#i rarely enjoy austen adaptations even of the books of hers i love

[lesbienneanarchiste]

Someone convince me that Sense and Sensibility is worth finishing bc I really enjoy bits and pieces but on the whole it's a slog that I have to force myself to pick up and I don't want it to be

[cctinsleybaxter]

2022 in Books

Happy new year! I play faster and looser with this list every time, but 42 books -> 6 favorites -> 7 almost-favorites and/or honorable mentions. Tumblr doesn’t lend itself very well to forum discussions that aren’t ‘fandomized’ in some way, so know I’m always down to answer questions, go into more detail, talk about other books, or exchange recommendations. With that let’s dig in, listed by reading order not merit.

The Department of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

At least I am having a twenties, I thought, though my twenties, which I’d treated with a cast-down-your-bucket-where-you-are approach, had thus far only brought me a string of men who were all very sad about some quality in themselves that they had no intention of making any effort to change.

Quality varies so much in anthologies that I tend to dwell on the misfires over successes and end up disliking them, but that wasn’t a problem here. Evans’ writing style instantly clicked for me; prosaic but still very beautiful, with short sentences and run-ons taking turns. I also think it’s interesting (read: annoying and predictable) that summaries and reviews say that this is a collection ‘about race’ when so many of her stories are reflections on everyday life. My favorite was Why Won't Women Just Say What They Want, about a visual artist who sets out to make amends to every girl he’s ever wronged, with close runners-up being Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (about a wedding reception) and Alcatraz (about a family reunion.)

Emma by Jane Austen

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person who either marries or dies, is sure to be spoken kindly of.

I like Emma so much it’s a little embarrassing. It’s the most conservative story I think I have ever or will ever enjoy, about small town drama resolved by maintaining the status quo, and I’d love to do a deep-dive comparison between adaptations because the appeal is all in the third person limited narration. The book is funny and smart and dumb and overly-descriptive and frivolous and mean and full of word games because Emma herself is and likes those things; the intro of the edition I borrowed calls it a ‘dramatization of self-knowledge,’ pointing out that the dialogue is so memorable and idiosyncratic because characters are speaking in the way other people hear them, rather than how they sound to themselves! To take one example it’s difficult to write a guy who has a surface-level standoffish ‘doesn’t suffer fools gladly’ attitude but is fool4fool (many romcoms have tried and failed), but as someone. um. in that demographic. Knightley works.

Savage Feast by Boris Fishman

I can make myself work at my writing for many more hours than I want to. I can make myself rise when all I want is to lie on the floor. I can make myself charm almost anyone, especially if it means they can give me something I want. But I can’t make myself stop eating so quickly. I can’t make myself stop eating even though I am full. It’s too good. And I am too hungry.

Well Mr. Fishman thanks for getting me to fall in love with you with that paragraph. Unlike someone writing a memoir just because they have the ability to write access to the publishing industry + memories, Fishman has a rare knack for storytelling that makes it feel like whatever he says next is worth hearing. He uses in-text recipes to frame his family’s move from the USSR to the United States as continuous event, his tactile descriptions are incredible (“…a zinc-grey pot embossed with factory and model identifications that made it feel like a part of some engine. The lid closed over the rim with a distinctive, plaintive peal that rolled all through the house...”), and grappling with emotions without coming to any real conclusions is honestly a novelty for the genre. He of all people could romanticize Eastern Europe and doesn’t- is instead up front about returning and feeling some of the completeness he expected, but also the disillusionment and smallness of childhood nostalgia, and, more practically, antisemitism. Describing the beautiful view from a friend’s guest room, “maybe I could feel what I felt because I could leave.” 

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

It had become a verb which needed no object.

Journalists have a lot of trouble balancing objectivity with their own opinions and emotions, and usually just opt for one or the other. Shilts is maybe the rarest gem in the world for achieving such a balancing act, and this is maybe the best nonfiction book ever written. His research into as many sides of the global AIDS crisis as possible, the creation of a timeline from the late 70s up to publication in ‘87, and his concise, thoughtful writing style are unmatched. I couldn’t highlight the edition I was using so ended up taking notes just because everything felt so relevant. In the early 80s The University of California wouldn’t buy a $1,500 filter for their infectious disease lab and was too proud to accept government help. One researcher (Levy) asked the government anyway and got it, but it set his research back six months. “In politics the players jockey for power, in academia, they play for vanity, a far more compelling instinct that could conjure far more vindictive punishment.” 

It’s always by turns comforting and deeply painful to me that so little has changed within the LGBT+ community over time. The slowness with which progressives actually managed to accomplish anything, infighting over everything from personal health responsibility to PC language, and the stark differences between gays living in the extremely politically and socially active West Coast and the didactic ‘old school’ East Coast were fascinating to read about. Felt far too relevant in 2022. 

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan

Another @actuary-tattoo rec that was so catered to what I like in a novel it’s a little scary. Third person limited narration, short, clever sentences, a horror story that feels like three different books it changes plot and tone so dramatically, and a perfect, brilliant ending that ties everything together and resolves none of it. Also not a premise I would’ve sought out on my own, about 20-somethings Remy and Alicia becoming obsessed with Remy’s ex-girlfriend trough Instagram. Takedowns of affluent urban millennials and ‘the social media generation’ have always felt disingenuous to me, because either the self-insert character is just as well-off as their peers but inexplicably better than them, or the self-insert is a put-upon impoverished outsider.. with likewise unquestioned moral superiority and no earthly desires. Authors and filmmakers frame themselves as holier-than-thou observers when they should be using their participation in these groups to their advantage! Morgan explores the emotional toll of the East Coast social scene and then doesn’t excuse it. Her descriptions of anxiety and small talk and playing the game are the best I’ve ever read, and it was refreshing to have two horrible protagonists so complicit and so needy in that setup. I know them, I love them, I’m terrified for them.

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel ‘Chip’ Delaney

Two essays, Times Square Blue a reflection on how NYC had changed in the 1990s through explicit descriptions of Delaney’s time at porn theaters in the 70s and 80s, and Red composed of lectures, notes, and diary entries advocating for cross-class and cross-cultural contact in everyday spaces. In a profit-driven world networking is becoming the only option for social contact, as places to encounter one another naturally, or even just be in cities are actively destroyed with ‘no loitering’ signs and buildings you can’t set foot in without a wallet. Safety concerns are often cited as the motivation behind these changes, but urban planning decisions like moving sex businesses away from walkable streets, into areas only accessible by car and surrounded by other ‘seedy’ businesses instead of residences, parks, or offices make them isolated and even more unsafe for everyone. The Times Square of the 90s was already becoming a Times Square dedicated to the vague idea of tourists in need of fun, the vague idea of (wealthy, white) women in need of protection, and the vague idea of U.S. citizens in need of ‘a good neighborhood’ over the needs of the real people living and working there.

Runners Up/Honorable Mentions

Broken Harbor by Tana French

The friend who got me hooked on French books hasn’t read this one, but pointed out that the reason she likes them is because they’re like if Criminal Minds was good. I don’t usually delve into plot with these reviews, but since my love was entirely driven by it I’ll spoil a little here. A nuclear family are found killed in their suburban home with no motive and too many suspects, but the most puzzling aspect of the case is that the house is riddled with holes. The father was trying to catch some sort of beast he was certain was living in the walls, probably (probably?!) the product of carbon monoxide poisoning, which both symbolically and literally drove the family into bankruptcy, social shame, and a brutal death. As a commentary I found it really striking (made even more so by French’s often unkind depictions of the working class; queen of lack of self-awareness), and I love that the B plot is structured around the setup of ‘older by-the-book cop takes younger loose-cannon cop under his wing’ but with realistic, disastrous consequences on both sides. The originality and the deliciously creepy ambiguity have stuck with me; some scenes are straight out of a nightmare.

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

Rare to find something so skillfully written and genuinely scary in the horror genre. Like A Touch of Jen it shifts focus and feels divided into three different books, the first a meditation on hauntings and the second reminiscent of a violent Stephen King story, but it really lost me in the last third. Frustrating in a way that only made me want to discuss it more, I’ll definitely look for anything Moreno writes in the future. He has my attention.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Easy to see why this has become a college staple; helpful as a literary reference point, but also just a hell of an interesting story with some choice dialogue. It only gets a mention because I will always prefer and advocate for The Idiot, which reworks similar themes and characters to much more melodramatic and touching effect.

The Fisherman by John Langran

If you like cosmic folk horror this is a must-read, with some of the best trope subversions I’ve run into and an intelligent, patient writing style. The ending lost me a little bit, but I am so into the idea of a meditation on grief told through the lens of a distorted, monstrous fishing story! Two working class men waiting out bad weather at a roadside diner are warned about ‘the one that got away,’ and go to seek it for themselves.

Awful Hospital by Jonathan Wojcik

I haven’t read a webcomic since I was in early college, never really been my preferred medium, but man is AH good. As a sci-fi horror action historical tragedy romantic comedy board book finger puppet comic it’s much more nuanced and kind with its moral philosophy than a lot of ‘great literature’ I’ve read. I was hesitant to include it on the list because it’s not a completed work or even really a book, but why not let it be a prefect little anomaly, just like the thing itself.

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

This was so fun! A serialized magazine story about aliens landing in feudal England and being unprepared for villagers physically beating the shit out of them and stealing their spaceship to go fight the French. Brought me back to being a kid staying up past my bedtime to read weird garbage, only this one was incredibly well-written, framed as an account transcribed by the village clergyman (the only literate crew member, natch), and given lots of excellent drama and conundrums.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Like watching a train wreck (complimentary.) Everything on earth happens to this 18-year-old, and I’m delighted that it’s being taught in schools since it has as much to say about writing and English social history as it does being a lovelorn teenager. I also much prefer Charlotte’s writing style to her sister Emily’s; was finally getting that ‘rawness’ everyone always claims is in Wuthering Heights. 

[saint-starflicker]

From a quick trawl of your blog, you enjoyed The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky...which I have never read... and have tagged Rory Gilmore affiliated with a reading list of some stuff I have read but I think the books don't really have much in common.

Based on that, I recommend:

1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

I also really enjoyed the 2007 movie adaptation, and I love both the book and the movie but I think both are good. It's the early 19th century and Catherine Morland is a gothic literature fanatic. While being a companion to the older Mrs. Allen to attend parties in the high society in Bath, Catherine finds herself in a tangle of treacherously false friendships, cozy/domestic murder mysteries, and the best most-underrated Jane Austen romantic hero ever. I include Mr. Darcy in that consideration—unless your type is gruff, awkward, foot-in-mouth but ultimately does the right thing.

2. Crooked House by Agatha Christie

Somebody in Sophia Leonidas' family murdered the patriarch, and her fiancé Charles Hayward is forbidden from going through with the wedding until they catch the culprit.

This one is my personal favorite, but Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile by the same author were probably more popular titles because of good reasons.

3. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

This one's so quirky. Off the coast of Carolina is the island of Nollop, named after the inventor of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and they put that sentence in iron letters over an archway because they worship the sentence. Due to age and bad weather, the letters begin to fall off and the townsfolk take it as a sign that they should not use any words with those letters. Then, more letters begin to fall.

It's a comedy about a cult, an ode to the English language, and the title character is one of the only voices of reason. It's also formatted as an epistolary, which I just think is neat.

4. The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Post-Apocalypse science fiction. The safehouse against the thing that caused the apocalypse falls and a mad scientist woman, a friendly fun schoolmarmie (who might have murdered somebody though), a military grunt who wants to kill things, some other guy who got swept up in the plot and is very anxious about it, and the next step in human evolution in the form of a little girl—must travel the wasteland together to survive and find answers to the mystery of the end of the world.

5. The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones

Very dark academia with witchcraft, desperately intense bonds of sisterhood, and domestic violence.

Books I haven't read in full but sound interesting:

The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein, I watched the 2011 movie and it is very dark and very academia, but I have not read the book.

Final Girls by Riley Sager. When trendy horror movies in the 1970's made "the monster" of the piece a serial killer, film and media scholars noticed how gendered the genre became. The last sole survivor had to be a girl in every movie like this, because even fictional boys aren't as free to be emotional in these fleeing-from-a-murderer situations. This trendy trope is called The Final Girl. The book is about what would happen if "real-life" survivors of attempted serial murder or mass-murder had a support group...and why they would, ironically, try to murder each other.

Fledgling by Octavia Butler. I'm reading it now because I heard there was a vampire in it. It's pretty good so far, it's rare that I read a book in first person and think that I'm definitely going to be comfortable sharing this character's head for the whole book no matter what happens but I really like the main character's voice in this one.

please send me book recs!! <3

[leggerefiore]

I've noticed in some headcanons that Ingo seems to enjoy rom-coms, I feel like he might also enjoy period dramas/romances for the old school courting. It might appeal to his domestic heart and even give him ideas on how to court someone but what kind of movies or tv shows might the twins enjoy?

Cw: Death mention

▲Ingo▼

● Yes, man loves his romcoms. He watched them with his mom during his younger years and got dreadfully into them. Any completely predictable drama and downturns had him in tears, as he didn't understand why a stupid misunderstanding had to ruin their clearly true love? He's upset and writing a bad review until they get back together in the end. He writes an absolutely glowing review, starting with “Bravo! Excellent!”

● He finds period dramas neat, and does find traditional courting interesting. Usually, he'll find him a long movie adaption of some Jane Austen novel and dedicate an evening to it. He also gets passionately in to these and ends up buying Victorian romance novels. No one believes to Depot Agent saying Ingo was reading Jane Eyre during his lunch break. He very much was but denies it. His image must be upheld.

● Deeply enjoys Murder on the Orient Express. He would for anything like to happen on his train, but it gets his mind rolling. He loves mysteries, it makes his mind think and consider things from perspectives he might not otherwise. Also gets mad if the killer isn't who he thought it was; he goes on a full rant. Ingo loves anything that takes place on a train. (He has also read through book.)

● Naturally, he likes documentaries that are train adjacent and watches them quite often. He loves learning how they are made, how different engines function, about certain famous train wrecks. All of these things he knows by heart, yes, but he loves hearing it over and over again. It's a bit terrifying when you're just chilling at his place, and you learn about a wreck that killed dozens, and he's explaining how it could have been prevented.

● Secretly into true crime as well. He really is the bored housewife to a love for murder documentaries. Emmet calls him weird whenever he visits, and there's just a narrator going on about how a woman had been steadily poisoning her husband for years. (The younger twin turns that shit off.)

● Watches Hallmark movies around Christmas like crazy. Everyone hates it, but no one can stop him. Elesa had to wrangle the remote from him because genuinely started crying over one. Emmet felt bad, but it was for the greater good.

● He also watches sitcoms when he doesn't want to think. Sometimes they're modern, but often they're dated. Walk in, and you'll catch him watching reruns of 'I Love Lucy' while doing some excess paperwork. He doesn't even look up to greet you, he's in his zone.

▽Emmet△

○ Horror movies. Emmet loves anything exhilarating, so naturally these are some of his favourites. Despite what some people might think, he actually has the patience for slow burn psychological horror as well. (Unlike Ingo with his romcoms who wants to couple together in the first act.) He's not sure what his favourite one is, but he definitely enjoyed the Evil Dead. (And Dark Water, too. Disliked the Shining, however, because of all the bullying it allowed for him and Ingo.)

