"Little Women" (1978) -- Initial Thoughts

I have wanted to see this version of Little Women for twenty years.  Yes, I love the 1994 adaptation -- that's the one I kind of grew up with.  I've seen the 1949 too, years and years ago.  But since I was 14, I've wanted to see this version.  And until a year or so ago, I thought I never would.

You see, long ago I bought a paperback copy of the book that was published as a tie-in to the miniseries, with a cover that matches the one used in the opening credits.  I bought it at a yard sale when I was probably ten or twelve.  Inside are a few production pictures of key moments in the story, plus a cast list.

And when I was 14, I fell deeply in love with Captain Kirk and the original Star Trek series.  There was a time, believe it or not, when I loved Captain Kirk more than Sergeant Saunders, and Star Trek more than Combat!  By 14, I was also quite familiar with the book Little Women, though I much preferred Little Men (and still do).  My two favorite characters have always been Jo March and Professor Bhaer, and so when I opened my copy of the miniseries tie-in book one day and saw that William Shatner once played my dear Professor Bhaer -- he who played my beloved Jim Kirk!  How could I not long to see that version?

The years passed.  I always wished I could see this, but it was made two years before I was born -- how could I?  It was too obscure to ever show up at a library or video rental store.

But hello, brave new world of the internet!  Last year, when I participated in the Period Drama Challenge, I learned that this version was available to watch online!  It was on YouTube at that time, but I didn't have the three hours to devote to it.  So I waited.  And the other day, being down with strep throat again and holed up in my room to rest, I watched it.  It's on Hulu now -- you can watch it for free here (if you're in the US).  You can also buy it pretty cheaply from Amazon, which I did even though I'm kind of boycotting Amazon right now.  ("Kind of" meaning "I'm not buying stuff from there unless that's the only place I can find something.")

Did I love it?  I think I might have.  I certainly liked it a whole lot, and like I said, I bought a DVD copy because I really want to watch it again, and I think my kids will like it.  I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, as I've read some pretty scathing reviews of it online.

I'm not going to compare it to the 1994 movie, because they're very different, and both good in their own ways.  I liked how much of the story was in this -- with three hours, they could hit more than the highlights.  The characters felt very well developed, and if there wasn't quite as much Professor Bhaer in it as I'd hoped, well, he's not in the book as much as I'd like either.

Mostly here I'm going to talk about the cast.  The costumes were just fine, and I'm no great critic there anyway.  The scenery and sets were nice, and the writing was too.  But it's the acting I liked the most, so I'll just say a bit about each of the key characters.

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First, Susan Dey as Jo March.  She's not traditionally pretty, which I appreciated, since after all, Jo's hair is supposed to be her "one beauty."  She pulls off the tomboy aspects of Jo very well, climbing trees and riding horses with great verve.  And she's great at crying.  I mean, really great -- very realistic, and not afraid to look not-pretty when she cries.  This Jo cries rather more than I'd expect, but since Dey was so good at it, I didn't mind much.

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Next, William Shatner as Professor Friederic Bhaer.  His German accent was not as atrocious as I'd feared!  And few people can be as charming as Shatner when he feels like being charming.  He alternated Bhaer's impatience and gentleness quite nicely.  I liked that he was about twenty years older than Susan Dey, since Professor Bhaer is supposed to be older, though they looked more like they were maybe ten years apart.  And he had me almost in tears myself at the end.  All in all, he more than lived up to what I'd hope from him in this role all these years!

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I don't have my copy of the DVD yet, so am relying on Google to find pictures, and there aren't very many.

Dorothy McGuire has long been one of my favorite "movie moms," so I was confident she would make a splendid Marmee.  I was not wrong.  Just like in classic movies like Friendly Persuasion (1956), Old Yeller (1957) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960), she imbued her role with quiet strength and dignity, with sparks hidden beneath her calm exterior that would flare up now and then.

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And what a treat to have Greer Garson playing Aunt March!  She seemed to be having so much fun with her outspoken, flinty role.  I mostly have only seen her in 1940s movies like Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Miniver, and Random Harvest, but she was just as delightful here as she was in those.  And she had more of a character arc than I remember from the book, to tell the truth.  By the end she had softened and was not quite so sour.

