The Other Boleyn Girl

[cleolinda]

Oh my God, that was horrible. You know what? It doesn't even bother me that the movie wasn't like history, because movies so rarely are, and the book wasn't either. And it doesn't bother me that the movie wasn't like the book, because--well, movies so rarely are, and the book wasn't like history anyway, and also, I'm usually the first one up at bat

Comments

[crickwooder]

DUDE. I just posted abut this very thing. I am Not Happy.

[cleolinda]

I keep thinking I'm going to stop being angry any moment now, and it keeps not happening.

[crickwooder]

I'm looking at it this way: after the rape, I am glad they left out George being gay. How badly would that have been mishandled?

[cleolinda]

Yeah, pretty much. I was going to say that there wasn't much George at all, but there wasn't really much of anything, was there?

Also, I can't remember--did Anne really turn gifts down, or did they just totally steal that from Jane Seymour's courtship?

[cpl593h]

To be quite honest, I think all historical inaccuracies aside, Philippa Gregory writes some of the most sexist tripe I've ever read.

[cleolinda]

Well, it's weird--she's really sympathetic to Katherine and writes her as a really interesting character (okay, The Constant Princess is kind of atrocious, but aside from that), and I like Hannah Green in The Queen's Fool, but her Elizabeth is just pure character assassination. I seriously cannot understand why she has such a hate on for Elizabeth.

[cpl593h]

I think that she has a hate on any kind of outwardly strong female figure. She champions the historical underdog, which in itself is actually really interesting because often those are the people that I would like to know more about, but she does it by contorting their better-known counterparts into sexually deviant, manipulative, out-of-character messes. Elizabeth and Anne could have been all of those things irl, who knows, but I think she does it purposely and it just always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I can't help but get the feeling that she is made uncomfortable by strong women, or is at least conflicted about writing them.

I always want to really like her books but in the end I'm just disgusted.

[cleolinda]

Yeah, it's really weird--she makes the "weak" women strong and tears the strong women down. I love Tudor history and I particularly love Elizabeth, so The Virgin's Lover was really, really galling for me.

[spectralbovine]

Wow! A friend of mine recently posted about how bad this movie was too (and he doesn't post that often, so he went out of his way to warn us away). I was surprised.

[cleolinda]

Seriously, I would have said, "Eh, Netflix it" until That Scene came along. Now I'm just angry. And the rest of it isn't even lazy screenwriting, because you have to WORK to change that much of the story. It makes me wonder why they even bothered adapting it--it seems like open disdain for the book to just not even use it, except for the line "My golden sister, my milk and honey sister," which may be the ONLY ACTUAL LINE that made it into the movie.

[spectralbovine]

I think you will appreciate my review of Jumper.

[rufinia]

Yes, yes, OMG yes.

[last_archangel]

Oh, it was just awful. I thought even the costumes were poorly-done; did you see all the copies and clones everywhere, like Katherine's ladies-in-waiting, all wearing the Exact Same Dress except for accent colors? Also, absolutely no effort was put into making it a good film. It was poor enough as an adaptation, but it also was the laziest piece of movie-making I've seen in a while. If possible, it was worse than the ridiculous reality-show like version that the BBC spent £30 on a few years back. Possibly the worst screenplay I've seen in recent years. The editing was poor, the acting (even on the part of actors we know are good) was abysmal. It was just messy and substandard all around.

[cleolinda]

Didn't Peter Morgan write The Queen? What the shit happened?

[last_archangel]

Honestly, my vote is laziness. Or perhaps this was his way of joining the strike.

Oh, I forgot: Since WHEN was Elizabeth, a PRINCESS OF THE BLOOD, raised in Rochford with her bastard half-sibling?! Somehow all of my history books got that one wrong!

[cleolinda]

Yeah, I know that was ridiculous, but it's the kind of thing I understand them putting in--it's shorthand for, "And Elizabeth was safe kind of, for a while and here's a chance to echo the opening scene, aren't we clever." It's inaccurate, but I see why they did it.