In which anti-heroic personal odysseys aren't only jobs for the boys
- I watched the Absolutely Fabulous film in a cinema matinee full of silver ladies who laughed their arses off throughout, and were still giggling in the ladies loos afterwards. It's like the series but less tightly scripted for laffs and with the wider vistas that movie money can buy. My favourite cameo was Jean Paul Gaultier deciding to ebay Magda's handbag, lol. I loved Bubble's house, and how she paid for it. I also enjoyed the cheap gag about Edina having to do her "mindlessness" practice. My favourite moment was the last scene, which was an Ab Fab girlpower rewrite of the last scene of Some Like it Hot, lol. Oh, and I was glad they removed Edina's Black granddaughter from the background of the scene in which the policeman mentions a "lynch mob" waiting outside for Edina. (4/5 for fans of the series)
- Who you gonna watch? GHOSTBUSTERS! Having been hoping this film would deliver on its possibilities, I was disappointed by the first trailer, to the point that I wasn't intending to make any effort to see it, but my flist are declaring their love and I saw the new cinema trailer this afternoon and it definitely looks worth watching on a big screen. ::hopeful::
- Reading, books 2016, 110.
87. Travesties, by Tom Stoppard, 1975, play. I still don't get this and I still don't care that I don't get this. (1/5)
• Google informs me that no-one has named a character Joyce Augusta James. An opportunity not yet lost....
• Ah! [/revelation] That's why hipsters put all their energies into social media: "I have always found that irony among the lower orders is the first sign of an awakening social consciousness. It remains to be seen whether it will grow into an armed seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or spend itself in liberal journalism."
• It appears I'm only an artistic revolutionary, lol: "[...] the odd thing about revolution is that the further left you go politically the more bourgeois they like their art."
• I'd forgotten that in the limerick section the deliberately uncompleted last verse is followed by a scanning and rhyming stage direction in a piece of business to amuse only the author and reader with a full play script.
88. Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, 1982-1984, is a play with exclusively female characters, requiring seven actors (actresses), including pre-existing women/characters such as Pope Joan, Lady Nijo, Patient Griselda, Dulle Griet, and Isabella Bird, who meet for a fantasy dinner party and discuss the ways being female influenced their lives. The author appears to be taking issue with the exceptionalism often projected onto famous women, by viewing their lives from the point of view most often disregarded: they re-tell their own stories and don't leave out the bits which excluded them from becoming part of the canon of Great Men in history or literature. The feminism has noticeably early80s, "second wave", revisionist herstories, nuances but skillfully transcends the time it was written better than sexist and misogynist theatre of a similar vintage (or, indeed, more recent excretion). I grew up on this kind of intelligent egalitarian feminism and I don't especially need reminding so, again, I'm probably not her primary intended audience but I can appreciate the reinforcements this created at the time and there are still plenty of people who would benefit from seeing or reading this now. And Dull Gret's speech at the end of Act One has the power to move me. In Act Two Ms Churchill also records some aspects of the Thatcherite influence on society while it happened, especially the queen bees allowed an opportunity to rise until they crashed into glass ceilings. The ending, like history, is unresolved. "Frightening." (4/5)
• Ms Churchill's work is usually too closely woven to provide simple quote-bites.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/588000.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
- Who you gonna watch? GHOSTBUSTERS! Having been hoping this film would deliver on its possibilities, I was disappointed by the first trailer, to the point that I wasn't intending to make any effort to see it, but my flist are declaring their love and I saw the new cinema trailer this afternoon and it definitely looks worth watching on a big screen. ::hopeful::
- Reading, books 2016, 110.
87. Travesties, by Tom Stoppard, 1975, play. I still don't get this and I still don't care that I don't get this. (1/5)
• Google informs me that no-one has named a character Joyce Augusta James. An opportunity not yet lost....
• Ah! [/revelation] That's why hipsters put all their energies into social media: "I have always found that irony among the lower orders is the first sign of an awakening social consciousness. It remains to be seen whether it will grow into an armed seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or spend itself in liberal journalism."
• It appears I'm only an artistic revolutionary, lol: "[...] the odd thing about revolution is that the further left you go politically the more bourgeois they like their art."
• I'd forgotten that in the limerick section the deliberately uncompleted last verse is followed by a scanning and rhyming stage direction in a piece of business to amuse only the author and reader with a full play script.
88. Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, 1982-1984, is a play with exclusively female characters, requiring seven actors (actresses), including pre-existing women/characters such as Pope Joan, Lady Nijo, Patient Griselda, Dulle Griet, and Isabella Bird, who meet for a fantasy dinner party and discuss the ways being female influenced their lives. The author appears to be taking issue with the exceptionalism often projected onto famous women, by viewing their lives from the point of view most often disregarded: they re-tell their own stories and don't leave out the bits which excluded them from becoming part of the canon of Great Men in history or literature. The feminism has noticeably early80s, "second wave", revisionist herstories, nuances but skillfully transcends the time it was written better than sexist and misogynist theatre of a similar vintage (or, indeed, more recent excretion). I grew up on this kind of intelligent egalitarian feminism and I don't especially need reminding so, again, I'm probably not her primary intended audience but I can appreciate the reinforcements this created at the time and there are still plenty of people who would benefit from seeing or reading this now. And Dull Gret's speech at the end of Act One has the power to move me. In Act Two Ms Churchill also records some aspects of the Thatcherite influence on society while it happened, especially the queen bees allowed an opportunity to rise until they crashed into glass ceilings. The ending, like history, is unresolved. "Frightening." (4/5)
• Ms Churchill's work is usually too closely woven to provide simple quote-bites.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/588000.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.