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Robert Young made a delightful Mr. Lawrence.  He had a loud bark, but was such a sweetheart inside, and Young gave him a twinkle even at the beginning that kept him from ever being gruff.

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I felt like Meredith Baxter's Meg was too unlikable, to be honest.  She was whiny.  Yes, a whiny Meg!  Unthinkable, right?  But she was, or at least I thought so.  I never really warmed up to her, or felt that she had much kindness under her stiff exterior.  Also, her mouth was open most of the time, which annoyed me.

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And Ann Dusenberry's Amy felt off too.  For one thing, they had the same actress play Amy through the whole thing, and while I finally liked her pretty well when she was older and went to Europe with Aunt March, when she was little she annoyed me dreadfully.  I wanted her to get in way more trouble for burning Jo's book than she did.

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At first, I wasn't sure about Eve Plumb as Beth.  She didn't seem sweet or kind enough at first, but I think that they did that deliberately, so that after she got sick she became much gentler and nicer.  By the end, I really, really loved her.  The scenes between Beth and Jo were some of my absolute favorites, especially toward the end.  She had me in tears, to tell the truth.

Richard Gilliland was acceptable as Theodore "Laurie" Lawrence.  I didn't love him, but I was fond of him by the end.  Same goes for Cliff Potts as John Brooke.

And finally, William Schallert as Mr. March.  I don't have a lot to say about him, except that he kept cracking me up because he played Baris in the classic Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," which is one of my favorites.  So I kept thinking of him in that, fussing at Captain Kirk about all the tribbles, and through the whole movie I wondered if there would be any interaction between Mr. March and Prof. Bhaer.  And there really wasn't, I'm sorry to say, other than Jo introducing Prof. Bhaer to her family at the end, so they may have smiled and nodded at each other.  I wonder if Shatner and Schallert had any fun reminiscing about Star Trek while they filmed this, or if it was like, "Oh, hi, how're you?"  It's fun to think about, anyway.

Is this movie family-friendly?  You betcha!  Nothing remotely unsavory, and my six-year-old has been reading this while I type it and asking if we could watch this some time (he's read an abridged version of the story, so knows a little bit about the characters already), and I told him we definitely can as soon as my copy arrives.

I actually jotted down my favorite lines while I was watching it, so I'm going to quick share them here:

"Anything worth reading is worth reading twice." -- Aunt March

"I want to experience something besides the dumb old things I'm supposed to do."  -- Jo

"You can't fight growing up forever, Jo.  You'll change, just like everybody else."  -- Laurie

"Such a fine young woman, with such a good mind, even if you can't learn German."  -- Professor Bhaer

"Christmas isn't Christmas unless it's snowing." -- Jo

Container Garden Update

Just a quick update to show off how my container garden is coming along.  Actually, these photos are from almost 2 weeks ago -- just didn't have a chance to take them off my camera until now.  Click here to see what it looked like in May, if you want to compare.

Everything came up except the pansies, although only a few straggly chives came up, but oh well.  I replaced the pansies with a flower I'd never seen before called purslane.  I picked the purslane up at Walmart on a whim, and it's a short-but-rangy plant with very bright flowers.

The leaves and stems are almost rubbery, so I'm guessing it comes from arid places and handles heat and drought well.  Considering the heat index here is supposed to be over 100 today and for the next 4 days, I'm glad to have something that will survive!

Here's how big my lavender is getting:

And look at my lemon basil!  I used some of it for the first time the other night, with some fish I baked for supper.

Here's that center pot with lantana and calibrachoas.  This is before it got hot last week -- I'm so glad I took pictures when I did, because this may well have been the most glorious the calibrachoas will get.  They've gotten pretty bedraggled the last few days, and I'm sure the continual heat will not improve them.  But the lantana is going strong still!

