(no subject)

[snowystingray]

I've had some odd synchronicity going on in my life lately. For starters, I unconsciously coordinated the past week around Venice: we just finished reading The Merchant of Venice in class, and I watched the film with Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino on Saturday; last week I also watched Summertime, the David Lean film with Katharine Hepburn; and I've been rereading Brideshead lately, and am almost at their trip to Venice. The next movie on my list of things to get from the library is Venus, which almost kind of sounds like Venice (okay, now I am stretching it).

Then on Monday night, the final Jeopardy! clue included something about Emile Zola, and I thought, "Doesn't Paul Muni play him in a movie that I keep meaning to watch? I wonder when it is going to be on." The very next morning I checked my e-mail: "TCM Reminder:Life Of Emile Zola, The 1937 playing on Tue. October 23." That same morning I was down at breakfast eating with a friend, who randomly mentioned something about A Midsummer Night's Dream. "Oh!" I said. "That's the next thing we're reading in class, actually." Then I went upstairs and changed the day on my Forgotten English calendar, only to have the vocabulary word and historical tidbit both be about A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Weird, right? Maybe life is trying to tell me something.... Oh well; I will ignore the urgings of fate (whatever they may be) and instead steal a meme from foolshavepride.

10 Things Currently on My Desk
01. electric pencil sharpener
02. cell phone
03. aforementioned Forgotten English calendar
04. Psych: The Complete First Season on DVD
05. Moonlighting: Seasons One and Two on DVD (let's guess how much studying I get done while sitting here...)
06. recently acquired lilac Bon Bon nail polish to coordinate with my Benjamina costume
07. flier from an art gallery, proof required to receive extra credit in art history
08. note reminding me to feed my roommate's fish this past weekend
09. list of local radio stations, so I know what's good to listen to in the car
10. ...and a big huge stack of books and notes towering over me to DO MY HOMEWORK!!!

9 Favorite Ships
01. Guy/Marian (Robin Hood)
02. House/Wilson (House M.D.)
03. Shawn/Lassiter (Psych)
04. Kirk/Spock/McCoy (Star Trek: TOS)
05. Bashir/O'Brien (Star Trek: DS9)
06. Chris/Blake (American Idol 6)
07. Cutthroat Pixie/Thirteen (House, M.D.)
08. Damon/Carlton (Official Lost Podcast)
09. Clark/Lex (Smallville)

8 of My Current Favorite Songs
01. Serenade in Blue - Glenn Miller Orchestra
02. No Action - Elvis Costello
03. Apruil in Paris - Andrew Kostelanetz
04. (She's) Sexy + 17 - Stray Cats
05. Blake Lewis - Dumpty Humpty
06. Cake - Love You Madly
07. Michael Buble - I've Got You Under My Skin
08. El Tango de Roxanne - Moulin Rouge!

7 People I Talk to Most
01. my brother Dallas
02. my sister Nickie
03. Sarah
04. Tiffany
05. Kelby
06. my mom
07. Rebecca

6 Favorite Kinds of Candy/Chocolate
01. Three Musketeers
02. Dove dark chocolate hearts
03. Cadbury creme eggs
04. tropical mix Jelly Bellies
05. gummy worms
06. Milky Way

5 Favorite Bands and ONE Artist
01. Duran Duran
02. Elvis Costello and the Attractions
03. Stray Cats
04. Van Halen
05. Tom Jones

4 Websites I Visit Daily
01. Gmail
02. LiveJournal
03. Comics Curmudgeon
04. WebCT

3 Items on My Wall (I am doing my wall at home, because my dorm is totally naked)
01. The Two Towers poster
02. Erté calendar
03. pillows spelling out my name

2 Favorite Sayings
01. Tinkerty tonk
02. Fresh to death

1 Favorite Movie
01. Lawrence of Arabia

Comments

[queeniefox.livejournal.com]

What do you think of that film of Merchant? I have to say, I'm not very up on the play so it's hard for me to to care that much about it one way or the other, but hey, Shakespeare on Film geekery is fun!

