monoceros blogsVan Tan brings me Threadless luck. She and I were having an email exchange about "Still Life with Van" when I told her I was hoping for a shirt to be reprinted because I have an inexplicable desire to wear a picture of a human-looking lion with glasses on my chest. A few hours later, I get an email that it's been reprinted. Thank you, Van!
(And if anyone's a Threadless fan, I'm always up for trading StreetTeam points!)
In 1998, Gwyneth Paltrow won the Oscar for her role as Viola in "Shakespeare in Love," a role that, while entertaining, did not deserve the award; certainly not when another Oscar-nominated role carried far more gravitas and pathos - Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth I in "Elizabeth."
Nine years later, the sequel should land Blanchett another nomination, and if the trailer is anything to go by, she's a shoo-in for the award. Blanchett's become a queen again, and we witness her power, fragility, rage, pride, and yearning.
If I had to pick a favorite scene, it would be Elizabeth armoring up to face the Spanish Armada and giving her troops some pep talk, or rather, that famed Speech to the Troops at Tilbury. An excerpt: "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too! And I think it foul scorn that Spain or Parma or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm". After that, it would be Elizabeth telling off the Spanish diplomat: "I too can command the wind, sir!" If I were one of Cate's young sons watching his mother in that scene, I'd probably faint dead away from terror.
Here is the international trailer that preceded the just-released North American one.
This one's a keeper.
"Thinking about the Past" by Donald Justice
~ from "The Writer's Almanac"
Certain moments will never change, nor stop being—
My mother's face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune—
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red—haired girl with wide mouth—Eleanor—
Forgotten thirty years—her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery's, a small, caught bird—
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
O marvelous early cigarettes! O bitter smoke, Benton...
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the ends of songs...
Acting on the advice of Entertainment Weekly, I watched the trailer for the latest Michel Gondry film, "Be Kind Rewind." I enjoyed "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and wanted to watch but missed "The Science of Sleep" (will watch it on DVD), so learning that he has another movie pleased me. However, the trailer didn't just please me; I was grinning and laughing and watching it again and again, if this were on video, I'd be rewinding a fair bit!
Two friends (Jack Black and Mos Def) film their own versions of famous movies ("Ghostbusters," "Driving Miss Daisy," "The Lion King," "Robocop,") after they learn that all the videos in the store Mos Def's character works in have been erased. I can't decide which parts of the trailer I like best - Jack Black singing (mangling) the "Ghostbusters" theme song; filming "Driving Miss Daisy"; filming "Robocop"...there are so many I like!
Aargh! According to today's newspapers, Robert Olen Butler was in town last week to give a talk at the National Library, and I had no idea! Why do they have to report events like these after they've taken place? If they'd put an announcement in the newspapers, I'd certainly have attended; or perhaps they did, and I missed it completely. Darn it! Visiting writers need to have more publicity here.
Robert Olen Butler! Damn, damn.
I loved his work on decapitated characters, Severance.
Someone's head should roll - compensation for the folks who missed out on this - or perhaps it should be my own, if I'd missed any mention of his talk in the papers.
I have a couple of blog entries in draft form but I'll skip over those just so that I can say it's been a lovely week for Wolverines. Well, the literary ones anyway. I finally got round to buying Travis' novel, part which I got to workshop during my first semester at Michigan. At PageOne, it's placed at the front of the store, next to Haruki Murakami's After Dark. Few things beat the thrill of seeing a friend's book in the most prominent place of a bookshop.
Also, Peter's novel The Welsh Girl has made the Booker longlist! He was my thesis advisor during grad school, a wonderful combination of a fine writer and and one of the kindest and humblest persons I've ever known. And he cooks a terrific chili crab.
This didn't happen this week but I'm on a roll here - my thesis advisor from my undergraduate days, Eileen Pollack, has a short story in this fall's Best American Short Stories 2007. Eileen has been a mentor not just in writing, but in hmm....life itself. She's the reason I returned to Michigan for an MFA.
So I have Peter's and Travis' books waiting to be read, but what am I doing? Editing, and preparing for the new term. In addition to teaching writing to Chinese students, I'll be teaching one class in the business school. I'll have to read on the bus, I guess.