○ Also likes train documentaries! More obsessed than Ingo, he will memorise an entire script for favourite one. He loves learning about the more mechanical side of trains, so you'll frequently hear him getting into the engineering side of things. People wonder if he's planning on trying to build his own train. (Ingo won't let him… Alone.)

○ Shamefully, Emmet absolutely has watched a few animes. No one talks about it, but everyone has walled in to catch him watching some weird shounen. He has very strong opinions on them, too. Do not get him started, it is a rare time he will not shut up. (Others being battle and train adjacent.) See, all this is to say Emmet has seen JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and is reminded of Ingo by Jotaro. He does not know why. (Also, Emmet has read part 7 and likes it solely because of Love Train. Horrible man probably thinks the villain should have one because of that reason alone.)

○ Watches those multiple hour long videos on YouTube about random topics as background noise. Does he care about the content? No. Is it wonderful background noise while he does things around the house? Yes, absolutely. Emmet is really uncomfortable by silence, as his job has constant noise and Ingo talked a lot growing up. He appreciates the vague comfort it gives him.

○ Emmet likes high fantasy content. You will catch him rewatching Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit quite often. People get tired of it, but they are some of his favourite movies and books. He enjoys aggressive world-building. Definitely read The Silmarillion and managed to understand it without a chart of what the fuck is who and where. Ingo has no idea what drives his brother to such odd lengths. (He hates Tolkien. Not enough romance.)

○ Watches high league competitive battles to analyse them for strategies and new ideas. Ingo does this, too, actually. They both sit around a screen and criticise bad plays. They have absolutely roasted a poor novice trainer who lucked their way into a league challenge. Emmet scribbles down whenever someone does something he wants to use in his own battles. He's very passionate and into it.

○ Doesn't really watch shows, so much as movies. It feels hard for him to slow down and watch content split up slightly. Ingo does it regularly, so Emmet feels like he might be the weird one. He has no idea how he sits through animes, yet one episode of a highly acclaimed that Elesa recommended him will always be ditched with the first three episodes.

○ Also likes sci-fi content, so people are often amazed by his strange conversations about things that make no sense without context. Why is the train guy going on about sulfur-based lifeforms? He is going into great detail about to his brother who is just kind of nodding along like he understands. (Ingo does not.)

[ladybirdwithoutdots]

why Emma 2020 changed the proposal scene a bit?

I understand why some book fans don't like Emma bringing up Harriet in the proposal scene because, yes, in the book she thinks keeping Harriet’s embarrassing secret is the only thing she can still do for her friend. I get it doesn’t seem so canon compliant for her to tell him there; pointing that up is valid because you are just noticing a major difference between the book and the movie, and it might even seem contradictory for Emma’s character that she does the very thing that in the book she doesn’t want to do for a valid reason. However, I also understand why the movie makes this choice, and I think this is a case in point of what it means 'adaptation' and a creative team having to reconcile with the big differences between a movie and a book when it comes to storytelling and story structure. One major difference between a book and a movie is that in a movie, they show what happens in the story from an outside perspective where canon is limited to and defined as, essentially, only what the characters make you see, and what they explicitly say. If something doesn’t happen on screen then it isn’t real in the story.   A novel, on the other hand, tells a story from an inside perspective and is allowed, through a narrator (the author or the protagonist or another character) to make the reader actually know more than the characters in the story may know in that moment. The problem with a movie adaptation of this book in particular is that you can't read Emma's thoughts in a movie, and a lot of things about this book are based on her thoughts and a ‘narrator’ who can help you understand the motives of the character beyond what the character is explicitly telling others in that moment. That’s why, among other things, this movie chooses to make Emma’s feelings for Mr Knigthley obvious (on her face, in her reactions, in her jealousy) for us from the beginning, and regardless when she realizes them herself, instead of reducing it all only to the scene where Harriet confesses loving him herself, and Emma realizes her own feelings for him through the obligatory explanation scene with flashbacks, voiceovers or an added conversation between her and another character (though you could say that the added moment here where Harriet realizes, and thus says that Emma loves Mr Knightley too might serve that same function still).

I think that with the infamous proposal scene and its on screen adaptations, there are, surprisingly, two ‘issues’ a creative team may face:

1) The first issue is that, in the book, Emma is torn between her relief and joy that Knightley loves her back, and her anguish about Harriet for she doesn't know how she is going to face her and tell her that the guy loves her..and that she loves him back.  She takes her time and actively avoids Harriet because she feels guilty and that, for a time, ruins her own happiness a bit.

Given how many things still happen in the book between Mr Knightley’s proposal and the wedding, and the fact it’s near impossible for the creative team to put everything in a movie, if you only see Emma being happy about his declaration of love there (as if she doesn’t know Harriet wants him too) and then them getting married, it might seem like almost erasing her feelings from the novel a bit and make it seems she doesn't feel guilty about Harriet, or doesn’t care about her being in love with Mr Knightley too. That would go against her character growth a bit for she'd look, once again, selfish and lacking empathy and critical thinking about herself.

Of course, if you read the book you also know that she does think harsh things about Harriet after the latter tells her that she loves Mr Knightley (and she thinks he wants her too). Emma regrets including her in her circle, she thinks she has turned her into arrogant, vain girl for thinking Mr Knightley would really marry someone like her. However, all of that isn’t mutually exclusive with the fact she also matures, she does see her own responsibilities and arrogance and she blames herself for Harriet’s inevitable humiliation (the second!).

Too long don’t read: book Emma cannot be indifferent about the fact Harriet wants Mr Knightley too, and she isn’t.

In light of that, it’s easy to see why Autumn de Wilde changed things a bit in the movie and, in a way, tried to still insert that part of Emma’s thoughts from the book that would be very hard to include without a narrator’s voice. It’s also a change consistent with their own version and the fact they try to make Emma a better friend in the end ...

Emma really kind of gets everything she wants in the end, and we thought a lot about watching the movie after she behaves so badly and has this epiphany and she’s totally different now,” de Wilde said. “We really felt like we would not be able to enjoy it unless we saw Harriet transformed by their rift.” The solution: pushing Emma to actively make things right with Harriet and her best suitor before Emma can accept a much-desired proposal of her own.

Indeed, you could say that Emma gets it easier in the book than in the movie because in the novel everything works in her favor without her having to face Harriet and make any personal effort to help her.

This movie, instead, wanted Emma to really earn her happy end a bit more, and called her out on her faults in the funniest way possible during the proposal scene, well emphasizing her state of mind and conflict through the infamous nosebleed, that also ruins her perfect, poised appearance symbolizing her humanity and the fact that no matter how much she tries, she can’t keep a false control of everything and always be ‘perfect’ (and the beauty of that metaphor also lies in the fact that Knightley isn’t one bit grossed by what is happening, he still tenderly touches her face, he’s all love and concern for her. He’s the one person who always loved her with her imperfections too, he won’t love her less just because she’s human).

By making Emma reveal Harriet’s mess to Mr Knightley in that moment, not only you have a version of the events that is consistent to this movie, you also have an Emma that, in some way, is still consistent to the Emma you also read in the book, albeit just in her thoughts. It also emphasizes Emma's character growth all the more.

For sure, I agree with de Wilde about that. That said, if I want to play devil's advocate here I have to say that while Emma gets it easier in the book, their version kind of erases Harriet/Robert’s agency a bit for I prefer them finding their way back to each other (in the book) without any interference. I also maintain their ‘let’s do better for poor victim Harriet’ myopia results in them not really making Harriet act as a real friend for Emma, not even in the end, leaving their relationship very unbalanced simply because they didn’t realize that their Harriet, even more than her book counterpart, was wrong too and she too had to make amends and apologize for her own blindness about Emma’s feelings, and her selfishness and uncalled for anger when she realized Emma loved the same guy she wanted for herself. This is what happens when you have critical thinking about your main character, but not so much about the secondary ones; creative teams often forget that just because someone is the protagonist (and they get the happy end) and they may be wrong about something, it doesn’t mean they are wrong about everything.  I honestly feel really bad for Emma in that ‘I refused Robert Martin because of you’ scene in the movie because it really is the one moment where she is doing nothing wrong, and Harriet has no right making her feel like she’s the bad guy for loving a guy she had know since forever just because her ‘friend’ had decided she wanted him and deluded herself he wanted her too. If that scene is supposed to make me feel bad for Harriet they failed because it makes me find her annoying.  Maybe it’s personal experiences too for I well know what it means when you think you have a friend, but in reality that person doesn’t care about your feelings much, and just takes for granted that your purpose and your focus is just helping them. 

2) Another issue writers might find in adapting the confession scene from the book to a movie version is Mr Knightley's agency too.

Here’s the thing: her behavior in that scene is confusing to Mr Knightley for, in one moment she seems to not even want him to propose to her, but the next he understands that she loves him back. The poor man despaired, his heart broke when she seemed to reject him.

Austen, in her function of narrator, acknowledges this inconsistency in the book and she's like, yeah it must be very confusing for the guy but people rarely tell the whole truth to each other all the time and he's too happy in the end to ask himself why Emma acted so weird with him, and what matters the most is that he knows she loves him back and they can be finally together.

Still, he’s going to be all the more confused when, later, he tells her that Harriet has accepted Robert’s second proposal and where he expected Emma to be unhappy, given her oppositions to the guy before, he’s very surprised by her 180° and happiness for Harriet instead. He even says that.

Once again, I think if you are adapting the story for a movie where you don't have a narrator’s voice keeping the balance a bit and explaining what the characters can’t explain, it might seem like making this part of the story a bit unresolved for him (and him and Emma). It might not seem fully satisfying that he doesn't get an explanation and their misuranderstanding isn’t fully cleared up.

This movie resolves that by having Emma confess him that, basically, her confusing behavior was because she was scared he wanted to propose to another woman (because she loves him but she didn’t think it’s her he actually loved!), and then when he tells her that it's her he loves, she reciprocates but is also overwhelmed because there is still the issue of Harriet and it ruins her party in that moment because new Emma cannot be indifferent.

This Knightley can make sense of her behavior much better than in the book  and if he's still so happy in the end, it’s because he understands that Emma didn’t reject him for she actually loves him back, and in this version she needs to make amends with Harriet and Robert Martin before she can accept her own happy end. 

I also like what the director said about this scene, especially this point:

“I wanted to make that scene so romantic, and then just turn it on its head, because to say just like, they’re not perfect, they’re both just like a hot mess, and seeing Mr Knightley and Emma panic and try and solve a problem together is just as romantic as the proposal” 

you know what? I agree with her.

Let's be honest, btw, Emma trusts him. Book or movie, this is a fact. She may not tell him about Harriet there but I think even in the book’s canon, it’s not so impossible to imagine that one day, when it’s safe for her to because Harriet is happy with Robert etc, she may tell him the whole story to explain her behavior to him a bit more... and have a good laugh together about the absurdity of it all.

I shouldn’t need to say this but yeah, an adaptation doesn't 'replace' the book said adaptation is based on. It's not like this is the definitive story now. I just have no real issues with changes if there are reasons for them and they make sense with a particular version, and I don’t have issues with adaptations trying to find ways to include even those things that might actually be in the book too, but they seem impossible to convey in a movie. All things considered, this movie actually is one of the most faithful to the book and historically accurate adaptations of Austen ever made. When I watched it the first time, having read the book many times, I was really surprised by how much of the book’s text is included in this version and not really modernized or altered.

I maintain that this version of the proposal scene is as ‘valid’ as the others too. Given Austen doesn't write Emma's answer in that scene (you only know she makes him undestand in some way that she loves him back  and they agree to marry), it's fair to point up that all the adaptations had to create that part on their own to fill where novel doesn't tell you every detail (same thing with the dancing scene: Austen puts the proverbial fade to black there, and whether Emma and Knightley were overwhelmed by dancing together in the book, it is their business just like their honeymoon, or whether they make out during their  engagement...). Emma kissing him right there and then like it happens in other adaptations isn't a more likely scenario for a lady in regency era’s context than her getting a spontaneous nosebleed, just saying.  If anything, Austen’s depiction of her female characters was influenced by the fact that, at the time, while a man could be explicit and very emotional when declaring his feelings for  a woman, a lady had to keep her cool and couldn't tell a guy she loved him so men had to understand a woman recipricated them through their own subtle messages and codes. This isn't to say other adaptations are wrong for making them kiss there, and for adding more romance to that particular scene (just like it isn’t wrong for this adaptation to make the dance scene and what happens afterwards more emotionally charged than it usually is, and choose to also emphasize Emma’s own feelings for him a bit more), but it isn’t wrong for this adaptation to do something different and place a kiss in the other romantic scene instead (when he tells her he'll move to Hartfield) so that the romance isn’t resolved in his confession scene only.  Expecting all adaptations to be the same and interpret things in the same way means making things a tad too formulaic, tbh. And I don’t know why I should even want that. Personally, I like every version of that scene makes sense with their own adaptation, I don’t consider it a ‘flaw’ but a good thing.

I find it annoying when people reduce the love scene in this movie to the funny nosebleed thing only, anyway.  It seems like misrepresenting it a bit to pretend this adaptation is just silly things when it really isn’t like that (and even the nosebleed actually has a purpose for the director that is NOT ‘silly’ tbh).  Regardless the fact I actually like the whole scene including the funny twist in the end too, it’s still a romantic moment and his speech is actually delivered in a way that is very moving to me because Johnny Flynn makes the feelings of the character come across as so real on screen, and you can also see on Anya’s face (they are both crying!) all the confusion and love and amazement. I honestly have no complains about how the part that is written in the book, his speech, is delivered here because it’s really well done and the acting is on point. I really love the way they conveyed all the emotions on screen and I even felt like they conveyed some things about him better than previous versions.

[cinema-tv-etc]

‘Bridgerton’ Isn’t Bad Austen — It’s An Entirely Different Genre

Critics and viewers have dinged the show for being a cliché-ridden period piece or a sloppy historical drama. But it’s neither: It’s Regency romance, and it’s spectacular.

By Claire Fallon

I was deep in a Regency romance binge a few years ago when I pitched a highly self-interested piece to my editor: an investigation into why this didn’t exist onscreen.

This was a creature apart from the Jane Austen adaptations and sedate period pieces I already enjoyed, or sexy but bloody cable costume dramas. A Regency romance is set in a fantasy version of British high society in the early 19th century, and the central action revolves around the courtship between a woman (often a well-bred beauty) and a man (often a rakish peer). They consummate their attraction in improbably acrobatic sexual encounters, and then they live happily ever after.

In the post-2016 election malaise, these novels became my anxiety palliative of choice. They piled up next to my bed and in my e-reader. But sometimes I wanted more, wanted to see the gossamer petticoats and lingering glances and gently unfastened bodices. The piece I pitched never materialized, but the object of my longing did. On Christmas Day 2020, Shondaland’s “Bridgerton” arrived on Netflix.

