Rec. #278: Personal Velocity

What: Did you watch the Oscars this past weekend? If so, when Daniel Day-Lewis won his award, you might have found yourself wondering, "Who is this woman he's married to, this woman he calls 'the versatile one in the family'?" She's Rebecca Miller, she's extremely talented, and this is a book of short stories that she wrote.

The book was praised by the New York Times and was a Washington Post Best Book of 2001. She later adapted three of the stories into a movie, which she also directed. The film went on to win stuff at Sundance and the Independent Spirit Awards. (Try not to feel too depressed about having done comparatively little with your life. We can't all be Rebecca Miller.)

Opening lines: "Greta Herskovitz looked down at her husband's shoes one morning and saw with shocking clarity that she was going to leave him."

How to get it: Buy or borrow. (Not currently Kindle-able.)

Connections to previous Wreckage: I mentioned the Personal Velocity book/movie combo during Personal Wreck Week (List #2).

Rec. #277: The Business

What: A production company previously committed to smut-peddling unexpectedly acquires an indie hit and decides to change its direction to Quality Films. The only problem is that most of the people who work there have terrible taste and absolutely no idea what they're doing.

Representative quote:
"What do you want, chicks, fame, money?"
"Those things sound nice, yeah."

How to get it: There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the television show's vague title can make it kind of difficult to find. Try adding keywords like "IFC" (channel it aired on) or "Kathleen Robertson" (star). Or limit your search by year (2006-2007).

The good news is that once you do find it, it will probably be pretty cheap.

Rec. #276: The Heir

What: Peregrine Chase manages an insurance company, and he really, really seems like someone who would manage an insurance company. Then he inherits a Tudor house with a moat and some peacocks, and everything changes. (Except his name, which was already pretty great.)

Comparable to: Cold Comfort Farm without the smirking bite.

Opening lines: "Miss Chase lay on her immense red silk four-poster that reached as high as the ceiling. Her face was covered over by a sheet, but as she had a high, aristocratic nose, it raised the sheet into a ridge, ending in a point. Her hands also could be distinguished beneath the sheet, folded across her chest like the hands of an effigy; and her feet, tight together like the feet of an effigy, raised the sheet into two further points at the bottom of the bed. She was eighty-four years old, and she had been dead for twenty-four hours."

Representative quote: "What on earth were panage hogs, to which apparently he was entitled?"

How to get it: Buy it or borrow it.

Connections to previous Wreckage: I previously mentioned Vita Sackville-West's The Heir during Personal Wreck Week (List #5). And all the smirking bite of Cold Comfort Farm was Rec. #34.

Friday Flashback: Rec. #40: Summer Half

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: Over the course of three decades (1930s, '40s, and '50s), the characters under Angela Thirkell's purview grow up, grow older, fall in love, get political, stay provincial, mostly survive one war, and try to recover from the resulting peace. Summer Half is a golden period for the characters. It's summer; teachers, students, and headmasters (and their relations) are enjoying the holiday; and the second world war is not yet on the horizon.

Comparable to: Same vein as Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, and Thackeray. But one hundred years later.

Representative quote: "To his unhappy situation he saw no outlet which honor could allow, and hoped vaguely that on his Russian visit he might somehow turn into someone else, or even get sent to Siberia by mistake."

You might not like it if: It's too quiet. You want the war!

How to get it: Thirkell's books tend to go in and out of print. It looks like Summer Half is out of print now, but try your library.

[Originally posted 2/8/11.]

Rec. #275: Moonstruck

What: Moonstruck is one of the most quotable movies ever. After you watch it, I dare you to stop yourself from doing an impression of Nicholas Cage's baker-with-eyes-like-a-gypsy-who-lost-his-hand-and-his-bride.

Or maybe you'd like to attempt an impression of Cher's bookkeeper-whose-first-husband-got-hit-by-a-bus-and-she's-pretty-sure-it's-because-they-got-married-at-City-Hall.

You could also try Olympia Dukakis, John Mahoney, or Danny Aiello. Or --- ooh!--- you could do Cosmo's speech on the three kinds of pipe ("there's what you have, which is garbage"). So many delicious choices.

Representative quote: "A man understands one day that his life is built on nothing, and that's a bad, crazy day."

Bonus representative quote: "I looked the wrong way and I lost my hand. He could make you look the wrong way and you could lose your whole head!"

