The producers of The Amazing Race describe one of the four remaining teams (TK and Rachel) as “newly dating” and their AR bio says they’ve “only” been dating a year. I wonder at the thinking behind those adverbs. I think that any couple together a year (especially considering they’re in their early 20s) doesn’t need minimizing adverbs.
They’re my favorite team, and I was a bit distraught to see them end up so far behind because of bad flight choices from Mumbai to Osaka. I was sure they’d get a note to go straight to the pit stop, but the fact that they completed all their challenges was a good omen, and fortunately they weren’t eliminated. And from the previews it looks like they may catch up with the rest of the pack, though they still have a speed bump to contend with. They’re the most patient team in recent history. It’ll be interested to see how they react when it really gets tense, assuming they make it to the final three.
Continuing our Jane Austen binge, we watched the BBC version of Northanger Abbey and the Keira Knightley/Donald Sutherland version of Pride and Prejudice this weekend. The former was a fun but slight tale that focuses on a young woman who is somewhat melodramatic due to her obsession with Gothic novels. General Tilney was an interesting, fun character at the outset, but he became increasingly bizarre as the movie elapsed.
Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand, is a beautifully filmed and executed movie that I would highly recommend to anyone. Donald Sutherland seems delighted as the patriarch of the all-female Bennet clan. The mother is a bit of a piece of work, but the five girls are all unique and interesting. Rosamund Pike is the beautiful eldest—her eyes always seem a tad out of alignment, which enhances her beauty rather than marring it, for some odd reason. Knightley is the focus of the story, and she seems to be having a blast, and I’ll bet she had a lot of fun filming the scenes where she gets to chew out Dame Judi Densch.
The dance scenes at the balls represent the first time in period movies that I’ve seen where the dancers actually seem to be having a lot of fun. There’s one scene that is a minutes-long single shot with a tracking camera that follows several different vignettes of action from room to room. Exquisitely orchestrated. The film in general seems much richer than any other Austen adaptation we’ve seen so far. There’s nary a stumble in the casting—even the simpering Mr. Collins is perfectly conceived.
I started a new novel this morning. It’s a loose expansion of one published short story that might have been read by 10 people and will also use elements of another unpublished but scheduled story. I did a great deal of research for this last fall and have been ruminating on the story for a while and decided to start of 2008 with a novel. I didn’t get a great deal done this morning as it took a while for me to set up the new document and inherit all my custom styles, but even 720 words is a decent morning’s work—at that pace it would take a little over 100 days to reach my goal of 75000 words. I’m sure there will be better days, and days when I get nothing done, but I’m going to aim for 1000/day when I can manage it.
Took down all the decorations this weekend, too. Since it’s back up to the 60s and 70s in the daytime, it seems like winter’s over down here. I’m sure we’ll be surprised with cold weather again in the next month or two, though.
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