Camille (Amy Adams) is a journalist unwillingly sent back to her home town to investigate a missing girl. She doesn’t want to return because she has memories of her cruel mother(Patricia Clarkson), her distant father (Henry Czerny), the sister who died (Lulu Wilson) and the sister who remains (Eliza Scanlen). But when the disappearance turns out to be a murder, the tensions become deeper. Haunted by her past (and her present), Camille spirals. Then there’s the sexy out-of-town cop (Chris Messina), the local cop who has a close friendship with Camille’s mother (Matt Craven) and the group of friends who remind Camille of the world she left behind.
This show was compelling, strong performances, beautifully created, and it had this mysterious style which captured the often drunk POV of Camille, along with these sharps cuts and loud, sudden, sharp noises which made the whole thing disjointed and strange.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
After watching, I wanted to read the book (as is often my want) and it was fascinating to read the source material and see how it had been taken and shaped into the show. Both tell the same story, but in such different ways it was almost like two totally separate projects. Both pretty impressive.
Any time I see that Frances McDormand is in something, I want to check it out. So with no prior knowledge of the production, I watched the short series Oliver Kitteridge and it was fascinating. Not exactly linear, yet mostly so. No overall story arch, but more like a series of shorts. Olive (Frances McDormand) is pretty unpleasant but yet the audience is on her side. We want her to succeed despite the way she treats people – she’s direct but to the point of being offensive. She’s the type of person that I’d hate to have in my life, yet if she was and I made her happy for me or proud of me, it would be a huge feat. The series is charming but not lightweight. And made me desperate to read the book.
Olive Ketteridge plus Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
The book is wonderful. Each chapter is its own story, sometimes with Olive as the main focus and othertimes with her presence more in the background. Like the show, she is unlikeable yet very lovable. The way she treats those she loves so harshly and sometimes seems to have far more generosity for those she’s not close to. A second book, Olive, Again, came out last year and I was a little hesitant, worried that it might not live up to the wonder that the first book inspired in me. But I shouldn’t have worried. It was delightful.
Travelling artist Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl arrive in the small town of Shaker and become entwined in the lives of the Richardson family. Suddenly the seemingly closely curated live of Elena Richardson is turned upside down. But when there is a custody battle over a Chinese baby that was abandoned, things get ugly.
There was so much in this book, and I loved it. The characters are so compelling, there is so much discussion on race and privilege and expectations… I couldn’t put it down.
Little Fires Everywhere
Perhaps it would have been better to have more time between reading the book and watching the show. But all I could see were the differences. Which was fine, I could absolutely see reasons for making the changes, especially for a TV series. I can’t say I preferred one to the other, although the end is quite different in both (well, without spoiling it, the way it unfolds).
My gut is either see or read it, but maybe not both. And either is good, but it is really hard to pass up watching Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington leading such a perfectly cast series. And yet, even as I say that, the book is so good. Oh I don’t know. Do both.
Three nuns live off the British coast in a ruin of a convent. They are Sisters Margarita, Iphigenia and Carla, two older women and one much younger. Their days are punctuated with prayer, stories and knitting the wool they shear and spin from the sheep who share their space. They are an enclosed order, which means that they have no contact with the rest of the world, so when a young priest appears to tell them that the head honchos of the church plan to sell their land, it doesn’t go down too well.
I loved this book so much. It’s hilarious, the characters are so beautifully depicted with their flaws, their strange existence, their power and their weaknesses. I love the stories they tell each other, fairy tales changed to suit their purpose. Wonderful.
Lambs of God – TV Review
A four-part mini-series was produced in 2019 starring the wonderful Essie Davis as Sister Iphigenia and Ann Dowd as Sister Margarita amongst others. I was very excited about it – it looked beautiful, the convent was run down and the nuns filthy and wild as depicted in the book. There was always going to be a few issues translating for the screen as I felt the end of the book wrapped up a bit easily. However, I wasn’t expecting a whole additional plot line which I felt was mostly unnecessary and really ruined the story for me.
It’s the early sixties, Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting have just become engaged and headed to their Honeymoon at Chesil Beach. They are both virgins, and have had no sex education. So things are tense, each comes with their own baggage and things don’t go well.
I found this read long, slow and tedious. It had moments which almost seemed to get emotional but then it just dragged on. I saw that it was a film starring the wonderful Saorise Ronan and had to give it a try, to see how they could possibly have taken a story I found so dull and made it into a film.
On Chesil Beach (2017)
As it happens, the film was a pretty decent reflection of the book, which unfortunately meant it was slow and dull. Though apparently I might be a bit alone on that one… there were a lot of good reviews, though there are also a few clankers in there.
A soap opera set in a woman’s prison… what could be better? I’m a bit young for the original Prisoner: Cell Block H which ran from 1979 to 1986 (though I’ve seen some best moments from it), so when it was essentially rebooted as Wentworth a few years ago, I was ready to get on board. So good, so ridiculous, the corruption, the violence, the very stupid decisions. There have been several storylines which have made me angry (not least the whole ‘man abuses woman, women eventually ends up in a relationship with said man’ which is appalling and should never be used), but most are your stock standard soap fare. It was good when eventually some indigenous characters were introduced to the main cast (especially when the wonderful Leah Purcell joined the cast), though the cast remains very caucasian-heavy. I felt like Season 7 was starting to drag a bit, but it definitely kicked back into life Season 8. Though the closing image of the season shows that we are about to drop back into the utterly insane in Season 9.
One of the mostly highly publicised cases in US history is that of OJ Simpson over the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her boyfriend Ron Goldman. This dramatisation of the events around the crime and the trial tell the story – or some parts of the story. It has a strong cast full of very familiar faces – from Cuba Gooding Jnr playing OJ, John Travolta as Robert Shapiro and David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian- to just so many other familiar faces.
