Wednesday Review: The Lady Vanishes

Welcome back to the Wednesday Review! I thought this day would never arrive.

Today's topic:

The 2013 remake of the 1938 Hitchcock film.

Introduction: The Lady Vanishes is a riveting mystery on a train. A young English woman named Iris is taken ill during a journey in the Balkans, and Miss Froy, an older English woman, looks after her until she falls asleep. When Iris awakens, Miss Froy is no where to be found. Iris become worried, but when her fellow passengers insist that no such woman existed, Iris' sanity comes into question.

My Review: I shall review the movie as a stand-alone film, rather than as a remake, for the simple reason that I have not yet seen the original.

The 2013 The Lady Vanishes is an excellent film, full of uncertainty and suspense. It has a languid start with quite a few details that may or may not come into play later (I wouldn't want to give anything away!), that very clearly sets the scene and introduces the main players quite effectively. The real action begins when Iris falls asleep on the train, but the slow build has its own suspense, as the audience cannot help but try to guess what may be part of the mystery later.

The mystery itself is very well-woven. Although I noticed several key markers in the plot and dialogue, I had no idea how everything would fit together, or what end it would eventually lead to. I also wasn't sure at first whether Iris was mad or not - whether this was a Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or more of a Spanish Prisoner. Once it became clear, the suspense was shifted, but by no means diminished, to what would actually happen.

I thought it was a great movie. It had a nice level of suspense and was well-filmed. It felt very Hitchcockian, and I like that they held on to that atmosphere with the style of filming and music, etc. The acting was very strong, as well. All in all, a really entertaining film.

Statistics:

Release Date: 2013

Rating: N/A (British)

Run Time: 90 minutes

My Rating: 4 Stars

Friday Report - Welcome Back

Dear Readers,

Although you are undeniably few in number, I feel a certain responsibility toward you. I have been absent of late, and issue I would like to redress.

Some time ago, I mentioned that I was creating a profession editing website, and that I would not be blogging as often in the future, but my lack of presence was already being felt here, even then. The reasons are as follows:

     1. I was a full time student.

     2. I was a freelance developmental editor.

     3. I started a part time job.



Since I launched my website, I've barely updated my blog at all. Here are the reasons for that:

     1. I was still a full time student.

     2. I was still working part time.

     3. I was still a freelance developmental editor.

     4. I allowed myself to be distracted by YouTube videos of Rhett and Link eating peppers (which are entertaining), the Doctor Who series 9 trailer (which is exciting), and interviews with J. K. Rowling (which were helpful and inspiring).*



But now I'm back! I have reasons for that, too:**

     1. School's done until late September.

     2. I miss my blog.

     3. I like to pretend that one or two of you miss my blog. (I feel imagination must be nurtured.)

     4. My break has provided me time to gather new things to blog about.

     5. Recent literary events have energized me.

     6. I was running out of decent YouTube videos to watch.

     7.^ I was starting to feel lazy.



So here I am, back again..




*Tell you all about it soon.

**Because lists.

^The number of reasons I'm back equals the sum of the number of reasons I was gone before and after my new website launch. Just sayin'...

Blackberry Fever

I’ve been living in Oregon again since October, but only now, with scratches and puncture wounds and purple fingers, do I feel like I’m really home. That may not sound very appealing, but that combination of wounds can only mean one glorious thing: I have been picking blackberries.

Not the cultivated, thornless kind. No. The wild, thorny, hard-to-get-to kind. The delicious, adventurous, free ones. The ones growing in tall brambles along the sides of roads, walkways and railroad tracks. The ones creeping on the ground at the coast and in the coast range after the loggers have been through. Let me tell you, there are only two things for which I will willingly, nay, enthusiastically! risk close encounters with spiders, bees, and who knows what other bugs and insects: strawberries and blackberries.

Coastal blackberries, growing on the ground and tasting like my childhood.

On Saturday, I went picking with Dad along the railroad tracks. It was easy – nobody had gone through and stripped the bushes yet, and there were tons and tons of berries. We picked enough for a whole pie, a small personal-sized pie, some eating berries for Mom and Dad, and 9 and a half quart-sized Ziploc bags in my freezer for winter pies, and we barely made a dent.

