nineveh_uk

Red Cliff Who would have thought a film based on a famous battle had so much fighting in it? Not me, apparently. Political strategising, too, but lots and lots of fighting, which I have to admit got a bit much. The film tells - at whopping length, I watched the +4 hours two-part original over two successive evenings - an incident from history /The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which Cao Cao, chief minister of a young puppet emperor, leads the imperial army southwards with the aim of capturing 'rebels'/the southern kingdom, and perhaps ultimately installing himself on the throne. Our trusty heroes must assemble their forces to defeat his implausibly massive army, with their chief strategist Zhuge Liang who even to my untutored eye is quite obviously the ur-Mei Changsu* from whom every later genius Chinese strategist is derived. Right down to the being a bit of a drama queen.

It was a bit more of an action film than I was expecting, but for something four hours long it nonetheless kept my interest, partly because - like CT,HD - it was extremely filmic. No need to put in every conversation, it worked with quite a different visual style and script from lengthy Cdramas, and a real sense of scale. Further to my post on terrible Cnovel translations, the DVD had different subtitlers for parts 1 and 2 and no agreed crib sheet. This meant that (1) was a bit more generous with inclusion of (translated) honorifics, (2) more inclined to substitute with names. (2) had more fun with a character's modestly claiming to know 'a little' about various subjects with 'a trifle', which felt more apposite with the character. But, being proper subtitles for a film, they were overall very decent.

I've also reached the point of going 'I recognised that actor, but have no idea what I've seen them in' that I do with Anglophone films, in this case especially with the actor playing Cao Cao, Zhang Fengyi, who I turned out to have seen in rather different roles in Farewell My Concubine, and The Emperor and the Assassin** , which was 20 years ago, definitely the one I recognised him from, and I'd really like to see again.

Anyway, interesting, long, and ultimately probably more emotionally engaging if you have cultural familiarity with the characters and can appreciate its specific take on a classic story, but well worth a couple of evenings' viewing.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon By far the most high profile of Chinese historical/wuxia dramas that showed up in the UK cinemas in the early 2000s, I saw this originally at Bradford's splendid Pictureville cinema, and certainly my television can't compare, but twenty years on the film itself holds up. We're in the nineteenth century, not that you could tell beyond the dreadful Qing hairstyle, with Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) running a logistics/security firm and suffering UST with her good friend and renowned swordsman Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) with whom she can't get together because she was long ago engaged to his best friend, who died.

I loved this rewatch. It looks glorious, the cinematography is top-notch, it is full of emotion, a series of sequences, of pictures, in different settings, glorious to look at, at its heart is emotion, a poem of feeling. It's also very entertaining to watch having seen some of the wuxia tropes and actually knowing they are tropes. Oh look, here's a fight in a rural tavern! Here's a character jumping off a cliff! More subtitling interest, in that for western audiences the name of the young female character Yu Jiaolong was evidently felt too challenging, and she was renamed Jen Yu when it was released and remained so in the subs - but 'giang hu' went merely transliterated.

Rewatching it seemed to me a film about what it means to be true to oneself, to other people, and to ideals, and what it is to betray them. Yu Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai haven't married because they think to do so would be to betray the man they both loved, but in fact all this means is that they have been true neither to their love for one another nor to him. The theme resonates across the characters, as they attempt to fulfill themselves and are frustrated by each other and the duties/demands of society in a complex web. I'm sure for a viewer a lot more familiar with wuxia themes than I am it is in clearer dialogue with those, but it doesn't need that to work splendidly as a film. And of course it is all very Ang Lee. Watching it without being overwhelmed by one's first wuxia drama, the fingerprints of the man who five years earlier had made Sense and Sensibility are all over it.

*Also one general looked like he had a bad case of the poison of the bitter flame, so apparently ancient Chinese troops could cope fine with being commanded by yetis.

