Movie Night
I belong to a Book Club that has about 16 members several of whom have become friends I see outside of the Book Club. This is group of special friends numbers 4-6 and we get together to see exhibits at Museums, the Botanic Gardens, art galleries, movies, concerts,even a ballet. Sometimes we go out to eat or just have coffee.Once we got together around Halloween for a Witches Hat Tea and in December a Dundee Cake Tea (see December 13th Blog).We have started a "Movie Night" that has become something I look forward to once a week or every other week. It started as a one time thing when we watched
"WAR AND PEACE", we enjoyed a lot and I suggested it would be fun to continue watching other movies perhaps once a month or every other week. One friend likes to entertain at her home and we always meet there to talk, eat and watch a movie. Everyone brings something to eat--one night we had a veggie pizza with a big salad and dessert, another night Pasta Fagioli soup and dessert crepes, once it was savory crepes and cookies, another time just "finger food" that we ate while watching the movie.
Leo Tolstoy
We have watched 4 episodes of ",
WAR AND PEACE", "
SUFFRAGETTE ", and
"ROOM"--All serious and one disturbing (
"ROOM"). I must confess to never having read "
WAR AND PEACE" so I got an abbreviated education while watching the BBC adaptation on PBS. I learned that the film and the novel cover the period of 1805 to 1812 and details the French invasion of Russia and the effect on the Tsarist society by telling the stories of five aristocratic Russian families (paraphrased from Wikipedia). The film took us through marriages, affairs, deaths, war and as far as I could see, not much peace.
Emmeline Pankhurst
While the first two films were serious and dramatic, the third film we watched, "ROOM" , was to me the most unsettling--It is the story, taken from a book of the same name, of a young woman who was kidnapped at age 17 and repeatedly raped by her captor, she eventually becomes pregnant and bears a son, Jack
Both mother (Joy) and Jack are kept in a place they call "Room", which turns out to be a garden shed outfitted with electricity and heat as well as a small space for limited cooking, a bathtub,a toilet,a bed and closet.
Joy struggles to maintain some sense of normalcy for her son while protecting him as best she can from the horrors of their situation. Eventually Joy makes a plan for Jack's escape and he is able to take the police to the shed where his mother is rescued. While Jack experiences the outside world for the first time in 5 years he eventually adjusts to it easier than Joy. Despite the disturbing and all too true to life story of the film, it is the bond between mother and child which gives hope and cautious optimism to the situation.
On the most recent movie night, there were only two of us and we somehow miscommunicated about the movie we were going to watch (I thought she had it and she thought I was going to get it from the library which I hadn't) so we were without a movie to watch. My friend said "you just pick one from the Netflix list available on my Smart TV and we'll watch it." I browsed the list of numerous movies in several genres and picked one that I thought sounded like something we would like to watch. I choose
"LIKE SUNDAY, LIKE RAIN"--it is the story of a friendship that develops between Eleanor, a 23- year old woman who is fired from her job in a cafe after the boyfriend she has rejected due to numerous infidelities, confronts her at work causing a scene, and a 12 year old genius and cello prodigy Reggie, whose mother temporarily hires Eleanor to act as a nanny for while she leaves the country to visit his step-father. Reggie's father died in a automobile accident and his mother has re-married. As his mother and step-father are often absent, Reggie lives a rather lonely life having only one friend. He fills his life with reading and playing the cello. When Eleanor takes the temporary job as his "nanny" they begin to form a bond. Through a series of events with Eleanor's dysfunctional family from who she is estranged, Reggie finds out that Eleanor once played the coronet and had been accepted to Julliard, but was unable to attend due to a lack of funds. Reggie has given up playing the cello declaring that "art is dead", yet tries to convince Eleanor to again play. Eleanor declares that "she will if he will". Reggie tells her that he will write a revised version of a piece he has written (and Eleanor has greatly admired) entitled "
Like Sunday, Like Rain" to include a part for the coronet. The job caring for Reggie was just temporary and as it comes to an end, Reggie wants Eleanor to stay, but she declares that she must return home, where she hopes to get her life in order--I was somewhat mystified by that development since Eleanor declared in a recent visit home that she was leaving and never returning. The movie ends with Eleanor finding a package on her front porch which contains the coronet Reggie has sent her along with the revised music or "Like Sunday, Like Rain". We first see Reggie begin to play his cello again and the last scene is of Eleanor putting the coronet to her lips and beginning to play the music as well.
