gone Hollywood

Here’s my own personal Catch-22 -- I spend concentrated time trying to find book covers that in no way feature pictures of, say, Scarlett Johansson.

If a movie is based on a book, I want to find the book that still has its original art on the cover. I guess it’s sort of like how I want the book that doesn’t have Oprah’s stamp on it. (I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my copy of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina actually had an additional Oprah sleeve wrapped around it when I purchased it. It made me sad a modern day talk show host could somehow claim even a small part of a book that outdates her by a couple centuries.)

At the same time, I’m fairly open to suggestion. And so last night, when I went to Elizabeth: The Golden Age (not good, if you’re wondering, but not exactly bad, either -- if you really want to see this movie, wait for it to come to DVD and in the meantime watch its far better prequel), I was struck by the premise of P.S. I Love You.

The movie, starring Oscar so-and-so’s, is scheduled to come out later this year, I guess. It’s based on a book by Cecelia Ahern, which I bought today in giddy expectation of a love story I will enjoy.

My giddiness is getting out of hand, lately.

While in Ottawa, I went to the movie version of The Jane Austen Book Club.

For the record, I didn’t actually expect to enjoy this movie much. For once, I was bothered, right off the bat, by how young everyone cast is. Because in Karen Joy Fowler’s book, there’s such an emphasis on middle age. I felt like going with Maria Bello and Amy Brenneman (who, by the way, does not look old enough to have a daughter in her 20s) was sort of pandering to our society’s misplaced ideals of beauty, which are linked to youth.

I still think whoever cast the film should have tried a little harder to find older women to play the main characters.

But I sort of easily put my concerns aside during the film’s opening credits. Everyone’s rushing around in today’s LA, no time to think, no time for pleasantries -- and yes, I know many another movie critic before me has discussed these opening scenes. Then, as the movie opens, it really does stay true to Fowler’s excellent book. There’s just enough Austen trivia for those who love the books, but not too much for those who’ve never read them. The story doesn’t rely too fully on the six novels, but you can easily recognize how Bello’s Jocelyn is Emma, etc.

I love, love, loved it. Cross your fingers for future adapted screenplays.

the cool table: we meet again

Cool things I discovered while in Ottawa, thanks to my brother and his partner:

1. Ted Leo.
2. A handful of cool, laid-back pubs in the capital.
3. I like Nick Hornby.

I know, you're rolling your eyes at me. You're thinking that anyone who has the patience to read Helen Fielding probably has the patience for High Fidelity. Turns out you are right.

Sometimes I make quick decisions, quick judgements. (Eh? Emma? Okay, I'll stop.) So if a guy at a bar makes a lame joke, or stares at a girl's breasts for too long, I assume he's an idiot. Similarly, I read the first two or three chapters of Hornby's Fever Pitch, and I jumped to a conclusion about his writing in general....

But High Fidelity is really something special. And not because I feel like I'm hanging out with John Cusack, and he's quietly reading to me, or perhaps we are sitting on a couch together and he is listening to utterly cool indy music on his headphones while I read a novel on which a movie he starred in was based.... (Who wouldn't want to hang out with John Cusack? Honestly.)

To be honest, I have little else to say on this topic -- yes, it's written by a man. Yes, it's popular. Yes, Hornby's actually quite a good writer. But it's still fluff. So I'm not going to bore you with a full-out dissection.

I will bother you with some prose pulled from the pages, however:

"What came first -- the music or the misery?.....

"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody ever worries about kids listening to thousands -- literally thousands -- of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives." (p. 25)

*Additional notes: Stay tuned for my giddy, over-the-top, yes-I-clapped-my-hands-all-through-it review of film based on The Jane Austen Book Club. Really. I clapped my hands. Also, I am still reading Blindness. But I was on vacation, you understand.