**Both directed by Chen Kaige, more recently known for The Battle of Lake Changjin, which I can live without.

I have just finished watching my latest Cdrama, Winter Begonia, which I really enjoyed. 49 episodes of epic pining - yes, this is 'soulmates' territory - and 1930s costume porn, both western* and Chinese, that's my kind of thing. Chinese opera is much less my kind of thing - it can't be denied that it sounds like a strangled cat crossed with an air raid siren - but the theatrical setting with one ofmthe leads being an opera singer was really interesting and certainly looked impressive. My sole previous experience of said art form is of course the film Farewell My Concubine, which I saw decades ago and didn't understand at all, even when I read the novel.** Winter Begonia goes rather easier on the viewer, introducing us to the technicalities through the device of the interested layperson character and chief fanboy/piner. Anyway, proper review to follow, here's a trailer.



(Alternatively, the shippy bromance trailer.)

Closer to home, The Green Knight has finally got a UK release date, and an excellent review in the Guardian, and seems generally to be reported interesting. That said, I feel it's a bit early for me to want to go back to the cinema. Masks and my glasses are not a good combination, and while my Covid immunity is probably OK, I really don't want to catch a cold. It's available via Amazon if you have Prime, but not to rent otherwise. So I 'll probably be waiting for this one. I wrote one of my less good undergraduate essays about the poem, so the filmmaker probably doesn't have less of a handle on it than I did.



Firmly in 'will this get a UK release in any form whatsoever?' territory is Margrete – Queen of the North (Margrete den første) about Denmark's first (and until 1972, sole) ruling queen***, and creator of the Kalmar Union. I don't know much about it, but am willing to bestow good faith on the grounds of casting a woman of appropriate age in Trine Dyrholm.



(English subtitled version refuses to embed, but can be found here.)

* I had a certain sympathy for the woman who would clearly rather have been living in 1937 Paris instead. Yes, Paris is about to be invaded, but so is 1937 Beijing.

** Picked up cheap somewhere, and now I'm rather regretting having got rid of it due to aforementioned incomprehension. The film appears to be on YouTube so I shall give that another go.

*** Technically as regent rather than regnant, not that this seems to have stopped her.

Middle Sister visited for the the weekend, being halfway through a longer trip to her in-laws, a bit less than 2 hours away. She provided company and I provided a guaranteed lie-in. I feel that I got the best of the deal given that she also did: the food shopping en route, the washing up and a good deal of the cooking, ALL my ironing - a veritable Everest of a basket, dug the garden, and helped hang a picture. As a result of which I ended the weekend feeling better than I had for a good ten days despite having a far sprucer house, as I'd been able to gently amble round putting things away a bit and no longer have to confront the ironing.* Also, Youngest Sister got a cat on Saturday, so we were glued to the family WattsApp group for updates.

We also watched the recent film of Emma, with Anya Taylor-Joy, a woman who would be perfect casting as Discworld's Verity Pushpram (AKA "Hammerhead"). Fortunately one does get used to the eyes. I stand by everything I said about the trailer, but notwithstanding this unpromising start, quite a few people seemed to have enjoyed the film, so it seemed worth a try. And I'm glad that I did, because it was really pretty good. Very different in tone from the general run of adaptations, and with a lot less focus on the core 'events' of the plot as events rather than settings for key interaction, but no less faithful to the novel than other recent adaptations, just a different set of choices in presentation.

Things that were very good: the casting was generally very good (see caveat below), with by far the best Jane Fairfax I've seen, and though not devoting much time to the relationship between her and Emma, capturing the point that for all Mr Knightley thinks "You are both women I like, you should like each other", anyone in Emma's position would dislike Jane Fairfax, anyone in Jane's would resent Emma. Mr Knightley was a real highlight, done in quite a different way to the usual run of Knightleys, with attention paid to fashionable hair and clothing (and, as been mentioned in many a review, we see him dressing), and a focus on friendship rather than moral preceptor to Emma, making his upbraiding her at Box Hill the more devastating. His horrified realisation both that he's in love with Emma and has taken himself out of the running before ever he realised it was excellent.

