to limber up for the Bondarchuk version, not bad, not bad at all. The trouble is that it tends to diminish things I've already seen (like I Clavdivs) as the originality looks more like the triumph of a formula rather than bravura telly. Napoleon's tiled floor also looked suspiciously like one of the floors in Clavdivs.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
It's been years since I've seen I Claudius, so I can't comment on that. I think this mini is brilliant, especially the acting. And it's not uncommon for the same shooting locations to turn up in projects over and over again, for example, I recognized in Cranford the patterned marble floor of the great hall of Lady Ludlow's house, as Syon House, which also appeared in a number of other productions, including the wedding scene in A Royal Scandal (1996).
http://www.syonpark.co.uk/tour_great-hall.asp
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974077/locations
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117520/locations
(Besides, is there anyone in I Claudius with cleavage that could compare with Fiona Gaunt's in W&P?!)
It's very impressive isn't it (I've seen a bit more)? I was ten when it was shown so I doubt I saw it, if I did I've forgotten. Clavidivs was a few years later and I remember bits of that vividly. I've still got the VHS set somewhere. The floor situation in W&P reminded me of a cup somewhat like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/julio-claudians/2765079648/ which I saw in Clavdivs and which has been popping up ever since.
~~~~~(Besides, is there anyone in I Claudius with cleavage that could compare with Fiona Gaunt's in W&P?!) [] ~~~~~
Amidst the incipient-explosion-in-a-bosom-factory dresses she is rather prominent.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
Apropos, did you notice the amount of noise the dancers' feet made? I bet it was mentioned somewhere at the time - Princess Lieven's diaries perhaps. These days the dancing'll be filmed and the sound dubbed after.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
LOL, I know what you mean about the dancing! You can hear shoes clopping in some newer productions though, such as the 2007 Northanger Abbey tv film, and the 2005 cinematic film of Pride & Prejudice. But I'll bet they dubbed the sound in later, as you stated.
That's one of the things my dance friends get annoyed about in the ECD portrayals on film!
Just finished the third disc so there's more fighting than dancing at the moment. I enjoyed the scene where the peasants tried some free collective bargaining and got seen off by Nikolai; they weren't so humble a hundred years later.
I also noticed that the bloke playing Napoleon was giving it the Marlon Brando treatment - most enjoyable.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
Followed exactly this arc last year.
Read the book, watched Hopkins and Hood (she'd make a more realistic Robin Hood than she did a Natasha) and then watched the Bondarchuk. I remember when it first came out only half the TV critics dared to review the first episode. The other half (who hadn't read the book) waited to see what the others would say. Actually, the first half hadn't read the book either.
The script was pretty good, Hopkins did pretty well, I thought, as did most of the supporting cast. But even though Morag Hood got better as she went along, she never really got under Natasha's skin and had a few rather off-putting 'actorly' habits, which annoyed me a lot in the first few episodes and stopped me watching the whole thing until last year.
What's with the floors? Are you doing your kitchen at the moment.
The babe's the Tolstoy man and she rather likes it because it mimics T's 'cinematic' prose. I find it surprisingly absorbing despite the Empire line dresses. Natasha isn't much of a distraction because she strikes me as no better than she ought to be - a bit of a working class slapper with noble polish. Sonia's (Joanna David) intelligence, thoughtfulness and see-though skirtings are much more to my taste, despite her being 20 years too young.
TradBBC floors are one of the things that COMbbc isn't capable of, the bastards.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
I have to admit Hood's performance annoyed me the first time I watched this mini, but the second time I barely remembered why it grated so much on the first viewing. (Perhaps I just got used to it?)
Does your DVD have the little booklet about the making of the program? Interesting stuff.
No, I've been getting them from dvd hire.
I didn't think Hood's performance was poor, more that the character was a bit vapid. That said I've only read one Russian novel so I wouldn't know what Tol made of her.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
Nastaha in the book is a combination of Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet, Shakespeare's Viola and Marlene Dietrich's Shanghai Lil. Everyman's dream (or this one's, anyway).
