Movie Binge

Edna and I have been going to the movies quite a lot. Since the 23rd, we've gone to the cinemas and watched four films--Sherlock Holmes, An Education, It's Complicated, and Nine--which is pretty heavy movie watching traffic for us since we also watch stuff on DVD at home (which involved two Fred Astair films, The Name of the Rose, The Holiday - more Edna than me -, Purab Aur Pacham (me) and some episodes of The Gilmore Girls).

1. Sherlock Holmes: I really liked the gray gray landscape and the grandiose cinematography. The plot was terrible (when we got home I promptly insisted that we watch The Name of the Rose because it's so much better as a "mystery" movie even if that's the least of its concerns). Showing Holmes' mental processes in slow-mo before he acts was a nice touch but then re-playing everything (perfectly) in "real time" after encapsulated how predictable this movie is.

2. It's Complicated. We actually tried to watch this on Sunday but it was sold out. I can't imagine the hordes of teenage girls (yes, they were with their parents, but still ...) wanting to watch this. I didn't even really want to watch it. Still, when we returned on Monday, there was a sizeable crowd and lots of people were really enjoying themselves laughing at the romantic knots that old people tie themselves into. I suppose the fantasy about getting back with one's ex (especially around the Holiday season) after the kids have grown up is pretty powerful.

3. Nine. Because It's Complicated was sold out on Sunday, we watched Nine, which I really wanted to see anyway since I like Fellini films. I thought that the musical about the paralyzing, neurotic creative process (or elegant procrastination) was very nicely done. I have a thing for films where nothing much happens and Nine certainly fit the bill. I think the audience didn't really like it. A lady sitting to our right left during a Penelope Cruz number, never to return. Maybe watching voluptuous women touching themselves in time to music isn't something you're supposed to do on a Sunday in the South.
Still, I appreciated the whole meta-cinematic feel of Nine, especially how the "set" that gets taken down at the end without having actually been used to make a film IS the space where every musical number (save one) happens. It's just that kind of momentary recognition in a film that gestures to its status as a clever construct that I enjoy.

Fantasizing the A-levels

Having taught ill-prepared college freshmen this semester, I've been thinking a bit about how the A-levels were possibly the hardest and most stressful exams that I've ever had to do. Even though I took them with almost no pressure to do well (I was headed for NUS to do an Arts degree: four Cs would have sufficed; though, in accordance to the grim and deterministic laws of mugging, I ended up with much better grades), the sheer scope and intensity of the thing was quite staggering.

So it was with much interest that I watched An Education this week, where the A-level year of our protagonist, Jenny, played by a be-witching Carey Mulligan, takes an interesting turn as she becomes involved in a romantic tryst with a much older man. Like many a smart, independent minded female protagonist before her, she offers English as an A-level subject (with aspirations to read English at Oxford) and there are nice references to Jane Eyre in the film. A week before, as I struggled with final grading, A.S. Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden was a constant companion. That book also features a precocious 17-year-old on the cusp of an Oxbridge career. Frederica Potter, whose devastating intellect (and grating attempts to demonstrate it) is only matched by her adventurous cavorting with older men ends the book losing her virginity (as does Jenny) under the most unromantic of circumstances.


I'm wondering how the A-level year, when it isn't filled with anxious mugging, does represent a way into adulthood that "senior year" in an American High School doesn't. Are there American films and books that don't infantilize 12th graders and deal with girls on the cusp of becoming women at the same level of sophistication as An Education and The Virgin in the Garden? I've rehearsed a version of this argument on these pages (in a desperate attempt to rationalize my fascination with the High School Musical franchise) but the characters of Twilight series, Fast-times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused, and the Gilmore Girls, and even Dead Poets' Society don't come close to capturing the aspiring sophistication of Jenny and Frederica.

Given that both works are set in the 50s and 60s, and that both Jenny and Frederica contemplate NOT going on to University--one to be married and the other with hopes of pursuing a career on the stage--I suppose the A-levels is much more the symbol of a final academic hurdle than senior year in High school will ever be. I'm sure there are interesting literary and filmic representations of precocious 12th graders but I think that given the cultural imaginary, "senior year" in High School can't ever take on the symbolic weight of the momentousness that is enshrined in taking the A-levels.

The Sidneys

David Brooks's pick of the best in long form journalism for 2009. Definitely much more "serious" in subject matter than what has appeared in previous years, but I guess I'll give them a crack.

Keeping Warm

You'd think that having transplanted to the South from the perpetual cold of Michigan, we'd be in much better shape. We got our gas bill yesterday -- $ 168 -- it said. All that for keeping this house only moderately comfortable (at 60 F). Shocked into penury, I've turned down the thermo to 50 F. We never kept our apartment in Lansing much higher than 50 F, and I guess we thought the warmer weather here would afford us the luxury of ten more degrees of warmth. Ah well, it's going to be a cold Jan and Feb. At least I don't have to chip ice off the windows.
So it's out with my trusty indoor gloves (with cutaway fingers for typing and reading) and my gigantic 18-year-old Canterbury fleece that has was first worn when the USSR was still the USSR and my beanie hat. And of course, my indoor boots: the hardwood floor's nice but it chills the toes. All this for indoor warmth in a cold house.

So

I'm sitting the North Carolinian sun on a cold winter's morning, working on an essay about horses, exchange, and being human. Just so that I make another post to this blog before the year is out - it has been a dismal year for blogging, I write these lines.