While I was old enough to follow the case, I wasn’t overly interested at the time. I saw the news updates, but there wasn’t the type of access to media there is now. I read articles and I sort of know what happened, but I wanted to see how it was going to be depicted in this series. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it felt like a pretty cheesy, true-crime re-enactment, which I supposed is exactly what it was. I don’t think I’d exactly recommend it, but I wouldn’t tell you to keep away.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – Audio Book Review
I’ve been an Austen hater for as long as I can remember. Well, no, I know when I became an active hater. It was Year Twelve, I was doing literature, we were studying Mansfield Park, my literature teacher was swooning and gushing about it and I was bored out of my brain. I remember trying to enjoy it, but I just didn’t. And ever since, I’ve shunned and mocked everything Austen, despite many good friends urging me to give it a go.
Finally, I decided to give it a go. I went the Audible audio book of Pride and Prejudice read by Rosamund Pike. And… It’s bloody good. There were points while I was listening and driving where I was shaking my head, frustrated at being proved wrong. I mean, I knew enough about the story through general pop culture that nothing was a surprise, but it was the detail that got me. Austen was clever and made some pretty decent comments on society. And I have no doubt that my enjoyment was absolutely fuelled by the wonderful performance by Pike. I’m not sure that I’m ready to hit Mansfield Park again yet, but I was prepared to give the BBC production which everyone raves about a go.
Pride and Prejudice – TV Review
This is the one with Colin Firth, with the infamous pond scene, with a cast filled with familiar faces. It’s a six-part adaptation and it’s great. Cheesy and wonderful, and I will forever be quoting (or knowing me, misquoting) Mrs Bennet. I can’t say that I feel the passion that some do, and honestly, the wet shirt scene wasn’t all I’d built it up to be, but it’s a good watch. Now, time to take a turn around the room.
Finding the third season of The Handmaid’s Tale a bit of a struggle (I’ve just watched Episode 9, Heroic, and I feel that this has been one of the stronger episodes of the season. I’m hoping it’s gearing up for the last few eps), I decided to watch the 1990 film. Apart from the fact that the poster is highly sexualised in a way that is extremely creepy, especially when you know the content, it’s a very good film. Very dated, but that’s surely to be expected.
Of course, each interpretation has its strengths and weaknesses. I think having a longer time to tell the story means that the first season of the TV show is able to take the time to set up the world – the darkness, the violence, the true horror of the place. While the film shows frightened people being herded off to the colonies, it doesn’t have the same sense of oppression and terror that is created by the long, slow shots and the quiet of the TV show.
There is a lot of criticism about the way the TV series deals with race – do a basic Google search and you will find a heap of articles on it. In the book, non-white people in Gilead were sent to the colonies (and this happens in the film), whereas in the show, they exist in this world as Handmaids and Marthas, and I believe even one of the wives is a woman of colour. I’m big on diversity in the media and love seeing the wide range of races, sexualities, genders, abilities and etc. appearing as a natural part of the TV worlds, and so this is a conflict for me. Gilead is a horrible place with terrible things happening, and Atwood’s creation included genocide. But I’m sick of seeing TV worlds which are not diverse… I’ve been enjoying Nashville recently, but wow it is a very white and heteronormative world. So, should the show have been true to the book and had anyone non-white in Gilead removed? And then we get yet another almost totally white cast… but a representation truer to Atwood’s Gilead? Or do we accept that race is pretty much ignored in the show, though still the vast majority of the cast are white. It feels like it’s a crappy solution – keep people of colour in the world, but keep the numbers down. It just feels like it’s not quite right.
One of the most notable strengths in the film over the TV show is the casting of the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. In the TV show, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) and Offred (Elisabeth Moss) are the same age, but in the film, Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) is considerably older that Offred (Natasha Richardson). This changes the dynamic between the two characters quite considerably. Each are good, but it changes the relationship between the Commander and Offred a lot, and Serena Joy’s opinion of this relationship.
I’m still torn about the way the television show is moving – this season I’ve been getting fed up of the long shots of Elisabeth Moss staring (and I really hope there is a pay-off to all those shots… three eps to see if that is the case) – but I think both the show and the film are very good, interesting interpretations of the book. And, of course, now I feel the need to re-read the book – I last read it in around 1997, so I think it’s due for a revisit.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Wow. The first thing that struck me about the book having seen the film and TV series recently is how sparse it is. Being told from the perspective of Offred, the reader only knows what she sees and what she chooses to tell us. The reader doesn’t know the whole world, only the space Offred occupies. While both the TV and film tell the same basic story, the book has the power of bringing the reader right into Offred’s world, and it’s truly wonderful.
In 1993, on information about a stockpile of weapons, the ATF stormed the compound home of a cult known as the Branch Davidians. David Koresh led this strange group who believed he was divine. It went badly, turned into a standoff and the FBI came in to negotiate. 51 days later, unresolved, the FBI went in. Most of those remaining in the compound, including children, died, many after the tear gas that was sprayed into the building caught fire. It is widely considered to be a huge disaster.
This short series is based on two biographies, one by a survivor from the Branch Davidians and the other and FBI negotiator. I remember watching a documentary on the siege, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, back in the late nineties and it was pretty clear that the whole situation had been pretty badly handled. As with any drama based on real events, it’s hard to know just how true-to-life it is, but it seemed plausible. I’m somewhat fascinated by the way some people are able to get a crowd of people to follow them in such an intense way. The leaders don’t even have to have great ideas, just this strange charisma that draws people in. Amazing… in a very horrific way.
ireckonthat 