Edmund

I went to bed early last night, so I decided to just videotape the Oscars. When I woke up this morning, I found out that nothing ever came out of the effort. I don’t know how to play around with VHS machines anymore—they now (like the typewriter) seem very unfamiliar  to me . . .

Inglorious Basterds didn’t win Best Picture. But my bet, Christoph Waltz, did win Best Supporting Actor—I should’ve put money on that bet. There’s talk that he’d next be starring with Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon in the film version of Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants.

I never finished reading the book—although I like anything that’s set during the Great Depression. I didn’t like the way the book began. I saw an audiobook version at iTunes. I heard the snippets. The “old man”—an actor portraying the voice of old Jacob, I think—who was reading it sounded really bad. I’ll just wait for the movie.

Je suis Canadien—mais je ne suis pas Québécois

I caught a[nother] glimpse of the Vince Coleman/Halifax Explosion Historica Minutes commercial on TV last week, so I decided to dust off and watch my old Historica Minutes DVD. I’m a huge fan of Historica Minutes—those sixty-second short films that feature important moments in Canadian history. I first learned my Canadian history from those beautiful shorts, and they really give you that vibe that makes you feel proud to be Canadian.

My favorite Minutes: Jacques Cartier and the “naming” of Canada—the actor portraying the know-it-all priest is a joy to watch; Governor Frontenac—one of the most good-looking Minutes, with shades of 1970’s Cromwell; and Étienne Parent and Balwin and Lafontaine—there’s something very Les Misérables about them.

Historical spoiler. I was reading The Folio Book of Historical Mysteries, edited by Ian Pindar (London: The Folio Society, 2008), an anthology of essays about history’s most fascinating enigmas. I was halfway through Paul Doherty’s “Was Tutankhamun Murdered?” when I put the book down, got up for a glass of water, checked my e-mail and found a news item about the very recent finding that King Tut died from complications from a broken leg and malaria. Suddenly there was no point in going back to the essay.

Pattinson/Dalí

I’ve mentioned the problems I’ve been having with my Twilight Blu-ray disc. Well, after installing those numerous updates in my laptop, I’ve finally got it to play. Yes, I finally saw Twilight. Did I like it? Yes and No, I guess. Am I looking forward to seeing the rest of the franchise and getting the upcoming discs of the upcoming movies? Maybe.

In other Robert Pattinson news . . . I also saw Little Ashes last night. I was expecting a lot of Luis Buñuel in it, but the film’s main focus was on the Salvador Dalí-Federico García Lorca relationship. I loved the film. My only complaint: it should’ve been en Español. Like the insufferable Love in the Time of Cholera, you’ll see Spanish characters here speaking accented English. Lorca’s poems featured in the movie, particularly the Balada de la Guardia Civil Española, will make your hairs stand. Too bad, they’re voiced-over in English.

Javier Beltrán looks a lot like the young Lorca. “Pattinson is simply brilliant,” proclaims the W Magazine quote on the DVD cover—and he truly is. Aside from looking very much like the young Dalí, R-Patz has captured the weirdness and creepiness of Dalí perfectly. His final scene (the last sequence in the movie) and the way he uttered his final line and made his final exit will make you cringe—in a good way.

So now I’m looking forward to seeing Robert Pattinson as Georges Duroy in the upcoming film adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s (!) Bel-Ami. I noticed that “Georges Duroy” has an almost-Dalíesque moustache in the cover of the novel’s Penguin Classics edition:

Readings of an almost-penniless bookworm

I remembered the self-imposed moratorium on buying new books—that I won’t buy new ones until I’ve finished reading all the unread ones. It’s difficult to do. Anyway, there’s no interesting new books out there right now and I’m quite broke. When this happens I usually read the unread ones or go back to my favorites, the books that I’ve read over and over again. I’m in a 19th century mode (again) right now, so I thought I’d re-read Gustave Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education. I’ve always thought of it as the male version of Madame Bovary. Frédéric Moreau is a lot like Emma Rouault.

