolary novel is to maintain a constant haze between foreground and background, between what is reported to a correspondent and what the reader must infer has happened: it is the art form of gossip, of the hint. 

Stillman’s characters are monsters of literary conversation. In Austen’s Lady Susan, her heroine makes a major observation to her friend Mrs. Johnson. It’s meant as evidence of immorality, but in Stillman’s film it is a charming statement of fact. “If I am vain of anything, it is of my eloquence. Consideration and Esteem as surely follow command of Language, as Admiration waits on Beauty. And here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my Talent, as the chief of my time is spent in Conversation.” For in this new world invented by Stillman, people talk syntactically, at high speed, with absolute artistry (one comparison, in a different register, but at a similar pitch of artificiality, is Tarantino). Stillman uses dialogue the way Matisse uses color: it does not necessarily correspond to anything in the real world. 

At such moments, trying to examine Love & Friendship, our definitions like adaptationor rewrite become faintly anachronistic, or clumsy. It’s a novel transformed into cinema, but it’s also a film that has allowed itself to be contaminated by literature. And that is the rarer, and greater, achievement.

 

Very interesting commentary on the film and adaption in this video. 

Interesting what Jemma Redgrave says at about 25 seconds - no, it doesn't feel like an Austen. Maybe because of the different format and how it was a novella written early on when she was around 18 - maybe it was unfinished for a reason.

And some pictures to delight:

A great collection of the "opening and end title design, plus character intros and a variety of intertitles" from the film - here. Definitely worth looking at.

Neon Demon

Not interested in actually seeing the movie, but I am interested in the visuals.

REVIEW: The Mummy Reboot

This review is so darn hilarious, I have reproduced it in full so there is no excuse for not reading it.

_____

The Mummy review – Tom Cruise returns in poorly bandaged corpse reviver

2/5 stars

Framed as more of a superhero origin movie than ancient curse mystery, a messy plot unravels fast

Peter Bradshaw | twitter: @PeterBradshaw1

Be afraid, for here it is … again … emerging waxily from the darkness. This disturbing figure must surely be thousands of years old by now, a princeling worshipped as a god but entombed in his own riches and status; remarkably well preserved. It is Tom Cruise, who is back to launch a big summer reboot of The Mummy, that classic chiller about the revived corpse from ancient Egypt, from which the tomb door was last prised off in a trilogy of films between 1999 and 2008 with the lantern-jawed and rather forgotten Brendan Fraser in the lead. And before that, of course, there were classic versions with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee both variously getting the all-over St John Ambulance treatment.

Traditionally, The Mummy is a scary movie (though un-serious) about taboo and transgression, based on the made-up pop myth about the mummy’s “curse” – which has no basis in the history of ancient Egypt, but is a cheeky colonialist invention, which recasts local objection to our tomb-looting as something supernatural, malign and irrational.

Yet that is not what this Mummy is about. It brings in the usual element of sub-Spielberg gung-ho capers, but essentially sees The Mummy as a superhero origin movie; or possibly supervillain; or Batmanishly both. The supporting characters are clearly there to be brought back as superhero-repertory characters for any putative Mummy franchise, including one who may well be inspired by Two-Face from The Dark Knight.

This has some nice moments but is basically a mess, with various borrowings, including some mummified bits from An American Werewolf in London. The plot sags like an aeon-old decaying limb: a jumble of ideas and scenes from what look like different screenplay drafts. There are two separate ancient “tomb-sites” which have to be busted open: one in London and one in Iraq. (The London one, on the site of the Crossrail excavation, contains the remains of medieval knights identified as “crusaders” who have in their dead Brit mitts various strategically important jewels they have taken from Egyptians: who were subsequently buried in what is now Iraq. Erm, Egyptians in Iraq? Go figure. Perhaps it’s because they are evil and had to be taken out of the country, like CIA rendition of terror suspects.) 

The Cruisemeister himself is left high and dry by plot lurches which leave him doing his boggle-eyed WTF expression. In one scene he is nude so we can see what undeniably great shape he’s in. The flabby, shapeless film itself doesn’t have his muscle-tone.