Along with Helene's embonpoint and Sonia's skirts, there are three fabulous extended battle scenes in the book and no novelist ever immersed himself so deeply in military strategy and history as Tolstoy did here (though he was heavily influenced by Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma whose hero gallops about at Waterloo).
You won't meet the real Natasha until you start the Bondarchuk version. And you'll actually feel you fought the Battle of Borodino.
It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily
Perv... and if not, why not?
Zola didn't do too bad in La Debacle.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
I read Le Docteur Pascal at university and decided that Balzac had better ideas about writing novel cycles than Emile.
However, you Amazon commission account should have chinged again this morning. I've decided more recently that I rather like that part of the world and am spending a few days near Sedan in December.
Watch out for them Panzers! I read a lot of Balzac in the days when a Penguin paperback was 75p but I haven't managed to read any since La Peau de Chagrin about fifteen years ago. I wouldn't mind but my low opinion of the novel form hasn't changed for ages. Zola wasn't bad and in La Debacle he tried to do justice to wie es eigentlich gewesen and of course a film version of La Bete Humaine has Jenne Moreau in it but still no stiffening in the aesthetic codpiece.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
The Germans our now our best friends. See Germinal? http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0107002/fullcredits#cast
Some nice naughty bits and serious class warfare.
Sadly not but there was a good OU on it years ago. There must be a treasure trove in the archives of the OU but that's another good thing gone.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
The last four episodes have just finished. Not bad, not bad at all. Shame Sonia didn't get her end away though.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
Ah seenk your choice of expressions eez not, how you say, transferable between ze sexes.
On to the Bondarchuk, its weird subtitles and its truly incredible battle scenes. Eat you heart right out, Mr Spielberg.
The BBC one got better as it went along and contained a lot of treasurable performances, like Frank Middlemass as Kutuzov and Rupert Davies as Rostov and wossisname as the Prince but I've watched it twice now and still haven't reconciled myself to Morag as Natasha.
D H Lawrence said that posterity would never forgive Tolstoy for not putting her in bed with Bolkonsky. And it he was right, it hasn't. This was the one thing TradBBC understood that Bondarchuk didn't.
This is a local epic for local epicureans, we'll have no trouble here....
I had a sneaky view of '1812' the other day which I thought was bravura, all the more so for not rubbing the cast of thousands in. They were there all right but using Pierre as a peg to hang a subjective narrative on worked really well, all Eisenstein-in-colour-a-go-go.
I thought that the TradBBC got better too but as usual it left me wondering about the order in which it was filmed. Did the cast mature into their roles or get knackered doing anachronistic blocks of the story? I also found myself wondering if a Tolstoy aficionado might make the same criticism that Downton Abbey has received - that the characters are contemporaries in fancy dress. I can imagine a philistine like Margot Leadbetter lapping both up.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
The thing is, if she got up off her fat arse and opened it, Margot would also lap up the book, especially if she bought the bloody brilliant new translation by Anthony Briggs. I like Constance Garnet for accuracy and the scent of Tolstoy's style but she's put more people off Russian literature than an a army of political commissars.
shareIn honour of Russian literature I'm watching '2010: The Year We Make Contact' to listen to Helen Mirren's cod Russian accent. It's a much better film than 2001 anyway.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
You and Helen. It's the real thing, isn't it?
shareI want to be reincarnated as her mattress.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
lol!
shareD H Lawrence said that posterity would never forgive Tolstoy for not putting her in bed with Bolkonsky. And it he was right, it hasn't. This was the one thing TradBBC understood that Bondarchuk didn't.
Thanks for posting the quotation; I've never seen that one before.
I've got to try to get the Bondarchuk version again. Myn library has it but when I borrowed it before, none of the discs would play. It was the oddest thing! At first I thought it was the wrong region, but then it wouldn't play in my multi-region player nor on my computer. I told the librarian when I returned it, but then I noticed it was right back on the shelf the next time I went to the library. I'll have to try again.
The BBC one got better as it went along
That's how I felt too.
I've watched it twice now and still haven't reconciled myself to Morag as Natasha.
