Nine Muses

What is it about Jane Austen?  Why do her stories keep enthralling me?  And it’s not just me.  Based on the number of republications of the books, movies made (both from her stories and based on them), and other paraphernalia, there’s a broad audience for this.

Now, I am an avid reader.  I devour books, sometimes at a startling pace.  However, there are very few books that I find the time to re-read at all, let alone multiple times.  And I have read Austen multiple times.  I have read each of her books at least three times, and a couple much more than that.  Of her six complete books, I have duplicate copies of three and electronic copies of two.  I have seen, to my knowledge, every movie version of her books.  Yes, even the horrible ones.  While I watch the worse ones, I complain, but I am still enthralled.

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I watched the movie "Julie & Julia" yesterday afternoon.  I’m not going to write a full review — I enjoyed the movie and that’s pretty much the end of it for me.  I will say, however, that I’m happy that it wasn’t some silly sappy romantic comedy.  Despite the subject matter not necessarily lending itself to such, I find too many movies stray in that direction unnecessarily.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love those silly sappy romantic comedies.  I just am glad this movie wasn’t one of them.

I was browsing around the web (surprising, I know) when I ran across an article about what the author refers to as "Fancy British People" movies… you know the sort — those period pieces that take place in England, tend to be about "Society" (which must be capitalized), etc.

Anyway, he had this humorous observation to make when talking about what qualifies for the genre: "They also can’t be French. Those people wouldn’t know moral repression if it glanced disapprovingly in their direction."  That made me snicker, so I had to share.

Read the whole article.  It’s well worth it.

(Talking about a movie article counts within my loose media/entertainment theme for this blog, right?)

This is exactly what I love most about Science Fiction, and Mr. Card has managed to define for me what I have had such trouble with. My attempts to explain why my favorite Science Fiction (movie or book) is my favorite have all fallen short of this. And he nails exactly why Serenity is such an incredible movie.

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