MOMMENTARY |
|||
|
Sunday, January 20, 2008 ( 10:25 PM ) Elinor Dashwood Northanger Abbey is much, much better than I feared it would be. This new production sticks pretty closely to the book, and the main characters are perfectly charming. Felicity Jones is prettier than the book leads one to expect Catherine Morland to be, and has rather a look of the very young Kate Beckinsale. I hope she doesn't fade so soon, or acquire so many irritating acting tics. JJ Feild is about the most appealing funny-looking redhead presently inhabiting the planet, and quite captured my heart as Henry Tilney. Mrs. Allen is played by Sylvestra le Touzel (how's that for a name?), who played Fanny Price in Mansfield Park the last time public television did the whole Austen canon, back in the Eighties. She isn't portrayed as half the cipher here as she is in the novel, where she's virtually in a state of suspended animation most of the time. Neither is Isabella Thorpe quite as much the fluttering, flattering poseuse she is in print. (To do the character justice, there isn't the slightest suggestion in the book that she's seduced and rebuffed by Captain Tilney, as here; all that really happens is that she makes a strong bid for his affections, and that he first flirts with her and then disappoints her.) On the whole, I'm very much pleased and surprised by the quality and fidelity of this new Northanger Abbey. They made such a pig's breakfast of it last time around, in 1986, that I was uneasy about watching tonight, but I heartily congratulate those responsible. # Sunday, January 13, 2008 ( 10:33 AM ) Elinor Dashwood Conversazione chez Cacciaguida: Elinor, doing a crossword puzzle: Is it je-re-boam, or je-ro-boam? Cacciaguida: I'm not sure. Whichever it is, though, I'm sure the guy at the liquor store will know what you mean. Elinor: Oooh, I'll give you such a pinch. # |
|
||
