Better In Your Head?--LITTLE WOMEN

 

Spoiler Alert: there's actually a lot of women.

THE BOOK-Written by Louisa May Alcott, released 1868/1869

THE MOVIE(S)-Directed by George Cukor, written by Sarah Y. Mason & Victor Heerman, released 1933

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, written by Sally Benson, Andrew Salt, Sarah Y. Mason & Victor Heerman, released 1949

Directed by Gillian Armstrong, written by Robin Swicord, released 1994

Directed & written by Greta Gerwig, released 2019

THE STORY-Insofar as occupying a multi-story Colonial in the American Northeast qualifies as "struggling," the March family struggles indeed. While her husband serves in the Union Army, cherished matriarch Margaret imports lessons of faith and forgiveness, of charm and charity, upon her four daughters: compliant Meg; arty, self-centered Amy; kindly Beth; and temperamental tomboy Jo. The ladies act out original plays, party with well-off neighbors, and pay it relentlessly forward. Prestige, romance, birth, death, how are you not familiar with the story already?

MIND THE GAP-Every version of Little Women is a fanciful backwards glance. Huge dresses! Heavy hair! Heavy dresses! Huge hair! Exemplary elocution! Jaw-dropping acts of selflessness! Through feminist lenses of varying curves, sisterhood is frivolity, frivolity is freedom, domesticity is an insidious poison, Jo's a dyke clearly, so just throw Professor Bhaer Meg's way. For purposes of this blog, I approach the text as a mere reader. I can't get so ensnared in furtive sighs and insightful pauses.

Guaranteed to chafe certain generations, but remember--the world's best stuff is soft and pink.

I rank the "talkies" thusly, best to least: 2019, 1949, 1994, 1933.

Katharine Hepburn's Jo remains my favorite portrayal of my favorite sister; besides being a hammerhead shark of an actor, she's closest of all contenders to Alcott's character as written: "tall, big hands and feet." Unlike many Jo devotees whose fandom is driven primarily by their inability to deal with the fact they're really Amy deep down, I was Jo March. A wanna-be writer, an unrepentant slang-slinger. (No dude drama, though, as I was much too homely.) Even though she proved more Cameron Frye in a Red Wings jersey than 2pac in a Red Wings jersey, I still love Jo. Mistakes are like bowel movements--everyone makes them.

Amy. No field too long for that cunt. 

Winona Ryder's pretty passions aside, the first Little Women adaptation directed by a woman is more careful than colorful, often cute and rarely cutting.

Described variously as "bold," "arrogant," or "unnecessary," the latest (last?) take disturbs the veil masterfully, reveling in gorgeous ambiguity, a steel pinata cloaked in fine silk. Nearly every risk it takes pays off, and the box office returns were quite sweet. 

Can't wait for the conclusion of the "Saoirse Ronan desperately out-acts Timothée Chalamet in a Greta Gerwig film" trilogy!

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Even in 1985, Little Women struck me as a story of Cespedesian absurdity. Catch a falling star, save it for a snowstorm, incinerate a life's work, settle for perpetual leftovers. Pure sisterhood. Louisa May Alcott was not a powerhouse prose stylist, but she was a superior storyteller. Once upon a time, I ate it up. Baby Snoopy at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, snuggled behind the jug, that was me with this book. It poked my belly, tugged my earlobes and tickled my tear ducts. Of the re-imaginings, only the 2019 version manages that last one.

Better In Your Head?--ORDINARY PEOPLE

 

Spoiler Alert: Martin Scorsese loves the movie.

THE BOOK-Written by Judith Guest, released 1976

THE MOVIE-Directed by Robert Redford, written by Alan Sargent, released 1980

THE STORY-The Jarrett family had it all. Wealth and health, love and fun. Then the oldest son died, leaving behind countless devastated. None more so, perhaps, then little brother Conrad, whose ongoing struggles with depression threaten to tear the frayed tether away for good.

MIND THE GAP-For his directorial debut, Robert Redford wisely let the actors act. Besides Hutton's riveting portrayal of emotional fatigue in gradual motion, Donald Sutherland doesn't strike one fraudulent note as dad Calvin, Judd Hirsch is indispensable as the therapist-next-door, and Mary Tyler Moore played her best-ever game of pretend as a walking ice cube of a mother. Timothy Hutton's Oscar win was egregious category fraud, but his Conrad is so fucking good my complaints taste like artichoke in my mouth.

 In a world dependent on constant change, we denizens should know better than to fancy ourselves impervious. Interpreting the tragic event as a mundane event would save us so much headache. 

