Claudia's Blog

First things first — the tours are almost over and have been a whopping success! So, so great to meet all of you who came to Oxford, Doylestown, Salt Lake City, Miami, Atlanta, LA, the Somerset Festival, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth! Does reading that list exhaust you? Well, doing it has tuckered me right out. I am currently taking a few days of R&R before heading to Auckland, NZ, for my final BALTHAZAR promotional event this Saturday. (If you’re in Auckland, or can be, I hope you will be there!)

But for now I must talk to you, o kindred spirits, about “The Hunger Games” movie, which I saw in Perth:

I LOVED IT.

Seriously, I adored it. I had high hopes from the get-go, but the film adaptation went beyond my wildest expectations.

Let’s get a few quibbles out of the way first, though:

Stuff I disliked:

1) Diminishing Thresh — No, Thresh isn’t a major character in the book, but we get a very real sense of him as a person with both courage and integrity. IMHO, that didn’t come across in the movie. Yes, he agrees to let Katniss go once for Rue’s sake … but he does so angrily, and the moment passes in an instant. Since Thresh was someone I cared about far more than, say, Clove or Marvel, I wish we’d had the two more minutes of screen time that would have defined him more.

2) President Snow Rigs the Games — Don’t get me wrong: of course he rigs the Games. But I thought that element of it was introduced a little too early. President Snow has it out for Katniss in the movie before it should even be clear that Katniss is a threat. The same scene twenty minutes later in the film would have been far more believable to me.

Stuff I wasn’t sure about:

Haymitch — Woody Harrelson is SO not how I would have gone for Haymitch, and yet I thought he delivered a terrific performance. It’s a totally valid interpretation of the character, and one that has me intrigued to learn more about him in a way I never fully felt in the books. However — is he too together? In every scene he has in the film, Harrelson makes it clear that Haymitch is the guy who outlasted everyone else in his Games, who has taken life many times and could easily do it again. (That moment where he puts his foot against Peeta’s chest? I didn’t doubt for a second that Haymitch could’ve killed him with that foot if he wanted to.) And, yes, on one level that’s who that character is. But Haymitch is supposed to be a total wreck. While I can accept the different interpretation in this film, in CATCHING FIRE, one of the rationales behind Peeta taking Haymitch’s place in the Quarter Quell is that Haymitch wouldn’t stand a chance with his aging, alcoholic body. Harrelson’s Haymitch? If he went in, I’d lay odds on him to win. Like I say, it’s not that it doesn’t work, because it does; it’s more that I wonder how it plays out long-term.

Stuff I loved:

ALL OF IT

Ahem.

1) Jennifer Lawrence – love her, love her, love her. As many of you know, I was kind of rooting for Haylee Stenfield to get the part (and I still think she’d have been good), but that was never an anti-Jennifer Lawrence stand. Have loved her since “Winter’s Bone,” and she just nailed it here in every scene.

2) Josh Hutcherson — for the first ten minutes, I wasn’t at all sure about him. He wasn’t grabbing me; I hardly knew whether to like him or distrust him. And then of course it hit me, That’s EXACTLY how you should feel about Peeta at that point. As the film went on, his performance expanded to fill our greater understanding of the character, and in the end I thought he utterly nailed it.

3) Elizabeth Banks — This is probably the single performance that came closest to my idea of the character in the books. (Which is not the be-all end-all — I am always open to an interpretation that expands our idea of the people we’ve read about — but it is nonetheless satisfying.) She was fabulous, and am I the only one that thought she and Haymitch might have had a very self-destructive thing back in the day?

4) Oh heck all the other performances — Donald Sutherland = magnificent. Lenny Kravitz = magnificent. Stanley Tucci = I will be building an altar to you at my next convenience. So, so good.

5) The overall look and feel — this very much captured the Capitol in its decadence, the Games in their ferocity and District 12 in its desperation. (I finally came around to the nicer dresses in the Reaping scene, as that was explained, though I still think Ktniss’ leather jacket should look a little more worn, a little less tailored.) And as over the top and futuristic as so much of it was, I thought it retained credibility throughout. I was really able to get lost in it.

6) The suspense — there were several moments where I found myself holding my breath in fear and, you know, I know how it ends. Good job, Gary Ross.

So, did you guys enjoy it as much as I did?

BTW, it will be a while before I reply — this tropical town is short on internet — but I definitely want to hear what you think!

