with a rose in your teeth

[lotesse]

We've had absolutely bats weather here - day before yesterday windgusts of 80 mph, huge trees down all over the place, but mercifully no loss of life, and no tornadoes either. The winds aren't turning, just blowing like snot.

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and just hated it - I can't remember the last time I was so bored. The total lack of narrative structure/plot/characterization is stunning. Was this supposed to be a movie? It felt more like an amusement park ride, the way the first three managed to avoid in the despite of their origin. Johnny Depp v. pretty as always, I suppose, but my irritation with the formlessness of the thing kind of detracted from my ability to appreciate his eyeliner.

BUT. I also finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and wow. It went somewhere MAJOR.

I do think Anne Brontë is, technically speaking, a weaker writer than her sisters. Wildfell Hall suffers from an overabundance of unmemorable, redundant secondary characters, and needs to be about a hundred pages shorter. (I've been wondering if Anne wasn't helped as much as the others were by their family writing collective because her interests turned to different genres/narrative modes/social issues. She wants to write a sober, longform realist novel, and she's stuck working with a bunch of crazy gothicists. But I have no evidence, only speculation.) Almost half of the novel keeps you stuck in the pov of Gilbert Markham, the whinging childish jealous brutish guy who's supposed to be the Good Lover, idek, and his head is a really boring place to be.

But the middle third of the novel, when you're in Helen Huntingdon's diary, is insanely banging. It's relentless, not allowing the reader to avert any of their attention from even the most squalid moments in the disintegration of Helen's marriage. The stuff with her son -! And with her husband's very clear understanding of the liberatory effect Helen's art has on her and his determination to put a stop to it -!

Comments

[laughingrat]

Aw, I'd heard the new Pirates movie wasn't much good. That's a shame.

[lotesse]

It is! I was hoping for a good summery swashbuckler, but alas. I can't imagine sitting through the thing again.

[esteven]

Someone told me to wait until I found the OST DVD in a charity shop and buy it then. At least I would do something good with the money. You do not sound that much more enchanted. *g*

I also heard they did not really use dear Surprise

[lotesse]

No. The boat porn was decidedly substandard, and it was all so quickly cut and badly lit that I took but little pleasure in it! Also, had totally headscratchy ripped zombie!sails on a totally normal boat that was not a possessed ship or anything like that.

[esteven]

*definitely waits for DVD in charity shop*

[tiamatschild]

I love Tenant! It is just. That middle section, yes. The first time I read it I read it in the school library and I couldn't breathe.

[lotesse]

I was sitting in bed making upset noises at my reading screen! I do a lot of my reading late at night when I can't be seen, so that I can vocalize - I hate having to suppress physical reaction!

[ilthit]

Let's resurrect Anne through dark magics and give her a computer to write more.

[lotesse]

That sounds like a surprisingly good idea. *goes off to research resurrection spells - surely the uni library must have something*