Saw the last of the Up series, 49 Up, last week. I feel like I know the participants. Just regular people, they have allowed a film crew once every seven years to capture where they are in their lives. Only two of the 14 have left Britain. Paul is in Australia, and Nick is in Madison, Wisonsin. Only one has not participated since becoming an adult. Interestingly enough, he is a documentary filmmaker for the BBC. Almost all of the participants say how difficult is has been to be in the spolight as part of this project. If anyone out there is interested in this set of documentaries but doesn't want to invest the time to watch all of them, you could just rent 42 Up and 49 Up. They do a pretty good job of going back and showing the most important clips from the earlier films. In fact, it isn't until 42 Up that some better documentary techniques are applied. It's almost like they had the subjects and the means for a series before they quite knew the best way to present it.
The film Once is at the local "cheapie" theater! Will be seeing it soon! (Jim went the other night, but he is not allowed to say anything about it to me.)
Jim is taping all 15 hours of Ken Burns' The War, but we haven't sat down to any of it yet. Has anyone been watching it this last week? Is it as good as everyone hoped?
What have you seen out? Rented? Gotten from Netflix? Anything you've just got to get someone else to see?
One reader's thoughts as she steps from book to book.
Books I've Finished
- "A Christmas Memory"
- by Truman Capote 12/8/12
- "Child's Christmas in Wales"
- by Dylan Thomas 12/7/12
- "One Christmas"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- "The Thanksgiving Visitor"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
- by Leslie Baldacci 11/28/12
- The Bee Eater
- by Richard Whitmire 11/15/12
- There Are No Shortcuts
- by Rafe Esquith 10/28/12
- I'd Like to Apologize to
- Every Teacher I Ever Had
- by Tony Danza 10/21/12
- Corked
- by Kathryn Borel 10/15/12
- Year of Learning Dangerously
- by Quinn Cummings 9/30/12
- A Hologram for the King
- by Dave Eggers 8/23/12
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- by Harper Lee 7/18/12
About Me
- Christine
- I often have a few books with bookmarks in them at once. I enjoy classics more than contemporary works of fiction, often read historical fiction, and love to get glimpses into other people's lives by reading memoirs and biographies.
6 comments:
Once is in IL? I'm envious. As far as I know it still hasn't been released down here.
Haven't really seen any trailers for anything, although I caught an ad for Elizabeth: The Golden Age over the weekend and was seriously intrigued.
Not impressed with "300". I was looking forward to watching the intriguing story of how Leonides, King of the Greeks led 300 Spartans into war against the Persians.
It felt a bit like The Matrix visits ancient Greece. I think the director must have been given a new video camera for his birthday and he was trying out all the slo-mo and stop-action features on it.
One plus: I folded a lot of laundry while it was on.
300 was painfully stupid. Insomniac, you should read Gates of Fire, by Stephen Pressfield. It's a novelization of the battle at Thermopylae, and rather well done.
My dad is also taping Ken Burns' The War for me, though I've not yet seen it. It's also releasing on DVD tomorrow, and Netflix has it, for anyone who's missed it on PBS. Frankly, at this point, anything Ken Burns does is worth watching, imo. The man is just amazing. I've been watching Jazz lately, which is as beautiful & interesting as I'd expected. I loves me some Ken Burns.
As far as actual movies, I've not watched too much lately...Apocalypto was pretty incredible, and really a fascinating snapshot into a culture & a time that I don't know all that much about (and, the neatest thing is, it inspired me to learn. Dang, but I'm glad I didn't live then!). Mostly I've been watching All Creatures Great & Small, a BBC series from the late 70s/early 80s about James Herriot, a vet in 1930s Yorkshire Dales. I swear, if I could crawl inside a tv show & live there for a while, that would be the one I'd choose.
The girls and I love All Creatures Great and Small! Can you believe the actor stuck his arm all the way into a cow? That was not a computer generated scene back then. And the woman with the little pampered pooch? What's its name--Tricky Woo? Sweet and funny show.
Heather, thanks for the recommendation for gates of Fire. And I second you for "All Creatures....."
When I watched it as a kid I wanted to grow up and marry Christopher Timothy and become a vet.
Obviously, I didn't do either. ((SIGH))
I have been watching The War off and on. They keep interviewing a pilot from Laverne, MN. He speaks frankly about how he changed as the war played out. And his story, along with the others, has fleshed out my grasp of America's involvement - the time spans of fighting, the role of being in the military, the parents of soldiers, the weapons...
But I just watched "Once", and that's all I really want to think about.
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