6 posts tagged “books”
My fingertips are sore from the three chords of La Poupée qui fait non and I've only played, like, 15 minutes (nice site for guitar tips) and my thighs tired from three days in a row of roller-blading. Just started reading Yunus.
On the whole, nice Eastern week end.
What better to put a smile on my face than the story of Beatrix Potter? In her eponymous movie, she says Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny are her friends and she talks to them while painting their stories... and while watching it I'm reliving parts of my childhood, those little books with delicate drawings I was often going to sleep with (there was a time I knew The tailor of Gloucester by heart, songs included).
The movie is nothing exceptional, but lovely and sensitive, just as Beatrix's drawings, with amazing landscapes of England.
My friends have me well figured out... the gift I've got today:
I've started the second book in the Tales of the City series, by this author I can't properly write the name without googling it first. And I have the same feeling I had about the first volume - which I enjoyed enough to want to read the second one, don't get me wrong: I need an American friend who was around 20 in the seventies to give me lectures about it. Because seriously, sentences like "I will not cry when Mary Tyler Moore goes off the air" are completely lost on me. How frustrating. I need a crème de menthe to cheer me up.
You've noticed I like talking in this blog about movies I haven't seen yet (as opposed to my French blog, where I only write about movies I've actually watched), so it's time to ramble about the question asked in all (French) cinema forums: why is there an 'e' in the title of this new James Bond movie? I've already read several different explanations, from the basic "it's a proper name" to the "in the book, the action is set in the French fictional town Royale-les-Eaux". Some enlighten people even tell that the answer is in the movie itself, which proves I should go to the movies instead of ridiculing my dragon online.
The actual debate amongst film buffs is... scented. Can you, thanks to the motion picture, live up to the masterpiece of literature that is Das Parfum? The book was supposedly unadaptable, because of the wonderfully detailed descriptions of the fragrances felt by the hero's over-developed nose.
Why would that be? After all, you're not actually smelling the scents while reading the book. You're making your own mind impression, transcribing Süskind's descriptions into a mental feeling. Words can bring this to your brain, why wouldn't images? In Chocolat for instance, I could almost taste them. It's mainly because I love chocolate and know the smell very well. But I don't know the scent of a tannery, so despite all the descriptions of the book, I can't really imagine what it's like - pretty horrible, it seems.
Through words, the experience of smelling is quite personal, and it must be the same through images.
I haven't seen the movie - yet - but I heard that Tom Tykwer did a tremendous job, and that the feelings of Grenouille are well rendered thanks to the talent of Ben Wishaw.
This chronicle is to be continued... after I've seen the film, to bring more objectivity to my argument.
