No-one does romantic comedy like the British

[bwinter]

The best part of Pride and Prejudice was the giggling around the cinema each time a male did something stupid. A very decent job of an adaptation, with some superior acting, though not exactly Oscar material on Keira's part.

In other news, I would like to take the opportunity to wish a very happy birthday to ithilwen. Have a good one and may Himring's

Comments

[fyrie]

There's a lot more to Christine than they like to show in the musical, unfortunately. ALW has a weakness for dumbing things down, because he feels audiences can't understand complex characters, which is why Starlight Express ended up with their fricking fabulous villain getting cut when they reformatted the show.

Since I'm a sucker for the character, I've read any Phantom related-stuff and the best one I've come across is Phantom by Susan Kay, who writes the story from the POVs of half a dozen characters, including Erik, Christine and Raoul and Christine in it is amazingly strong-willed. The quiet relationship that the writer created below the surface of what's shown in the musical was beautiful. And oh, the hand-fetishing that went on! Erik sitting in front of a fire, telling Christine -sitting on a cushion in front of him - stories and practically weeping for joy when her hair brushes against his hand.

Mind you, the writer gave him mother-issues by the bucketload and went with the all-too-common Christine-lookin-like-dead-wife/mother/cousin/one-time friend thing.

*coughs* Should stop babbling now, else this might lead into a crit of the book as a whole.

[bwinter]

I've got an e-text of Kay's Phantom, but I've yet to read it. For some strange reason, I can't bring myself to read any Phantom fanfiction at all - something about the fact that I have the characters in my head and I can't imagine them being different. I have the same with Artemis Fowl for some reason.

[fyrie]

Makes me kind of glad I never dared to tread in Phantom fandom in a ficcing and role-play way. Mind you, with the number of the films and books I've seen and polar oppositions in Christines and Eriks, I would have characters with personalities splitting every which way, depending on which version I was focussing on.

Mind you, most surreal thing I've ever seen was a strikingly gorgeous guy with long, silky blond hair playing Erik, with a rat army as his minions. It boggles me when they turned it into a proper horror film with dismembered corpses gnawed to pieces by the Phantom ratty minions. And he didn't even have a mask! The shame!