Things that were not so good: Bill Nighy's performance as Mr Wodehouse was fine, but he was too much a generic slightly fussy father rather than the closely observed portrait of the book, and I really disliked Isabella as basically a hysterical mother whose husband rolls her eyes at her.Rupert Graves should have been costumed as far more attractive as Mr Weston - my search for a really hot Mr Weston continues. Given the plot, Mr Weston could easily be only in the first half of his forties, and I'd love a portrayal of him as a handsome, energetic man who Miss Taylor has liked and respected, but not had particular hopes of, because these days he could clearly catch a younger, richer, more connected woman, and suddenly here he is proposing and it turns out that he's been hoping to establish a position to marry her for years. Emma's flippancy towards Miss Bates in general was also a bit overdone, and a point where there was an unnecessary loss of subtlety. But these are fairly minor caveats overall. It's really thoroughly enjoyable if you are in the mood for a light, funny, Austen adaptation.

*I had really never appreciated how physically demanding ironing could be until this spring, when two separate half-hour occasions proved Too Much and left me with aching muscles down my sides! It's normally my go-to household task to keep on top of when I've got a cold, because it can be done in front of the TV, and I had not thought of it as particularly energetic. But this turns out to be another area that even the worst cold is not Covid.

Back to work tomorrow after a fortnight off, most of which has been spent at my parents'. antisoppist had been going to come up for a few days, but fell victim to a cold and so couldn't. I was luckier, managing to spend the first Christmas holiday for a long time with almost no germs - though inevitably, not quite. It was a very nice break and I just need to remember that no, I won't get loads of reading done like I used to, and no writing whatsoever, because we're busy doing other things and that is fine, though sometimes slightly less busy would be nice!

Thoughts on out-of-the-house entertainment, in order of viewing.

Star Wars: The Return of Skywalker. Saw this the Saturday before Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it, partly because I had calibrated my expectations to the fact that (a) this was a Star Wars film, and (b) it wasn't made for me personally (although I have always been pro Rey/Kylo, so it kind of was, and I really liked all of that plotline). Yes, the script is a bit of a mess* and it really needed an extra 20 minutes (not something I usually say), but unlike The Last Jedi (which I did like), the pointless side quests were much shorter, and the ridiculous furry animals brief. One thing that the sequel trilogy really does deserve credit for is its casting: in brief, every actor is more than capable of their part. I think Daisy Ridley deserves far more recognition that she has got for ability to carry the trilogy as a relatively inexperienced actor. Yes, Adam Driver is terrific and casting him rather than someone who looked Hollywood standard was a great idea, but he also had the sort of scenery-chewing part that lets a good actor get their teeth into it. Rey was a very different part, and Ridley is convincing and engaging in a way that the films would have utterly failed without. I shall be going again before it leaves cinemas.

The Snow Queen, Scottish Ballet. In my teens and early twenties, going to the theatre at Christmas was very much a family thing. We've managed it less often in recent years, partly because what is available is not always attractive (we are united in our total lack of interest in The Wind in the Willows and The Nutcracker), but Mum, Youngest Sister and I thought that this was worth a matinee ticket, and so it proved. "Inspired by" (loosely) Andersen, music neatly filleted from Rimsky-Korsakov, I tend not to find ballet very moving, but it was pretty, well danced, and an enjoyable couple of hours. It's on iPlayer.

Frozen 2. I went with this expecting the best part of the afternoon to be the pleasure of my youngest sister's company, but it was actually very good. The music is not as strong as the original - 'Into the Unknown' is no 'Let It Go' and highlights the (to me) most annoying aspects of Menzel's voice - but it has a script that perforce was cemented before 'filming', a coherent plot, and looks absolutely gorgeous. I found myself gripped, and left thinking that I really should read something about Hollywood's interest in Jungian archetypes. I'm still not over the revelation that Anna is voiced by Kristen Bell of The Good Place, though! Honourable mention to the unexpected I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue reference.