What ensued was both somewhat exhilarating — getting to see my Regency escapism come to life — and unnerving. My private indulgence, one generally viewed with dismissiveness if not contempt by non-romance readers, had become the target of a full-blown cultural discourse. “Bridgerton” was met with valid and vital critiques, especially over its treatment of consent, but also ones that made me wince: that it was formulaic, predictable, vapid, historically inaccurate, best suited for teens.

Many of the critiques, understandably, seemed rooted in unfamiliarity with the genre’s conventions, or in the expectation that “Bridgerton,” which is based on a series of books by Julia Quinn, would resemble a “Pride and Prejudice” remake. “You don’t get it!” I wanted to shout. “That’s not what this is!” The historical romance has finally gone mainstream — and that means a whole new audience is learning how to read a genre so long relegated to the margins. Sometimes that can be a bumpy ride.

With its bounty of sherbet-hued satin gowns, scandal rags full of malicious gossip, unblinkingly earnest romance, and on-screen lovemaking, “Bridgerton” seems to defy easy categorization for many critics, journalists and viewers — and even Regé-Jean Page, who stars as the smoldering Duke of Hastings.

“It’s a little bit of Jane Austen meets ‘Gossip Girl’ with maybe ‘49 Shades [of Grey’],” he told The Wrap in a December interview. Critics and viewers, at their wits’ ends trying to make sense of this sexy, gossipy, frothy Regency costume drama, also tried to characterize it in terms of beloved on-screen classics: “Pride and Prejudice,” “Downton Abbey,” and, yes, “Gossip Girl.” These comparisons convey some bafflement, an uncertainty about how to categorize a show that isn’t really a realist historical drama, nor an edgy satire, nor a campy soap.

Though it’s true that Austen was the inspiration behind the whole subgenre — the first Regency romance novelist, Georgette Heyer, was emulating Austen’s work — it has evolved into a well-established genre with its own tropes, conventions and standards.

“There’s a way that those kinds of incredibly popular adaptations of Austen will make you, I think, expect that you’re watching a certain kind of thing, and romance novels are not trying to do the same thing at all,” critic Aaron Bady said in a phone conversation. “If you go in watching ‘Bridgerton’ and say, ‘I think I’m watching Jane Austen,’ you’re going to be disappointed. It feels a little Jane Austen-y, but it doesn’t work like a Jane Austen novel.”

Nor is period romance merely a form of realist period fiction. In her review of the show, Patricia Matthew, an associate professor of English at Montclair State University, placed it in a long artistic tradition of Black women depicted in Regency settings. But ultimately, she said in a phone interview, “Nobody’s reading Julia Quinn because they’re looking for disquisitions on historical precedent.”

Bursting though a romance novel may be with carefully researched, period-accurate details about Vauxhall entertainments, Almack’s vouchers or ribboned chemises, these novels really aren’t about the Regency era, or at least not primarily.

“Historical romance does a different kind of work than historical fiction,” Sarah MacLean, a popular historical romance author, told me during a phone call. “The work of the romance novel is not to tell the story of the past. It is to hold a mirror to the present.”

By building a love story between the primary couple, one that is guaranteed to end “happily ever after” or “happy for now,” a romance novel not only provides escapism and the heart-pounding rush of vicarious passion, but a space in which to explore how romantic relationships can and should be, and how women can find fulfillment and happiness. And that means these stories have little to do with how the marriage market of Regency high society actually functioned; they’re about what readers — predominantly women — want to see in their lives today.

“The appeal of the time period for readers is very much about being able to distance readers from certain kinds of social issues and then reframe them as a reflection of society now,” MacLean explained. In the 1970s, novels typically featured brooding alpha males who took what they wanted sexually ― a narrative device, MacLean argued, for the fictional heroines of the time to have plenty of sex without being seen as loose and deserving of punishment. Historical romance novels today often feature heroes and heroines having what seem like rather anachronistically tender exchanges about consent.

Ella Dawson, a sex and culture critic, sees period romance as a way to provide a balm — an experience in which violence and trauma are, if not absent, superseded by a reassurance of ultimate well-being — while also walking readers through more thorny questions.

“Romance as a genre is really interested in consent, in diversity representation, in political issues,” she said. “Romances are so infused with these issues that I [am] really passionate about, and they explore it through this really fun, romantic, swoony, but still very intellectual, thoughtful, accessible lens.”

As odd as it felt to see a straightforward romance adaptation dissected as if it were a failed attempt at matching Jane Austen, it makes sense. Because the genre is generally regarded with such disdain in mainstream culture, it occupies a rather marginalized niche. A non-romance reader is unlikely to have a firm grasp of many things about the genre, outside of well-worn jokes about throbbing members and Fabio’s flowing hair, and though romance is among the bestselling genres in the book industry, it’s rarely adapted for TV or film.

Why has this omission persisted for so long? “I can’t imagine that it isn’t a huge amount [due to] patriarchy, in the sense that for the same reason it gets disdained on the page, it gets disdained on the screen,” said MacLean. To this day, the people deciding which films and shows to finance are almost entirely men. Shonda Rhimes is that rare exception — a woman with creative control over a TV empire, and a fan of the Quinn series.

Practical obstacles to adapting romance also pop up. A novel stuffed with sex scenes and building toward a tidy happy ending may be tricky to adapt for network TV, which needs to keep things a bit cleaner — and keep the narrative drama going indefinitely.

And it’s not just the network TV standards and the tidy endings. The heightened reality and bodice-unclasping of the genre, Matthew said, rely on an intimacy between the reader and the page that’s difficult to translate to the screen.

“I think the plot lines are bananas. I think they’re so extreme that they strain credulity,” she said, laughing. “You have to believe that a sane man, an adult, would say, ‘Oh, I’m just not going to have children so I can spite my father.’ It only works if it’s you with a glass of wine, kind of throwing yourself over to the world of romance.” It’s awkward to sit with someone else, knowing they’re watching the same melodramatic story unfold, partaking in a pleasure that feels somewhat private, if not embarrassing. “We all have these fan worlds that when they’re exposed to other people that aren’t a part of that world we might feel protective of, or feel bashful,” she said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bridgerton-netflix-romance-genre_n_60086fd5c5b6ffcab969dafa?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[roc-thoughtblog]

Sense and Sensibility Readthrough Part 5

Chapter 8, Pages 31-34

Previously, the Dashwoods move into Barton Cottage, and meet their colourful hosts, Sir and Lady Middleton. Their most genuinely heartfelt insincerity makes even the passionless Colonel Brandon seem respectably tasteful in Marianne's eyes.

Colonel Brandon generally seems like an interesting person for Marianne to get to befriend; perhaps Elinor and Edward would both seem much less strange if Marianne got to know more people like them in favourable terms.

Very slow session because this chapter was too entertaining + It's given me thoughts about narrative voice that I think is more important I write them down before I forget.

Readthrough below.

Chapter 8 Lady M's mother, Mrs. Jennings, is a real person shipper. Oh boy, this will end w- Colonel Brandon?? With Marianne? I was just saying they'd make nice friends but come on lady, dude's like 20 years older than her! Is this why or because, that your own daughter is married to Sir Middleton fourteen years her senior? Oh, her only reason is that the Colonel seemed to enjoy listening to Marianne's music. Ah, and;

It would be an excellent match, for he was rich and she was handsome.

Natch. And she's of course enjoying herself greatly with the private teasing one gets to unleash upon their infatuated friends, except that neither of them are probably really her friends, and she's doing it publicly, so. She has no right and it's awful. I can feel the awkward shudder-inducing from here outside the book, in real life, 200 years in the future. Poor Marianne. :(

At least the good Colonel seems to take it like a champ. Marianne still holds the convinction that his 35-year-old-ness is ready to return to the dust though.

"My dearest child," said her mother, laughing, "at this rate you must be in continual terror of my decay; and it must to you seem a miracle that my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty."

Mama Dashwood is so cool. :'D

Oh, Marianne actually calls her Mamma. Should I update my spelling or... nah.

"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire affection again,"

ohMIGOSH MARIANNE NO!! OH MY POOR ANNE ELLIOT, COVER YOUR EARS. This is so much different from Persuasion I am rolling.

Addendum: my friend has just called Marianne a drama queen. I agree.

I was just about to say, in comparison with Persuasion it's so nice to have Mama Dashwood around as a most wholesome well-witted force of good nature and love, and then it hits me with this.

I really do like Anne Elliot, you know. I appreciated her before, but lines like here do make me appreciate her more.

Marianne's such a hopelessly youthful romantic she can't imagine anyone older than a teenager being capable of love. Elinor doesn't even try to convince her. He talked of flannel waistcoats, so he must be ancient. Marianne! Marianne no!

I have gone 40 minutes and covered 2.5 pages. From that you can tell I'm thoroughly entertained.

"Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?"

Holy shit Elinor, that is some spitfire. Marianne you cheek, as soon as Elinor leaves the room she tries to goad Mama into bringing Edward over- wait no she genuinely thinks that something is wrong with Edward for not having come over already. Mama's more sensible about Edward's genuine personality.

"Twice did I leave them purposefully together in the course of the last morning, and each time did he most unaccountably follow me out of the room."

HA! Yeah Marianne is the opposite of me. I had no idea how people like her feel, but she has no idea how reserved people act in general. Or I guess borderline aroace in my case. She'd probably think I'm crazy. No real passion, aversion to affection displays and impractically rare events of attraction? Thoroughly inhuman. Which I appreciate, heheh. It's okay Marianne, I'm flattered.

It's lines like these though that make me think about modernised Austen adaptations. Like these are great, insightful lines and funny in a very character-driven way, but when I watch the period adaptations, the lines are so long and need parsing that the humour and intent get lost on me.

Similarly, I feel like if you lose the snarky omniescent narrator you lose part of the charm; and I don't remember seeing any period adaptations with something like that. I really love that the Good Omens adaptation preserved the narrator for the precisely that reason! Is there an Austen adaptation with modernised dialogue that keeps the snarky backhanded voiceover? I would be quite interested.

I'd would say I'm stopping early today but in terms of time I'm going over; also, I'm being struck by thoughts on Narrative Voice that I'd like to write down and develop so that'll be where overtime will go today.

[c-ptsdrecovery]

Fanny Price and Emotional Abuse

colubrina replied to your post “Emotional Neglect in Austen”

I would actually love to read your analysis of Fanny Price if you ever had time and inclination to write it out.

Oh my goodness, where do I start?

Fanny Price is abused and neglected from start to finish of that novel. She suffers direct emotional/verbal abuse from Mrs. Norris, bullying from Maria and Julia, excessive criticism from those three AND Sir Thomas, and emotional neglect from Lady Bertram and Tom. She also suffers PHYSICAL abuse and neglect, mostly from Mrs. Norris, who does not allow her to have any heat in her room in the winter and forces her to work beyond her strength in the summer even though Mrs. Norris KNOWS she’s chronically ill (and it’s no wonder, considering the amount of emotional strain Fanny’s under, that she should be chronically ill!). 

The only person in that house who even notices that she’s utterly miserable from the trauma of being torn from her family is Edmund: he’s the only one who treats her like a person and is kind to her. It’s no WONDER she falls in love with him: he’s the only person in the entire family who doesn’t treat her like SHIT. But while Edmund recognizes Mrs. Norris’ behavior toward Fanny to be beyond the pale, he generally does not seem to notice that his more immediate family also treats her horribly. Lady Bertram treats Fanny as a servant, putting her own (Lady Bertram’s) needs and wants before Fanny’s (”You don’t want to go to the party, do you? You want to stay home with me because I get bored if you don’t!”). Sir Thomas is generally so critical and cold that when he greets Fanny kindly on his return from Antigua she is “nearly overcome” by his kindness. Even Edmund himself begins to both emotionally and physically neglect Fanny the moment he gets interested in Mary--leaving Fanny for ages on the bench alone, keeping her waiting too long for her horse when she needs to exercise, etc. Fanny only gets noticed and included as a member of the family when Maria and Julia are both gone and the family is apparently bored without them--the same reason Henry decides to flirt with her.

The result is that Fanny has almost no self-esteem. She has completely internalized Mrs. Norris’s lesson that “Wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last.” At one point she parrots the lessons she’s been taught by the treatment of the entire family:

“I can never be important to any one.” “What is to prevent you?” “Everything. My situation, my foolishness and awkwardness.” “As to your foolishness and awkwardness, my dear Fanny, believe me, you never have a shadow of either.”

She believes she’s foolish and awkward because the family harped on her lack of education and “refinement” when she first came to them, and they have drilled into her, not only that she is not important to them, but that she can never BE important to ANYONE. Classic result of emotional neglect. And Fanny NEVER actually gets over it, throughout the entire book.

She’s nearly silent through much of the book too, mostly because she’s too terrorized to talk. As someone who was similarly brainwashed by emotionally abusive parents, I can tell you that taking any attention under some circumstances feels excruciating and guilt-inducing, because you’ve been conditioned so hard to believe that “being the center of attention” is somehow morally WRONG. Fanny suffers from precisely that false belief (note her distress when she is required, by the social rules of the day, to start the dancing at her own ball--Sir Thomas basically has to SCOLD her into it!).

That said, it’s amazing to note the one way in which she DOES have self-esteem: she believes in her own moral judgment. This is the only basis on which she is able to think and act independently of others. When Edmund treats her badly, she gets seriously annoyed. When she notices Henry’s bad behavior toward Maria, she is indignant. She secretly judges Mary Crawford the whole way through the book. I would attribute this trust in her moral judgment to be the result of the kind of long walks and talks she has with Edmund in the text and has had her entire life: he has molded her to think of things with the same moral judgment he uses and to think herself capable of being superior to others in that moral judgment. Of course, since she has absorbed the moral tone of Edmund, learned from Sir Thomas, she is pretty judgy sometimes, since Sir Thomas clearly feels himself and his moral code to be superior rather than conservative. She certainly feels superior to her birth family (with some reason, honestly lol), because in this one thing she has been taught that the family she grew up in was superior to others. She has imbibed this superiority and acts it out when at Plymouth.

Let me give you an example of Sir Thomas’s conservative moral code. You might think, from reading Mansfield Park, that Jane Austen disapproved of private theatricals, and that they were generally considered too naughty by the Better Sort of Person. It turns out that this isn’t true at all. Not only were private theatricals popular, but Jane Austen enjoyed performing in them and even WROTE some plays for that purpose! One of them involves a gentleman sitting on a lady’s lap!! It turns out that the strait-laced tone of the novel is not so much a reflection of the author’s standards of conduct, but of Sir Thomas’s, imbibed by Edmund and then Fanny. Edmund, Fanny, and Sir Thomas’s dislike of private theatricals would have been a bit PRUDISH at the time, not the obvious standard of Good Breeding.

Another thing the novel has imbibed from Sir Thomas is its insularity. The modern criticism of Mansfield Park talks a lot about the family’s isolation. Now, I don’t hold with the criticism that makes a big deal out of Fanny marrying her cousin and implying that that’s incestuous, because in the 19th century, cousin marriage was not only acceptable but a norm. Marrying your cousin was often considered desirable because it strengthened family ties and kept money in the family. BUT, I completely agree with the observation that the Mansfield Park family seems to shun the outside world. 