To air out grievances is human. Beth Jarrett, former mother of two, is easily the most (only?) loathed character, because she cannot. Cannot figure, cannot comprehend, cannot regard her surviving son as a fellow puzzle piece. She adores the horror show of respectable parties hosted by important people, where small talk is a form of currency and cries for help are served up as medium-rare jokes. Her husband and son have welcomed self-reflection into the family, but Beth is thisclose to calling the cops on the bastard.

Conrad--adjusting to life after an extended stay in a mental hospital, a fresh set of scars rushing up from both wrists--is instantly likable. He's trudging through a jungle of guilt and trauma with two sharpened pencils. He wants not simply to persist, but to please. He'll never be the superstar shine of a son his big bro was, but damnit, he can be good nevertheless, worthy. So--mom is contented in her chill; son is restless in his remorsefulness; and dad is...desperate. There's just no other word for the thing. Reconnection notice on every door of the house, and it's no small pad. 

Damn Beth! Except...I can't hate Beth. Immaculate hostess, sterling guest, spiffy dresser, emotionally stunted--she did not pop out fully-formed. Beth Jarrett was made, from a recipe many generations old. (Interestingly, both Redford and Moore saw their respective fathers in the character.) Where's the hate stem from? The pedestal upon which mothers are placed. So I pity Beth. I pity them all. 

Whether or not Ordinary People deserved Best Picture over Raging Bull, it won. Dismissing it as outdated white people stuff (see also: the Charleston and shadow puppets) is to miss the point. Rich and poor alike, given enough time, will experience the ultimate in pain. The problem with rejecting stories out of hand is the assumption the narrative is beyond the beholder's mien. Take a moment; take a chance.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD?-Nothing in the movie diverts drastically from Guest's work. Conrad's relationships outside the home aren't fleshed out, but such excisions are common (hence, adaptations so often coming up short). 

An ode to the lost soul lugging around a backpack stuffed with maps, the story of Ordinary People is the story of radical disruption on a primal level, and a reader's internal interpolation will always ring truer, and stand taller, and sleep sounder. Somehow, it's a comfort novel for me, a clarion call to self-reclamation.

Better In Your Head?--THE WAR OF THE ROSES

 

Spoiler Alert: don't let the home own you. And never apologize for being multi-orgasmic.

THE BOOK-Written by Warren Adler, released 1981

THE MOVIE-Directed by Danny DeVito, written by Michael J. Leeson, released 1989

THE STORY-There's these people. People who wear underwear every day. People whose mother-of-pearl shells breed maggots. These people fall crazy in love, then crazy out of love, and The War Of The Roses is their frosty story. When the tongue can no longer distinguish water from vodka, when undercover resents overflow, when indifference becomes the new anger, and waging war is the only thing that brings peace. 

MIND THE GAP-The film alters quite a bit. Two lawyers become one; an American au pair becomes a German housekeeper; and said lawyer provides voice-over narration in the guise of advice to a disgruntled husband. The excessive one-upmanship between the estranged Oliver (FKA Jonathan) and Barbara Rose, while still ludicrous onscreen, is tempered somewhat. Spiked drinks, sabotaged saunas, crunched Ferraris, bathtubs of rotting food--the movie shows you most of the carnage. But it pusses out when it comes to the dog. Can't risk alienating the audience!

Danny DeVito pulls double duty as the lawyer, and makes their kind seem not-so reprehensible. The book lawyers, with full knowledge of the depths their respective clients would plunge in order to retain possession of the opulent family home, take separate vacations. 

The film doesn't care that the action takes place in Washington, D.C. Shame; Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner tearing into some Double-R burgers would've kept Roy Rogers from near-extinction.

The Rose children, vital on the page, are non-entities on the screen. Once they're sent off, the battle between their folks escalates. Respect, decency, love--up in smoke. The epiphany hits just before the end does. 

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD?-Most who've consumed both prefer the film. Already familiar to '80s audiences as the stars of Romancing The Stone and The Jewel Of The Nile, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner proved equally successful in a dark, lethally clever comedy. It's for sure funnier than the book; like being tickled with rusted tongs. And as mentioned, the filmmakers pulled punches in their quest to push out as many gallows guffaws as possible. Viewers never get the space or time to consider the headier issues.

I walked away from the book dazed, knowing that parents who abandon their responsibilities (no matter the reason, regardless of the rhyme) are hopelessly lost. I walked away from the film dazed, knowing that spouses who abandon their common sense are not as lost as they imagine. The idea of sympathizing with either version of the Roses is laughable to me. A control freak who'd feel markedly happier with an acquiescent partner of modest ambition, or a nauseatingly-entitled sociopath whose single gift cannot sustain her desired lifestyle? I'll choose the beach, thanks, and I'll be re-reading the book. 

