Tag Archives: Jane Austen

A weekend in the country

Posted on August 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

Oh, Austenland — I wanted to love you.

austenlandYou had it all.

A costume drama dressed up as romcom. Subject matter I enjoy ever so much. And a cast with the chops to make movie magic.  So what went wrong?

I blame the director.

The premise was great fun — a Jane Austen addict on a total immersion vacation — and it’s not like everything missed the mark.  But some of the actors were doing slapstick and others were letting the humor happen more naturally.

And in the same scenes, that difference was rather jarring.

austenland martin nobelyI did develop a crush or two — on JJ Feild, who portrayed Mr. Henry Nobely (right), and Bret McKenzie as the estate worker Martin (and who you may recognize from Flight of the Conchords).

So, while the movie did not win my heart like a Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, the men did.

Time well spent.

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200 reasons

Posted on January 28, 2013 | 3 comments

Today is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice.

Fans around the world will celebrate this, one of our greatest works of literature, and its prolific author Jane Austen.

Myself?

image

I celebrate the movie and its unforgettable Mr. Darcys.  I use the plural because I find everyone has a favorite.

Mine is Matthew Macfadyen, who starred opposite Keira Knightley. I loved his interpretation — quiet, shy, judgmental, passionate.

I’ve loved everything else he has acted in as well.

Thanks, Jane, for the introduction.

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The score

Posted on October 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

I’m not one to typically notice movie scores. And that’s not the reason I decided to watch Pride and Prejudice on E! tonight.

I have Matthew MacFadyen to thank for that.

But as I watched the Jane Austen classic for the umpteenth time, it was hard not to appreciate the music that underlies each scene — not telling us how to feel, simply providing the perfect accompaniment to the action.

I had a much more immediate appreciation of the score to Little Women when it was released in 1994. In fact, I bought the score before I bought the movie — an almost unheard of action on my part.

The music that accompanies the news of Beth’s death is in and of itself a showstopper.

And more recently I loved the soundtrack to The Social Network, which won a well-deserved Oscar.  I remember being excited that the same composers were doing the score for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Which makes me think I pay more attention to movie scores than I originally thought.

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