One thing that I don’t know if the criticism has commented on is that dysfunctional families often function like cults. Offspring of dysfunctional families tend either to rebel and “run away” (Maria elopes, Julia elopes, Tom rebels) or to fail to establish autonomy (Edmund takes a living in Sir Thomas’s gift and later the house right down the road; Fanny never gets out of the family at all because she marries Edmund). Dysfunctional families also teach their members not to trust those outside the family circle. They don’t tend to socially interact much with others. I can say from personal experience that my parents have VERY few friends that they see outside of work or church, and only one couple that they invite to the house regularly. As a child, I rarely got to have birthday parties with my friends: my parents would instead invite my extended family. I was taught not to establish strong bonds outside the family, to trust the family only to be generous or to help and support me. I find it difficult to establish strong ties of friendship outside the family or to trust those friends to support me the way my family might.

The Bertrams are the same way. Maria and Julia go to local balls, but that happens offscreen, and we never meet any of their acquaintances except Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth (who become family). The family disapproves strongly of Tom’s having such an active social life away from home, and disapproves when he brings home a friend (Mr. Yates) to stay. Even when Sir Thomas holds a ball for Fanny in the house itself, we never actually meet any of the guests except the ones we already know! And the “last straw” that causes Edmund to agree to join the theatricals is when they start asking people “outside their circle” of Mansfield and the parsonage to participate. He also deplores that they might invite in an audience of these personae non gratae. Frankly, it’s amazing that the Bertrams were willing to open their family circle enough to let in, not only the Grants, but the Crawfords.

I’ve gone on for quite awhile, but I’ll close like this. When I first read Mansfield Park, I hated it and I hated Fanny, because she had no backbone and cried all the time. Then I watched the 2007 adaptation with Billie Piper, and realized that although Fanny was so shy and retiring and weepy, she had an iron backbone in that nobody could make her do what she thought was wrong. Mansfield became one of my favorite Austen novels.

At the moment, I don’t feel like I can reread MP. I’m dealing so much with my own history of emotional abuse and neglect that MP strikes just waaaay too close to home (also the reason I can’t rewatch Tangled right now). I’m not sure how much I like MP anymore, frankly. Austen did a fantastic job of accurately portraying a victim of emotional abuse. And she gave Fanny what she wanted at the end, which was Edmund. But I can’t help wondering if Austen herself wished she could have ended the novel differently. She comes right out and says, authoritatively, that if Edmund had married Mary, and Crawford hadn’t run off with Maria, that Fanny would have married Crawford and been happy. She could have escaped from her abusive family, with someone who really sees their abuse: “And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness.” If Crawford and Maria hadn’t run off together, the ending of Mansfield Park might have been entirely different--and it MIGHT have been better.   

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior February 21, 2020 – CALL OF THE WILD, BRAHMS: THE BOY II, THE IMPRACTICAL JOKERS MOVIE, EMMA and more!

After overestimating Birds of Prey… I mean, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey… it looks like I underestimated Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog… I mean Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik… with Sonic. It truly spanked my lowball prediction in the mid-$40 millions, but I wasn’t alone there at least. Hey, it’s a fun movie and my positive review wasn’t off-base with the critical world at large, so there’s that, too.  (Apparently, I liked both Downhill and Fantasy Island more than most people, including CinemaScore voters who gave the movies a “D” and “C-“ respectively… ouch!)

This is likely to be another down week as neither of the two new movies are particularly strong, which gives me a chance to focus instead on this week’s FEATURED MOVIES! And we have four of ‘em this week, no less!

That’s right. I think it’s time I go back to my previous desire to use this column to focus on smaller movies that you may have missed since very few of the bigger outlets bother to cover them, and there’s a few worth pointing out this week. I’m gonna start with the two foreign films, because hopefully, you’ve listened to Bong Joon-ho and his translator and are not as fearful of subtitles…

First up, opening on Wednesday at New York’s Film Forumis Jan Komasa’s CORPUS CHRISTI (Film Movement), Poland’s selection for the Oscar International Feature category, which was actually nominated for an Oscar in the category in which everyone already knew Parasite was always gonna win! It’s a shame, cause this is a really amazing film with Bartosz Bielenia playing Daniel, a troubled youth just out of juvenile hall who steals the trappings and identity of the youth prison’s pastor and is therefore mistaken as an actual priest when he arrives at a small community village that has suffered a tragic loss. It’s an amazing film about faith and forgiveness and redemption, and how the script came to Komasa from screenwriter Mateusz Pacewic is an equally amazing story. Seriously, if you get a chance, definitely check this powerful drama out, since it’s another fantastic film from a country that has continually been delivering the goods in terms of original storytelling.

I was just going to do three featured movies this week, but a really good German thriller is finally hitting the States, opening at the Quad in New York Friday then in L.A. on March 13 before a nationwide rollout. Michael Bully Herbig’s incredibly suspenseful German thriller BALLOON (Distrib Films USA) is about two families from the GDR (aka East Germany) who try to cross over into West Germany in 1979 using a hot air balloon, over a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Based on the actual events, their story previously was adapted into the Disney movie Night Crossing (which oddly, isn’t on Disney+ yet-- I checked­, but it’s on Amazon Prime if you wanna compare the two movies). The movie doesn’t spend nearly as much time in the balloon as something like The Aeronauts, as the family’s first attempt fails miserably, so much of the film involves them working towards a second attempt, while trying not to be caught.

Balloon is a pretty heavy film (irony?), sometimes a little overwrought with drama but it keeps you on the edge of your seat as it cuts between the families trying to figure out their escape plan and the authorities trying to put together the clues to find these defectors. There’s a particularly amusing man in charge of the investigation, played by the always-amazing Thomas Kretschmann (The Pianist), who is constantly berating his men, something that helps lighten the otherwise heavy tone that permeates the film. This is another fairly low-key foreign film that’s worth seeking out.

Another movie people should make an effort to seek out is Rashaad Ernesto Green’s PREMATURE (IFC Films), an amazing film that follows the relationship between two young people in Harlem over the course of a summer. We first meet Zora Howard’s Ayanna as she’s hanging with her friends kibitzing about boys, as they begin their last summer before Ayanna heads to college. Shortly after, she meets Josh Boone’s Isaiah, and the two hit it off. The rest of the film follows the ups and downs of their relationship including incredibly intimate moments that lead up to Ayanna getting pregnant.

I won’t go through the plot play-by-play style, because it’s interesting to discover the twist and turns in their relationship in a similar way as we do our own relationships. Needless to say Green has a pretty amazing partner and lead in Howard, who co-wrote the screenplay, which is probably why it feels so authentic and real. Sure, there are a few scenes between Howard and Boone, both fantastic actors, that feel a bit too showy dramatically but otherwise, it’s a fantastic second feature from Green who has mainly been directing TV since his earlier film Gun Hill Road. I’ll definitely be very curious to see what Green and Howard get up to next either alone or working together.

Opening in New York and L.A. this Friday but in theaters nationwide on March 6 is the latest incarnation of Jane Austen’s novel EMMA. (Focus Features), this time starring the wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy (from The VVitchand Split/Glass) as the title character, Emma Woodhouse, a 28-year-old matchmaker who prides herself on the relationships she’s put together even while unable to find her own mate.  The film follows as the latter starts coming in the way of the former as she infiltrates herself into things as an “expert on love” who can’t find it herself.

Maybe it’s not surprising that I haven’t read much of Austen’s work and have missed this one altogether, never having seen any of the other iterations, but it’s a fairly wild and witty ride. Much of that is due to the amazing and wonderful cast around the young actor, the most surprising behind Mia Goth, who is in fact three years older than Taylor-Joy, but plays the younger wide-eyed Harriet who looks up to Emma and elicits her advice. Emma basically steers Harriet from the farmer she likes to Josh O’Connor’s Mr. Elton, the wealthy local vicar who is more than a little bit of a dark. This leads to a bit of a revolving door of who is interested in whom, etc especially when Emma’s nemesis Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) returns to Hartfield.

Some of the other men in the mix are Johnny Flynn’s dashing George Knightley – the brother-in-law to Emma’s sister – and Callum Turner’s wealthy Frank Churchill, whose attentions lead to more misunderstandings. Both were great but I was more impressed with O’Connor who transforms into a completely other person when Emma spurns his affections and seems like a different person from the way first-time features director (and photographer) Autumn de Wilde shoots him. Of course, Bill Nighy is as great as always as Emma’s father, always feeling a slight draft, but even more impressive is the wonderfully hilarious Miranda Hart (from Spy) as Miss Bates, a woman who gabs at length about how wonderful Jane Fairfax is, much to Emma’s annoyance. As much as Emma. is Anya Taylor-Joy’s show, it’s the ensemble cast around her that makes the movie so infinitely enjoyable, getting better as it goes along.

This is a very good first feature from de Wilde, who has directed quite a number of music videos for Beck, and Emma. seems very different from the movies we normally get from video directors, much of that to do with Austen’s source material and the cast. Either way, how things develop over the course of the film makes it more enjoyable as it goes along. (Although I have never read the book, the film seems fairly faithful to the book’s Wikipedia page, so Austen fans should enjoy it, too.)

I guess we can now get to the wide and semi-wide releases and the rest of the movies – merging my two columns into one means you get more 5,000-word columns, you lucky ducks!

The higher-profile of the two new wide releases is probably CALL OF THE WILD (20thCentury Studios), a PG adaptation of Jack London’s classic novel starring Harrison Ford and the most adorable CG dog (i.e. not real, so back off PETA!) you’ve ever met named Buck! Sure, dog lovers might say, “Why would we want to watch a movie with a CG dog when clearly, a movie with actors in green suits turned into dogs using CG would suffice?” But no, it’s actually a very heavily CG movie directed by Chris Sanders, who directed Lilo & Sitch, the first How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods before giving a go at live action. (Sanders also provided quite a few voices in earlier animated films like Disney’s Mulan and Tarzan.)

A film that already was well into production when Disney bought Fox (now 20thCentury Studios), Call of the Wild also stars Omar Sy (returning for next year’s “Jurassic World” finale), Karen Gillan, Dan Stevens, Bradley Whitford but the real star of the movie is the dog Buck, which is performed by the immensely talented Terry Notary, who you’ll know for his work on the “Apes” movies with Andy Serkis, Kong: Skull Island and some of the characters in the last couple “Avengers” movies.

Of course, opening the weekend after Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog, which has turned out to be a bigger hit than anyone imagined, certainly won’t help The Call of the Wild.

In many ways, this reminds me of the 2002 Disney movie Snow Dogs, which opened with $17.8 million over the 4-day MLK weekend. The combination of Ford (who appears in very few movies) and the adorable dog antics might be enough for the movie to make $15 to 17 million this weekend, maybe a little more, although it only has two weeks to do business before Disney’s next Pixar movie, Onward, takes over, not giving it much time to make bank.

Mini-Review: It’s pretty evident that this exceedingly faithful take on Jack London’s book will not be for everyone. While I personally was mixed, I expect this to be one of the rare positive reviews just ‘cause. Surprisingly, it’s also the most “Disneyfied” movie that could possibly come from the newly-renamed 21stCentury Studios as it’s a movie clearly made for kids and animal lovers even if never the ‘twain shall meet, in some cases.

The story follows a large St. Bernard named Buck (portrayed by Terry Notary – but we’ll get back to that), who begins his life as the spoiled and pampered pet of a wealthy judge in California but is sold to a man who trains Buck with his club sending the dog on a wild journey across the Yukon as part of a dog sled for a pair of Canadian postal workers (played by Omar Sy and Cara Gee from “The Expanse”). Eventually, he’s paired with an alcoholic frontiersman (Harrison Ford) and he finds true love, as the two of them go off looking (and finding) gold.

Some might be surprised that director Chris Sanders (who has an extensive animation background) decided to go for straight-up CG when depicting the animals and some of the environments in Call of the Wild. In fact, it feels almost necessary to make Buck as expressive as he needs to be to carry this film, and that’s where Terry Notary (Andy Serkis’ partner-in-performance-capture from the “Apes” movies) and the CG team comes in handy. Buck is already lovable but being able to make him so expressive doesn’t hurt, and the scenes where he’s interacting with other animals are pretty amazing.

We do have to discuss the negatives, and one of them is the episodic nature of Buck’s story that means that Harrison Ford, other than the narration and a brief appearance, doesn’t play a large part in Buck’s story until about the 45-minute mark. I didn’t think much of the performances by Sy and Gee or Dan Steven and Karen Gillan as the spoiled rich people who buy Buck to drive their dog sled off to find gold. Buck’s experiences as part of the first dog sled is far more positive even though it’s rigorous and it puts him at odd with the dog pack leader. The problem is that most of the human actors don’t come close to delivering what Notary does as Buck, the exception being Ford, but it’s still one of those odd CG-live action amalgations that doesn’t always work.

If you’re fond of Jack London’s Arctic adventures (as I generally am), Call of the Wild offers as much good as it does bad, but it’s worthwhile more for the amazing vistas and terrific use of CG (and Terry Notary’s performance as Buck) than anything else.

Rating: 6.5/10

I won’t have a chance to see the horror sequel BRAHMS: THE BOY II (STXfilms), but I never got around to seeing the first movie either, although this one, starring Katie Holmes, does look kind of fun. 2020 has not been a great year for horror so far with almost a new horror every weekend and few doing particularly well – The Grudge tops the heap with just $21 million and that opened almost two months ago!

I really don’t have a lot to say about this other than the fact that the original The Boy(not to be confused with The Boy, The Boy or The Boy, which are also movies about a different “Boy”), also directed by William Brent Bell, opened in January 2016 to $10.8 million on its way to $35.8 million domestic but it also opened at a time when there were no strong horror films in theaters. Some could argue that there are still no strong horror films in theaters, especially since so many of them quickly lost theaters after bombing. Still, there have been a lot this year already and the most recent one, Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island underperformed this past weekend, so why would anyone want more?

STXfilms’ marketing has been solid even as this moved from its December release to now, but I still think it will be tough for this to make more than $10 million this weekend and probably will end up closer to $8 million or less.

Opening in limited release but also sure to be exciting to the fans of the TruTV hidden camera prank show is IMPRACTICAL JOKERS: THE MOVIE, which brings the hilarious Tenderloins comedy troop – Q, Murr, Sal and Joe -- to the big screen as they go off on a cross-country adventure to attend a party in Florida, playing their usual prank-filled games to see which three get to attend. At this writing, I have no idea how many theaters it’s opening – I’m assuming 150 to 200 maybe? – so no idea how it might do although there are already some sold out showings in my general area (NYC) where the guys are from.

Mini-Review: It feels like there need to be two reviews for this movie – one for those who already know and love the show and find the Tenderloins hysterical (this includes me) —and then one for everyone else.  The former can probably skip the next paragraph.

The Tenderloins are a group of four Staten Island friends (names above) whose antics led to a successful TruTV hidden camera show where they pull pranks and challenge each other to say and do whatever they’re told. The show has run eight seasons, and it’s made the Tenderloins such big stars they regularly sell out enormous venues (like Radio City Music Hall) to perform live for their fans. Considering the success Johnny Knoxville’s “Jackass” show has had in movie theaters where it can take advantage of an R-rating, there’s little reason why the “Impractical Jokers” shouldn’t be able to do the same. (For some context, I watched this movie with a theater full of the group’s friends, crew as well as Q’s firehouse buddies, in other words, 75% of Staten Island.)