It was fun picking that day – some guy riding by on his bike stopped and called to us across the road, asking if we were naturalists! I said no, just blackberry pickers, and he bounded over to us. He said he’d been seeing them all over the place, wondering if they were edible. Almost before we’d confirmed that they are, he’d reached out and eaten one off the vine. I told him how to pick for the nice ripe ones and gave him one as an example, which he declared as ‘Delicious!’ He was obviously not from the Pacific Northwest (turns out he was from Maryland) - poor kid didn’t know what a blackberry was!

Later, when we’d filled our containers and gotten back in the car to go home, we saw a couple picking at a bramble down the road from us. They must’ve taken their cue from us, too – all they had to hold the fruit was a couple of Ziploc bags she was fishing out of her purse!

All that was a blast, but not exactly the reckless hunt I remember from my childhood.

Fast-forward to today. There are blackberries growing all up and down the walking path behind my apartment complex, and I often walk by, picking a berry or two as I go. A lot of these bushes are evergreens, which ripen later than the rest;* most of them are still green, some just starting to get red. And the regular blackberries get picked over by passersby and kids in the apartments. Still, as I picked and ate a handful as I walked by this evening, I decided that one measly hour of picking was not enough to last me to next year.

I didn’t figure I’d get very many berries for my efforts, but I went home, got a good-sized container, and went blackberry hunting.

I walked and picked and walked and picked, even finding a few really good, untouched patches. I was having such a good time, I picked until I couldn’t see the berries anymore.  It was great, and I came home with 2 pies’ worth, plus enough extras to make it an even 10 quarts in the freezer.**

Tonight's haul: About nine cups of city berries.

So I may have been stabbed in the thumb a couple times, and perhaps my legs got poked through my jeans, and of course my arms look like I got into a tussle with a cat, but this here’s a very happy berry-picking Oregon girl.

*You think I won't be out there picking when they get ripe?

**How to freeze fresh blackberries: put some on a cookie sheet; put the sheet into the freezer; let them freeze up enough that they won’t smoosh; transfer berries to a freezer bag and return to the freezer. Use for pies, scones, what-have-you. Note: if you leave the cookie sheet of berries in the freezer long enough, they feel like hard candies when you handle them to transfer them to the bags. Pretty fun!

Wednesday Review: Into the Woods

I finally watched Into the Woods with some friends (which is exactly how Into the Woods ought to be watched).*

Introduction: Into the Woods is a musical/operetta that takes several old folktales (Cinderella, Jack the Giant Killer, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood) and combines them.  A new tale about a childless baker is added, which provides the means of bringing all the other tales together.  But this isn't a simple amalgamation - the story turns the fairy tales on their heads a little, as Cinderella doesn't seem too thrilled with the idea of marrying the prince, Jack's pretty much a budding kleptomaniac, and Red Riding Hood is a bit obnoxious.

My Review: This musical is a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy tongue-in-cheek humor. The basic story of the baker and his wife and the witch is pretty great, and I love how they run across the folktale characters. It's a lark.

The music is well-performed, but that's about all I can say about it. Other than the few notes of the main "Into the Woods" theme, it is utterly forgettable.

The casting for this film was great. Meryl Streep is good in everything, but she makes an awesome witch. She handles the more absurd aspects of her character's story very well, indeed. Emily Blunt makes a lovely and fun baker's wife. James Corden plays the baker and was a great choice - he's as lovable here as he is in Doctor Who, and he avoids re-playing Craig. Anna Kendrick is a surprising Cinderella. She's a bit of an annoying character at first, but Kendrick plays her likably and makes a successful transition after the wedding scene to a more interesting character. Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen are brilliant princes. Their duet was the funniest part of the movie. Completing the main fairytale cast are Mackenzie Mauzy as a believable Rapunzel, Johnny Depp as a very disturbing Wolf, Lilla Crawford as a delightfully irritating Red Riding Hood, and Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche. I mean, Jack. Seriously, though, he did a great job in both movies.

It's easy to see why high schools tend to end their performances at the 'happily ever after' scene - it's a great place to stop and would've made a fun movie right there. But no, Sondheim and Lapine had to push it. What follows is a sometimes fun, sometimes strange after-story, dealing with the consequences of infidelity in a delightfully fairytale manner, the futility of playing the blame game, and ending with the morally questionable song about the nature of what is right.

