Metaphysical Conceit watches the movie before reading the book

The movie is White Oleander, which I watched long time ago without knowing it was based on a book. I rewatched it a couple of years ago because I remembered really liking it, and I enjoyed it even more the second time. That was when I found out it was based on a 1999 novel by Janet Fitch, and I kept my eyes open for a copy until I finally picked one up at a secondhand bookstore.

The one I found is the movie tie-in version of the book, which I always do my best to avoid buying, but in this case, it's no more than I deserve, right?  

Movie tie-in cover --- one notch above or below Oprah's Book Club edition??

I read it on vacation in North and South Carolina. I felt like the movie does a good job of capturing the essence of the novel, although there are whole sections left out of the film for reasons of length. 

It's about a girl whose mother is an eccentric, self-centred poet who ends up convicted of murdering her ex-boyfriend. Her daughter is shuffled from foster home to foster home throughout her adolescence. It's sad and hopeful and full of fascinating female characters. 

Recommended!

Metaphysical Conceit goes to the movies

I stayed up late the other night watching Stuck in Love, a movie that was (unexpectedly!) about a family of writers. I don’t think it’s a perfect movie, but it’s sweet and funny, with that ring of honesty that seems to come from first-time writer-directors who are making a very personal film (not sure if this is the case, but it has that feeling). The performances are great, and the soundtrack is so, so good. If you like romantic dramedies (sorry, but that’s what they’re called!), you should check it out.

There were one or two small moments where the writing business part of it didn’t feel 100% true, but maybe that’s just me feeling more authoritative than I am. It’s hard to find a movie about writing that feels accurate. Adaptation is a great film, but it felt a little too psychologically true to be totally enjoyable. (Did it make anyone else super anxious?) Wonder Boys is my favourite movie about writers/writing, but since it’s based on a book I wonder if it should count. 

Oh, I just looked up Stuck in Love’s director, Josh Boone, and it turns out he will be directing the adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, a book I really enjoyed and a movie I'm looking forward to seeing when it comes out. (However, it looks like the screenplay has been handled by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the writing team responsible for (500) Days of Summer, a movie a lot of people seemed to love but which I really disliked.) 

A writer to watch!

It made my Canada Day to be named one of CBC Books' 2013 Writers to Watch!  Along with a lot of writers whose books are in my TBR pile.

You can click through the full list here. 

For another amazing list, check out Amanda Leduc's Up-and-Comers on her (lovely!) blog . This is a update on a group of writers she profiled a year ago...although if you are a writer be warned: it may make you feel insecure and unproductive or (better yet) inspired to to work harder.

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I started this post over three weeks ago now. Travel and vacation has kept me away from the internet a little more than I'd like. 

To celebrate our anniversary, D and I went on a weekend trip to Franconia Notch State Park, where we saw bears (in the backyard of our B&B!), hiked a gorge, had some amazing pizza (jalapeno-cream-cheese-stuffed crust....YUM), backed some plastic duckies in the town Lions' Club annual duck race fundraiser, caught the 4th of July "Home Day" parade, swam in the lake, visited Frost Place on Frost Day, and fulfilled a long-time yearning (er, of mine) to go to a drive-in movie, something I haven't done in almost twenty years. I am going to suggest you peruse the snack bar menu of the Northern Nights Drive-In because it is American thing of beauty. We took full advantage with chocolate milkshakes, cheeseburgers, chicken fingers...and even a meatball sub. When in New Hampshire... 

Pickup trucks are de rigeur at the drive-in

Small town drive-in

The Frost Place, one of Robert Frost's former homes

Walking the trails behind the Frost Place

Hilarious scrambling at the end of the duck race

We topped it off with an amazing meal at Manoir Hovey in North Hatley on way home. It was the kind of meal I can barely describe because it was so delicious and delightfully detailed on the menu.  Fine dining menus are a complex conceptual/literary/culinary art form, don't you think? Basically (in a prosaic, incomplete summary that does little justice to the meal), I had asparagus soup, halibut, cheese risotto, a bunch of amazing chanterelles (pilfered from D), and notably, as a pre-dessert, some apple-tarragon sorbet. Notable not only for the delicate and (at least to me) surprising combination of flavours, but also just for the concept of a pre-dessert, which strikes me as a useful one that might have almost as much mileage in it as second breakfast.  

A week after our return, we came back out to the country for a working vacation which has included lots of swimming (initially, during the heat wave), reading, writing, and napping. Just a few days left, but I hope to try and squeeze in the time to finish a second story...

Salty Ink, Type Books, and Oscar blabbing

Salty Ink, one of my favourite Can Lit websites has featured Bone and Bread in the first installment of its Spring Fiction Spotlight -- 15 Novels to Put on Your Reading Radar.  Hurray! 

Also, you have probably already seen this if you’re on Twitter (or if you live in Toronto!), but I love it too much not to belatedly share it here: a beautiful window display at Type Books by Kalpna Patel, who has one of my all-time favourite handles on Twitter and who snapped the photo below:

Display for Freedom to Read Week at Type Books

Did you watch the Oscars?  I watched the whole thing at a lovely, low-key Oscar party with delicious eats, but today I find I don’t have much to say about it besides a deeper love of Adele, whose performance of Skyfall was amazing and almost nonchalant, and who, in the context of these Hollywood award shows, just seems refreshingly real every time she opens her mouth.   Also, in the days leading up to the Oscars, I stumbled upon this insider’s look at Oscar voting, which was being linked to as some kind of shocking revelation (people vote without watching the movies!) but is not really very surprising at all. 