The movie, directed by Chris Henchy, long time McKay and Ferrell collaborator – the film is presented by their “Funny or Die” brand –opens with one of a number of scripted/staged scenes to frame the road trip the Tenderloins to attend a party in Miami being held by Paula Abdul. Since they only have three passes, they need to compete in their usual challenges to determine who misses out.

If you are a fan of the show, I’m not going to spoil any of the challenges or pranks they plan on each other, but they generally get better and funnier as the movie goes along, to the point that when it returns to the “story” and the scripted stuff, the movie does falter a little. Although the Tenderloins aren’t the greatest actors, they are great improvisers and you can tell when they’re coming up with lines by the seat of their pants.

The majority of the movie is basically what we see on the show without all of the commercial breaks cutting in just as things start to get outrageous, and as someone who watches more of the show than I probably should admit, I find it hard to believe no one watching the movie will at least get one good snicker out of the movie. There are a few recurring gags throughout the movie as well as a follow-up to a memorable punishment from an earlier season. (Like with the show, you’re likely to feel bad for Murr and Sal, the nicer half of the group who always get the most abuse because of it.)

If you’re already a fan of the Impractical Jokers, you’ll probably like the movie, but if not, you might not get it and there’s just no real use trying. In other words, not a great intro to the “Impractical Jokers” but a fine bit of fun for the already-converted.

Rating: 6.5/10

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…

1. Sonic the Hedgehog  (Paramount) - $29 million -50% (up $1.5 million)**

2. Call of the Wild (20th Century) - $17 million N/A (up .3 million)** 3. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey  (Warner Bros) - $9 million -48%

4. Brahms: The Boy II (STXfilms) - $7 million N/A (down .6 million)**

5. Bad Boys for Life (Sony) - $6 million -48% (down .1 million)**

6. The Photograph (Universal) – $5.5 million -55% (down .6 million)**

7. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (Sony) - $5.3 million -57%

8. 1917 (Universal) - $5 million -38%

9. Parasite (NEON) - $3.6 million -35%

10. Jumanji: The Next Level  (Sony) - $3.3 million -42%

-- The Impractical Jokers Movie (TruTV) - $1.8 million*

-- Las Pildoras de mi Novio (Pantelion/Lionsgate) - $1.3 million*

* These last two projections are made without much info on either movie, including theater counts for the former.

**A few minor tweaks as we go into weekends with actual theater counts, although this weekend will still mostly be about Sonic the Hedgehog. I still don’t have any theater counts for Impractical Jokers on Thursday night so I guess we’ll just have to see if the theaters playing it report to Rentrak and it gets some sort of placement, presumably outside the top 10, on Sunday. 

LIMITED RELEASES

There are lots of other new limited releases this weekend beyond the ones I mentioned above.

On Wednesday night, Fathom Events is releasing Masaaki Yuasa’s new movie RIDE YOUR WAVE (GKIDS) across the nation for one night only in some places, although it will get a limited release on Friday at New York’s Village East and maybe other places, as well. If you’ve seen any of Yuasa’s other films like 2017’s The Night is Short, Walk on Girl or Lu Over the Wall or Mind Game, then you can probably expect this to be another wild ride, except this time it’s on a surfboard. It follows the story of a surfer and a firefighter who fall in love. You can learn more about how to get tickets here.

Like Portrait of a Lady on Fire last week, Una director Benedict Andrews’ SEBERG (Amazon) received a one-week release in 2019 but it’s getting a legit limited release this Friday. It stars Kristen Stewart as French New Wave icon Jean Seberg who came to the States in the late ‘60s and began a relationship with civil rights leader Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), putting her in the sights of the FBI who were hoping to use her to bust the Black Panthers. The film also stars Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, Vince Vaughn, and Stephen Root, and it’s a pretty solid historical drama, although I haven’t seen it so long I’m not sure I can say much more about that.

I was never a huge fan of Bob Dylan or the Band but I found Daniel Roher’s doc ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON AND THE BAND (Magnolia) (about the latter) to be quite compelling as the story is told by various people who were there, including the film’s exec. producer Martin Scorsese who directed the band’s legendary concert film The Last Waltz. This is also produced by Ron Howard and Brian SGrazer of Imagine, so you know it’s gonna be a quality music doc, and it certainly is, although I’m not sure it will be of that much interest to people who aren’t already fans of The Band.

Opening in roughly 350 theaters this weekend is LAS PILDORAS DE MI NOVIO (Pantelion), translated as “My Boyfriend’s Meds,” a comedy about a woman (Sandra Echeverria) who falls for a mattress store owner who suffers from multiple personality disorder and when they go on vacation… he forgets to bring along his meds! Humor abounds. As usual, this won’t screen in advance for critics.

Tye Sheridan stars with Knives Out’s Ana De Armas in Michael Cristofer’s thriller The Night Clerk (Saban Films), Sheridan plays a hotel clerk with Asperger’s Syndrome who witnesses a murder in one of the rooms but ends up as the main suspect by the lead detective, played by John Leguizamo. The film also stars Helen Hunt and it will be released in select theaters (including New York’s Cinema Village), on demand and digitally this Friday. Just couldn’t into this one, having at least one good friend with Asperger’s, due to the way Sheridan played this often-debilitating disease. (Think Rain Man without the talent of Dustin Hoffman.)

Opening exclusively at theMetrographFriday with an expansion on March 3 is Portugese filmmaker Bruno de Almeida’s Cabaret Maxime (Giant Pictures), starring Michael Imperioli as Bennie Gaza, the owner and manager of the title nightclub specializing in a mix of burlesque, striptease, music and comedy. Bennie is fairly old-fashioned so when a modern day (translation: trashy and demeaning to women) strip club opens across the way, Bennie finds himself pressure to make changes to stay in line as he starts getting pressure from his mobster financer to change. I was kinda mixed on this movie, which delivers another typically great performance from Imperioli but the way it cuts between various acts and disparate scenes that do very little to move the story forward (including the far-more-interesting subplot about Bennie’s wife Stella, a performer suffering from depression, as played by the amazing Ana Padrão). I think one of the reasons I just couldn’t get into the movie is cause a friend of mine attempted a similar film based out of a nightclub and the film never got much traction. De Almeida should have paid more attention developing the storytelling than showing off his talented musical singing/dancing friends.

A second Portugese filmmaker, Pedro Costa, also releases a new film this week.  Vitalina Varela (Grasshopper Film) will open at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center on Friday. The title of the film is also the name of the non-actor who returns from Costa’s Horse Moneyto play a woman from Cape Verdean who comes to Fontainhas for her estranged husband’s funeral and sets up a new life there.

Also opening at the Quad Friday is the latest from the Dardenne Brothers, Young Ahmed (Kino Lorber) about a 13-year-old (Idir ben Addi) who has come under the grips of radical jihadism in his Belgian town, putting him at odds with various factions. When he carries out an act of violence, he ends up in a juvenile detention facility. The Dardennes won the Best Director award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where their films have been honored with the Palme d’Or twice. I’ve never been much of a fan but what do I know?

Opening at the IFC Center Wednesday is Nicolas Champeaux, Gilles Porte’s documentary The State Against Mandela and the Others, which is built around recently recovered audio recordings of the 1963-4 Rivona trial in which Nelson Mandela and eight others faced death sentences for challenging Apartheid. The film mixes animation showing the trails with contemporary interviews with the survivors including Winnie Mandela, about their fight against the country’s corrupt system.

Another doc I know little about is Andrew Goldberg’s Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations, which will open at the Village East Friday but it includes the likes of Julianna Margulies, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton as anti-semitism rears its ugly head over 70 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust.

Also opening at Cinema Village is Matt Ratner’s Standing Up, Falling Down (Shout! Studios) starring Billy Crystal and Ben Schwartz (the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog!), the latter playing a stand-up comic whose L.A. dreams have crashed and burned leaving him with little money, forcing him to return to Long Island. Once there, he pines over his ex (Eloise Mumford) and becomes friends with an eccentric dermatologist (Crystal) as they help each other deal with their respective failures.

Playing at the Roxy for a one-week run starting Friday is Sam De Jong’s Goldie (Film Movement), starring actress/model Slick Woods as the title character, a teenager in a family shelter pursuing her dreams of being a dancer while trying to keep her sisters together. This premiered at the Tribeca Film Festivallast year.

Oscilloscope (the distributor that brought you the cat doc Kedi) is doing something called “Cat Video Fest 2020,” which will take place at the Alamo in Brooklyn (although the Saturday screening is sold out there) and the Village East Cinema. This screening of pre-selected cat videos is also taking place at other cities throughout the country, and you can find out where right here.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

This Friday, the Metrograph will debut its newest series “Climate Crisis Parabels,” a series of varied future shock films, this weekend with Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably (1977), Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1999) (hosted by Naomi Klein Sunday afternoon, but also playing as part of the Playtime Family Matinees”) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cu ton Sunday night. “To Hong Kong with Love” also continues with screenings of Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1987) and the 2016 film Raise the Umbrellas. The ongoing Welcome To Metrograph: Redux also continues with HarunFarocki’sdocumentary Before Your Eyes: Vietnam (1981).  This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph is another Japanese thriller, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1966 thriller The Face of Another, and the Metrograph’s Japanese love continues as Playtime: Family Matinees will also show Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke from 1999.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” is Ken Russell’s 1987 film Gothic, and this week’s “Kids Camp” offering is the 2006 animated Curious George with a special “pick your own price.” In preparation for the release of Emma. On Friday, the Alamo is doing a “Champagne Cinema” screening of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley, which unfortunately, is sold out already. (Waugh Waugh) Monday’s “Out of Tune” is the Prince film Under the Cherry Moon from 1986, which is also sold out. (Hey, Jeremy Wein, why don’t you tell me these things are going on sale so I can go!?!) Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is the horror classic Candyman (1992), which is ALSO almost sold out and then we’re back to “Weird Wednesday” with next week’s offering, 1985’s soft-core actioneer Gwendoline.

If you’re one of those poor souls living in L.A., you can also go to see Don Coscarelli’s 2002 film Bubba Ho-Tep, starring Bruce Campbell, on Wednesday night or the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors on Thursday at the grand, new(ish) Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown Los Angeles. Saturday afternoon is a matinee of Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998), starring George Clooney and J-Lo and Saturday night, you can see Cassavetes’ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), starring Seymour Cassel and Gena Rowlands. Monday night is Juliet Bashore’s 1986 Kamikaze Hearts, which looked into the X-rated SF underground of the ‘80s. The West Coast “Terror Tuesday” is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Keanu Reeves, Gary Oldman and Winona Rider!

THE NEW BEVERLY  (L.A.):

Wednesday’s afternoon matinee is the classical musical The Sound of Music (1965) and then Weds and Thurs night’s double feature is Robert Redford’sThe Hot Rock (1972) and Cops and Robber (1973). Friday’s matinee is the late Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983) and then the Tarantino-pennedTrue Romance (1993, also directed by Scott), will play Friday midnight and Saturday’s midnight movie is the 1967 film Carmen, Baby. This weekend’s Kiddee Mattine is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). Monday’s matinee is Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) and the Monday night double feature is A Man for All Seasons(1966) and The Mission  (1986). Tuesday’s Grindhouse double feature is 1980’s Super Fuzz and 1977’s Death Promise, both in 35mm, of course.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Weds’ “Black Voices” movie is William Greaves’ 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, and then on Friday night in the Spielberg Theater, you can see the 1913 film Traffic in Souls with live music as well as a couple shorts. The Japanese horror film Kwaidan(1965) will play in the normal theater. On Saturday, the Egyptian is presenting “Leigh Whannell’s Thrill-A-thon” a series of four films that helped to inspire Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which comes out next week with some great options worth seeing, including 1987’s Fatal Attraction, David Fincher’s 2014 film Gone Girl, Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation Misery(1990) and the classic Aussie thriller Dead Calm(1989) starring Nicole Kidman … all for just 15 bucks!

AERO  (LA):

The AERO’s “Black Voices” film for Weds. is the great Stir Crazy, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and then on Thursday afternoon, you can see Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classicDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for $8 (free to Cinemateque members!) New restoration of the Russian film Come and See (also opening at the Film Forum in New York) will play on Saturday evening as part of the “Antiwar Cinema” series. Sunday’s double feature in that series is Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and the Russian film The Ascent (1977). Tuesday’s “Black Voices” matinee is Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust  (1991) and then Greg Proops will screen the 1996 film Ridicule as part of his Film Club podcast which precedes the film.

MOMA  (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Jack Lemmon continues through the end of the month with Mister Roberts (1955) on Weds., Billly Wilder’s Avanti (1972) and the classic (and one of my all-time faves) Some Like it Hot (1959) on Friday. This weekend also sees movies in the continuing “Theater of Operations” series, which will include Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2009) on Saturday afternoon and a bunch of docs including Werner Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness on Sunday. Weds also kicks off “Television Movies: Big Pictures on the Small Screen” – pretty self-explanatory, I think – with 1953’s The Trip to Bountiful and 1955’s Tosca on Weds. and Sunday, 1967’s Present Laughter Thursday and Tuesday and more. (Click on the link for full schedule!) Following Film Forum’s focus on black actresses (for February, Black History Month, get it?) MOMA begins a  “It’s All in Me: Black Heroines” series with All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story and Julie Dash’s Illusions, both from 1982, on Thursday and many more running through March 5.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES (NYC):

The Anthology still has a few more films in its “Devil Probably: A Century of Satanic Panic” including Eric Weston’s Evilspeak (1981) tonight in 35mm, but also David Van Taylor will be at tonight’s screening of his 1991 film Dream Deceivers. I’ve never seen either of these, by the way. Robert Eggers’ The VVitch and Alan Parker’s Angel Heart screen one more time on Thursday night, as well. This weekend also begins a new series, “Dream Dance: The Films of Ed Emshwiller” but since I have no idea who that is, I have nothing further to add. (Sorry!)

NITEHAWK CINEMA  (NYC):

Williamsburgis showing David Lynch’s 1990 film Wild at Heart as part of its “Uncaged” series on Friday just after midnight and John Singleton’s Poetic Justice on Saturday morning as part of “California Love.” They’re also showing Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride on Saturday morning for an “All-Ages Brunch Movie.”

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Elem Klimov’s 1985 Russian drama Come and See (Janus) will have a DCP restoration premiere at the Forum and Sunday afternoon will be a screening of the 1953 Mexican film El Corazon y La Espada in 3D. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is the 1953 pseudo-doc Little Fugitive.  Monday night is a screening of David Rich’s Madame X  (1966) introduced by actor/playwright Charles Busch.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

This weekend’s Weekend Classics: Luis Buñuel is the Mexican film The Exterminating Angel (1962), while Waverly Midnights: Hindsight is 2020s will screen Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Mnemonic and Late Night Favorites: Winter 2020is taking a surprising weekend off.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Still waiting to see if Pandora and the Flying Dutchman continues through the weekend, as at this time (Monday), there is nothing repertory listed.