It's an odd film, to be sure. You absolutely cannot take it seriously. The story has a few elements to it that I didn't particularly care for, and the music is forgettable, but the story is very creative, and I think they did a great job making an entertaining movie.


Statistics:
Release date: 2014
Rating: PG
Run time: 125 minutes
Director: Rob Marshall

My Rating: 3.5 stars



*Seriously, it'll be way more fun than watching it by yourself.

Upcoming Changes and Early Blackberries

So.

I'm working on building a website - an actual, dedicated website.  As opposed to a "blog site."  I even bought a domain name - this is not a drill.

Once that website is up and running (not sure exactly when that will be because I just started working on it and have very little idea of what I am doing at this point), this blog site will be phasing out.  I plan to transfer all my attention and blogging activity to the new site.  That also means I'll be blogging less often,* but I will be posting mini-articles about the arts, arts and faith, and writing stuff, more often.**


But Rachel, why would you do this to us?

Well, this whole editing and writing thing is what I would like to do as a profession.  A website is a nice, professional platform for someone offering editing services, but I don't really want to maintain a separate website and blog.  Right now I have my "website" stuff rolled into my blog site - after the transition, the blog site will be rolled into the website.  Easy.


But Rachel, how will we find the new site?

I'll post it here, of course!  I'll have a transitional period to give you plenty of time to switch over - all ten of you.  ;)


But Rachel, professional sounds like a synonym for boring...

Ok.  The editing services part of the site (and possibly the home page) will carry a professional tone, as will the mini-articles, but everything else is up for grabs.  I still like to have fun, so I don't anticipate that going away.


But Rachel, what about The Wednesday Review that we love so much?

Yes, I've thought about that.  I will still do book/movie/music/whatever reviews.  I probably won't do them every week (I don't even do that now!), but I will still do them, and they will still fall on a Wednesday.  I will also occasionally add to my Off the Shelf and From the Vaults features.

Ok?



Anyway!  A couple of days ago, I was outside taking a walk, when I found them: Early blackberries.  There aren't very many and they're easy to miss because they're wrapped up in some non-blackberry bushes, but they're there.

When I first saw them, I was walking pretty briskly, talking on the phone with Mom.  I glanced at the bushes for some reason, and noticed a few little red berries.  Raspberries? I thought to myself.  I stopped and stepped closer to see. Not raspberries!  Blackberries!  I caught sight of a darker berry.  RIPE Blackberries!!

I could hardly believe it.  Naturally I ate the ripe berry (delicious) and scoured the bush for more.^  I must have found upward of a dozen little blackberries ready to be eaten.


I cannot tell you how happy this made me.  I'm an Oregon girl, born and bred, and blackberries are huge.  They were an integral part of my childhood.  Those ubiquitous spiny bushes grow all over the place in the rainier parts of the state - I don't remember once paying for blackberries as a kid.  You just go for a walk or hop in the car with a bunch of containers and find a good bramble to start picking on the side of the road somewhere.  When I was really little we used to go pick Wild Mountain Blackberries - the kind you need inside information from the loggers to find.

Having lived in other parts of the country, I know that blackberries are a very western (perhaps even Pacific Northwestern) thing.  Berries in general, and particularly blackberries, just aren't a very big deal most other places.  So it's exciting to be back in Oregon for berry season.

You may remember that I recently went strawberry picking:

Twelve pounds of washed strawberries.

And now, Unexpected Blackberries!?  It made my day.  No, it made my whole week.

Look at those beauties!

So pretty!  So delicious...

The Pacific Northwest is berry heaven.  We've got several varieties of blackberries and strawberries.  We've got raspberries and blueberries.  You can find black huckleberries,*^ red huckleberries, thimbleberries, salmonberries, and more.  I learned to identify them as a kid, just by going for walks in the woods.

All this to say, finding a little trove of ripe and ripening blackberries when the rest are still in the flowering and green berry stage was very exciting.


But Rachel, where are these lovely, early berries located?

Nice try.



*Which, let's face it, I'm already doing because of generally being so busy this term.

**Right now, all I have in that vein is what's on my arts and faith blog, which has been sorely neglected for quite a while now.

^And ate a few nearly ripe ones, as well - yum!

*^Which are actually blue and look a lot like blueberries.