It was also a big night for Life of Pi, which I’m looking forward to seeing, and I felt some real Can Lit pride to see it do so well.  I was happy that at least two of the people who won (including Ang Lee for best director) acknowledged Yann Martel’s novel.  (I wonder…if a movie based on your book is nominated for an Oscar, do they stick you up in the balcony?)  

One of several delicious courses last night.  Carrot-apple-ginger soup by M, hostess extraordinare:

Argo and Auster

Another weekend come and gone.  They are always too short.  It seems like an extra day is called for – just to squeeze in all the fun AND the needed sleep catch-up AND the little errands and cleanup that are hard to take care of during the week.

Friday night was dumplings and a movie.  We caught the late show of Argo, which I really enjoyed.  I can’t think of a movie from last year that I liked quite as much.  And I can’t believe it has taken me this long to see it.

Saturday morning was choir rehearsal and reading.   I bought this beautiful edition of the New York Trilogy a while back and I’ve finally started it now. 

I’m only a little ways in but so far I love it and it’s exactly what I want to be reading right now.  Later on Saturday, we went out for a birthday celebration where the kitchen table was loaded with liquor, the apartment floor was covered in glitter, and there was a perpetual screening of Groundhog Day in one of the bedrooms.  Very fun!  

We also had slices of this amazing rainbow jello cake.  The strangest thing…it looks just like cake, tastes just like jello. 

Sunday I met up with some writer friends to go over some stories we’d shared and enjoy A’s piping hot sticky buns with pecans.  My first trip to Point St. Charles, aka the Point.  For once, I’m going to try and revise my story while I still have all the feedback fresh in my mind. 

Midnight in Paris

I finally saw Midnight in Paris recently, and I was a little disappointed, even though it was a perfectly fine movie. The opening was long and unfocused (I get it: we’re in Paris…happy as I am to watch endless picturesque shots of the City of Lights), and the whole thing felt too fluffy to mean very much to me. (I also kept getting bogged down by the “practical” considerations of the time travel magic…and how it worked exactly...though I recognize this is probably mostly my problem.) I’m not in love with the time period (true, I haven’t read all that much of any of those writers), and I’d already heard the best jokes from a friend of mine who was talking up the movie, and Rachel McAdams’s character was enough of a caricature (wasn’t she just awful?) to make the whole thing seem mostly like a pleasantly diverting little comic strip.

Then I was reminded of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a movie I don’t recall all that well, but which I remember well enough to be surprised all over again, when I think about it, that it was made by the same person. It felt like an entirely different category of movie. That’s Woody Allen for you. Prolific!

A few interesting Woody Allen links have crossed my desktop lately.

On Woody Allen’s typography (he uses Windsor, based on the recommendation of a printer who used to eat breakfast at the same New Jersey diner in the late seventies):

http://kitblog.com/2007/12/woody_allens_typography.html

9 things entrepreneurs could learn from Woody Allen (I think they’re pertinent to anyone involved in a creative endeavour):

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/14/woody-allen/

Top Five Movies of 2008

I'm a little slow on the draw here, but it's still early January, and, anyway, does anyone really ever need an excuse for a Top 5 list?

1. Rachel Getting Married

I'm not positive that this is the best movie on the list, but I certainly enjoyed watching it the most. Shot in Dogme-style with handheld cameras and music played live on set, the film makes you feel like a weekend guest at a real wedding, from the cringe-inducing, over-long wedding speeches to the gleeful post-ceremony dancing. Bill Irwin is wonderful as the father. I laughed, I cried, and I also enjoyed the blue elephant wedding cake. Nom nom nom.


2. Man on Wire

The true story of Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker who walked a high-wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. A beautiful, riveting film. You'll be pleased to know that the destruction of the WTC is never mentioned.


3. Snow Angels

When I saw this in the theatre, I thought it was perfect. Filmed in Canada (Nova Scotia doubling for Pennsylvania), the small town setting and the snow as a backdrop for tragedy reminded me a little of The Sweet Hereafter, another one of my favourite films. This flew flew under the radar but was truly lovely. There is a great review of it by Katrina Onstad on the CBC website.


4. Happy-Go-Lucky

Mike Leigh's movie about Poppy, the insanely upbeat kindergarten teacher, was not unexpectedly excellent, and I loved the way it brings the viewer from a kind of native aversion to Poppy's impossible sunniness to a complete and utter sympathy with her. Less dark than some of Leigh's other films, but still complex.


5. Synecdoche, New York

A sort of terrifying epic movie, brilliant but exhausting, and perhaps a wee bit expository towards the end. I love Kaufman but find him harrowing. I still haven't been able to bring myself to rewatch Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I have a feeling those viewings are coming a lot sooner than a second screening of Synecdoche. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, though, and I feel like as a screenplay it is dazzling.


Also terrific:

My Winnipeg: Guy Maddin's beautiful and surreal tribute to his hometown.

Pineapple Express: If Snow Angels didn't make David Gordon Green any money, this sure did. Hilarious.

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation: A Brazilian movie about a boy who ends up staying with an elderly Jewish man while his parents flee the city to avoid being 'disappeared' by the dictatorship. Set against the backdrop of the 1970 World Cup.