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

Horace Jenkins’ Cane River continues through Friday. Saturday night’s “Beyond the Canon” is a double feature of Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker(1953) and Malick’s Badlands (1973).

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

This weekend’s “See It Big! Outer Space” offerings include1974’s Space is the Placeon Friday and 1924’s Aelita, Queen of Mars and the 1980 Flash Gordonscreening on Saturday and Sunday. As usual, 2001: A Space Odysseywill screen on Saturday afternoon as part of the ongoing exhibition.

ROXY CINEMA(NYC)

Weds’ Nicolas Cage movie is Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and then Thursday is a 35mm screening of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)!

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

Friday’s midnight movie is Who Killed Roger Rabbit (1988).

STREAMING AND CABLE

Let’s see what’s going on in the world of streaming this week, shall we?

Netflix is debuting Dee (Mudbound) Rees’ new movie THE LAST THING HE WANTED on the streaming service Friday, even though apparently, it opened in select cities last week, including New York’s Paris Theater, although it got such terrible reviewsout of Sundance, maybe Netflix didn’t want any more bad reviews before it begins streaming. Regardless, it stars Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Ben Affleck and Rosie Perez, and it’s based on Joan Didion’s novel about a D.C. journalist named Elena (Hathaway) who abandons her work on the 1984 campaign trail to run an errand for her father (Dafoe). I guess I’ll watch it when it’s on Netflix just like everyone else but my expectations have been suitably lowered.

The Jordan Peele-produced series “Hunters,” starring Al Pacino, which is about a group of Nazi hunters will hit Amazon Prime this Friday as well, and a new season of the popular series“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” will debut on Friday on Disney+, adding to the amazing amount of content already available on that network.

Next week, Saw and Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannell revamps The Invisible Man for Universal with Elisabeth Moss, and there’s also (supposedly) a movie call The Ride, which I know nothing about. You can guess which movie I’ll be focusing on.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or send me a note on Twitter. I love hearing from readers!

[sportadventure]

Review: Death Comes To Pemberly

After watching this three-hour adaptation of Jane Austen's fiction, I felt like coming here and writing a scathing review. But I didn't want to waste the time. The best way to get the knowledge is to understand and learn others' points of view. Moreover, you can get the best services for writing as well as SEO under one go. Let's get yourself equipped with the current affairs, educational news, world, and economic gossips, and the crumbling health care system in one place. That's Daily Blog Spot that is providing the best services at your table. So I'll keep it short. Lizzie (Anna Maxwell Martin) and Darcy (Matthew Reese) have been happily married for six years and are planning their annual ball when a murder on the farm interrupts their plans.

I must admit that my curiosity took me there

To make matters worse, the only suspect is Lizzie and Darcy's curse (or one of many curses) George Wickham (Matthew Goode). Is the evil Mr. Wickham innocent, or is it just P.N. James' imagination turning Austen's favorite story into a dramatic plot? You'll have to see for yourself, but what about the latter? Exactly. I must confess that my curiosity led me there.

I must admit that my curiosity took me there

I have seen Austen's fantasies on screen and anything to do with Austen or her stories irritates me, to say the least. But for some reason something else makes me feel strange again. Fortunately, I never cared for Austen's novels, there are so many of them! Two things have piqued my curiosity. Firstly, I was interested in the way the story depicted Darcy's married life. This is my biggest disappointment remember two paragraphs ago when I said "Lizzie and Darcy are happily married"? Maybe I used the wrong word. Or maybe I should have said the opposite.

Only worse because he's wrong

They had a strained relationship before the murder, but after they had a strained relationship. Oh, my God! Darcy is angry at Lizzie for (apparently) trying to talk him out of the wedding, and Lizzie thinks Darcy is sorry he married her, which is true. They yell at each other, don't listen to each other, do their angry, inconsiderate things, and Darcy suffers the most at one point childishly refusing to hold Lizzie's hand it becomes exactly like the beginning of P& P, only worse because his idea is completely wrong.

Mostly because of the success of the actors

It was all so bad that I didn't care about the characters, and the plot derailed my idea of what happens after the last words of Pride and Prejudice are written. Even though P.D. James wrote fantasy novels, which is good evidence that he was an Austen fan, I find it hard to believe that he portrayed all the characters so poorly. Only Lydia (Jenna Coleman from Doctor Who) and Wickham deserve an honorable mention, but even those two, in my opinion, are largely due to the success of the actors.

The mystery was not interesting

What else caught my attention was the mystery I wanted to know whether Wickham was a murderer (at least according to P.N. James) or not. And to be sure, even that point was a worthy disappointment. The mystery was not exciting. Not exciting. I've been watching and reading a lot of Agatha Christie lately, and it's hard to compete with The Queen of Murder, but there are much better crime thrillers out there, and available on Torn Austin Avenue.

I can forget Austin for a moment

At first, I thought I wasn't going to like this book because I love Austin, but I quickly realized it's full of pretentious drama and mysteries, even though it's completely original. Still, there were rare moments when I enjoyed the book, especially when I could forget about Austin for a moment. Now, I have to reflect.

The locations and sets were as beautiful as the movie

The costumes were excellent and everyone looked good (except for a few instances where I was looking at faces), but I particularly liked Lisa's costume. You can also check the Gigs at Fiverr at your convenience. The locations and sets were beautiful, as was the filming. There was nothing fancy, but everything was high quality.

You don't have to give up, as I did

But if you don't want to watch the whole movie just for the costumes and the nice house, or if you're not in the mood for a cheesy Austin thriller, do yourself a favor and save yourself three hours check out the spoilers are online! I can give them to you if you want. You don't have to give up as I did. Reference

[reyintherain]

No, I don't ship Rey and Kylo because literature told me so. In fact, I grew up reading just a few Western literary works, and you might guess 95% of them were written by men, about men, because in my corner of the world (and seems like many others) men's writing is considered more worthy to be considered 'classic'. I am still yet to read 'Pride and Prejudice', for example, or 'Wuthering Heights' in English (I read a translated version) and many others, which I definitely want to fit in my reading list. And while I did enjoy those few I read or watched (as adaptations, and I'm talking about the female-centered and romance centered ones, since we are talking about romance and Reylo), they aren't my sole reason for liking Kylo or wanting him and Rey work things out. But even if so, if someone just likes Kylo because he's dark and brooding, and if some of their dynamic  parallels or happens to parallel and take inspiration from those narratives, what's wrong about that? It's not like the women in those novels dump their lives at the feet of the men: they reject proposals, go do their own thing, and if both of them (her and him) manage to work it out, only then they end up together happily ever after. Or at least, that's my understanding to the best of my knowledge. And it's not like there is a ban on subverting those tropes or updating them to the modern day either.

To be fair, growing up (and to this day) I liked those kind of stories, with forbidden love, high tension, opposite sides yet complementing each other, unable to be together and/or finding a way to be, but those stories aren't limited to Western gothic fiction of 200 years ago. What those books did offer and perhaps what they revolutionized (or at least some of them -- I’m not talking about the entire list of gothic fiction from Wikipedia) is a female perspective. And sure, I was hooked as soon I could lay my eyes on them. I was craving it so much and had so little of, even before I realized that and was able to put in coherent words why I enjoyed those books so much. (And that's another reason why I find Rey's journey and her relationship with Kylo so interesting.) 'Those books' is actually just a handful I could find, and those that I could were priceless. I remember the first one was Jane Eyre back in my early teen days (I was around 13 or 14 probably). I had to hide both the copy and that I was reading it, because my family didn't want to me read those kind of novels. They were fine with me reading LOTR and Harry Potter, or whatever adventure/sci-fi/fantasy fiction. And not like I was ever asking their permission for what to read, but still. There was violence in other books I was reading, and plenty on TV and VHS, but a novel with romance and a compelling heroine, nothing graphic or explicit, was where to draw the line... Anyways. A friend of mine, well read and thoughtful, managed to get a copy of Jane Eyre and was kind enough to share it with me, and needless to say after that Lord of the Rings didn't cut it. I wanted more. I think I managed to dig out a few in the same vein, but they weren't as great. Those books were super rare in libraries in my town and absent from school curriculum. Later on, I did some introductory literary analysis (in English) in college, and that's how I read Wuthering Heights, and some poetry, and learned about Byronic hero, and 'dark, tall, brooding' thing. I don't recall us referring to it as 'gothic literature' in class, but again, that was far away from the West, and I’m glad we covered it (and thank goodness for my instructors who introduced those stories into the mix, who were women by the way). I'm not saying all this to say that I'm proud of gaps in my education. Neither am I ashamed of them: it's just how things were back in my school and college and my home, and I’ve learned a great deal of material not covered by the Western education, and I'm always more than happy to learn new things, thanks to the Internet and bigger libraries that make it easier.

Sure, what we read and watch informs us in a way, but to say that's the reason Reylo shippers ship Reylo? And to discount what the authors like Bronte sisters or Jane Austen did? Or that what they wrote in the context of their time has no place for interpretation and inspiration in our time? Hell, they were 10 times more feminist that some feminist critics™ of nowadays who either throw Rey away, or demand a relationship with her father instead of a boyfriend, because relationships with men shouldn't be allowed for strong™ female protagonists, lest frail female viewers take notes.

Hell, I didn't even see Pride and Prejudice until last summer when Knights of Rant mentioned it on their podcast, joking about Kylo's next move as Darcy's first proposal, and look what we got. Prior to that, I've been happily shipping Reylo without any P&P connotations, for what, 1.5 years roughly speaking? And for more than romantic or 'he's tall and hot' reasons, or self-insert as Rey, though romance and belonging and a tall hot baddie are fucking fine with me. If anything, I identify way more with Kylo, and just want him to be happy. Both of them.

I don't want to be ever back in those days when someone would try to stop me from reading or watching whatever I want and what I knew I could handle, and suggest what and how I should process. I knew my limits even back then as a teen, and knew what I was comfortable or uncomfortable reading, and knew how to separate fiction from reality and what you could take from one to another. As an adult, clocking in a third decade of my life, I think it's safe to say that hasn't changed, if not improved. If I didn't like that kind of policing at 14, I don't like it at 25+ either.

Those books and narratives were rare enough in my teen days. I got  marginalized and patronized for liking them, and I don't need that now either. Bye, Petri.

[jixiani]