My friend and I both liked the movie and I decided to look on the Internet for reviews where I found that there were several very favorable reviews" well acted", :"sweet"," tender"and "hitting all the right notes", but others panned it; dismissing it as "obviously sentimental", "overly written"," thin" and "too precious". So like all books and all movies there are many differing opinions and the opinion is ours alone. I know that I enjoy these evenings because it's a chance to discuss what we have seen and talk about our interpretations of the film, eat good food and enjoy good friendships,whether we agree on the movie or not.
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| 4 Friends at "Movie Night" |
***12-30-2017 For some reason I was looking back on my posts and after reading this one I discovered several minor errors which I decided to correct. In reading over the post I realized I had not much mention of the movie SUFFRAGETTE. I could swear that I researched the Suffragette movement in England, thus the picture of Emmeline Pankhurst above. I remember writing about the movement and the movie, but find that it is not in this blog post??? Did I accidentally erase it? Was it in another post? I looked forward and backward and don't see that part anywhere? It's probably confusing since the only mention is the movie title and then a picture not connected to any text! I could correct that omission but I am in the middle of trying to write a current post and so will just leave the notation and move on.
I save many things (but I am not a "hoarder"), books, recipes, newspaper articles, ideas for decorating, papers written in classes long ago and magazines. In the past I have subscribed to gardening magazines, Country Gardening and Country Living magazines; I have about 7 years of monthly issues of Victoria More recently I subscribed to Smithsonian , Country magazine and was given a subscription to Yankee Magazine by a friend as a gift. Being overwhelmed with so many issues, I have stopped all subscriptions with one exception.
Today I decided to look through a stack of Christmas issues that I have saved for years to see if I might get rid of some of them--While I know I saved them for a reason, today I failed to really see why--I know I saved some because of the recipes they contained and some for decorating ideas--today I admitted that I had so may saved recipes that I will never try and I since I no longer have much of my own space for decorating, I really did not need those ideas--
I chose 4 issues to look through and found a few crafts that I thought I might try (but probably won't) and a few recipes (including an interesting and quite complicated one for Birds Nest Pastry in an article entitled "Christmas at Winterthur) that I thought I might like to make (but probably won't)I read about different types of trees that make good Christmas trees, a little article about Poinsettias most of which are grown at Paul Ecke Ranch in the town where I grew up. I read articles on the use of holly in early winter solstice festivals, in homes to brighten the dark days of winter, and the exchange of branches by friends as tokens of goodwill. Holly was thought to ward of evil and protect a home against witchcraft as well as provide refuge for friendly woodland sprites. I read an article on vintage Christmas cards and learned that the first Christmas cards were sent around 1846 in London by Henry Cole who wanted to send holiday greetings to his friends and associates. German born Louis Prang immigrated to America where he perfected color printing techniques and his cards were elevated to the level of artistry. There were columns written telling stories of various traditions from choosing the Christmas tree, to one towns' yearly production of The Messiah, as well as one describing a traditional Polish Christmas Eve celebration. I even read a reader's letter to the editor and found one that seemed hugely intriguing; it thanked the magazine for an article on French gypsy wagons. In the letter the reader says she met a woman in New Zealand who bought a team of horses and a gypsy wagon and every summer leads the gypsy life, exploring her country--With the current interest in "tiny homes" these wagons seem like an interesting option (with or without the horses).