[snowystingray.livejournal.com]

I actually thought it was really good. I kept meaning to see it when it first came out but somehow never got around to it; the lame thing is that, right before I checked it out, I went on YouTube to watch the trailer -- and suddenly I knew the whole trailer word for word, frame for frame, because I remembered that it was played before Phantom of the Opera, which I saw in theatres an ungodly number of times. So maybe that's why I never caught it the first time around, because every time I was in the mood to see a film I just went and watched PotO again for about three months straight.

Um. Anyway. Back to the film. It seemed pretty unbalanced in terms of comedy and tragedy, but I think most of that stems from the play itself; so while I think it captured a lot of the funny scenes really well, they always seemed kind of out of place. Of course I am going to say yaaay for any movie that has Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes kissing within the first fifteen minutes ;) Shallow fangirling aside, I did like how their relationship was handled, and the note of sadness at the end as Antonio passes him into Portia's bond. Oh, but I didn't like the very end... They do a kind of weird thing with Jessica where she basically just stands there and mopes in the background for the entire movie, and then at the end she is all glum and regretful and watched people shooting fish with arrows (??? I have no idea what the significance of that was) and it turns out that she never really traded the ring that she stole from her father. Eh, it just struck me as kind of weird. The acting was all fantastic; biiig surprise there, I'm sure. That was actually why I wanted to watch it in the first place: for our final project we have to do an in-class performance, and I'm in the group that is doing Merchant of Venice, so I figured it would be a good idea to watch some proper actors do it before we started mucking around.

[queeniefox.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's interesting, because I really liked the Jessica thing! It's just another layer to the dark undertones the relationships have throughout, and it's reinforcing the fact that her beau is obviously not at all on her wavelength, which we see earlier on. Also I suppose it's making you think about issues to do with Shylock - adding to the subversion of his fate being a happy ending.

Of course I am going to say yaaay for any movie that has Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes kissing within the first fifteen minutes

Oh man, this is totally understandable. Irons kills me in this film; he's so angst ridden!

[snowystingray.livejournal.com]

I realize that it's very irrational and unfair of me, but I guess the real reason why I wasn't overly fond of the change was that it killed my own pet theory about Jessica. I saw her sale of her mother's ring not as an act of spite against Shylock, but rather an act of ignorance that fits into the emotional coldness of her relationship with her father. In my own mental version of their family, Leah dies when Jessica is very young, and she is raised without hearing much about her mother. Shylock preserves his wife's memory as his one spot of tenderness and keeps it hidden from everybody else, including his daughter. Jessica therefore does not know the significance of the ring when she steals it, and the fact that she trades it so readily means that she was never given a reason to treasure it with sentimental value. I just saw it as another instance of Shylock's denial of emotional connection coming back to bite him in the butt. So, I will shake my fist at the filmmakers for violating my own personal vision :P

[snowystingray.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* And now I just realized that I've commented as if you haven't yet seen the movie, which I'm sure you've probably already done. Whoops.

[foolshavepride.livejournal.com]

The Merchant of Venice was an awesome movie ^^

[snowystingray.livejournal.com]

Agreed! I was just depressed after watching it because we have to do our own production for class and I know it is going to be awful by comparison. Why can't we be a bunch of Academy Award winning actors, huh?

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Moonlighting! <3

(Clearly, this was a really necessary comment.)

[snowystingray.livejournal.com]

Totally necessary! I don't know anybody else who watches it! Yay, this makes me happy :) It is a much beloved show in my household (my dad has a total mancrush on Bruce Willis, and I think he not-so-secretly aspires to be David Addison), but when I started watching it at school last term I had to endure the endless mockery of, well, everyone. But as Cordelia would say, their loss is our incredible gain, right? I actually bought the DVDs as a gift for my dad, but, being the horrible daughter that I am, promptly stole them to catch back up with episodes that I haven't seen in ages. It's perfect Saturday morning material for me to watch whilst eating Wheat Chex in front of my computer.

(And of course the perfect Sunday morning material is Robin Hood! I am psyching myself up by peeking at the posts over at robinhoodbbc. Yes, it's a tease, but OMGSHIRTLESSGUYEEEE!! is surely worth the wait.)