Little Women. Undoubtedly the best film of the three, although to my mind not quite as original than some of the reviews gave it credit for. The structuring of the narrative through flashbacks allowed a different focus on events than the chronological order, even if the internal narrative of single events was very familiar, and the greater focus on adult!Amy than in adaptations I've previously seen was very welcome for her character, though the flashback structure necessitated the use of a single actress in a part that I think really demands double-casting. A terrific performance from Saoirse Ronan held everything together, although she is far too pretty for Jo, and the decision to highlight a strong physical resemblance to Marmee was an excellent one.** It was very Jo-centric despite the attention to Amy, and Meg and Beth's stories were under-served, though that's hardly something unique to this adaptation, and it certainly got across the feeling of the family life and also how the Marches might be perceived by other people at times as Rather Too Much. It made me think that I really must read some of Alcott's work that wasn't aimed at children, and more about her life.

*It is painfully obvious that the whole trilogy wasn't plotted out in detail in advance. Yes, Carrie Fisher's death meant that they had to rewrite, but there is a lot running through the trilogy that is nothing to do with her and really shows that they didn't have a clear plan. They should definitely have killed Poe off as originally planned.

**I really want an adaptation of Little Women in which Marmee's role in fucking up her daughter's lives through parental teachings that make them all feel complete failures is given full focus.

Though that sentiment is probably in large part because having seen the trailer, I am deeply unconvinced.

It being the middle of term, dark, cold, and tiring, I took myself to the cinema to see this yesterday evening - Mondays being cheap and my expectations low - and massively clunky title notwithstanding, I enjoyed it very much. Indeed I enjoyed it more than the first film, when I felt the various animal chase sequences went on a bit. Its principal weakness is that it is clearly the middle film of a series, with a lot of set up and limited resolution, and cramming too much plot into it so that some characters are not developed.

The costume designs are a wasted opportunity, leaning very heavily on the Muggle side of the equation (and if you're going to have Muggle school uniforms, then Hogwarts in the 1920s would have been gymslips and dresses for the girls, not tartan skirts), and I was unclear as to why Leta Lestrange had such a plunging neckline and Tina appeared to be cosplaying Herr Flick. I have decided to rationalise this in my own mind by saying that the WW's sudden adoption of Muggle clothing is a sign of a cultural crisis of confidence in the aftermath of the Great Muggle War. A crisis on which Grindelwald is able to capitalise.

Speaking of Grindelwald, Depp was OK, if not more than OK. He reins in the batshit almost too much, considering the character. Really Grindelwald ought to have been played by the most charismatic German native-speaker actor available who was aged between 45 and 50 and both able to act in English and carry off a very blond wig. Jude Law as Dumbledore, on the other hand, is excellent and comes across very warmly. I liked the Dumbledore and Grindelwald backstory very much and assume that this something we'll be drip-fed more of as the series continues, because why use it all up early when you know that you've got your Big Dramatic Fight coming? Darth Vader doesn't say "Just so you know, I am young Skywalker's father" in his first scene.

And now, because much as I am enjoying Lyndal Roper's recent biography of Luther it is not exactly a bedtime read, I think I'm going to reread the original series. It's been a while. I should get myself to the play, too, and stop having to dodge spoilers.

I finally got round to watching Star Trek: Beyond on Friday evening, having been sufficiently unimpressed with its astronomically boring predecessor that I felt no interest in watching any new Star Trek ever again. Say what you like about the original series, but it generally didn't present Spock's personal growth in terms of enthusiastic punching people to ridiculous "Pow!" sounds. Having heard that Beyond was actually a bit more like normal Star Trek than this, I decided I would give it a go, and indeed found it an enjoyable space romp that had finally grasped the concept of a bit of character development, i.e. not making that heroes actively unpleasant.

