Review: Much Ado About Nothing

I'm not quite sure how it's already February, but here we are. I've been thinking that this month is perfect for some love stories. There's quite a bit to choose from in that arena, and I went with one of my favorites.

I'm a big Shakespeare fan. Always have been, probably always will be. There are two of his comedies that I enjoy above all the others. For this review, I'll be looking at one of them.

Much Ado About Nothing gives us the story of Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero.

We watch Benedick and Beatrice as they engage in a battle of wits and attempt to convince everyone that they are not interested in love, and certainly are not interested in each other. It's clear from the very beginning that their true feelings are the opposite of what they proclaim.

In contrast to their refusals of love, we also watch the development of love between Claudio and Hero. This sweet young couple are the exact opposite of Benedick and Beatrice and can't seem to get enough of love. Much of the plot centers around their courtship and the effects of gossip that lead Claudio to believe Hero has been unfaithful. He publicly denounces her at the altar, and the rest of the play is spent righting the wrongs that have caused the misunderstanding. In the end, we see Hero and Claudio happily wed, while Benedick and Beatrice finally reveal their true feelings.

I always like the scheming, the mistaken identities and the revelations that Shakespeare works into his plays. That's part of why I think so many people still read what he wrote, and why people are still so enamored with his plays and their film counterparts. I've got the 1993 movie version of this play starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson as Benedick and Beatrice. I love it. I watch it all the time when the Big Guy is travelling for work. Their portrayal of these two characters has become so entwined with the story for me, that I can't picture the characters any other way.

Click here to read the book details on Goodreads.
Click here to find the book on Amazon.

A Christmas Carol- Stage and Screen

The Big Guy and I have a few holiday traditions that we've adopted over the past few years. Two of those traditions involve A Christmas Carol.

The weekend after Thanksgiving we put up our Christmas decorations. Once that's done and the house is all festive, we sit down with some hot chocolate or spiced cider and we watch the Muppet version of the movie. This tradition is actually one that my husband has been doing for a very long time. I love the innocence of the movie and the changes that were made so that the story would be better for children. It's become how we kick off the holiday season.

Our second tradition is going to see a live production at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. I've mentioned the IRT before, and this is one of the performances that makes me excited to have season tickets. There are always slight differences from year to year, but we always love it. If you're in Indianapolis this season, take a look at their website (www.irtlive.com) for tickets.

Angels and Demons: Diablo

Even though this is the first of the Robert Langdon books, it was the second one I read. Like many people, I read The Da Vinci Code first and was introduced to the character and the formula that goes along with the stories that way. Even though I read it second, Angels & Demons has been my favorite of the Robert Langdon series.

Now, not everyone likes Dan Brown's style. I definitely see that lots of the action is implausible, the characters are predictable and there is absolutely a formula that they follow. None of that detracts from the entertainment of the book for me. Some of those things might even help with its translation into a movie. Although I don't really like Tom Hanks, but that's a whole other topic that we don't need to get into today. I do find it a bit surprising that a Harvard symbologist is able to uncover secrets that have been hidden for hundreds of years in a matter of a few hours, but it's fiction.  Even with the flaws that some readers find, there were several things that I liked about this first book in the series.

First, it pretty much goes without saying that reading these books makes me want to travel to whatever city is their setting and experience the art and architecture for myself. I love the history and the symbolism, and even the references and ties to religion. I know that can be a hot button for a lot of people, but at the end of the day it's a novel, and there has to be some tension and something that causes stress for the characters. Religion can be a very stressful subject.

That's actually the second thing I enjoyed about the book. I was more interested in the struggle between science and religion than I was in some of the characters. That may have made it easier for me to overlook some of their flaws. I'm not someone who believes that science and religion are mutually exclusive. I think that while one can exist without the other, they exist more fully when they exist together. There's a need that we all have to define not only our world, but our place in it. This frequently leads to crises of both the faith and identity varieties. Throughout history we have struggled to find answers to the questions of why we're here and what it all means. Faith and science have served to answer those questions to varying degrees; depending upon the time and the individual asking the questions.

All of the lines and passages that I highlighted and notes I wrote in the margins were linked back to this topic and my own thoughts and struggles at the time. (I've put some of those lines at the end of this post, after the recipe.) I've had points in my life where I question my faith, and faith in general, and based on what stood out to me at the time I was in one these points when I read this book. It's funny to me now that I would have picked up this book during one of those times because it seems to be in line with what I needed to think through to get back to where I want to be with my faith, to be stronger in it for having worked through the doubts for myself. I'm sure it's not entirely coincidental that it happened that way.

The drink for this book is a variation on one that I came across last week actually in an online magazine- it's called the Diablo. The original Diablo came from Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide, published in 1972 written by Victor Jules Bergeron. I pulled most of my inspiration for the cocktail directly from the title of the book, though I like the duality of the drink for the primary topic of the story as well- the salty, tangy aspects of the tequila play well off of the sweetness from the ginger beer. Balance is always a good thing.

Ingredients
2 oz tequila
1 oz ginger beer
.5oz lemon juice
(The original recipe calls for Creme de Cassis, which we didn't have, so I left it out. I am interested in adding it in and seeing what type of difference it makes.)

Directions
Combine ingredients in shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with a lemon wheel and candied ginger.

