Tag: book adjacent

book adjacent, film, not a book

Book adjacent: Conclave

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Another Sunday, and another week where I’ve been out and about and doing a few bits and bobs. It’s been a few weeks since I talked about a movie so I’ve gone with that.

Conclave an adaptation of the book of the same name by Robert Harris. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on the differences between the two. But as the movie starts the Pope has died, and Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence is suddenly in charge of the Conclave – the meeting to chose the new Pontiff. A flock of cardinals descends on the Vatican to be cloistered together and vote. There are several different candidates and factions as the diversity of views in the church try to find a candidate the majority can get behind.

Considering that at the core of this is a group of old men voting, this is a suprisingly exciting movie, with plenty of twists and turns as votes go on and the situation in the Sistine Chapel gets tenser. And it’s got a pretty cracking cast: Ralph Fiennes plays Lawrence, who says (repeatedly) he doesn’t want to be Pope, much to the disbelief of some of his colleagues, and who has doubts – about himself and about some of the leading candidates. Stanley Tucci is Aldo Bellini, a liberal American cardinal who was close to the previous Pope, and who is one of the favourites going in to the conclave. John Lithgow is Joseph Tremblay, a moderate Canadian cardinal and Isabella Rossellini is Sister Agnes, the head of the Vatican housekeeping staff.

I really, really enjoyed it – the plot keeps moving and shifting, and the set design and cinematography make it feel cramped, dark and claustrophobic – a feat considering it’s set in the Vatican, a place filled with marble and high ceilings and designed to make you feel small and insignificant. The ending is going to be… divisive, but I thought it worked – and fitted in to the themes of the movie in general.

Conclave is in cinemas now – not sure how easy it will be to fine for long, but this week it’s on at both the independent cinema in my town that we’re members of and at the big chain.

Happy Sunday everyone!

book adjacent

Book Adjacent: Day of the Jackal

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Back with another recommendation for a film based on a book this weekend, but I’m going to start off by saying that this film is brilliant, but I’m not sure I can ever watch it again. If you read on, I will explain!

OK lets start with the fact that I’m talking about the 1970s movie based on the book of the same name written by Frederick Forsythe and not the Bruce Willis remake or the recent mini series with Eddie Redmayne. This one is directed by Fred Zinneman and stars Edward Fox as the Jackal, an assassin hired to kill French President Charles De Gaulle in the summer of 1963. The Jackal is hired by a militant group, angry about the independence of Algeria, who have just failed in their own attempt to kill De Gaulle and hire a British assassin instead. The movie follows him as he meticulously plots the assassination, travelling all over Europe, and also the police effort to track him down – led by Deputy Commissioner Lebel, played by Michael Lonsdale aka Drax from Moonraker.

It’s a film full of fabulous but understated performances, but Edward Fox is truly chilling as the Jackal. He is a professional who is completely detached from everything and everyone and will do whatever it takes to get the job done. The reason I’m not sure I can ever watch it again is because one of the murders he carries out en route to his vantage point to take a shot at de Galle upset me so much. I can’t tell you much more than that, but it really upset/disturbed me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards, and in the course of finding the trailer to insert into this post, YouTube also turned up the clip of that scene and now I’m thinking about it again. Hopefully writing about it will help and I’ll be able to get to sleep tonight without it circling around in my head again. I honestly don’t know why sometimes things stick in my head like this, but things do sometimes and this one did.

A few months back I wrote about Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I would put this in the same category as that – right up to the fact that there’s a scene at the end of that film that if I hear the music from it, I get flashbacks of it (although it doesn’t stop me from re-watching that one – so maybe I will get over this?). Luckily (!) after the opening sequence, Day of the Jackal doesn’t use music as a soundtrack – it only occurs on people’s radios or TVs or where there are bands or musicians on the street, all of which really adds to the tense atmosphere of the movie. It is also very sparing on the dialogue – you need to be paying attention to follow what is going on – so much is seen or inferred rather than spoken out loud. And on top of all that, it’s great to see what all of these European locations looked like back then and with all of the great 1960s cars.

Him Indoors recorded this one off one of the film channels for me, because he thought I’d like it (he was right, except for that one thing) so it should come around again at some point, but probably isn’t on the streaming services at the moment.

book adjacent, theatre

Book Adjacent: Pride and Prejudice (Sort Of)

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We are back at the theatre again this week because I had such a good time at Pride and Prejudice (sort of) on Friday night that I needed to write about it asap.

So, if you’re here and reading this, I’m going to assume you know the story of Pride and Prejudice. And this is a modern retelling of the story through the eyes of the servants, and with a cast of five each playing a servant and then various of the main characters, who sing carefully chosen pop songs at key moments. Here’s a trailer to give you a bit of a sense of what we’re talking about because it’s sort of hard to describe.

The London production of this won the Olivier award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play in 2022 and I can totally see why. The commentary on the events of the book is on point, the songs are witty (including Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain) and the running jokes are a hoot too. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I thought my mum who was sat next to me was going to cry laughing at more than one point.

We did wonder how it might work if you *don’t* know the story of Pride and Prejudice – which as I said may not be a problem for you but maybe your normal theatre going companion isn’t an Austen fan. Well luckily I know someone who went earlier in the week to me and who isn’t familiar with the original text and she also enjoyed it – her description was “pretty good” and she liked the meta-commentary on the events and also the sweary bits, of which there are a few. So I think it’s probably a pretty safe choice for a theatre trip – if you don’t mind a bit of swearing (my mum coped) and some double entendres!

