Having been in my possession the longest out of all the Netflix DVDs, I did finally sit down and finish out Secretary. Amazingly enough, my parents rented this one before I even saw it - I wonder if Mom even watched it because this is so far out of her comfort zone....Dad only said it was wierd.
Secretary is an amazing adaptation of a short story by Mary Gaitskill (in her collection Bad Behavior). I was really worried about 20 minutes from the end that the tables were going to turn and it was going to have some hokey, Lee-decides-to-dominate-Mr. Grey-type of ending. I thought the movie was really well crafted up to that point, beautiful set decoration, a nice guitar-and-trap-set score, and that really great scene with the worm...and other things following that scene. But it didn't get hokey and the ending turned out to be a really beautiful scene of love and acceptance. A really great film to watch and reminded me also of that stray line from CSI, one of the scenes with Lady Heather: the submissive is the one who has the power.
Then I finished out Disc 1 of Slings and Arrows Season One...I'm just going to have to buy the complete set now. I wasn't too sure during the first episode, there were a lot of characters and I was having trouble keeping track of who related to whom, like I'd missed an episode. I got the premise right about the time Oliver "wakes up" in front of Geoffrey at the funeral home. By the time Geoffrey turned up at Ellen's with his "second" to duel Darren, I was sold. When the actors are doing "bad" Shakespeare they're really good at it and when they're doing "good" Shakespeare (i.e. when the accounting guy give the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth) it is wonderful.
The Green Knight will start up on Labor Day for my BNBC group. This is one of Iris Murdoch's last novels and since I've never read a Murdoch before I'm coming at this one with few preconceived thoughts. I finished the first section "Ideal Children" and it isn't very long but I'm not getting a sense of where the novel is going. We've been introduced to all the main characters, except Lucas, so I'm hoping that this was a set-up section and then we'll get into the main action.
Current book-in-progress: Back to The Green Knight since that's going to start up soon
Current knitted item: Second pair of booties, surprise project, and that pretty top (I'm going to the IHC Node Conference tomorrow; since I'm only going to be busy for about two hours, I might have to cast on a sock....)
Current movie obsession: Slings and Arrows (I pulled the rest of the discs out of my Netflix queue because I'm just going to buy the whole thing on DVD); next up in the queue is Withnail and I, Penelope (finally!!), and Velvet Goldmine (yes, confession again, I haven't seen this...I was a deprived college student)
Current iTunes loop: Wait, wait! Don't Tell Me
Geoffrey: Will you be my second?
ReplyDeleteGuy whose name I can't remember: Sure. What's a second?
I love that. If you don't want to buy it, ask Janice if you can borrow it. My copy is still at their house.