Better In Your Head?--THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

Spoiler Alert: six inches is perfectly adequate.

THE BOOK-Written by Muriel Spark, released 1961

THE MOVIE-Directed by Ronald Neame, written by Jay Preston Allen, released 1969

THE STORY-Edinburgh, the 1930s. At the Marcia Blaine School, Jean Brodie is cultivating a small garden of six twelve-year-old girls who, with great care and magnanimous patience, will grow into redoubtable ladies distinguished by exemplary aplomb and towering intellect. (And, ahem, lady boners for fascism.) 

MIND THE GAP-Best known as the woman who put the "pose" in "composure," Maggie Smith won her first Oscar for the role of Jean Brodie, and the Academy's decision is no scalp-scratcher. While not precisely the gray-haired, middle-aged teacher desperate to leave a legacy, she nails every narcissistic beat. The truculent tulip, the reluctant rose, the pouty petunia, the diffident daffodil--she's every plant in the pot. A lesser actress would've not only missed out on a golden trinket, she would've rendered the character (and thus the film) pointless. Dame Maggie's technically stirring, emotionally detached performance impeccably frames the portrait of a drowning woman blowing air into the world's last life raft. I almost believe she cares about these girls.

Besides keeping the narrative entirely linear, the film omits two girls, and plays mix-and-match with some characteristics and ultimate fates. (Sandy "The Snitch" Stranger and Mary "The Marshmallow" MacGregor are standouts in both. Pamela Franklin deserved a better career, probably, and Jane Card is the quintessential stuttering plain-o with pigtails.) 

The "sexy" scenes are as arousing as a trip to the Hormel factory, though.

Monica...Jenny...Douglas...Pamela...my mom mighta read this book.

The behatted Brodie Bunch adore their self-styled captain of culture, a peacock in a yard full of robins. One foot in the grave, the other foot in the gravy, Jean Brodie is the sort of woman fit for fanfic immortality, the type of lady your soul needs to reconcile. Her downfall is her own fault, and if my empathy isn't strong, nor is it weak.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD?-Muriel Sparks wrote as though she'd been trapped in a sandstorm of her own creation. She'd die of thirst before admitting her folly. For every "a six o'clock feeling in the house," there's a useless repetition of a trite descriptor. Often in adaptations, characters rendered in the flesh wind up reduced. Not here. The novel--a pre-war classic, mind--left me feeling displaced. Monotonous, droll to a double-fault. Despite the indelible grossness of the classic Catholic-perv of an art teacher who subsists on the poorly-formed words and deeds of young flesh, and despite so many rolling R's my tongue fell asleep, the film version of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie is British as fook, and I--American as a missed point--prefer it for that very reason.

Better In Your Head? Pt. 2

Hot damn ho, here we go again.

From December 2016 to July 2017, Trapper Jenn MD hosted an ambitious project: "Better In Your Head?," my challenge of the conventional wisdom stating the cinematic adaptation of a novel is almost always inferior to the source material. 55 books, 58 movies, 1 big win for conventional wisdom.

If you were among the hundreds who regularly checked in (or if such an endeavor just shakes your peaches), well, you're in for a treat. And I don't mean pee-flavored popsicles. The structure of the original posts remains, but I've streamlined the actual reviews themselves. Making for, in my horrifically-biased opinion, a vastly improved reading experience.

61 books, 70 movies. Is it still better in your head? Starting tomorrow, we find out.

Tempt Fate

 

THE SICK, THE DYING...AND THE DEAD!

9/2/22

Megadeth's sixteenth album in six years (first with drummer Dirk Verbeuren) is a testament to resilience. It's timely, yet could've been released at anytime within the past three decades and been just as appropriate. Some things are forever. 

Dave Ellefson as Megadeth bassist, not one of those things! Lava finally escaped the fissure vent, and Mustaine wasted little time in showing his longtime bottom the exit--and promptly bringing in Steve Di Giorgio to re-record all of Ellefson's parts for this album. 

"The Sick, The Dying...And The Dead!"--A strong-footed stomp that exemplifies the eternal shine of the loud, the fast...and the hard.

"Life In Hell"--Dave Mustaine the lyricist is hung up on berating "you." A bad person, this "you," or maybe they've just made some poor choices. He chooses breakneck over breaking necks, and the regrets dissolve in the loogies hocked against an Amazon truck. 

"Night Stalkers"--The second single features Ice-T. Rather than rap or sing, however, the former delivers a bad-ass interlude befitting a private in the Army's 25th Infantry Division. The lyrics are evocative without coming off hoaky and, in what proves to be a common theme throughout the album, the guitar solos destroy. 

