{"id":322,"date":"2011-02-12T23:37:24","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T23:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/?p=322"},"modified":"2011-02-12T23:43:36","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T23:43:36","slug":"february-2011-movie-and-book-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/2011\/02\/12\/february-2011-movie-and-book-picks\/","title":{"rendered":"Glen Huser's Movie and Book Picks for February 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My Movie Pick<\/h1>\n

My pick for this February is a story of romance and heartbreak that I\u2019ve watched time and time again for its nuanced performances, lavish period detail, and superb pacing and tension shaped by director William Wyler. The film is The Heiress, <\/em>based on a play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, in turn based on the Henry James novel Washington Square.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the heart of the story is a young woman, Catherine Sloper, who has always been considered dull and clumsy by her father, a well-heeled Washington Square doctor who remembers Catherine\u2019s deceased mother as a beauty with charm and grace. Catherine seems to accept her shortcomings and the mantle of disappointment until she encounters a handsome stranger at her cousin\u2019s engagement party. Morris Townsend attends to her as if she were the only girl in the world and, before long, she is utterly smitten by this young man who lives in high style but is essentially penniless. Dr. Sloper is immediately suspicious of Townsend\u2019s intentions, seeing him as a worthless opportunist with an eye on Catherine\u2019s fortune. Add into this mix a visiting aunt who acts as a chaperone to Catherine, but who believes that a one-sided love can be better than no love at all.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Olivia de Havilland inhabits the role of Catherine and she\u2019s wonderful to watch. At first anxious and hesitant, apologetic and submissive, we see her bloom under Morris Townsend\u2019s attentions. De Havilland won the Academy Award and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance. Although Montgomery Clift as Morris never felt that this was one of his best performances, he brings to the fortune-hunter not only an incredible handsomeness but a kind of puppy-like vulnerability that we can believe would melt Catherine\u2019s heart. Ralph Richardson\u2019s Dr. Sloper is believable and chilling, and Miriam Hopkins as the giddy aunt turns in one of her best performances. Edith Head\u2019s costumes also won an Academy Award that year \u2013 as did Aaron Copland\u2019s original music score. Director William Wyler was nominated along with cinematographer Leo Tover.<\/p>\n

So\u2026yes, it\u2019s hard to imagine a valentine package with more treasures. But remember that this is a Henry James story \u2013 and in a box of James chocolates, there are no soft centres.<\/p>\n

My Book Pick<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>I do believe that books can have a seasonal aspect to them. Some novels beg for a summer \u2013 or winter \u2013 reading. I\u2019ve just finished reading Geraldine McCaughrean\u2019s White Darkness, <\/em>which unfolds mostly across the icescape of Antarctica and, while I\u2019ll chat about this book because I\u2019ve just finished reading it, it\u2019s actually one you might want to reserve for those overheated summer days filled with the sounds of fans running and ice cubes clinking in whatever drink you have in hand. It seems to me I kept running and putting on sweaters whenever I picked up McCaughrean\u2019s prize-winning book (Michael L. Printz 2008 Award).<\/p>\n

And I picked it up whenever I had a spare moment! In this tale of a fourteen-year-old, Sym, who jumps at the chance to go on an excursion to Paris with her uncle, Victor (not a blood relative but a friend of the family who stepped into the breech with the death of Sym\u2019s father), it\u2019s pretty impossible not to be caught up in events that spiral across the globe and into icy encounters that will leave you gasping for air. Uncle Victor is convinced there is spot at the southern pole in which it is possible to disappear into an alternate subterranean world \u2013 something Jules Verne had figured out in Journey to the Centre of the Earth,<\/em> only he got the location wrong.<\/p>\n

Sym realizes she has been groomed to be Uncle Victor\u2019s companion on this journey and she\u2019s thankful that she has the close friendship of Titus Oates who accompanied Scott on his last expedition to the South Pole. As she says in the opening lines of the book: I have been in love with Tits Oates for quite a while now\u2014which is ridiculous, since he\u2019s been dead for ninety years. But look at it this way. In ninety years I\u2019ll be dead too, and then the age difference won\u2019t matter.<\/em><\/p>\n

McCaughrean can be very funny as she follows Sym on an adventure filled not only with a ghost but a motley crew of tourists to the ice-cap and a Norwegian film-making duo who aren\u2019t exactly what they at first seem to be. But she can also write exquisitely about this subcontinent with its sculptured ice and shifting glacial shelves and iridescent snow. Mostly I think I\u2019m envious of the imaginative tour de force she\u2019s pulled off in a narrative that blends a clear-eyed history of polar exploration and exacting geographical detail with a cast of wonderful dysfunctional characters.<\/p>\n

Has McCaughrean filled me with a desire to visit Antarctica? No. But she\u2019s filled me with a desire to seek and find some of the other novels she\u2019s written (which include\u00a0 the 1988 Carnegie medal-winner A Pack of Lies<\/em> and 3 Whitbread award-winners \u2013 A Little Lower Than the Angels, Gold Dust,<\/em> and Not the End of the World<\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Movie Pick My pick for this February is a story of romance and heartbreak that I\u2019ve watched time and time again for its nuanced performances, lavish period detail, and superb pacing and tension shaped by director William Wyler. The film is The Heiress, based on a play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, in turn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glen-huser-movie-and-book-picks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}