Monday, March 21, 2005

"You are my Goldmine, my only Goldmine..."

"You make me happy, when skies are gray...
"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you...
"Please don't take my Goldmine away..."

I get anxious and twisted trying to find the right words and the right argument and the right inspiration for my dissertation chapter, but then I tell myself, go look at how beautiful and amazing this movie is, and it makes we want to keep writing! To wit:

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posted by NicksFlickPicks at 11:56 PM Links

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10 Comments:

Blogger Dr. S said...

This is how I feel about Middlemarch.

3:39 PM, March 22, 2005  
Blogger Nick Davis said...

I feel this way about Middlemarch, too. Y'all, it's the best 838 pages you'll ever do.

Now, what I'd love to see is the glam-rock version of Middlemarch. For one, those earrings that Dorothea (Chloë Sevigny) can't bear to give up in the opening chapter would be straight bangin'. And when you say "cheval-glass," I say "disco ball." Even Mary Garth (Catherine Keener) would love the nightlife.

All right, I'm'a stop sacrileging Middlemarch. Which I really do love. Read it, y'all.

5:59 PM, March 22, 2005  
Blogger Dr. S said...

Oh man!

Glam-rock Middlemarch!

I don't really like Chloe Sevigny, though, so can we make her Rosamond? I think I could imagine her bitch-slapping Lydgate (Christian Bale) around. In hotpants.

Ally Sheedy would be an awesome Mrs. Cadwallader.

And of course Samantha Morton would be Dorothea, silly.

9:58 PM, March 22, 2005  
Blogger Nick Davis said...

Dimming the strobes for a second...

When I first read the book in Spring '96, I had cast it this way:

Dorothea: Kate Winslet
Celia: Toni Collette
Lydgate: Samuel West (Leonard Bast in Howards End)
Rosamond: Julianne Moore
Will Ladislaw: Ralph Fiennes
Casaubon: John Gielgud
Peter Featherstone: Jim Broadbent
Mary Garth: Julia Roberts ('cuz Mary Reilly was out then)
Fred Vincy: Rupert Graves
Nicholas Bulstrode: Jason Robards
John Raffles: Ian McKellen

I have to say I still kind of stand by this cast, except Julia R. and except that John Gielgud and Jason Robards have now, as they say, merged with the infinite. I realize Julianne is probably pushing the age thing a tad, but I've never been able to see anyone else. Then again, I pretty much see Juli everywhere, regardless. Personal weakness. Anyway - why didn't they/I make this when everyone was still the right age?

12:48 AM, March 23, 2005  
Blogger Nick Davis said...

F***in' hell: that's what you get for attempting self-promotion. But it's my blog, and I'll plug if I want to. My review of Howards End is here.

12:52 AM, March 23, 2005  
Blogger Dr. S said...

Oh! I thought about Kate Winslet as Dorothea but was trying not to be too obvious (I'm not calling you obvious, Nick; I'm just demonstrating the level of originality I feel I need to show on your blog!). I could certainly imagine her as Dorothea. The rest of your '96 cast now seems too old to me--because Dorothea and Celia, for instance, are like 18 and 20. I read the book now and see my students acting these things out. Rosamond is 22 when it starts; Lydgate is in his late 20s, I think. Casaubon is 50ish (Ralph Fiennes, un-fined, could play him--that would be sweet). Fred and Mary are in their 20s. I think it would be awesome if there were a movie version that cast people of the right ages as these characters--hence my suggestion of Samantha M., who's still a little old for the part, but closer.

Why am I writing this instead of preparing for class???

11:39 AM, March 23, 2005  
Blogger Nick Davis said...

Samantha Morton is an awesome suggestion. esp. as it is not the kind of part people tend to think of her for.

This leads to another question: what film adaptations of classic novels do people feel have been done right? I was gaga over what Jane Campion did with The Portrait of a Lady, and I also thought The Wings of the Dove, a very different take on James made about a year later, was extremely good. (But don't even talk to me about The Golden Bowl.)

Persuasion was pretty terrific, if modest (and, actually, because it was modest). There were things I wanted to fix in the recent Age of Innocence and House of Mirth, but other things I thought worked very well in both. And y'all know I dug Howards End.

A less obvious choice: I was impressed with the Heart of Darkness that Nic Roeg put together for TNT in '94, with Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz. Loved Michael Winterbottom's two forays into Hardy: Jude and The Claim (i.e., The Mayor of Casterbridge in loose, American disguise)

Speaking of Winterbottom, I can't wait to see what he does with Tristram Shandy, though as described, this project could also go very wrong.

3:11 PM, March 23, 2005  
Blogger Dr. S said...

I would like to put on record that I didn't despise the 2004 Vanity Fair, though I think it shied away from the most difficult aspects of that novel (Becky's borderline sociopathy, the lack of sympathetic characters, the hopelessness and fear behind a lot of what happens). I *love* Persuasion almost as much as I love the book. I did like Winterbottom's Jude (Christopher Eccleston would make an excellent Casaubon); I'm not sure how I feel about the upcoming Tristram Shandy, esp. since it's now been retitled. When I was younger I used to swoon over A Room with a View. Sometimes I still do.

8:35 PM, March 23, 2005  
Blogger Nick Davis said...

I only swoon over part of A Room with a View. No points for guessing which part.

8:44 PM, March 23, 2005  
Blogger Dr. S said...

It's the part where she's wandering through Florence, right?

tee hee hee

I do remember this movie as the first one where I saw naked men running around. A tiny part of me was startled, and then I thought, that's cool. They're just naked.

8:55 PM, March 23, 2005  

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