In defense of fanfiction

I’ve been thinking about fanfiction lately, (really I’ve been thinking that I should really be taking some of this time to write more, but that’s another post) AO3 just had their yearly fundraiser so of course the old discourse over the site and its history was dragged up again and then Sarah had brought it up this morning and well, I have a lot of strong feelings on the subject. Let’s start with a little personal background: I have been reading and writing fanfic since the late 90’s. It started out as something silly my best friend introduced me to and we would sit in her mother’s computer room and giggle over ‘speculative fan fictions’ and participate on months-long roleplay scenarios on chat boards and take turns passing notebooks full of handwritten stories back and forth which were every bit as terrible as you’d think two 14-year-old girls could come up with. Unfortunately, we were in the Vampire Chronicles fandom so we had a front-row seat for the Anne Rice and her lawyer's debacle that will from here on out be referred to as “The Dark Times”. We watched our friends’ work get pulled, our RP sites close down, we feared that we’d get a cease and desist letter, we hid our notebooks and dreamed up our stories exclusively verbally.  I was deeply ashamed of my secret love of fanfic for years. I kept writing, but I kept it secret, I kept reading it but would never admit to it. Fanfiction was something shameful, taboo, some terrible sin akin to watching porn, and not the good socially acceptable kind of porn. But time moved on and fandom moved on and fanfiction started to be more acceptable. I joined Fanfiction.net, I wrote some stuff on Livejournal (although I still kept it set to private). I read A LOT of fanfiction, jumping fandoms, and leaving reviews. People I admired came out as liking and writing fanfiction. Of course, then the purges hit. Strikethrough and the like. I’m not going to get into that here, because that’s a rant all its own. Anyway, those were also some dark days as fandom searched for somewhere to land. I stumbled over Archive of our own a few years ago and I aggressively support them whenever I can because they fight for the fandom. Now I speak out in defense of fanfiction whenever possible. I’ve attended panels at conventions about fanfiction, I support and share posts about it from my favorite authors, I let everyone know that I’m proud of my fanfic (although I still don’t post it, that’s because I tend not to finish things and I don't’ want to get someone excited for something I know I’m going to abandon in a month, not because I’m ashamed.). So let’s talk over some points because Sarah brought up a good point today. Why is fanfiction such a shameful thing in the fandom community, and in the writing community? One of the people on my friends list who I admire and is a professional, published author once rolled their eyes and scoffed when I said that I wanted to go to the fanfiction panel at a convention. Yet, no other facet of fandom is treated this way. I brought this up on Sarah’s post and I’m going to reiterate it here. Fan artists are not scoffed at, people flock to their tables in artist’s alley. Fan-made comics and doujinshi have led to careers writing and drawing comics and scripts for the same series their fanwork was based on. No professional costumer or prop maker sneers at cosplayers, in fact, there are now professional cosplayers. Fans wait in line for hours to watch masquerade skits at conventions. Fan-dubs like Dragonball Z Abridged and Nescaflowne are hugely popular and have led to professional voice acting gigs and production studios. But if an author dares to mention that they got their start in fanfiction? The horror, the outrage, the hate mail. Yet so much of our media could arguably be called fanfiction. Dante’s Inferno? John Milton’s Paradise Lost? The Aeneid? Classics? Yes. Fanfiction? Also yes. Joyce’s Ulysses is just an AU of the Odyssey. Anything written about or based on myths? Anything involving King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Shakespear...Oh you can cry adaptation all you want. Let’s face it if it’s written by some old white guy it’s literature and a classic and an innovative reimagining but really it’s just fanfic and it’s everywhere. West Side Story is a fanfic of a fanfic since Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet off a poem by a similar name. My Fair Lady? Pygmalion AU. Hamilton? Real Person Song Fic! 50 Shades series, Mortal Instruments, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, hell there are literally hundreds of published Jane Austen fanfictions. John Gardner’s Grendel is a retelling of Beowolf. The Wiz, Wicked and the rest of Gregory Maguire’s books? The Wizard of Oz doesn’t enter public domain until 2035. The Magnificent Seven? Kurosawa called and he wants his seven samurai back, he’d also like to reclaim Yojimbo from A Fist Full of Dollars. Speaking of tv, how about Black Sails? It’s a fanfiction prequel to Treasure Island. Any comic book not written by the original creator. Any book series based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, etc. I could go on all day. So why is it, when so much of our popular culture consists of what basically boils down to fanfiction, that fanfiction is seen as a shameful indulgence, as “cheating”, as trash?Part of it boils down to sex. Read any article that brings up fanfiction and there will invariably be a line where the author distances themself by saying something along the lines of they don’t personally read it, or how slash fic isn’t their thing but to each their own. (Both quotes from some of the sites I pulled the above list from) A lot of people seem to think that fanfiction is just porn, and while yes there is some fanfiction that is porn and some of it is very good, the same can be said for regular fiction as well. People don’t blush and giggle over Lord of the Rings, yet when I say that I’ve read fanfic that’s longer than Tolkien’s trilogy I may as well be talking about how I read Aragorn/Boromir slash fic regardless of what the actual subject matter was.  Yes, there’s sex in fanfiction. A lot of it is gay sex. You can read Lolita in school but Harry Potter fanfic? Gasp, think of the children! Even if that fanfic happens to be about what if Petunia loved Harry like a son instead of pushing him away and neglecting him. There is some really fantastic fan fiction out there. Some of it has sex, some of it doesn't. Some of it deals with queer characters and experiences, some of it doesn’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with erotica and it’s an entirely separate issue. Not every fanfiction is a 50 Shades-eque erotic rewrite of Twilight, and even if they were, so what?  A lot of fanfiction has to do with wish fulfillment. You want to know what happens next, or what would happen if this had happened instead, or if there was this character. You want to see someone like you in your favorite fandom. I had wanted to adventure with Bilbo when I was a kid. I wanted to go on adventures and fight and ride dinosaurs. These desires don’t go away just because we grow up. I got into roleplay and larp and gaming because I still enjoy make-believe. I write for a lot of the same reasons. Everyone wants to be the main character. Fanfiction gives you that chance. You can write yourself into a story, you can write someone that’s like you, you can write someone that’s nothing like you but what you want to be. So, let’s discuss our old friend Mary Sue. She gets trotted out as an example every time someone brings up fanfiction (or any uppity female character ever). Mary Sue was born in the 60’s. She is an actual character from a Star Trek Original Series fanfiction. Yes, fanfiction existed in the 60’s. Mary Sue was the brightest and prettiest girl to come out of Starfleet, she managed to be in all the right places at the right times to save the ship and capture the heart of Spock. Self insert fics and Mary Sues are at the heart of why we should be terribly ashamed of our fanfiction habit. Except, what was Luke Skywalker if not George Lucas’ self insert Marty Stu? There are countless male characters that are as bad or worse than your typical Mary sue and they are never called out for it. Seanan brought this up in a post once about her character October Daye, her editor had said that the character was too competent, too cool, and that it was unrealistic and she should tone it down. She had him replace the character’s name with “Harry Dresden” and reread the story and suddenly it was fine. There are a great many articles and essays about our friend Mary Sue and I implore you to read some of them. She is not the enemy we make her out to be. Fanfiction, on the rare occasion that it is accepted, is seen as some sort of training wheels, or baby’s first writing. It’s amateurish, it’s juvenile, it’s just not very good. If we are not ashamed of it, then it’s expected that we are only using it as a starting point to hone our writing and move on to professional published works. It’s either that or something terribly self-indulgent that should be kept to ourselves. Some fanfic writers do go on to become “real” writers. Seanan McGuire has always been very open about how her agent first approached her after reading some of her Buffy/Faith fanfiction. Some “real” writers also write fanfiction. Neil Gaiman won a Hugo for his Chronicles of Narnia Fanfic. Ursula Vernon and Mercedes Lackey write fanfiction in their spare time. Some fanfiction writers never become published authors, not everyone wants to. Some are happy to have a dozen 150k fics about their favorite fandom, or maybe just one 500k epic, some, myself included, may only have one short fic posted somewhere. There is nothing that says that you have to use your hobby to turn a profit. (By the way, for reference, War and Peace is 561,304 words, Dune is 187,240 words, you cannot make the argument that fanfic writers don’t put time into their craft when they have more words than Tolstoy under their belt.)Some of the ‘training wheels’ analogy is true. Fanfic is a terrific gateway to writing. It teaches pacing, plot, character development, how to take criticism. If I ever do write something professionally I will not be nearly as afraid of the red pen as I am of bad reviews. Anonymous readers are the most ruthless critics. May the literary gods preserve you from ever having your fanfic read aloud as an example of how terrible and ‘cringy’ fanfiction can be. There is a lot of fanfiction out there that is written by teenage girls, and it reads like it was written by a teenage girl, but the only way to get better at something is to practice. Fanfiction allows budding writers to do that. There are no rules, no one standing at the gates to bar entry, and entire communities of people willing to give advice and commentary. Sometimes it’s less helpful than harmful, but there is something about posting a new fic and waiting for that first ‘like’ or ‘kudos’ or a review. There’s something to be said for instant gratification. I have read a lot of really terrible fanfic. I have slogged through stuff that would make Mary Sue herself cringe. I have read about the ½ vampire, ½ werewolf, ½ fairy long lost princess. I have read grammar that would make your eyes bleed. Not all of it has been confined to fan works. I have read fanwork that has had me convulsing with silent laughter to the point that I wondered if I would die. Dialog that was ten times better than anything I had read in a professional novel. Fanfiction should not be judged by its worst offenders. We don’t hold Dune to the same standard as Twilight. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not terrible and cringy because 50 Shades of Grey overuses the phrase “Oh my.” There is some absolutely terrible fanfic out there and there is some pretty terrible published fic as well, but we don’t hold that against most novelists, so why do we hold it against fanfiction writers?I guess that brings us to the elephant in the fandom. Sexism. Fanfiction has historically been something written by and for young women and there is nothing more shameful than something liked by a young woman. Boybands? The color pink? Horse Girl books and Sparkly Vampires? Society hates them. We mock them. It is not acceptable to enjoy them. Sound familiar? How many times is something considered cool until a woman decides that she likes it? We as a society hate women and hate the things they enjoy and we hate teenage girls the most. Think of how much people hated selfies and duckface and instagram. How much hate was directed at Britney Spears, One Direction, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber? Whether it has a basis in something or not, we hate them, we make jokes, we share the memes. We write them off as having no substance, as being stupid, not worth our time. Belittling of teenage girls for their interests and fandoms isn't a new phenomenon. Remember Mary Sue? Not only that, but a lot of fanfiction is gay. Women and gays are still the punchline to a lot of jokes and we can’t ignore that that plays a big part in people’s hatred of fanfiction, even if it’s not on purpose. Fanfiction has always been a bastion for people that couldn’t find stories about them in popular fiction. A lot of mainstream main characters are straight guys. A lot of fanfiction main characters are young women or gay men. Now, I admit that I’m oversimplifying this, and especially in recent years as it is becoming safer for people to come out as other genders and queer and as having mental illness or not being neurotypical, you are seeing more of that reflected in the fanfiction community. I don’t want anyone to think that I am purposefully leaving anyone out of this. The fanfiction community has not always been so great at being inclusive of people of color or transgender, it’s getting better, but I’m not going to stand here and pretend we’ve always been perfect. In the last several years I’ve seen a lot more inclusion. As I said, fanfiction has always been a home to the “Other”, as that expands to include more individuals so too does the community. Fanfics provide us with a place to work through issues and present perspectives that we don’t get to see anywhere else, without having to create an entire world from scratch. It’s accessible to everyone. I’ve spent the better part of an afternoon researching and writing this. I hope that I was at least partially coherent and I got you to at least take a look at why you feel the way you feel about fanfiction. I’m not sure if I exactly got across the points I was trying for, there’s a lot more eloquent, well thought out arguments out there from more knowledgeable people. Check out Seanan McGuire, she’s got a lot to say on the subject.

[thebookrat]

Disclaimer: a review copy of this book was provided by the editor for review purposes. Affiliate links are not used in this post, but are used on this site. All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own. Edited to add: as you can see in the banner below, this post was supposed to be up yesterday, but I apparently don't know how to 'days of the week'... That is entirely MY BAD, sorry about that, internet!

You may have already seen me talking about this book online, as I listened to it while I was decorating for Christmas, but today -- before we dive into a guest post from one of the book's authors, Amy D'Orazio -- I'm going to dig a little deeper into why I loved Yuletide, an anthology of Christmas-oriented Jane Austen stories. And love it, I did! Generally when I read short story anthologies, I skip around to whichever story is calling my name most, with little care for the flow of one into the next. I also tend to only read them in bits and pieces, fits and starts, and never cover to cover. But because I was listening to Yuletide on audiobook*, and because I was flitting around the house, clipping evergreens that were politely pilfered from my neighborhood (ahem) and working them into wreaths and such, I just hit play and went along for whatever was in store. *it is still possible to skip around to stories in an audio anthology, btw. Chapters still exist. And man, I enjoyed this. The first story in the book actually gave me butterflies, but even when stories hit a flat note (which was rare), the immersive experience of listening to someone tell me Christmas stories about characters I love (who at this point feel almost like family, I've sent so much time with them), while working on Christmas myself? SWOON, it was so enjoyable. Harry Frost's narration was excellent, as well, even if I did occasionally chuckle at his "American" accent. ;) I'm not going to give you my whole spiel about how short story anthologies are great for discovering new authors, or as palate cleansers between books, our any of that (except I kinda just did), but as Austen anthologies go, this is one of the stronger ones. Each story felt entirely unique from the others, while still cohesive in context of the theme, and the different approaches mean that there's likely to be a story here to suit most Janeites. The book feels tightly and thoughtfully curated, and I did, in fact, discover some authors whose JAFF I now want to look into! And the best part of all? Proceeds from sales of the e-book and paperback go to benefit Chawton House! This mini review was turned out to be less mini and more review, but basically, I recommend this book, and I especially recommend reading it in the wintertime, when there's snow on the ground and the days are short, when your brain has turned towards Christmas but you're out of new Hallmark movies to watch... 10/10 experience, would recommend. And now, a piece from our special guest, Amy D'Orazio!

Eight Reasons Why Writing Modern JAFF Adaptations is so Much Harder than Writing Regencies 

by Amy D’Orazio (contributing author to YULETIDE “The Wishing Ball”)

The Yuletide anthology [collection of five Regency era and two modern holiday stories] explored some new ground for me — it is the first time I have published a modern adaptation rather than the regency-based stories I typically write. Part of that was because this story was originally part of a Christmas challenge at A Happy Assembly. The idea for it came from fellow author Pamela Lynne who challenged me to write something to do with Christmas ornaments.

I know many people believe writing a modern adaptation is easier than a Regency. Both have their challenges but of the two…? Writing moderns is harder, in my opinion, and here are my reasons why:

1. Prejudice. Okay so this is a big one and often one I find takes a good modern and makes it shaky. Heaven knows there are plenty of things people are prejudiced about in this day and age but translating that into a feasible Darcy & Elizabeth-type situation isn’t easy. Elizabeth Bennet wasn’t poor—yet— in P&P. She was part of the upper echelon of wealth in England, but Darcy was, by comparison, stratospheric. So, a story about someone wealthy marrying someone else who is uber-wealthy? —not really anything notable today

2. Location, location, location. The first challenge any modern author faces is where to put their main characters. Jane Austen put hers in various spots around England, and when I am writing a Regency, I feel comfortable enough with my research to do likewise. But modern day? I’ve been to London a few times but that’s about it—I would have to do a LOT of research to find the exact restaurant on the exact street or the specific house with the certain features I need for my characters. The chances of getting it wrong are so much higher! In my story in this anthology I placed Darcy and Elizabeth in New York City (gasp… they’re American!)

3. Show of hands—who has had a family member voice an expectation that you should marry your cousin? But it was an important custom then and had super important implications for bloodlines and fortunes and etc. So, it’s sort of a hard issue to translate into a modern circumstance even though it was an important part of many of Austen’s books.

4. Or for that matter —who has really allowed their family members to have much say into their marriage at all? I mean, sure, I wanted my family to like my husband but if Aunt Martha didn’t…well…I guess we’d have just cut her off the Christmas card list.

5. The whole Lydia-Wickham and Georgiana-Wickham thing. Let’s be honest, in modern times, the only proper place for the likes of George Wickham (age 26/27) is jail for being a sex predator on teenagers. Would the military even take him? Let’s hope no one would force one of his victims to marry him! It’s storyline that is very tricky to translate to the modern era!

6. Modern life changes fast which brings with it another pitfall of books set in modern eras (not just for JAFF but any modern story)—when you have your hero check email on his Blackberry, or your heroine snap her Razor phone closed, you automatically dated your story. If you mention a song, a book, a news event, or a particular celebrity, five or ten years from now someone reading your book might not get what it is you’re talking about. Horse technology, on the other hand, rarely changed throughout the Regency period and the main forms of communication—writing a letter or walking to your neighbors house to talk about it—were the same. 7. By far, I think the most difficult thing about modern translations is how the characteristics of the our main characters are when placed into a modern setting. I’ve seen some intriguing takes on this — Elizabeth’s wit becomes almost supernatural intelligence, Mrs Bennet’s illiberality becomes racism or homophobia, Emma’s tendency to matchmake turns into a wedding planning business. To me, this is where writing moderns can really be tricky—in a Regency you don’t have to decide all of this but in a modern, you need to decide how you’ll bring it all into a modern era. 8. Marriage. By far the trickiest part of creating a modern is the aspects of marriage. In modern times, there are dates, there are non-monogamous relationships, there are engagements that end with no dreadful outcome to either party—in short there are many complexities to modern relationships that didn’t exist back then (for better or worse). If you’re writing a Regency and your hero and heroine dance twice, have a whispered conversation behind a potted plant and then decide to marry— sure! True love! But a modern couple? I think most of your readers would think it was a bit unrealistic! So, there you have it! It should be noted of course that all the opinions expressed herein are solely those of me, the author! Love to hear your thoughts on the subject below! AMY D’ORAZIO is a former scientist and current stay-at-home mom who is addicted to Austen and Starbucks in equal measure. While she adores Mr. Darcy, she is married to Mr. Bingley, and their Pemberley is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has two daughters devoted to sports with long practices and began writing stories as a way to pass the time spent at their various gyms and studios. She firmly believes that all stories should have long looks, stolen kisses, and happily-ever-afters. Like her favorite heroine, she dearly loves a laugh and considers herself an excellent walker. She is the author of The Best Part of Love, A Short Period of Exquisite Felicity, A Lady’s Reputation and various anthologies. Below you'll find an except of Amy's story in Yuletide; find samples from the rest of the anthology here!  ABOUT THE BOOK:

Yuletide: A Jane Austen-inspired Collection Of Stories, edited by Christina Boyd  190 pages / audio 5 hrs and 50 mins Published November 26th 2018 by The Quill Ink, LLC BUY HERE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZPBZSFB ttps://www.audible.com/pd/B07ZP9R3QW?

“I went up to the Great House between three and four, and dawdled away an hour very comfortably...” –Jane Austen  A holiday short story anthology with some favorite Austenesque authors, YULETIDE is inspired by Jane Austen, PRIDE & PREJUDICE, and the spirit of the season. Regency and contemporary alike, each romance was dreamt to spark love, humor, and wonder while you dawdle over a hot cup of tea this Christmas.  Stories by: Elizabeth Adams * J. Marie Croft * Amy D’Orazio * Lona Manning * Anngela Schroeder * Joana Starnes * Caitlin Williams Edited by: Christina Boyd  All proceeds from e-book and paperback sales to benefit Chawton Great House in Hampshire, former manor of Jane Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight and now the Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing, 1600-1830.

via The Book Rat

[adelightfulcalamity]

Most Ardently (A Pride & Prejudice Retelling)

CHAPTER ONE: A NEW BACHELOR AT NETHERFIELD

The cold autumn air kissed Elliot's cheeks as he strolled through the fields, a leather bound novel in his hands and his eyes darting across the pages. He mindlessly wandered through the wildflowers towards his family's manor, Longbourn, a humble stone estate surrounded by countryside. He had spent the afternoon in the fields, finding himself a resting place on the hills where he could read in the comfort of nature and bask in the tepid sunlight of Hertfordshire.

