late fantasy girlfriend and a movie review...
It seems I've got fewer fantasies than I originally imagined. I've been having trouble coming up with fantasy girlfriends and have been forgetting altogether to even try on Tuesdays, which was the day I'd set aside for that little treat. Oh well. After Portia de Rossi, I had nowhere to go but down... no pun intended... (snickers).
I liked the idea of having real lesbians, like Portia, as my fantasy girlfriends, but I stalled out when it came time to pick the next one. So, instead of forcing myself to find lesbian fantasy girlfriends, I decided to settle for the original plan, which was to pick whichever chick happened to be calling my name in the moment. And so, this week's very, very late (or next week's very, very early) Tuesday fantasy girlfriend is: Reese Witherspoon, seen here in Vanity Fair.
I had this out from the library and kept meaning to watch it but didn't until just now. If I'd known that much of its action takes place during the Napoleonic wars, I'm sure I would've watched it sooner, since I've been buried in the Napoleonic wars for the the past month trying to read War and Peace. War and Peace was published about twenty years after William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but both are set in the same early 19th century period and both concern, to greater or lesser degrees, society, money and marriages.
I enjoyed the movie because it is gorgeous and full of color. Why? Because it was directed by Mira Nair, who recently directed another beautiful movie called The Namesake. Nair is Indian, as are the characters in The Namesake. Bits of India turn up here and there in Vanity Fair and Nair has drawn those bits out and let them add color to a place and time that could not have really been so bright and vivid.
Then, of course, there's Reese. I don't care what anybody says, I love Reese Witherspoon. I love that she's Southern, I love that she's cute, I love that she reminds me of my cousin Lacey who, incidentally, is the first girl I ever kissed. Lacey didn't grow up to be as hot as Reese, but when she was younger, she had promise.
Anyway, my fantasy girlfriend Reese, brings her natural sass to the role of Becky Sharp, a very sassy character indeed. However, as I watched, I kept wishing I was simply reading the novel. As gorgeous as the movie was, and as great as Reese was, my understanding is that Vanity Fair is one of those long, sprawling novels with lots of characters and connections and alliances and betrayals, and novels like that are hard to cram into the format of a good movie.
For example, I watched Portrait of a Lady last weekend. The book, which I read a few months ago, was great, but the movie felt clipped and forced and bland in comparison. There was no time to linger over characters and motivations and a lot of the nuance was lost. That's a shame.
I hope I haven't ruined the reading of Vanity Fair by watching the movie. I've got a terrible memory, so if I just wait a few months, I will have forgotten all the details. Though I'll never forget my fantasy girlfriend, REESE WITHERSPOON.
I liked the idea of having real lesbians, like Portia, as my fantasy girlfriends, but I stalled out when it came time to pick the next one. So, instead of forcing myself to find lesbian fantasy girlfriends, I decided to settle for the original plan, which was to pick whichever chick happened to be calling my name in the moment. And so, this week's very, very late (or next week's very, very early) Tuesday fantasy girlfriend is: Reese Witherspoon, seen here in Vanity Fair.
I had this out from the library and kept meaning to watch it but didn't until just now. If I'd known that much of its action takes place during the Napoleonic wars, I'm sure I would've watched it sooner, since I've been buried in the Napoleonic wars for the the past month trying to read War and Peace. War and Peace was published about twenty years after William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but both are set in the same early 19th century period and both concern, to greater or lesser degrees, society, money and marriages.
I enjoyed the movie because it is gorgeous and full of color. Why? Because it was directed by Mira Nair, who recently directed another beautiful movie called The Namesake. Nair is Indian, as are the characters in The Namesake. Bits of India turn up here and there in Vanity Fair and Nair has drawn those bits out and let them add color to a place and time that could not have really been so bright and vivid.
Then, of course, there's Reese. I don't care what anybody says, I love Reese Witherspoon. I love that she's Southern, I love that she's cute, I love that she reminds me of my cousin Lacey who, incidentally, is the first girl I ever kissed. Lacey didn't grow up to be as hot as Reese, but when she was younger, she had promise.
Anyway, my fantasy girlfriend Reese, brings her natural sass to the role of Becky Sharp, a very sassy character indeed. However, as I watched, I kept wishing I was simply reading the novel. As gorgeous as the movie was, and as great as Reese was, my understanding is that Vanity Fair is one of those long, sprawling novels with lots of characters and connections and alliances and betrayals, and novels like that are hard to cram into the format of a good movie.
For example, I watched Portrait of a Lady last weekend. The book, which I read a few months ago, was great, but the movie felt clipped and forced and bland in comparison. There was no time to linger over characters and motivations and a lot of the nuance was lost. That's a shame.
I hope I haven't ruined the reading of Vanity Fair by watching the movie. I've got a terrible memory, so if I just wait a few months, I will have forgotten all the details. Though I'll never forget my fantasy girlfriend, REESE WITHERSPOON.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 3:37 PM
6 Comments:
man, i'm from the south, too. kissing cousins is hot. i never kissed none of my cousins but when i was five there was one i really wanted to...
yeah, don't worry about the late fantasy girlfriend; you're lucky to have as many as you do! i like reese witherspoon, too...and vanity fair was a pretty good movie. i liked that she ended up with the regular dude who wasn't as hot as her other bf's.
i was THIS CLOSE to adding a warning about "kissing cousin" jokes. i knew somebody would jump on it. leave it to zuhn to jump first. jeez.
i'm glad you abandoned the idea of using only lesbians for fantasy girlfriends, both because there aren't that many lesbian celebs to pick from, and because hi, it's fantasy! so who cares if they're straight. ;-)
anyway, nice selection. reese is cute. and she makes me think of ryan philippe which makes me think of 'playing by heart' with angelina jolie AND gililan anderson. swoon. no, double swoon (mostly for gillian).
Sorry if i bothered you, what i said about cousin kissing. i didn't mean to hurt your feelings:(
no, not you scg. i was fussing at zuhn. your comment was actually pretty sweet.
So was mine! Notice the little smiley face?
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