To generalize from wilfulcait's principle

[mrissa]

N random things make an entry!

1. This morning our package from Otto arrived! So far we have only opened one bag of chocolates, but they are very fine. So apparently we were good children after all. Also we have enough paprika sausage to feed an army, or alternately to feed ourselves for a month or even two.

2. While I was out walking Ista, it flurried beautifully! Snow blew in our faces and she danced and I laughed and passersby smiled at us involuntarily. A few smiled voluntarily, but you can see the difference in how it comes on their faces.

3. Tomorrow I leave for Omaha in the mid-afternoon. I will be going to my cousin's baby shower and to a family Christmas event. I will return Sunday evening. I will try to get a functional lj phone-post number on my cell phone before we leave, but other than that I will not be in internet contact until Sunday night. Be interesting without me, and if something absolutely needs to be said, tell markgritter or timprov; they can relay it to me.

4. Here is an example of why I liked "Master and Commander: Far Side of the World" more than I thought I would: in the funeral scene, when everyone is saying the Lord's Prayer, the camera didn't linger on Stephen Maturin's face. So it wasn't obvious. But when all the C-of-E and/or Dissenter Prots got to "for thine is the kingdom," Stephen shut his mouth. Like he would, because Catholics tend not to say that part. If the camera had lingered on his face while he was doing it, it would have annoyed me, because doing a dance about how true they were to the characters would have been just as bad as not being true at all. No, it was off to the side of the shot, and I actually had to rewind on the DVD player to be sure, but it was there: Maturin was behaving like Maturin when only a few persnickety geeks would notice or care.

papersky characterized this movie as fanfic for the books, and I think she's mostly right. It wasn't that I thought Russell Crowe was Jack Aubrey so much as that evoked Jack Aubrey, and that was enough for a few hours of spectacle, and more than I really expected. It was like -- I think it was like having actual historical figures cast, actually. Where you think, well, he's clearly not Louis XIII or Abraham Lincoln or whomever else, but he'll do as a stand-in; the thing can continue uninterrupted and unargued, as long as we all know that this man is an actor and not the real Jack Aubrey.

Yes, I know there is no real Jack Aubrey. Except that there is, in the books. Perfectly real and himself. So.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Now I want to re-watch M&C just to look at that moment. (I hadn't noticed it, and didn't know about that distinction in behavior anyway.)

Mmmm, ship porn.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, ship porn.

Which concept adds a whole new level of meaning to "She is vulnerable in the stern, as are we all."

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Exactly so.

Except Pullings. Film Pullings is Pullings.

Actually, Pullings gave me the feeling I have when I meet people I only know online, oh my, there's Pullings, that's what he looks like. I don't know who that actor was but he was perfect.

The thing the film does impressively well, and which no other film I've ever seen has got anywhere near, is allowing the extra material from the books to be there as depth for those who have it. (Also, no love story -- what's with that, I thought films were obliged to have a romance?)

rysmiel bought me the DVD with all the making-of stuff for my birthday. I haven't watched it yet.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Pullings looked incredibly familiar, but looking over his credits in the IMDB makes it clear that it's just because -- particularly with his hair the way it was in M&C -- he looks like someone on my friendslist. Who probably hates that actor's looks, so the minute I say, he'll be horribly offended, because that's how these things go; I think they both look well enough, even apart from looking like Tom Pullings, which they very much do, and which is not a bad thing at all in my book.

Pullings moved like Pullings. Having the right face is all very well, but being able to hold your shoulders like the person you're playing is another thing entirely.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I really like that observation: he evoked Jack Aubrey. Yes.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin and several others from those books are so real to me that they turn up in my dreams. And while Maturin does not look like Paul Bettany I'm afraid Aubrey looks a lot like Russell Crowe, which makes me mad because that's not how I pictured Aubrey before I saw the movie.

But the rest of them, yes yes. And it was such a love affair of a movie between the director and the books. I should love to own the DVD.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have heard of people having this problem, of having the characters in their heads from the books morph into the characters from the movies. I'm glad to say I don't have this problem much. I can picture Jack Aubrey quite clearly, and he still isn't Russell Crowe; but then, Frodo Baggins isn't Wossname, either. I'm lucky. Or non-visual. Or both.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I finally finished the books and now am allowed to watch enough of the movie to figure out who's who, and some plot. I'm looking forward to it now. It took me a while to get Russell Crowe out of my head for Aubrey, and then I ended up with more a nebulous shape of big and yellow and wild grins, but that always happens.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Aubrey is more movement than still portrait anyway.

So is Maturin, but it's finer-grained movement.