We were the second stop of a new national tour around the UK – you can find all the rest of the dates here along with info on how to book.

Have a great Sunday!

book adjacent, books

Book related: The Three Musketeers

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Let’s start by saying I have a soft spot for adaptations of Alexander Dumas’s band of sword fighting soldiers. I think it probably started with Dogtanian and the Muskerhounds – the original, not the film a couple of years ago and possessor of a deeply catchy theme tune (I’ve put it right at the bottom of the post, press play if you dare) but there have been many others since, including when my favourite skater at the time did a routine to the music from The Man in the Iron Mask to win his Olympic gold! Anyway today we’re talking about the new French movie – the first of a duo.

So they’ve done some… adjustments to the plot of the book, but if you’ve read the book D’Artagnan takes you to roughly the halfway point of the novel in a very easy to enjoy two hour romp. There are sword fights galore along with chivalry and banter and some great stunt work – including a man jumping from one horse to another, which I always love to see.

It’s got a top notch French cast – including Vincent Cassel and Romain Duris among the musketeers and Eva Green as Milady – who spends a lot of time in a huge hat smoking a long stemmed pipe. Iconic stuff. Him Indoors came with me to see it and he described it as “nonsense – but very enjoyable nonsense” and then started to speculate on how the French film industry manages to make such impressive looking movies on such a consistent basis!

If you’re a purist and want something that follows the book completely, this may not work for you – one man left out screening sucking his teeth and telling the usher it wasn’t very accurate – but if you enjoyed the BBC series Musketeers, then I think you’ll like this. We’re definitely going back for part two, which is called Milady, when that arrives here at the end of the year.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

book adjacent, Children's books, Surviving the 'Rona

Surviving Coronavirus: Baby-Sitters Club

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Another in my occasional series of posts about things that have been getting me through the Coronavirus, and this is one that dovetails with my love of middle grade books, despite the fact that I’m no longer a middle grader – and in fact am easily old enough to have a middle grader of my own!

If you’re my sort of age, The Baby-sitters Club was up there with Sweet Valley High as a series that you binge-read from the library. Or at least it was for me.  The books – with the building blocks logo and the house with the illustration of the story in the window were instantly recognisable. It’s hard to remember so many years later, but I’m fairly sure I read almost all of the first 50 books, and all the early super specials as well as some of the mysteries. So, I was excited – but also a little trepidatious – to see that Netflix had adapted it. How do you update a series written in the pre-internet, pre mobile phone world so that it works for children today?

As it turns out, they’ve done it really, really well. The personalities of the girls are the same – but Dawn is Hispanic and Mary Anne is biracial. Stacey still has diabetes, but now she has an insulin pump rather than having to do injections. There are mobile phones, but Kristy and Mary Anne still have flashlights to signal between their houses – because Mary Anne’s dad is so overprotective. Would modern parents really trust a bunch of barely teenagers with their kids? Well the series does try and address that. It’s got a strong focus on social justice, which I think is both true to the original books and inline with what the kids today (!) are interested in and it has enough easter eggs in there for the grownups too – like the handwriting on the episode titles being the “right” ones for each girl from the original books, Alicia Silverstone as Kristy’s mum, Kevin from Brooklyn 99 as Mary Anne’s dad. As grown up, sometimes it was all a little bit ott but I’m not the target audience- and i find that with a lot of children’s shows. It was perfect though for watching while ironing. And low-stakes drama is about all I can deal with right now. At the end of the series Mallory and Jessi were introduced, which means I’m hoping there are plans for a second series – but obviously these strange times we live in could have thrown all that up in the air and mean that the cast age out faster than expected.

Anyway, you can find the Baby-sitters Club on Netflix – and I’m off to read one of the new Babysitter’s Club graphic novels which have been adapted by Raina Telgemeier.

Happy reading!

 

Children's books, Series I love

Bank Holiday Bonus post: Verity goes to a Book Conference

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I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about this here, but actually, I can’t help myself.   At the end of July I went to the Sixth Bristol Conference on Twentieth-Century Schoolgirls and Their Books.  If you’ve been hanging around here for a while you’ll know that one of my big bookish passions are school stories – and one of my most enduring loves are the Chalet School series.  And this was a gathering of over 100 people who love all the same books as me to listen to talks about them, chat to people about them and yes, buy more of them.

Wills Hall quadrangle

As it’s the centenary of the end of World War One, the theme this year was War and most (although not all) of the talks had that as a theme linking them together.  Now I am quite a young enthusiast in the genre – the last run of Chalet School paperbacks came out when I was in secondary school and they were one of the last classic series left in print – so I discovered a lot of new authors at the conference – and was able to pick up books by some of them.  You may have spotted some of my purchases popping up in Week in Books and Book of the Week posts.

My book purchases!

What was really, really wonderful was meeting up with people who love the same things that I do.  I think I had underestimated how wonderful it would be to be able to talk to other people who have read the same books that I have.  I mean all of my friends – and most of my work colleagues  – know that I love reading and read a lot (some of them even read this blog) and we have conversations about books, but I never really get to talk about this bit of my bookish life because I’m meant to be a grownup reading adult books – and no one has read a lot of these books any way even when they were younger.

Saturday night dinner in the Hall

So I guess what this boils down to is find yourself opportunities to go and hang out with other people who are into what you’re into.  You’ll make some friends, learn some new things and have a marvellous time.  I’ve already got the next conference (in 2020!) in my diary.

Happy Bank Holiday!