In a little while my mom will be here. We’ll celebrate this afternoon/evening at my brother’s, and she’s spending the night at mine. It’s Elias’ first Christmas, so it’ll be a bit different, but I’m looking very much forward to it.
I hope each and every one of you is also able to spend this holiday with people you love. Thanks for sticking with me for another year! <3
In honour of the beauty that is Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers dancing, I decided to change my WordPress theme. The image is from their 1938 movie Carefree, from the delightful The Yam, one of only four musical numbers. They’re well worth it, though, and the rest of the movie is thoroughly enjoyable, too, showing off Ginger’s comic talent at its best and poking fun at Freudian psychoanalysis.
I also switched from daily to weekly Twitter digests, because the blog felt unnecessarily cluttered.
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? With one thing or another (most importantly, of course, I’ve become the godmother of my adorable little nephew Elias) this year has flown by – and today Christmas season has officially started, wow!
Somehow fitting the season, these last couple of weeks I’ve gone on a Classic Hollywood kick, mainlining black-and-white movies, mostly screwball and romantic comedies and Astaire-Rogers musicals. I’ve also devoured the delightful “Scandals of Classic Hollywood” by Anne Helen Petersen, both the original blog series and the book, and have lined up some biographies to read next. It’s just such a fascinating era, and a lot of the movies are simply first class!
Long-time favourites:
The Philadelphia Story with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant & James Stewart
Ain’t No Other Man by Sof – set to Christina Aguilera, this is a brilliant tribute to what is one of my all-time favourite movies! (I cringe at the dressing down from her dad, but other than that, Tracy Lord RULES & both C.K. Dexter Haven and Macauly Connor know it. *g*)
Swing Time with Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
A Love That Won’t Sit Still by icepixie – a general tribute to those two and the way they light up the screen. I’ll pretty much watch them in anything – seriously, even “weaker” movies like Follow the Fleet and Shall We Dance make me happy.
New discoveries:
Holiday with Katherine Hepburn & Cary Grant
You Belong With Me, by Hepburned – another great use of a modern song. From reviews I expected to prefer the other Grant/Hepburn collaboration, Bringing Up Baby, but that was just too frantic & over-the-top for my taste, and I enjoyed this movie much more – again, Hepburn plays a delightful character & Grant is pitch-perfect.
The Awful Truth with Cary Grant & Irene Dunn
Worth seeing for the end scene (here set to music by Edward Boensnes) alone. I preferred it to both My Favorite Wife (another Grant/Dunn collaboration), which drew out the jokes much too long imho, and to His Girl Friday (Grant with Rosalind Russell). The latter was pretty great, though, especially the first scene is brilliant – I just never quite bought that Russell should get back together with Grant’s character, since all he does is cheat and scheme to get her back, not addressing at all why their marriage fell apart the first time.
And I’ve only just started, there’s so many more to discover! After all, I’ve stuck to Astaire/Rogers and Cary Grant movies so far… Next up: It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, I think. 🙂
I came home today knowing exactly what I’d do – take out my DVD of the 1999 Mansfield Park, which I hadn’t done in years because, while I remembered enjoying it, I wasn’t sure whether it would hold up to a repeat watching, considering how loose an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel it is. (It did, but that’s not the point of this post.) So why did I?
In a way it started with the Youtube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Or maybe it started years and years before that, when I fell in love with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and, not long after, the 1995 mini-series. In any case, I watched and completely adored this modern take on the beloved story (unusual for me – most re-writes, adaptations and sequels leave me cold or, worse, make me cringe), so I bought the book and subsequently the audiobook. I took a break listening to it (not the fault of the book, I hasten to add!), so I only finished it yesterday.
As chance would have it, the very next thing on my playlist was the recent BBC radio play of Mansfield Park. You see what I’m getting at – I finished listening to the play on my way home, being gripped with the desire for more. I have yet to watch the BBC mini-series from the 80s (although I own it as part of a DVD set) and am not sure I want to bother with the 2007 ITV version. Which is why I decided to follow up Jane Austen with another beloved story, Jane Eyre – namely the 2001 movie. I utterly adore the mini-series from 2006, but a) it’s rather long for one evening, b) I’d only watched it once since seeing it in the cinema, and c) my recently rekindled love for the X-Men movies (sparked by finally watching First Class before seeing Days of Future Past in the cinema) made me want to see more of Michael Fassbender.
Which is where I stand now, asking myself in which direction I should let fancy lead me – because the X-Men movies are still fresh in my mind, I’m leaning towards The Eagle, because St. John Rivers is played by Jamie Bell. We’ll see, shall we? It’ll be enjoyable in any case – and quite far from Pride and Prejudice…
Which is why I wanted to write this post, I guess. All of us have followed the rabbit down its hole at some point or another in this media-saturated age, I’m sure. 😉