Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/19/21

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Miss Me?

So on Christmas Eve last year, I gave up movie blogging. A lot of effort for not much return, it seemed to me at the time. But with Christmas looming again, it feels right to re-enter the blogosphere, maybe this time with a wider scope.

Last night, I watched Death at a Funeral (Frank Oz, 2007), a sometimes amusing, sometimes stupid British farce with some performers I like, namely Matthew Macfadyen, Peter Dinklage, and Rupert Graves. It was remade in 2011, and that version lies somewhere in the queue of movies on my DVR that I've recorded. Dinklage apparently plays the same role -- a gay man who crashes the funeral of his lover after being cut out of the man's will -- in the remake. On the whole, not a total waste of his and the other actors' talents, but not a movie I'd urge upon anyone who hasn't seen the classic Brit farces like Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Lavender Hill Mob or The Ladykillers, all of which do this sort of comic larceny and mayhem with greater finesse.

Matthew Macfadyen and Peter Dinklage in Death at a Funeral

On TV I started the second season of The Witcher, a well-made Netflix fantasy series starring Henry Cavill as some kind of fantasyland soldier of fortune dedicated to killing monsters. The first episode of the season opened with highlights supposedly recapping the first season, which started two years ago. I watched that season and enjoyed it, but I have to admit that the recap didn't really refresh me on what happened then, much of which I've forgotten. No matter, the new season started off very well on its own, and I didn't really need to be au fait with the backstory to enjoy it.

I also watched the sixth episode of Maid, an often depressing Netflix series about the struggle of a young woman, played well by Margaret Qualley, to make it on her own with her 3-year-old daughter after leaving her emotionally abusive alcoholic husband. The series focuses on the complications and contradictions of the American welfare system, as the heroine, Alex, tries to keep her head above water despite the snares of its red tape. Andie MacDowell is wonderful as Alex's air-headed, gray-haired hippie mother, who hinders more than she helps. The series often seems to be on the verge of sinking into sentimental mush, but it hasn't done that yet.

I'm also reading Anthony Trollope's The Warden, which takes me back to my days as a Victorian literature scholar. More on that later, maybe.