First of all, may I take this opportunity to wish Ma QB a Happy Mothering Sunday?
 |
| {Cheeeersssh!} |
Probably still playing catch-up after last week's sner.
Anyway, without further ado ...
This week, I have mostly been ...
Reading 📙
I may have got through a few more pages of Little Women since last we spoke ... but yet again I've been preoccupied with:
Writing ✍
 |
| {Aaah, my spiritual home, Costa, the institution of which will doubtless end up in the acknowledgments of this novel |
 |
| {... even on the corner of Ma's pasting table desk!) |
 |
| {Note-making in the pub because the bl__dy tablet ran down its own battery, like the defiant machination that it is.} |
Watching 🎥📺
(Oh, now, brace yourselves: I've been a right ol' square-eyes lately, comparatively speaking.)
Friends
(Season Six, in case any of you are keeping track.)
Florence Foster Jenkins
This is just a wonderful film.
Meryl Streep can do no wrong, ever; and she plays FFJ, music aficionado and deluded opera-singer, with just the right amount of whimsy and empathy, while Hugh Grant as her husband plays, well, you can imagine. (Hugh Grant, basically.)
Quick upshot of the plot for those of you still awake at the back there: FFJ decides in her latter years that she wants to sing, and hires a pianist and a tutor to help her fulfil her dream.
Except she can't sing.
Ooh, look, Charles and Bernard reunited! {#pointlessfourweddingsandafuneralreference}
(Well, that's the film interpretation anyway.)
There are some wonderful comic moments in the film and some gorgeous performances – look out for Simon "Howard Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory" Helberg as FFJ's pianist, Cosmé McMoon; he's utterly adorable.
Breathe
Watched this with Ma last weekend: it's the biopic of Robin Cavendish who contracted polio as a young man while in Kenya, and was paralysed, but who survived far beyond his predicted years with the help of a breathing machine and an adapted chair invented by his friend Teddy Hall.
As ever, the story was rather Vaseline-smeared for the purposes of Hollywood but Andrew Garfield is just wonderful to watch in what is otherwise quite a slow-moving flick.
Fans of The Crown will enjoy Claire Foy: she's a little too, er, Helena Bonham-Carter-ish for my liking (plus as Robin's wife Diana, she did not age a day from the 1940s to the 1980s, which, considering the makeup artists did a fine job ageing Robin, was just a bit weird).
Oh but Tom Hollander, playing both of Diana's twin brothers, is just marvellous.
The Girl on the Train
Warning: the trailer is a bit grim ...
(Are ya ready for another
You'd think that I, hardened, seasoned, embittered stalwart commuter, would be the first in line to appreciate a book, and a film, entitled The Girl on the Train.
I'm afraid, dear FOQ, that you think wrong. Wrongity-wrong.
Did I enjoy the filmic translation of Paula Hawkins' lauded 'thriller'?
Nope.
No.
Nein.
Nyet.
At this point, dear reader, now you've got the general idea that no, I did not enjoy this film, you can Choose your Own Blog Post Adventure: either you can read through my damning diatribe (and you can imagine me, shrieking, in my effusive way, and another thing as a preface to every point forthcoming).
Or you can skip right on ahead to the part of the blog where you'll find this picture collage of me in the snow looking hella tired:
If you choose to follow me on this journey, beware – BEWAAAAARE!
I enjoyed TGOTT: the fillum almost as much as I used to 'enjoy' waiting at East Croydon for hours on end back in the day, only to end up on a late-running service, in an aisle or a vestibule, wedged under someone's armpit, or downwind of their coffee/lager breath
(So basically none; I enjoyed it none.)
I'll tell you for why.
Actually, first I'll tell you for why not.
It wasn't down to the cast, the cast was comprised of some decent, acclaimed actors – and (Jennifer Aniston's ex-husband) Justin "Allegedly Collects Human Teeth" Theroux.
