Mondays

[chocolatepot]

I am so useless on Mondays - I always have been but when you're still at home it's so hard to make yourself go back to work.

Have y'all seen Emma? I'm pretty enchanted with it, apart from some of the casting (Jane Fairfax looks much older than Emma, Frank Churchill isn't very handsome or charming, and Harriet is supposed to be gorgeous - Harriet being very ordinary-looking in the movie annoys me both because I wrote a whole fic based on the sexual tension of Emma admiring her and because I also read a great chapter on how Austen played with the 18thc trope of the deserving, lovely illegitimate girl who gets taken up by a great lady and turns out to be legitimate after all). While I've thought before that the world doesn't need any more Austen adaptations, I would actually love to see a Pride and Prej movie in this same brightly lit and ironic-but-realistic style. 2005 is of course heavy on the realism but for the sake of playing up the romance (muddy, farmy Longbourn vs clean, monumental Pemberley) and 1995 looks ironically at the grotesque characters and seriously/romantically at the others while using realism for that '90s candlelight-drenched heritage-film experience. An adaptation that makes Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy look a bit silly at times, like Emma holding up her skirt in front of the fire/getting a nosebleed or Mr. Knightley being dressed by his valet/flinging himself on his parlor floor, and filmed with bright colors and wide-angle shots of the landscape overlaid with Maddy Prior singing English folk songs, would be a welcome addition to the canon.

First spencer test has come in, and I've screwed up the shoulders! Need to lengthen the front from them (and therefore grade the collar). Sometimes I just don't adequately visualize these things.

Comments

[robinsnest]

i'm in fact in the middle of editing rob and my review for youtube. I liked how it was irreverent. I also though that fairfax/churchill were the weak point. They were cut back significantly to the point where Frank's influence on her didn't make sense? Also lots of butts.

I loved that they really had servants there, so often they're mostly cut out. But the character's kind of blindness to them really highlighted the silver spoon I thought.

[mala_14]

The servants cracked me up so much. Like how they're just there because they have to be working, but sometimes super awkward things are happening. My personal favourite is when Knightly throws himself on the floor and the servant walks in, goes Nope!, and immediately walks out. Looking forward to seeing your review!

[chocolatepot]

That's awesome! Can't wait to watch it. And I totally agree about the servants - just inviting them onto the screen and allowing them to have facial expressions etc. is a fairly big step from other adaptations.

[mala_14]

I enjoyed Emma so much! I was also a little confused on some of the casting. I thought that a lot of the characters look more smarmy and kind of rabbit-y (if that makes sense) than pretty/handsome/conventionally attractive. I couldn't decide if it was intentional or not. Like makes total sense for the Eltons, but Frank Churchill and Harriet, I'm not so sure.

I think the irreverent style really captures Austen's wit. People so often get into the "romance" aspect of Austen to the neglect of all the hilarity and ridicule.

[chocolatepot]

I wondered if maybe it was on purpose in a "before mass media, people had lower standards" realism kind of way, too. TBH, I kind of thought Josh O'Connor would have been a better Frank Churchill than Elton!