"Dogs Of Chernobyl"--The caress becomes the clutch. The injustice of poison's prominence in our lives is enough to make the sky fall.

"Sacrifice"--And after a stupendous run, the stumble. 

"Come listen to the tale of a tragic sacrifice/Of a warlock king of Satanic ancestry." 

Dave, dude, what's the aim here? Scary? Stern? Are you a bard or a buffoon? Either way, these middle school lyrics and high school riffs ain't makin' it. 

"Junkie"--Don't do drugs, y'all. In fact, don't say anything to drugs. Even a "no" will drag you into a conversation so twisty and turny that by the time you hit the exit ramp, you're ready to pack your nostrils with fishscale. 

"Psychopathy"--More effective as an interlude inside of a song, probably.

"Killing Time"--More like "Skipping Time." Mustaine's a snot, and when he's hit that certain groove--that unimaginative, fake-tough, stolen valor-ass groove--it makes me long for the days of my brother's sun-warped Saxon cassettes.

"Soldier On!"--Finally, the bang is back. And it brought a buddy, suspiciously shy yet alluringly shouldered.

"Celebutante"--There's an accent somewhere there, and were this a better song, I'd go the extra steps necessary to add said accent. Ooh, the beautiful people are vapid and shallow! Tell me 'bout politicians and preachers next, metal man!

"Mission To Mars"--God of war, check. Red planet, mm-hmm, red is the color most commonly associated with blood, anger, tomatoes. Jeez, was this a whole bunch of not-much (a Risk-y proposition, dare I say) up until the twist. On the Serling Scale Of Story Surprises, it's quite below "To Serve Man," but it's considerably above "Probe 7, Over And Out."

"We'll Be Back"--The first single, and the first indication that maybe this album might be a winner. Ferocity, boy, an infinite kamikaze wave that's either a metaphor or a man-crush depending on how dumb the listener is. Still the best thing on here, and a hell of a circle to twirl out on.

(The digital release finished with two covers: "Police Truck" by Dead Kennedys and Sammy Hagar's "This Planet's On Fire." Man will visit Venus before I concern myself with such matters.)

So, bad news first. The Sick, The Dying...And The Dead! is ultimately mediocre. Thunder rumbles and cracks unbroken, lightning flashes at unpredictable intervals...but the clouds never burst. 

Good news, though, I have yet to catch COVID. Stay safe, kids.

Snoopy's Presents: Lucy's School

 

AIRDATE: 8/12/2022

It's been three months, time for Apple TV to drop another Peanuts special!

STORY

It's not just a new school year the kids are dreading. A new school looms in the near distance, strange as it is scary, scary as it is strange. Leading the charge against the tyranny of mandated education is Lucy, who has discovered a way she and her friends can enjoy endless summer. First, though, she has to teach them a thing or two about a thing or two. 

MUSIC

Sharing the slide with Jeff Morrow, She & Him contribute both a cute original song, "Back To School," and a sweet-spirited rendition of the Beach Boys classic "All Summer Long," which plays over a montage of amiable frolic. 

ANIMATION

I can't get enough of this new Peanuts style. I wanna stir it into my mashed potatoes. I wanna pour it into my bathwater. Unprecedented (for Peanuts) experimentation with color and design encourages repeated viewings of a show that is admittedly light on laugh-out-loud moments. 

VOICES

After a two-special break, Etienne Kellici returns to voice the world's most beloved blockhead. He fits in just fine with the troupe, who've all settled into their roles, snug as a hug.

ENGLISH 

Lucy's unorthodox teaching methods mean every day is a field trip. Her class (which includes Jose Peterson! And Snoopy!) sits through Star Trek, stamps up bingo cards, and shoots a round of mini-golf. Because what better way, truly, to learn about science, math and geography? 

Miss Othmar, make way for Miss Halverson. That name hit me immediately, and with a little research, I discovered why: Charles Schulz's mother, Dena Halverson. 

MATH

Change can be so devastating for a kid. I'm digging these new specials not only delving into uneasy moments of childhood, but also how two of them have centered around Lucy, always the most brazenly emotional of the bunch. 

The expanded neighborhood, where we see the characters interacting with other kids who'll never be given names much less lines, is another check in the column. But there's only so much more I can endure of Roy being seen and never heard. Guys, he was the Peppermint Patty hook-up in the comic strip! So vital! Just a line!

SCORE

Solid 8/10. No cynicism, no snark, just a nice little story told marvelously. And little kids cracking accidental jokes on England.