Overall the drink was light and refreshing, almost completely disguising the boozy quality of the tequila. I could see getting into some serious trouble with this drink over the summer.

p5: The most dangerous enemy is that which no one fears.
p21: I'm undecided on miracles.
p57: Sometimes to find truth, one must move mountains
p61: The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece.
p 108: -I want to believe. - So why don't you?
p155: Why change the world if the world is not watching?
p 243: Modern religion is a collage... an assimilated historical record of man's quest to understand the divine.
p332: Science can heal, or science can kill. It depends on the soul of the man using the science. It is the soul that interests me.
p484: Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.

The Great Gatsby- Movie Review

I can't claim to be a movie critic. I can't claim to know much about what makes a movie great as opposed to really entertaining. I can however claim to know what I like, and that's what this post is about. It might go without saying that there are spoilers in this post, but just in case it doesn't- there are spoilers in this post for both the movie and the book.

The Big Guy and I went out to see the new movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby recently. Actually on opening night because he knows how much I love this story. The verdict? Loved it. It's one that I've already mentioned we should own and would be a great gift for me. I'm not very subtle when it comes to those sorts of hints. We didn't see it in 3D, mostly because I don't care for 3D, and this wasn't an action or horror movie where I felt like the 3D was going to add anything. Still glad we made that choice.

Visually, I found the movie stunning. The depiction of the parties and the differences between East and West Egg and the valley of ashes was amazing. The stark contrast among the locations and the people within them was really well executed. I loved the effects while everyone was driving, it was definitely dizzying, which I think was perfect for those scenes. The extravagance of Gatsby's parties and the pure excess of everything that goes on at his place was amazing. The music was great, not as period-specific as it could have been, but a really good compliment to all that was happening on screen. Probably going to be downloading it this week.

I did have a few problems with the movie and the interpretation that Baz Luhrman and team provided. First, if you're looking for an exact replica of the novel, just on the big screen, it's not this one. First, this is not a love story. Gatsby and Daisy are not a pair of star-crossed lovers who have been kept apart by a cruel universe. He's in love with all that she represents that he'll never have, and she's bored. That's cynical I know, but if you really look at each character, it's true.

Second, what happened to the Tom and Myrtle story? Myrtle was barely present which diminishes the tragedy around her death. I wanted to see more of her. Tom was far too sympathetic in this movie. I almost felt bad for him, which I don't want to do. He's careless and selfish and truly the "hulking brute" that Daisy accuses him of being in their opening scene. But you miss that aspect of his character in this. He's too polished, he's too invested in the possibility of losing Daisy. He knows she'll never leave, and neither will he. They belong together. They have this carefully crafted existence where other people are of no real consequence and they insulate themselves from everything that is inconvenient or uncomfortable, which is most of reality. It's like at the end when you see Daisy reaching for the phone like she might call Gatsby, like she wants that final moment of connection so that she can move on. She doesn't. She's already moved on to whatever Tom decided would be next.

Third, I really didn't care for the way they changed things around Nick. Making him a writer and an alcoholic just wasn't necessary. (I kind of assume that almost everyone in the story is an alcoholic to some extent.) We get that he's the one telling the story, we get that he's the one doing the voice overs. You don't have to show him to me at a type writer for me to understand that. It weakened his position in the story. He's a hanger on, he doesn't really care about the people he's with aside from the entertainment they provide, and to imply that he was so affected by Gatsby that he's been driven to a sanitarium is just too much. Some of this may be that Tobey Maguire is just too wide eyed and innocent to play this role with the apathy I think it needs.

Having listed off the main things that I didn't like, the one thing done differently in this movie that I absolutely loved, was Leonardo DiCaprio's performance. For most of the movie I was comparing his Gatsby to Robert Redford's Gatsby. (I recently re-watched the version with Redford and Mia Farrow.) Redford was all suave and polish, DiCaprio had a few cracks and those cracks got bigger as the movie went on. There was an excited, frenetic energy to his portrayal that made you think he was on the edge of a complete collapse at any moment. Then he does collapse and it's like everything about his image, his facade comes crashing down around him. In that moment you get to see that he and Tom are two sides of the same coin. He's already lost Daisy at that point, but his outburst is still shocking.

The Big Guy thought there was too much that actually showed Gatsby as a criminal rather than leaving it up to you as the viewer to put together, but I liked that. I thought it supported the way DiCaprio presented the character. He was under so much pressure, from himself as well as these outside sources, that he wasn't going to be capable of standing up forever under it all. He was frayed at the very beginning and he slowly comes more and more unravelled. It's like the scene at the Plaza towards the end where he tries to straighten his pink jacket and tuck his hair back into place- once you've seen it out of place it never goes quite back to where it was or where you think it should be. Just like how the truth about Gatsby eventually comes out and you can never get quite back to what you first thought of him when you thought he was just a millionaire playboy.

Overall I thought it was a beautiful movie, and one that I will definitely watch again. A few of the things I didn't like stood out to me because I'd just finished the book a few days before. I'm sure that if I give it enough time those things won't be nearly as obvious as they are right now. Like any book to movie adaptation there are going to be changes, changes that make the story more entertaining or more accessible to a wider audience, and in some cases a different audience than those who read the book. For all its flaws, this one was well done, and absolutely lived up to and exceeded my expectations in a few areas.