The Silver Screen Oasis

It's great, I love to read so much, especially the classics, I had got a couple of Alison Weir books and Philippa Gregory books out of the library but to have this service which has a creditable amount on material is excellent. I've just listened to Tender is the Night and now I'm listening to a Radio 4 production of the Forsyte Saga. Dirk Bogarde is Galsworthy.

Oh gosh, I wish I had that! Those both are favorites of mine!

It's great but I crashed the computer again

OOPS.

I know, I wasn't popular still I just pop my headphones in and pretend it hasn't happened. I'm listening to Anna Karenina at the moment, I have a list of 5 to 6 books that jostle for top position, this is one, it's also the longest, the last time I read it I was pregnant with Libby, I've wanted to reread it so many times but it's a book that really deserves concentration. It's perfect for listening to whilst pottering in the house, so much of housework is automatic it's great to just sail away with a good story. There are so many good titles too and it is a bit like Netflix, you don't know exactly what is going to turn up, I love the surprise.

I still think Vivien Leigh was perfect casting, John Gilbert the closest to Vronsky I've ever seen.

I would have to agree with you on casting. just perfect.

I should try to get an ipod or something so I can putter while listening. I am so old school I don't even have a portable listening device! I have to turn on music from the computer or the actual stereo...

Just finished a couple.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins) is as tough and hard-boiled as it gets. Eddie himself does not seem as central a character (as opposed to a mood setter) as in the Peter Yates film, but that may be in large part to using Robert Mitchum's persona (which, in my opinion, resulted in his greatest performance) as a grab for the audience. In the novel, Eddie has some glimmer of hope even though he's being used and is doomed. In the movie, Eddie is resigned to his inevitable fate...taking Mitchum from his early "Baby, I don't care" to "Baby, it doesn't matter if I care."

Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?: His Life and His Films (Alain Silver & James Ursini) is about one-quarter biography, one-quarter detailed information about his filmography (completed and otherwise), and one-half critical analysis of his films. The authors have generally drunk the Aldrich Kool-Aid, which is fine with me because they focus on details to make their case of his auteurism that certainly slipped by me. But even they admit to 4 FOR TEXAS and THE FRISCO KID being, shall we say, lesser works. It also made for a nice transition from the Abraham Polonsky biography I read recently. One of blurbs on the jacket quotes Polonsky: But the real reason I and so many others in the film industry considered him a special kind of friend was that I knew I could always call on him in any crisis, personal or professional, and he would never ask why I needed a favor -- he'd just do it.

I like "Eddie Coyle." I've read several of Higgins' cold, harsh crime novels. Oddly, my favorite is the offbeat, deliberately distracting RATS ON FIRE. (Long story!) The author has a substantial cult following. Fans who consider him in a class by himself. I wouldn't go that far. I prefer the "old guard;" Macdonald, Cain etc. But Mr. H is worth reading!

I got an ipod for the same reason I got a kindle, to make room, CDs were fine for me, yet once I had one I haven't looked back. I'm still way behind times with my phone and my ipod is quite dinky although give it a couple of years and the kids will think that old too. It's really made a difference, I always have the radio or music on when doing housework but with the radio I always seem to be missing the programme I would have been interested in and music station have way too much filler for me. Is it a sign of age, I just have less and less patience for waffle, I want to cut to heart of the matter. I did like listening to an opinion programme where callers air their feelings about the news topics of the day but that seems to waffle these days.

Who's waffling now? As for Anna Karenina, I remember last time having a lot of sympathy for Karenin at the end of the novel. I'm up to the point where Kitty accepts Levin, so midway, so far Karenin isn't inciting that much sympathy but I'm guessing it will come, I think I'm more sympathetic as I mature. Anna, my empathy with her wavers, Karenin offers her his shelter if only she doesn't bring Vronsky to their house and she does, she loves her son so deeply and she betrays him just as much. When I was teenage I would have thought that love conquers all and all must give way to love. Not now, can she employ some common sense because she could have had her cake and ate it. It would have made a far less successful book though. I do like it's layers, it's so much more than a doomed love story. I'm thinking too that perhaps John Gilbert was too nice to play Vronsky, not saying that he hasn't the talent to play a cad well but I'm rather fond of him, too fond for Vronsky who even in my teenage years I never liked completely.

Maybe this is the reason it is such a classic? That you come back and see it so differently as a mature person? I felt the same way when I re-read Gatsby a few years back - I read it every so often, but in the last few years I've had less patience with Gatsby and Nick and Daisy. Rather than thinking it a grand love story it is to me a story of friendship in the face of modern age selfishness. Love can't exist in such a practical vacuum, not between a man and woman, and only tentatively between two men.

I've never liked Vronsky quite either, he's too callow in the end for my liking, but I bet GIlbert could have given it a wonderful spin had there been such a thing as miniseries back then. Gilbert was smart enough to have caught the romance of him, but also that waning passion that drove him away as well. I could see him portraying the anger, irritation and guilt equally as well as the love scenes. It sounds weird but I think you'll know what I mean when I say he would have had the depth to play shallow perfectly. Maybe shallow isn't exactly the word for Vronsky, maybe it's just the same things that brought them together passionately are the things that make their relationship dip and sway over the edge into frustration and even boredom at the end.

I am in no way familiar with ANNA KARENINA. Not book nor movie. I should change that!

I always have the radio or music on when doing housework

For a man, that would be twice a year!

I started on this on Friday:




It's a great read...

I started "The Last Outlaw" by an author named Stone Wallace.

More as I go.

That second one is too funny! And too true.

I saw the title the other day and almost bought the book based on nothing else.