Representative dialogue:

"You're gonna marry my brother? Why you wanna sell your life short? Playing it safe is just about the most dangerous thing a woman like you could do. You waited for the right man the first time, why didn't you wait for the right man again?"

"He didn't come!"

"I'm here!"

"You're late!"

How to get it: Buy it, borrow it, stream it, or catch it on cable sometime.

Friday Flashback: Rec. #58: Him Her Him Again the End of Him

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: The unnamed heroine of Patricia Marx's novel is working on her graduate thesis in Cambridge when she falls for a boring, miserable, selfish narcissist named Eugene Obello. Things do not go very well. Marx, a former writer for Saturday Night Live and the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon, has written a very funny tragedy/very tragic comedy.

Comparable to: Same type of sense of humor as David Rakoff, Sloane Crosley, David Sedaris, etc. But this is a novel, not a collection of essays or stories.

Representative quote: "I'd never been to Europe and now here I was, in a country where everyone sounded like Winston Churchill or Mary Poppins; where all the women had flawless skin and all the men looked as if they'd been wandering around in the Underground since World War II, never having seen the light of day or another change of clothes."

You might not like it if: The deliberately inexplicable nature of the Eugene obsession is a persistent bother that doesn't go away.

How to get it: The paperback is super-cheap on Amazon right now. If you're interested.



[Originally posted 2/26/11.]

Rec. #274: The Forsyte Saga

What: Before Damian Lewis ever crossed paths with Claire Danes, he starred in this 2002 miniseries. Adapted from the novels by John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga follows a British family over the course of five adulterous, scheming, artistic, wrenching, scandalous, tragic, well-funded decades.

Comparable to: Before Downton Abbey chomped its way through early twentieth century domestic drama, The Forsyte Saga made its own mark, with people running off with governesses, getting engaged to penniless architects, supporting spendthrift husbands, being killed while running around in the fog, disinheriting people (and then reinheriting them), and making grand gestures with jewelry.

A few key phrases from the Wikipedia plot summary:
"ends up vulgarly kissing her arm in public"
"June returns from a holiday in Switzerland and discovers the lawsuit"
"when he pulls the trigger he finds it was not loaded"

Representative quote: "There is something ironic, isn't there, that all the people I love, really love, all gravitate to her in the end. And they always love Irene more."

How to get it: It's available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon. All seven hours of it.

Rec. #273 (abbrev.): Amphigorey Too

What: Edward Gorey story collection, The Beastly Baby, The Nursery Frieze, The Pious Infant, The Evil Garden, The Inanimate Tragedy, The Gilded Bat, The Iron Tonic, The Osbick Bird, The Chinese Obelisks, The Deranged Cousins, The Eleventh Episode, [The Untitled Book], The Lavender Leotard, The Disrespectful Summons, The Abandoned Sock, The Lost Lions, Story for Sara, The Salt Herring, Leaves from a Mislaid Album, A Limerick

Representative quote: "One summer morning a sock on the line decided that life with its mate was tedious and unpleasant."

Also: Ascending Peculiarity (Rec. #80) and Amphigorey (the first) (Rec. #207)

Friday Flashback: Rec. #33: The Up Series

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: You know what's really quite scary? Driving in an actual blizzard. I did that today. You know what else is scary, in a very different way? Looking at a seven-year-old boy and thinking, "Ah, yes. You will grow up to be a Bond villain." I did not do that today, but I did it the first time I saw Seven Up, the initial entry in the Up documentary series. 

In the mid-'60s, the filmmakers interviewed fourteen British children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and director Michael Apted* films follow-up interviews every seven years. The results are sometimes heartbreaking, occasionally scary, and consistently fascinating. You'll form very strong opinions about these people you've never met. (See if you can spot who I pegged as the Bond villain.)

Representative quote: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." (This should tip you off that there's more emphasis on the ten boys than the four girls.)

You might not like it if: You get completely lost in the accents. No closed captioning, either, so it's sink or swim here.

How to get it: Quickly! Catch up before 56 Up comes out (due in 2012). So far, we've had Seven Up, Seven Plus 7, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, and 49 Up.

*Michael Apted was a researcher on the original film and has directed all subsequent films in the series.

[Originally posted 2/1/11.]

Also: Hey! 56 Up is out right now! Maybe in a theater near you! Might be a good idea to see it this weekend.