Views and Rooms

A room with a view
Lovely
Watch it

I want to see the one with Julian Sands as well.

He was my favorite for a while when I was younger.

Pride and Prejudice

I'd seen it before when I was younger, but never got into it for a few reasons

1. They did say that the girls were pretty and I never thought they were, as a result I couldn't believe anything else

2. I had no time for dark brooding men who said mean things, and you were supposed to understand that there is a deep inner life inside them, full of hurt and pain. Mean is mean- get over yourself and join the human race.
Everybody's got pain, not everybody has to turn it into rude meanness

3. I couldn't abide their clothes

4. Mr. Bingley's sisters were hideous

5. I was a serious teenager. I just couldn't get into them fannying about, giggling and waiting round for husbands who had 5000 or 10,000 pounds a year. It was all they talked about.

6. Then there were a lot of military men in this plot. Talking about love and wooing girls. Everyone knows that military men are whores.
Making themselves 'known' in every port, and every harbor at the four corners of the earth. It's true even today. Most women I know would never trust a military man in that way.

So where does that leave me now.
Well I love Colin Firth as an actor so I watched again. With new eyes this time.

I really like Crispin Bonham-Carter in this movie. His pretty, kind and welcoming eyes draw you into his character, of the trusting and kindly Mr. Bingley. Very sweet.

Adorable really.

Great choice of actors in this movie.
All the mean spirited, smarmy, or disagreeable characters have very sharp features, noses, eyebrows, thin pursed lips, never smiling unless they felt they'd one-upped someone else. Like Mr. Wickham. Charming and made friends easily. Not so easy to keep the friends when they sense his inner nastiness...

Great choices.
Innocent, artless characters had fresh faced, big eyed awareness.

Lovely.
The costuming was brilliant and the scenery.

Ok I love it. I still can't get into giving one's self over to a man who starts off as a very disagreeable person.
Snide and critical (sorry Colin I know the character develops into something more but that rarely happens in real life).

Oh sure one can be 'friends' or friendly at least, and muck about as much as one wants, but never ever consider the possibility of anything more than that. That's what I think anyway.
Anyway lovely movie.
See this version (not that awful pile of who-ha starring Kiera Knightly).

Mansfield Park

Umm About Mansfield Park.
See it just because you want to see it...
It didn't move me like the others, till the last 5 minutes.

I am trying to be nice but this movie really dragged on. The actors really didn't seem to connect with each other at all...
They were supposed to connect (just read the book), but geez.
They tried I imagine, but it was a no go for me...
What I think happened is this:
Billie Piper (you've seen her on the more recent Dr. Who), is really too strong of a personality to play Fanny Price. She really tries to be delicate but her facial features are a little bit too strong for her to be able to pull it off. Blonde hair and dark eyebrows just make everything oogy. The incongruity is very obvious.
Then the men are never able to match up. Either too pansy-ish or too outlandish, and never in a good way..
This is weird because the book is really beautiful with language, perfect timing and rich characters....
Some of them are likeable and some annoying but rich nevertheless

Northanger Abbey

I recommend this movie just because of this line.

"Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor, and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in! Open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise."

Persuasion

Even though Jane was ill when she wrote it, and it was her last and most 'scrappily' done work, it is one of the best.
I love Anthony Stewart Head as Baronet Elliot.

Having only known him as Giles In that TV series (where I adored him btw), it was good to see his range here. He was brilliant, even in this small part.
Sally Hawkins as Anne was nicely done.
However, I think that something was missing from the film...
Some small piece of 'something'. I believe it is was the introduction of Wentworth and development of his character as well as the relationships with the Musgrove daughters and Anne.
It needed a little more of that to kind of develop the Anne Elliot and Wentworth relationship.

Also the relationship between Mrs Clay and the Baronet maybe...
I dunno...The movie didn't last two full hours commercial free, so they could have done more with the time.