There was a church garage sale last Christmas, and I found a first edition copy of Karen Armstrong’s 1981 autobiography Through the Narrow Gate among the unsold items. I ended my delusions of being a (Christian) feminist as soon as I finished defending my bachelor’s degree thesis in 1994, but I’m still quite fond of Karen Armstrong. I’ve heard and read a lot of good things about this autobiography, and now I’m finally reading it for the first time. I like the foreboding sign Karen saw in the novitiate house: “I would grind myself to powder if by doing so I could accomplish God’s will.” Whew!

. . . and starring __________ as Holden Caulfield

Now that J.D. Salinger is gone, The Catcher in the Rye could finally make it to the big screen. Read all about it here. The big question: Who will portray its hero-slash-antihero? I’ve always imagined the pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio being expelled from Pencey Prep . . .

Coming soon (but read it first)

Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 children’s novel, The Eagle of the Ninth, is being made into a movie. The Eagle of the Ninth is the first of the seven loosely-connected tales about Roman Britain. I’ve only read The Eagle of the Ninth and its follow-up, The Silver Branch:

The Eagle of the Ninth tells the story of Marcus Flavius Aquila, a young Roman soldier who is trying to find the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of his father’s legion, the Legio IX Hispana, in northern Britain.

Stills from the upcoming film version were all over the Internet last month. (See more pictures here.)

I don’t usually like Hollywood’s take on beloved literary classics, but I really want to see this one. I saw the ’70s BBC TV version once, and I thought that the lead actor looked and acted more like a dandy than a legionnaire. From the stills of the new film, we can see that Channing Tatum (who plays Marcus) has given the character some muscle and swagger.

The Master of Horror in color

A small watercolor shows Edgar Allan Poe with a slight hint of a smile. Read it here.

Sleuthing around

I haven’t read a single Nancy Drew mystery. I’m only vaguely familiar with The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries TV series from the late ’70s. But then again, I’ve never read any Hardy Boys book either, and I was (in those days) way too young to be interested in teen stars like Pamela Sue Martin. It was my older female cousins who actually watched the show and made a huge fuzz over Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson.

The bad weather and the slippery snow had forced me to stay indoors since Monday, giving me the opportunity to finally watch some of those DVDs and Blu-rays that I still haven’t opened. The Original Nancy Drew Movie Mystery Collection, a 2-disc set consisting of the four Nancy Drew movies from the ’30s, was yesterday’s feature. I got it last year, after seeing Nancy Drew . . . Reporter, the second film in the movie series, on TCM. (Bonita Granville, who starred as Nancy Drew in all the four films, looked a lot like Christina Aguilera.) The Original Nancy Drew Movie Mystery Collection DVD set was my thorough introduction to the Nancy Drew universe, and I really enjoyed each one of the movies, because they give us a glimpse of “ancient” America—the innocent and kind U.S.A. of the Depression and pre-World War II eras. Hollywood movie characters back then do not have to be troubled, angry, sassy, foul-mouthed and oversexed.

I can’t forget that hilarious exchange between the sheriff and the lazy handyman in Nancy Drew . . . Trouble Shooter:

Sheriff Barney Riggs: Now listen, Apollo, you’re so excited, you don’t know what you’re talking about! Was it a corpse?
Apollo Johnson: A dead corpse!

Grace

“Starlight can be quantified—1954 was ‘this year of Grace,’ according to Life—but its effect on maddened mortals below is all but impossible to gauge.” Read more.

That Good Friday vibe on Christmas week

I received the promotional materials for the Brooklyn Museum’s James Tissot: The Life of Christ exhibit in the mail today—a hardcover catalog of the complete 350 watercolors, a 2010 calendar and a postcard book. After a religious awakening, French painter Tissot (1836-1902) traveled to the e Holy Land to paint the scenes from the story of Jesus with historical accuracy.

The pictures are breathtaking—they always give me that inexplicable feeling every time I see Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth. I call it my “Holy Week feeling.” (I prefer Holy Week and Passover week over Christmas, by the way.) I wonder if the Tissot watercolors were ever used as references in the making of Jesus of Nazareth.

I’m glad that these watercolors can now be found in a single, good-looking book. Prior to the release of the catalog, the Tissot watercolors can only be found in hard-to-find, expensive and rotting antique editions and old, old Catholic family Bibles.

The exhibit ends 17 January.