Monday, January 17, 2005
And stuff.
Term begins tomorrow.
My final semester.
OMG.
Lately I've become rather nocturnal, staying up till 4 and 5 in the morning. I can tell that this sleep pattern is going to kick my butt as of tomorrow. Last night, I headed off to bed around 2.30, with every intent of being a Good Girl and going to sleep before 3am. I snuggled up on the couch to watch a bit of television and doze off.
So naturally, I found Part 1 of the BBC miniseries of Gormenghast on PBS. I've been dying to see this for a while, and I was not disappointed. It was pretty awesome and totally worth staying up till 4am. I tuned in just before Steerpike begins to persuade Cora and Clarice to burn the library. Let me just say how impressed I was with the miniseries' portrayal of the atmosphere of the Gormenghast -- in the books the place is really like a character itself, an organism made up of all the different people within. I thought that was well done. Also, the characterisation? So much love. Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's Steerpike might not be ugly enough, but he does a brilliant job of capturing Steerpike's evil charm and manipulative mind. The twins were disturbing and creepy; Getrude formidable, sullen, and self-absorbed; Fuchsia passionate, naive and strange; Sepulchrave consumed by madness and books. And all of them just a little bit crazy. It's fabulous. It makes me want to write fanfic!
Part 2 airs at 2am next Monday. I am so there! Steerpike/Fuchsia; it's all about the doomed, screwed up romances. The Arithmancer's Apprentice has a fair bit of Gormenghast-ly influence, as some of you know; and the unwritten-but-kind-of-planned-at-some-point relationship between Tom Riddle and Cleopatra Mountwarlock is influenced, to some extent, by Steerpike's seduction of Fuchsia. Though Tom isn't planning on using Cleo to take over her father's estate, but whatever.
So, in conclusion, the miniseries was cool. The End.
Now I need to get with the program and write up my Phantom Review o' Snark.
| 7:45 PM |
Comments
I agree that the BBC version of Gormjenghast was outstanding, although it went down in flames in Britain.(They really revered the books there and could not stand divergence.) The best part was the look and sound of the thing, the art direction, and the cinematography. There is a book out on The Art of Gormenghast (try Amazon, although I bought it several years ago when it first came out) that is truly worth it--so much of what they did seemingly never made it into the film, or only for a brief second or so. Lastly, be aware that the series is available on DVD, via Amazon and even in places like Barnes & Noble. If you're anything like I was, you'll want to watch it about 1000 times just to see the colors...which you should adjust to high saturation and turn on enhanced black...
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