Novel in one hand, the other stretched downwards so that his fingertips grazed the top of the foxgloves in the fields, Elliot felt at home. The only son of the Bennett's, he had grown accustomed to perusing any novel he could get his hands on, whilst his four sisters practised needlework, languages and music. Never the kind of boy that would get into the Regiment- his swordsmanship left much to be desired and he would much rather have learnt poetry than strategy- he had grown content with spending his days reading outdoors, or in the parlour whilst his sister Mary played the piano forte and his eldest sister Jane sat beside him embroidering.

Reaching the small moat that separated the fields from the rear courtyard of Longbourn, he stepped across the the wooden walkway and peeled his eyes away from his book just long enough to smile at the gaggle of geese paddling in the water and honking chaotically. His worn, muddy boots squelched against the damp wood as he ascended into the courtyard, where the family servants, a Gaelic woman named Eilidh and her son Thomas were hanging his sisters' skirts out to dry.

"Good Afternoon Eilidh," He greeted the stout woman kindly, who smiled warmly in return.

"Afternoon Mr. Bennett." She answered in her broken, lilted English. She understood instructions nearly perfectly, but still struggled to communicate in English. Her son Thomas was much better at communicating, but he still spoke in the thick, melodic accent of the Scottish Highlands.

"Thomas." Elliott inclined his head in greeting as he passed the servant, Thomas nodding subtly as a means of reply. He was a quiet lad, of the same age as Elliot at twenty years, who pottered around doing the heavy lifting his mother could not handle and cleaning up the spots Eilidh inevitably missed.

Reaching the back door of the house, Elliott paused only briefly to wipe the mud from his boots before entering through the back door. This was a habit of his his mother did not like, for in her opinion the back door was the servants entrance, made for unnoticed coming and going. Elliott liked, however, the ability this door gave him to come and go as he pleased, without his mother complaining or insisting instead that he run errands to town, where he might meet a lovely girl and decide to marry her.

Hearing the sweet sounds of his younger sister on the piano forte, he wandered into the parlour. Two of his sisters lounged there, swathed in their modest house dresses. Mary was at the piano, where she could be found at any given time of the day, stroking the keys and producing melodies that made one feel as though they walked amongst the angels. Her face rested in it's signature concentrated frown, her chestnut hair falling from its braid unkemptly and the freckles on her cheeks dancing in the shadows.

Her petite frame was almost hidden amongst the the dark walls of the room, her dress a simple garment of charcoal grey and trimmed sparsely in white lace. Despite her mother's attempts to introduce colour into her wardrobe, the middle of the Bennett children was stubborn and focused, and could not be persuaded past a dark shade of violet.

By the window on the far side of the parlour, which looked westward and in this late time in the afternoon cast the setting sun's golden glow upon the room, sat Jane. Known for her beauteous looks and uncharacteristic fair hair amongst the other Bennett children, she was as timid as she was splendid to look at. In her hand she held an embroidery hoop, and her delicate, pretty face was peaceful as she stitched. Elliot crossed the room to sit beside her, noting the way the sun illuminated her pale blonde, fine hair.

"Mother has been looking for you today, brother." Jane smiled demurely, looking up Elliott with her large, silver-blue eyes.

"Whatever for?" He asked casually, closing his book and placing it on his lap. Jane did not remove herself from her sewing, instead she smiled to herself as though he had made a private joke.

"She went to Meryton with Lydia and Kitty to buy ribbons for the ball tomorrow." Jane explained in her gentle, glissando voice.  Elliot sighed deeply, having forgotten about the ball, which the Lucas family were throwing at their manor house. Elliott enjoyed balls for their dancing and music, but detested the social détente they often presented. He could not stand all the talking of affairs and marriages and children, for they seemed pointless. He would have much rather spent the words on poetry or politics or art. His mother had made it very clear that serious conversation should not be breeched whilst dancing.

As though by some magical power they had heard their own names, Lydia and Kitty came bursting into the room in a flurry of lace and ringlets. Following them, Mrs Bennett rushed in, her face the colour of a beetroot.

"Oh, the most wonderful news children!" She squawked loudly amongst the unending giggles coming from the two youngest Bennett children.

"Oh, it is great news!" Lydia swooned, her eyes wide and filled with excitement.

Lydia, the second youngest child, was a pretentious and vain young woman who spent most of her life desperately socialising with as many men as she could. She was a pretty, elfish-looking girl with full lips that were constantly twisted into a salacious grin and wide blue eyes that she had no problem using to get what she wanted.

"Netherfield Manor has been taken!" Mrs Bennett announced proudly, sweeping across the room to collapse onto an empty chaise lounge. "By a young bachelor nonetheless!"

"His name is Mr. Bingley!" Lydia squealed. Her and the youngest sister, Kitty, sat in a love seat beside Mrs Bennett.

Wherever Lydia was, Kitty could be found lingering in her shadow. She was a petite, impressionable young girl, barely sixteen and prone to simply affirming whatever Lydia said. Where Lydia was surreptitious, however, Kitty had a compassionate empathy towards people that was easily overshadowed by her sister's vanity. The youngest Bennett girl had dark hair and fair skin, with wide eyes the colour of pennies.

"And better yet, he will be attending the ball tomorrow evening!" Mrs Bennett swooned. Elliott noted the way Jane paused her embroidering to consider this fact.

Lydia and Kitty were already planning which ribbons they would match with their skirts, and rushing across the room to Jane, who being the oldest had the finest clothes they could borrow. Jane simply nodded at their requests politely, looking over at Elliott occasionally with an exhausted expression. Elliott silently thanked the Lord that he was not a girl and did not have to deal with Lydia's excessive requests to borrow attire.

Amongst the calamity, Mary barely flinched, her gloomy melodies permeating the chatter. She, like Elliott, was not a great fan of balls. Always the odd one out amongst the ladies, Elliott new that Mrs Bennett feared that in Mary she had produced a spinster child.

The dinner bell interrupted his sisters' flurry, and the room cleared quickly as the smell of Eilidh's cooking wafted in from the dining room. Elliott took his time, setting his novel down on the windowsill before meandering over to the piano forte, where Mary was still playing. The tune was ethereal and moody, Elliott leant against the side of the instrument and watched his sister play. As he did so, she looked up at him and offered him one of her rare, small, smiles.

"Are you not coming to dinner dear sister?" He asked her. Her tune quietened briefly, making space for her quiet, stern voice.

"I think not." She answered plainly. "I have too much to work on with this tune." Elliott nodded in return, noting the way her eyes drifted back to her music sheets. The way she furrowed her brow  in concentration was endearing, and was enough to fill his heart with affection for his peculiar younger sister.

He loved Mary dearly, because she was an eccentric and a loner in a way that he understood quite perfectly. Much like he did not conform to the standard of strapping, athletic young men his age, Mary was not one for the decorum, gossip or dancing that occupied young women. She was paid little attention by men and even less attention by other ladies, and spent most parties at the piano or hiding in the corners of the room.

"I shall tell mother," Elliott agreed with a smile. He noted that she was coming to the end of her page, and so amiably turned it for her, which earned him another grateful smile from his sister.

"Thank you, brother."

"You are most welcome, Mary."  

With that, Elliott left for the dining room, where he could already hear his mother updating Mr Bennett on the arrival of the new young Bachelor at Netherfield Manor.

____

A/N

So, I'm a huge Pride & Prejudice fan because it's the quintessential romance novel of the regency period, and so I decided that I would write an adaption of it that was LGBT-inclusive. If any of you who are reading this are super familiar with the original version, be prepared for a few changes.

I wanted to add characters, so Thomas is original character, and I also wanted to give all the Bennett children a plot line (So Kitty and Mary will both get more focus than they did in Austen's novel). Also, Mr. Collins, who is the children's cousin in the original, has been changed to be an old family friend.

I hope you enjoy it,

- Alison

[ouraidengray4]

The Things You Do and Don’t Miss Out on by Marrying Your First Love

My husband and I are pretty stereotypical Brooklyn creatives. We live in a Bushwick apartment filled with comic books and art supplies; he and his two partners run the ad agency GrandArmy, and I started the geeky clothing brand Jordandené. We spend our time working, creating, and partying, and at first glance, seem like roll-your-eyes cliches.

So when I was in my early 20s, the fact that I had married young was pretty shocking to practically everyone I met. Responses ranged wildly, from "OMG that’s adorable," to "Really? Why?"

When someone thinks my relationship status is unexpected, my favorite thing is to let them in on all the other details that are even more surprising. I got married when I was 21 to my first boyfriend, whom I met in high school… which we attended with fewer than 80 other people only one day a week.

We were semi-homeschooled in the age just before online classes were a norm. Our parents weren’t thrilled with the public school options available, so we attended a co-op high school in Delaware. Our friend groups overlapped, mostly because he had an unrequited crush on one of my best friends, which conveniently let us slowly get to know one another.

When we got engaged!

He was adorably genuine and sweet, in that Chris Evans Captain America sort of way. We spent many long nights chatting away online and officially started dating the week after my 16th birthday, because my parents wouldn’t let me have a boyfriend when I was 15. We stayed together through high school, our separate college experiences, and into our adult lives.

We never broke up, but we did create our own lives apart from each other. His college was an hour away from mine, which was far enough to create a bit of a long-distance relationship, especially since I didn’t drive. He had an internship in Oregon and spent a summer in London; I studied for a semester in Spain. He spent the last of his college kid savings to come visit me in Sevilla. Between meeting all of my new friends and touring around the city that had become my temporary home, he asked if we could take a trip to the neighboring beach town. While taking a midnight stroll down the sandy shore, he asked me to marry him. I was 20, and we’d been together for five years. It wasn’t even a question.

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I think one of the biggest concerns about marrying someone you meet so young is that you might miss out on more experiences and opportunities to find someone who’s an even better fit. You don’t want to just meet one person, decide they’re it, and stop looking for anything else. What if there’s something better out there? What if you let yourself blithely slide through the steps of dating, engagement, marriage, starting a family, without stopping to consider what you really want?

I decided early on that I wasn’t going to do that. Every day that we were dating, I asked myself if I still wanted to be with him, and promised myself if that answer ever changed, I would do something about it.

This is funny to admit, but a moment from Jane Austen’s novel Emma stuck with me. In an effort to convince her friend not to accept a proposal from a man she deems unworthy, Emma asks, "If you prefer [Mr. Martin] to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you hesitate?" This question was meant to dissuade a friend from pursuing a relationship, but for me, it became a way to confirm that I was intentionally choosing what I really wanted.

At New York Comic Con.

Despite my firm commitment to actively make a daily choice that would make me truly happy, it can be strange to have missed out on an experience that so many of my peers have had. I technically understand how online dating and apps work, but I don’t really get how to make a connection with someone through a profile. I have absolutely no game; my flirting skills cap out at about a 15-year-old level. I got pretty good at crafting a cute response to an AIM away message, but that doesn’t exactly transfer to the adult version of sending a sexy reply on Tinder or to a late-night text. The only romantic experience I’ve ever had started as a teenage friendship, developed into love, and ended in our staying together forever… which isn’t exactly helpful when a friend is trying to figure out what a guy means when he texts her nothing but the strawberry emoji.

Someone joked at my college graduation that I was an old married lady, but by 'settling down' so young, I’ve actually learned the importance of not settling down at all.

In our early 20s, almost all of my close friends were single. I never wanted to stop being in my relationship, but the young, single life did look like a lot of fun. Going out, meeting someone new and interesting, and hooking up with them is just one of those exciting things I never got to do; I haven’t had a first date since I was 16. So when a group of friends is chatting about hook-up stories, I’m not exactly able to participate.

Of course, I also don’t find myself nostalgically comparing the relationship I’m in or the sex I’m having with other—perhaps fonder—memories, simply because there aren’t any. I don’t have to miss the fun aspects of adult single life because I never experienced them. Someone joked at my college graduation that I was an old married lady, but by "settling down" so young, I’ve actually learned the importance of not settling down at all.

So young!

It’s easy to fall into a routine when you’ve been with someone for years, which is a very unattractive position to be in at the ripe old age of 23. Staying with the same person for over a decade can make your world seem very small, but I don’t want to let myself stop being interesting or interested in what’s happening outside of the two-person world I live in; I want to keep meeting new people, having new experiences, and learning. For every trip we take together, we take five with other people. Instead of coupling off in social settings, we make sure to catch up with everyone around us. We’re active participants in separate circles: he in the New York design world, me in the growing community of nerdy women. Our honeymoon phase should have ended years ago, but I’m not interested in letting that happen.

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The most important thing I’ve learned by being in one relationship for my entire adult life is that adapting to change is vital. We both went through so many changes in the decade between ages 18 and 28, and we got to go through them together. Some of those changes have been easy and great, and some have been a nightmare. On a day-to-day level, we traded in washing machines and driving for the headaches of laundromats and public transportation. Ideologically, we’ve both shifted politically from being pretty conservative to very liberal, although not at the same time—and there was some serious awkwardness and frustration in-between. We’ve had part-time jobs, freelanced, worked 80 hours per week, and started two businesses, each taking different tolls on our finances, free time, and happiness. And we don’t even have kids yet.

Hiking!

In a dating relationship, you can decide which issues are worth fighting for. In a marriage, there’s no option; seemingly unsolvable problems need to be solved, which can teach you a lot about being creative while working through issues. I’ve learned to compromise and adapt every day. Not only has this increased flexibility been very healthy for all of my relationships, it also allows me to enjoy things in life I otherwise never would have. I never wanted to live in a city, and I spent my first few years here planning my escape. I made myself miserable until I realized that this situation wasn’t changing, we weren’t moving, and I could resent that fact forever, or start looking for things to love about New York. I found them.

We’ve been there for each other through nearly all of life’s ups and downs. We’ve celebrated high-school and college graduations, new jobs, personal victories, and every exciting thing that’s happened to our friends and families. We’ve suffered through national tragedies, deaths, failures, and the struggles of making really hard choices. We’ve changed political parties and religious beliefs. We know how the other person makes decisions and how to work through problems together. We’ve learned which issues we simply don’t agree on and which we may never change our minds about.

Love.

I absolutely understand why what we have is rare. For all the beautiful moments we enjoyed, there were so many hard ones. We’ve made a lot of huge changes that the other person had to be OK with, and we didn’t have the freedom that comes with being single. And if you asked me 10 years ago to describe the life I pictured for my future self, what I have definitely isn't that. It’s not four kids and a house in the suburbs, baking cookies at home while my partner works a normal 9-to-5. It’s not being able to plan out exactly what my future looks like. For me, what I have is so much better.

Jordan Ellis founded Jordandené, a geek chic clothing brand for kids and kids at heart. She’s a proud Hufflepuff who loves dressing up and throwing extravagant theme parties. Follow her on Instagram at @jordandenenyc and Twitter at @jordandene.

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