Found Objects

I find myself rethinking scenes, seeing images from the films in my mind; even looking half-heartedly for widescreen wallpaper of any scene that appeals. But perhaps I’ll just have to get some pictures of random New Zealand landscape and make up my own stories in it.

Looking for other people’s experiences I came across The Purist, who seems to have seen exactly the same films that I have. The reviews are spot on, the parody summaries hilarious. And here is The NitPicker’s Guide to The Lord of the Rings, detailing changes between book and film. Especially the mail the NitPicker got, reproduced at the end, is instructive.

Here is a wiki article about a Purist Edit of The Two Towers: all Peter Jackson’s changes undone again. I may want to watch it some time, though I’m not such a purist; I appreciate that film is a very different medium from print, but I do question some of Peter Jackson’s choices. The rest of that wiki is worth perusing too.

Finally, here is a full synopsis, chapter by chapter of the book. Useful, especially if you’re trying to find a reference and know what the context was but not where in the book to search, as happened to me this morning.

Too many flashbacks. Too much cutting from one piece of action to another and back (I’m clearly not of the zap generation). Too much crawling up and sliding down mountains. Too much Gollum. Too much simpering by Arwen and, come to think of it, Éowyn. Too much Slow == Important. Interminable battles, interminable whitespace between events (people standing or sitting around and occasionally saying something), interminable horror scenes, interminable farewells. And still the head-to-one-side cuteness of Aragorn when he’s already been crowned king.

Yes, this is The Return of the King, of course. I watched it a few years ago on my own when I was ill, fast-forwarding most of the Gollum stretches and all of Shelob, joined by Secunda (who was also running a fever) for the coronation, and remembered mostly the good bits.

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I stayed up writing this last night but the network didn’t see the laptop and I didn’t feel like fixing that at 2:15 in the morning; ah well, gives me the chance to add a few things I came up with while in bed and in the shower.

We watched the Lord of the Rings films again— the first two in one evening as a school-holiday movie marathon; we have the third in the house as well but the other two are so long that The Two Towers ended well after midnight, and everybody was just plain too tired to face another one even if it does have the happy ending that the others so sadly lack.

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As a long-time fan of the book by Diana Wynne Jones I was very wary of the Miyazaki film. I’d never liked anime —correction, I’d never seen anime I liked— and though, according to Prima who’s been watching some anime lately, this film is not at all typical, the characters still had the huge eyes and little pursed mouths that I associate with anime I don’t like. But the friendly DVD merchant around the corner, who knows our tastes, was certain we’d like it. I’d heard a lot of good things about it on the Diana Wynne Jones mailing list too: that DWJ herself liked it a lot, for one.

Warning: the rest may contain mild spoilers.

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There’s currently an exhibition in The Hague (which we won’t be able to go to for various reasons, but we bought the book) of paintings by the twin brothers David and Pieter Oyens, born in 1842 and active in the latter part of the 19th century. Our paper had a scathing review: the critic said more or less that the brothers’ work was hardly worth mentioning, and certainly not worth a whole exhibition, because they were conservative in their choice of subject matter and not interested in political or social commentary like the “great” painters of their time, for instance Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. For this critic, a painting that doesn’t bring something “real” (read: negative) to the viewer’s attention is of necessity a bad painting. Like lit-critters who insist on “realistic” fiction, meaning fiction that emphasises only the gritty dark sides of human nature.

I say, piffle.

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On Tuesday night, when I was away playing the recorder (still have an earworm of Scarlatti), the art class people called to ask whether I could sit on Thursday morning. I called their voicemail on Wednesday morning to say yes, and this morning I sat.

This time, the teacher herself joined in: in between giving advice to students, she made dozens of small one-minute sketches and let me choose one (thanks, Danielle!)

If you’re at all in the neighbourhood of Deventer (Netherlands; there also seems to be one in the US) and want art classes, I can definitely recommend the Kunstlokaal. And if you’re not in the neighbourhood, perhaps you might like to buy some of the work of Petrus Franciscus or Danielle van Strien. The site is in Dutch; if you’re having trouble with it, don’t hesitate to ask me.

Thanks, Gilles!

I intended to go to the market and buy a blue skirt with my modelling fee, but this was thwarted by the fact that one of the students (Gilles Lescure; when he makes a name for himself, remember where you first read about him) made something that was so beautiful that I said “I wouldn’t mind framing that and hanging it on the bedroom wall.” “All right,” he said, “I’ll spray it with fixative for you.” And so he did, and so I did, spending about half the money on a frame and passe-partout. (Or rather, I framed it and my other half hung it.)

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(this post alone, I predict, will get all of my blog banned by various net nannies)

Every now and again I earn some pocket money by sitting still in the nude for two hours, in various positions. Modelling for a life-drawing class, that is, in case your dirty mind had switched on already. I have “my” art classes, run by a couple who are both artists, and people can join at different times during the year so there are always some old hands and some beginners. One of the things I like best is the evaluation at the end where I can see what all those people made of the body on the couch.

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