Add in to the mix:
- Emily Blunt (wondrous as she is, she is in some danger of being a little too ... English and Emily Blunt-ish sometimes, in most everything, but she's terrifyingly skilled at playing drunk)
- Allison Janney (who is utterly wasted in this film)
 |
| {via here} |
- Laura Prepon (most latterly of OITNB fame; she's still rocking quite an Alex Vause vibe but we'll allow)
- Haley Bennett (whose name I recognised but who I mistook for Blake "Gossip Girl" Lively for the first ten minutes of the film before I realised she's the teenage popstar in Music and Lyrics)
 |
| {via here} |
- Oh, look, there's that non-singing opera singer from The Greatest Showman, Rebecca "Not the X-Factor finalist" Ferguson again (far be it from me to get a little overly... fangirly about an actor to the point of watching everything they're in and yes you can count Florence Foster Jenkins in that number, too ... eh, OK, I totally do, but y'know what, I own that).
 |
| {That's a freakishly tiny hand you have there, Anna...} |
- And, spotted but scarily barely recognisable, Lisa "Phoebe from Friends some 25 years later, gulp" Kudrow.
Poor old cast, poooor old cast, why are you doing this?
Poor old cast, poooooor old cast, it's not your fault.
I'll tell you what is wrong.
It's the flamin' storyline.
The achingly implausible, contrived, riddled-with-inconsistencies storyline.
I'm sure Paula Hawkins is a very nice person and a very hard worker who spent hours, days, weeks, months, years on crafting TGOTT and hey, who am I to cricitise one who's a published novelist when I, dear reader, am not? but why on earth didn't anyone take a heavy-duty iron to her plotline and smooth out all the bumps? (Yes, friends, I'm quoting myself, again. And, Evie, check out our dialogue in the comments for this blog post! I'd forgotten this!)
There were many flaws, and they were all carelessly translated into the film adaptation. Maybe if the film-makers had waited for the book's publication before they got all excited about it, and read a few reviews before adapting it, they might have been able to right all those wrongity-wrongs but as Rachel herself might say:
I am still trying to fathom out what possessed the filmmakers to transpose the location from London to the outer boroughs of NYC ...
Although, I can imagine that budget and practicality had a lot to do with it, plus London according to Hollywood is full of red phone boxes and bankers in bowler hats so the story simply wouldn't make sense (!).
Also, it may be down to the mere fact that if Rachel really were travelling in and out of London pretending to commute (and who does that?!), there's no way she'd have been close enough to a window to be able to follow the everyday shenanigans of Megan and her husband, because she'd be rammed in an aisle or a vestibule, or wedged under someone's armpit, or downwind of their coffee/lager breath.
 |
| {Picture: Getty via here} |
WRONG.
Maybe I've spent too much time napping, gob open, on trains lately (I live a charmed commuter life these days: even the conductor – sorry, OBS – commented on how lucky I was to be able to have three empty seats around me, and a table to write on, this past week), but even on the quietest of journeys coming into the most built-up parts of the city, are you really, really able to see the everyday goings on of people living in the buildings by the tracks?
Really?
I mean, how good must her long-distance sight have been to be able to discern all the things she did from looking out of the window?!
I call tommyrot.
Admittedly, years ago, when I was on the train, I saw a dead sheep in a field somewhere between Edenbridge and Tonbridge but, y'know, I didn't know its name; and I certainly didn't get out of the train, and hunt down or stalk its husband or anything.
 |
| {"Can I interest you in a set of encyclopaedias?"} |
Mind you, that's probably because I'm not a ghastly fictional anti-protagonist.
Also, it was a sheep.
...