Nonetheless, some idiocy remains, and I'm not just talking about miniskirts without flame-retardant leggings. I'm not sure whether the decision to name a starship USS Franklin reflected the rather tedious inability to remember that the Federation is not actually meant to be the United States Empire in space, or someone's idea of dramatic irony. However I feel that if personally were in charge of naming a new starship destined to voyage into the unknown to seek out new worlds and new civilizations I would prefer to name it after a successful explorer: the USS Amundsen.

On the other hand, it might have been worse...

LOCATION: STARFLEET COMMAND

- Commander, the result of the public vote to name the new Starfleet vessel is about to be announced!

- USS Shippy McShipface.

I appear to be writing Kylo Ren fic. Save me!

Last weekend I bought The Last Jedi on DVD. It's really a very expensive public education film about the danger of cults.

Much as I've always been a sucker for tormented baddies, I suspect it is being over-generous to the characterisation to be reminded of Claggart's line from the libretto of Billy Budd, 'the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it and suffers.'* Nonetheless, it is very apt.

Question: in which work of popular culture have I recently been reminded of the line 'build a Heaven in Hell's despair', because it certainly wasn't Blake.** It will probably turn out to be Twilight or similar.

*I'd be surprised if the biblical original hadn't cropped up at some point in contemplation of the Force, though.

**Hell for me will be the pit of boiling oil while an amateur actor reads the lesser works of Blake and Wordsworth for all eternity.

For the first time in ages I wrote a fic for Yuletide! As per the last couple of times it was a treat rather than doing the exchange, but it was still a fic. 2018 resolution: Do More Writing.

Let's Tell the Press (1852 words) by Nineveh_uk
Fandom: Fyra år till / Four More Years
Rating and Warnings: G, CNTW
Summary: The Swedish media reacts to the Riksdag's love story of the century.

I've written about the film previously on LJ/DW here. Thanks to the recipient for prompting the one story that I could actually write: I don't claim to know a lot about the Swedish media, but you can get a long way on a superficial knowledge gleaned from the winter sports pages and it was fun to do. It's an absolutely tiny fandom - this is the first AO3 story - but that's the great thing about Yuletide, it's the one time when your really obscure interest will find its one reader. Now I'm looking forward to the opportunity to actually read some Yuletide stories myself.

Feeling somewhat grumpy after a frustrating medical appointment on Tuesday* I looked up what was on at the cinema other than The Last Jedi (promised to see it with youngest sister) and so took myself off for a de-grumping 6 o'clock showing of Call Me By Your Name yesterday. And very good it is. Not simply a lovely Italian summer**, but a sort of ideal of warm leisured society of a certain wealthy intellectual type*** in a large house somehow mysteriously short of bedrooms in which beautiful young people or at least young people with the potential to become beautiful**** fall for one another. In this case, Elio the musical son of an academic, and Oliver, the graduate acting as a research assistant for Elio's father over the summer.

I think Peter Bradshaw's dead on when he calls it an "erotic pastoral". Bradshaw and I don't always agree, but his review very much captures what I thought about the film. It is beautifully shot, terrifically acted, and very much character-based, about how these people behave in this situation.

The book apparently has an epilogue not included in the film. As it is currently 99p on Kindle and I'm interested to see how it has been adapted, I bought it. So no doubt I shall find out when I get round to it.

*Arranged for tests and referred to different department(s). Timetable unknown.

**Not as hot as in A Room With a View, but presumably not intended to achieve that stultifying impression, and also involving people wearing fewer clothes.

***David Lodge's c haracters might well be as intelligent, but they could only dream of the environment. Well, except Morris Zapp. Now I want a crossover fic in which Zapp turns up and ends up sleeping with both parents.

****Timothée Chalamet as 17 year old Elio is so good that I actually found myself thinking that they must be filming in chronological order to allow them to show the subtle aging of the character over the course of the summer. It turns out that the actor is 21. Armie Hammer is also very good, but I think a couple of years too old to portray the character's elements of insecurity.