What do you think of the scenes when she nurses Bolkonsky?
Those scenes helped my overcome my annoyances with her Natasha.
They were her best scenes. I think the BBC understood Andrei and Natasha and caught the tragedy of her frustration and also did well with the solidity and friendship that she settled for with Pierre.
The Bondarchuk version is an amazing thing. They REALLY don't make 'em like that any more. Like the BBC one, it takes a while to catch but some of the cinematography is absolutely peerless.
The babe and I are going to give it a go over the weekend, we haven't had a film-frenzy for a while.
I had a look on Amazon for the translaion you recommended (despite it being a novel) but to my consternation found that whatever version I clicked on it was the older translation. I assume a transcribing error but I'm going to give Clarissa, then Liaisons Dangereuses a go first which could mean waiting a decade or so.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
War and Peace is always there waiting.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Peace-Penguin-Classics-Tolstoy/dp/01404479 38/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290675200&sr=8-1
The freebie Gutenberg translation isn't all that bad. BI (Before iPads) I read a lot of books that way on my netbook when travelling. Download the text, import it in to Word, set it in a nice font with decent leading, export it as a pdf, rotate it through 90 degrees - instant free digital book.
'Senny' is untranslated Russian for 'hearth', in the Greek sense meaning the focus of the home. You'll need to know that, this weekend.
"Join us."
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
I've seen the BBC War and Peace twice - and am watching it a third time now - and I've seen the Bondarchuk twice - and the King Vidor version about 5 times. For production values, it's hard to beat King Vidor - the scenes are just so beautiful, so vivid, so colorful that he seems to have anticipated much of European film-making by a generation. (Think of the beauty of Elvira Madigan or Andre Rublev).
I also prefer Audrey Hepburn's Natasha and Mel Ferrer's Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, Mai Britt's Sonya and Anita Ekberg's Helene to the BBC and Bondarchuk actors.
The great difficulty with the Hollywood adaptation however is its short length -it's the problem for any theatrical version that seeks to avoid separate films of "War and Peace Part I and later Part II and later Part III".- when filmgoers would have forgotten muich of the story by the time they came to see the later film. That said, Vidor tells the story of Natasha, Andrey and Pierre well -- it's the world in which they move depicted by the other characters - and the stories of Boris Drubetskoy and his mother, of the relations of Prince Vasili Kuragin with his children Helene, Anatole and Hippolyte, or of Denisov, of Dolohov, of Julie Karagina and her mother, of the tensions in Kutusov's headquarters (even though I'm delighted with Oscar Homolka as Kutusov - better than Middlemass in the BBC version and superior to the Russian). Many of the stories simply drop off - we don't even learn there is an oldest Vera Rostova - we don't learn of Julie's relations with Nikolay.
The same is true in theatrical film versions of Anna Karenina - we see little of Kitty and Levin after the first scenes - and almost nothing of Princess Betsy, of Countess Vronsky, of Princess Lydia - as the story must be shortened to Anna's. (The BBC version of Anna Karenina is however - superb! I've seen no better Anna than Nicola Pagett, no better Vronsky than Stuart Wilson, and no better Karenina than Eric Porter (Soames Forsyte). The closest to Pagett in portraying Anna was Jacqueline Bisset - superior to Vivien Leigh and Greta Garbo (though I haven't seen the last 20 years of Anna Kareninas on TV or in film).
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Overall I liked this version. But some parts of the story were weak, and I did not like the actress in the role of Natasha. She seemed far too old for such a silly, vapid character. It was ridiculous that Andre would fall in love with her, and even more ridiculous that when he saw her again, he said he loved her more than ever. Yes, she had grown up some by then, but he did not know that at the time. Also Sonya was totally right when she told off Natasha, telling her what a spoiled brat she had always been. The mother was simply vile to Sonya in the scene demanding that Sonya hand over Nicholai to the rich princess.
I love Anthony Hopkins as the Count. He was so young, yet he has changed very little in forty years as far as his mannerisms and movements,
It is a pretty riveting miniseries, in any case.