Lady Jane

1986 — starring Helena Bonham Carter (yes, Bellatrix Lestrange herself), Guildford Dudley (Westley/Dread Pirate Roberts), Patrick Stewart (make it so) and John Wood (greetings Professor Falken).

The Plot: The sort of true story of Lady Jane Grey, whom King Edward VI designated as his heir instead of his older, Roman Catholic sister, Mary. Everyone got into this situation thanks to King Henry VIII’s wandering eye and convenient conscience, which had led him to figure that OF COURSE he had to start a new church that would allow him to marry his mistress way back when. This meant his eldest daughter Mary was Catholic in a now mostly Protestant nation — the only reason King Edward’s gambit made any sense, because basically, Mary was undeniably next in line. However, for nine days, Lady Jane was hailed as Queen Jane.

The movie is of course heavily caught up in these political elements, but it is first and foremost the story of Jane’s marriage to Guildford Dudley. They were an arranged match, one intended to create political advantages for their parents. In this movie, they are a very unlikely pair — she’s scholarly, even intellectual, and so prim and proper even her parents are like, Jane, loosen up. Guildford, meanwhile, is first seen boozing it up in a whorehouse. Neither of them is one bit happy about the marriage, and at first it seems as though they’ll spend the entire time either fighting or ignoring one another. But then Jane learns why Guildford is so angry, and begins to question whether her own academic pursuits have distanced her too far from the real world. She and Guildford find the unlikeliest common ground, which blossoms into love — just as King Edward dies and their lives are transformed again, forever.

The Love: Maybe they go from mutual loathing to absolute rapture a little quickly, and I for one think Guildford was up to more in that whorehouse than he ever admits, but honestly, I bought the romance here, heart and soul. Mostly it’s because the actors are so amazing; they convince me far more than the script does. HBC actually seems delicate and unworldly enough to have no idea of how things work outside of books; Cary Elwes, as Guildford, was hitting his personal hotness apex, which was very hot indeed. There’s a lot of romantic (a) destruction of glassware, (b) conversations held while kneeling naked in front of fireplaces, (c) social justice initiatives and (d) gamboling in meadows. I am a sucker for all such.

The Best Parts: The way Jane’s firm religious convictions are both admired and tested — it would be easy to simply turn her into a faultless martyr. But the movie makes it clear that, despite her intellectual rigor, a lot of Jane’s early arguments have more to do with wordplay and dogma than sincere faith. In the end, she refuses to convert to Catholicism — but also recognizes that a Catholic clergyman has shown her more Christian charity than almost anyone else in the entire story, and decides faith may be broad enough to hold them both. Also, the Love. The aforementioned meadows. The costumes, which I am a sucker for in any period drama ever.

Also this movie contains Patrick Stewart. I am always sort of guilty at book readings, etc., when people ask me who is hotter, Rob Pattinson or Taylor Lautner or some similar matchup, and the fact is — guys, I’m too old for them. I see that they’re very attractive, but because I am nonpervy, men almost two decades my junior just do not do it for me as a general rule. (Although I may call a one-time exception for Nicholas Hoult. Ahem. Moving on.) Patrick Stewart in the 1980s, though? In period costume?

YES THAT IS WHAT DOES IT FOR ME SHUT UP.

The Worst Parts: The ending. Don’t get me wrong — it’s powerfully acted and filmed, and the final scene is still one of the most affecting I’ve ever seen. But remember how in history class, you never studied Queen Jane of England? Well, there’s a reason for that. And you probably did study how Tudor political disagreements usually ended. Not with handshakes.

There is also a pretty high cheese level to some of it, but I think of it like a lasagna — incomplete without the cheese, but all the tastier for it.

Historically Accurate? Yes and no. Jane’s final words in the movie are taken almost verbatim, and the political factions and religious debates are correctly portrayed. Do not for one minute tell me that men did not wear hats like the one Patrick Stewart has on, because if that’s true, I don’t want to know.

But Jane wasn’t a social reformer in real life, and nobody’s really sure whether Jane and Guildford ever fell in love. They may not even have liked each other in real life; certainly their beginning was as rocky as portrayed here, and she did refuse to have him crowned king as some (including his politically powerful father) had hoped. But if you’ve ever toured the Tower of London, you’ve walked through the cell where Guildford was imprisoned; he carved Jane’s name three times in the stone. I’ve never understood why he would do that if there was really nothing there.

But when it comes to this movie, I don’t care about the history that much. It’s a rapturous period romance, if you’re in the mood for the same.

**

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