Cruise plays Nick Morton, an adorable rascal in the Iraqi warzone who goes around in a TE Lawrence headdress stealing antiquities to sell; well, it’s that or let them be destroyed. He’s helped by his exasperated buddy Chris (Jake Johnson), while Nick has already seduced beautiful expert Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) who in spite of herself is entranced by Nick’s distinctive cherubic handsomeness. Then they blunder across the extraordinary tomb of evil Egyptian sorceress Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) who has some kind of weirdo mind-meld experience with Nick. Her creepy spirit accompanies him back home where she is intent on getting that precious jewel to unlock her full power. Nick’s plane crashes, giving him the opportunity for some Mission: Impossible-type midair acrobatics, those gorgeous chops pulling some serious Gs.

Russell Crowe lumbers on at one stage, amply filling a three-piece suit, playing an archaeological expert and connoisseur of secret burial sites, who has some sinister connection with government agencies. Unlike Nick, he has no Indiana Jones-type heroism, and that formal attire of his signals that he does not have Nick’s kind of heroic looseness. He is a figure to be mistrusted, although when he reveals his name and his destiny, he is just a distraction — and silly.

In the end, having encouraged us to cheer for Tom Cruise as an all-around hero, the film tries to have it both ways and confer upon him some of the sepulchral glamour of evil, and he almost has something Lestat-ish or vampiric about him. Yet the film really won’t make up its mind. It’s a ragbag of action scenes which needed to be bandaged more tightly.

Jane Eyre - revision

Having now read (and loved) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë I understand that the 2011 film, which irritated me (although I loved the imagery!), really was an "interpretation" like so many films based on classics seem to be. So much was cut out, and parts were embellished. I also find that portrayals of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester are often more tortured and gothic than they come across in the book. Rochester really isn't that broody. Although, my main gripe is that Rochester isn't supposed to be handsome - yet he is unceasingly presented as such. I guess they can't make someone attractive based on what they say and do instead of reliance on the physical. Which rather contradicts the whole point of the story - Jane, Rochester, and St John's characters altered, to my mind quite a bit. Ramblings of a mad woman I guess my notes to be - but not Bertha mad....

“You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?”
I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware — “No, sir.”

From where do all these handsome Rochesters originate...?

"What fault do you find with me? I have all my limbs and features." - I will give the screenwriters props for that little in-joke though... Not for long...

Anyhoo, that's all for now from me.
But the topic will arise again, because Jane Eyre:

"Grands Ensembles"

Denise, 81, Cité du Parc et cité Maurice-Thorez, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2015
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

Les espaces d'Abraxas et al....

Not all from Noisy-le-Grand, Here is a taste of the grands ensembles of Paris and surrounds.

These modernist buildings, known as grands ensembles, were France’s response to a severe post-war housing shortage. Between 1954 and 1973, the country erected public housing in the suburbs surrounding the City of Light. These towering structures, which included some six million units, embodied the prevailing idea that modernist architecture could help foster a utopian state by improving people’s lives. “They were praised as places where men could blossom away from the agitation of big cities,” Kronental says. 

In the end, the grands ensembles didn’t succeed in bringing about a modernist utopia. It wasn’t long after the first of them went up that poverty and crime began to plague the projects. France stopped commissioning them in 1973, though some were constructed into the 1980s. Many have been demolished, with even more slated to be torn down as they age. Kronental, however, thinks they are worthy of celebrating. “They amaze me. They are unique,” he says. “Of course they should be preserved.” - via  

Les Tours Aillaud, Cité Pablo Picasso, Nanterre 2014, Laurent Kronental 

Joseph, 88, Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand, 2014
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

José, 89, Les Damiers, Courbevoie, 2012
Photograph: Laurent Kronenta

Joseph, 88, Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand, 2014
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

Le Pavé Neuf, Noisy-le-Grand, 2015
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

Les Orgues de Flandre, 19e arrondissement Paris, 2014
Photograph: Laurent Kronental 

Jean, 89, Puteaux-La Défense, 2011
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

Jacques, 82, Le Viaduc et les Arcades du Lac, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, 2015
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

Roland, 85, Les Arcades du Lac, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, 2015
Photograph: Laurent Kronental 

Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand, 2014
Photograph: Laurent Kronental 

Lucien, 84, Les Espaces d’Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand, 2014
Photograph: Laurent Kronental

Sources include, but not limited to:
Laurent Kronental's work documenting these estates and their elderly residents
Guardian Slideshow
Arch Daily 
Untapped Cities - good overview
Wired