At least in the film, the police were given enough gravitas to at least seem like they knew what they were doing; but riddle me this, other people who have lost two hours of their lives to this film:
Maybe I wasn't paying attention to the timelines (because, if you recall my previous criticism of the book, the whole Morning/Evening time shift thing bored me; it bored me, people) but, how did Rachel go from not knowing who Megan was, and imagining what her name was ("Lisa, or Amber, or Jess") to suddenly knowing she was Megan Hipwell, and suddenly having information about her based on seeing one photograph of this woman whom she'd only seen from afar on the train?!
 |
| {Aaah, just imagine how much one can deduce from this fleeting scene ...} |
I know Rachel was an unreliable narrator but coooooome onnnnnnn!
And how long had Megan and Scott been Anna and Tom's neighbours? Scott knew Rachel was 'Tom's crazy ex' but ... had they been Rachel's neighbours as well? Or did they only move in after Anna moved into what was Tom and Rachel's house, and had that adorable baby who seemed to age then regress from scene to scene (OK, to be fair, there may have been more time lapse notices that I wasn't paying attention to).
Ooh, so many questions.
... It annoys me when I dislike a film and it throws up all these questions to which I really want the answers if only to prove me wrong, but it's such a terrible film I can't go back and watch it and fill in the gaps because that's tantamount to smacking myself about the chops and why would I even do that?!
Oh look, here's me in the snow. That's your cue – the rest of you can come back into the room now.
---
I have also been ...
Celebrating the significant birthday 🎂🎈
of Pa QB in a typically but pleasantly low-key Harwoodian fashion, with a scrumptious lunch at the Poacher and Partridge in Tudeley followed by gift opening and giggling at home.
 |
| {Setting the gift standard high with a spangly new rain mac!} |
 |
| {Piggeh cake! 💓} |
 |
| {...} |
Happy birthday, ol' man.
Hanging with the Ginger Yoda 💜
... and putting the world to rights over some substantially-sized pizzas.
 |
| {By the by, Facebook Friends ... the water was what happened after the wine in case you thought for a moment that I'd gone all puritanical on you. Nooooo. | photo by Natalie} |
... twice in a day, first at Part Two of our a cappella workshop; and if you come along to either our free Sing into Spring event on 24th March, or our proper concert on 9th June, you'll hear us perform it for reals so I'm still not divulging what song it is – as Ma always says in her wisdom, you'll have to Wait and See.
... For our second liaison, we parked up round our Jess' gaff for what we like to call Kebabaoke and no, I'm not even going to explain for why, it's too easy; nobody likes a FOQsplainer.
 |
| {"Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Elton ... John!" Just kidding; they were singing Suspicious Minds.} |
 |
| {Sensible ... | photo by Mimi} |
 |
| {Slightly deranged ... | photo by Mimi} |
The night may have drawn to a close with a very high-pressure game of Chubby Bunny from which Charlie emerged triumphant with a total of seven? Eight? marshmallows wedged in her mouth.
 |
| {The aftermath} |
---
With big shout-outs to, of course, Jess (HWTM*) and Mimi (and Mimi's friend); Alun, Charlie and Al, Jenny, and Steve, quality duetting partner – yes, friends, we tackled this number which I kind of just learned yesterday afternoon:
And very nice to meet Jess' new man Marc (and young Isla); hope the lot of us combined weren't too scary a prospect.
(*first word is hostess and I'll let you work out the rest)
Pinterest Pins of the Fortnight 📌
Fortnightly Web Finds 🕸🔎
Serious 😑
• My Life as a Bookworm | Lucy Mangan (yay!) for The Guardian | via Goodreads
• When cooking for one, we need to banish the "why bother?" feeling | Signe Johansen on The Pool
• My workmate Emily is blogging, and cooking, and baking, and she has a reet good turn of phrase | This Cookbook Calendar
• Love this (and I think you will too, Natalie): wise words on self-love and self-care from illustrator Mari Andrew:
Silly 🤡
• Google Translate Sings ... The Greatest Showman | Malinda Kathleen Reese on YouTube
Well, as Ma QB very often said to Sis and me in our youth "That's enough!" (usually suffixed with, "I'll bang yer heads together").
More in a fortnight, probably.
qb xx
No comments:
Post a Comment