My dad unexpectedly gave me a really nice camera last month, and I tried out some of the fun features on it for the first time the other day.  Like this one, which lets you turn everything black-and-white except for one color:

Not sure how it happened, it being a new camera and all, but my picture size got switched to square for a while, until I noticed and switched it back.  That's why a bunch of these are square, not rectangular.  I named my new camera Diego because I was reading The Mark of Zorro when my dad gave the camera to me.  It's black, Zorro wears a lot of black, and I really love the name Diego, so it fit nicely.  But don't worry, I'm not abandoning Francis!  I still love my pocket-sized red camera too, and use it more still, to tell the truth.  Diego gets used when I have time to play and experiment a little, or want to take super-good photos.  But Francis is perfect to grab and take along to a museum or playground, or just snap a quick shot of the kids being cute.

Anyway, one more shot of the whole container garden from a different angle:

Some of the nasturtiums have started flowering since I took these, and I just saw my first marigold opening yesterday, all of which add more color and variety.

And, because I was playing with Diego's zoom lens (okay, that sounded wrong), here's a shot I took of one of our little bunny visitors:

We see these almost every day throughout the spring and summer.  This is one of the adults, but on Sunday we saw a teensy baby hop out from under our deck and nibble some clover oh-so-close to our house.  It was so small I could have held it in one hand -- just adorable!  I've read that bunnies like to roll in lavender, so if I can get mine going really well, I'll find somewhere in the yard to plant it so I can share it with them.  And then we'll have lavender-scented wild rabbits!  What's not to love?

Adios, Eli Wallach

1915-2014

I didn't realize Eli Wallach was nearly a hundred years old!  He was just making movies as of 4 years ago, and I guess I thought he was in his 80s or something.  His death on Tuesday shocked me so much.  I've only seen a handful of his films, but he plays my favorite film villain ever, and I absolutely loved his autobiography, The Good, the Bad, and Me.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2014) -- Initial Thoughts

This entire post is spoilage.  (EDIT:  Both my husband and my best friend say it's not all that spoily.  Mostly I just discuss my emotions about the film.)  Stop here and go see the movie if you at all love these characters and this series.  Do not scroll down below the pictures of Wolverine unless you want spoilage.  I mean it.

(This is just me pointing out, once again, that Hugh Jackman looks a lot like a young Clint Eastwood)

(And I'm not the only person who thinks so!  Source)

"You sure you want to keep reading?"

I am so, so, so incredibly happy.  Euphoric, really.  Filled with joy.  I feel like light and love could come shooting out of my fingertips if I wanted.  Thank you, thank you so amazingly much to the makers of this movie.  You have given me such an unexpected and wonderful gift.  You even fixed a bunch of the issues I had with X-Men:  First Class.  And James McAvoy learned to act, or remembered how, or something!  Maybe Hugh Jackman just makes everyone better?  I don't know, but McAvoy's Charles Xavier was anything but bland and boring this time.

I don't think I can be coherent here.  So I'm just going to repeat that I am beyond happy, thanks to this movie.  I will gladly sit through the first 2 hours and 5 minutes of pain and torment and fear and worry again to get to the final few minutes of giddy joy.  Hugs all around!

This song is exactly how I feel tonight:

A New Story Posted!

I've got a new story posted!  You can read it here, on the Combat! fan site I co-run with my best friend.  It's called "The Beaten Way of Friendship," and it's about how Grady Long befriends Saunders whether Saunders wants to be friends or not.  In some ways, it's a follow-up to an earlier story of mine, "The Better Part of Valor" (found here).  And yes, both story titles come from a certain Shakespeare play.

Isn't it odd how some stories come into being?  Both of these (and another that is as-yet unfinished because it has issues) stem from a single incident.  Five years ago, I unexpectedly ran into a guy who I had had a thing for ten years earlier.  We had gone on one quasi-date -- it was never an actual relationship.  But I had spent a whole summer writing poetry about this guy (the summer before I met Cowboy, I might add), and even wrote a completely unrelated Combat! story (here) as a result of the guy eventually dating someone else.  Then I saw him one night at Walmart, and I'm not sure he even recognized me (it'd been ten years, after all), but it was just the weirdest thing, to me.

I went home and started writing a fanfic story in which Sergeant Saunders ran into a nurse he'd once been in a relationship with, years before.  And then I wrote the story of how he met that nurse in the first place, a story I decided to use to explain why Saunders behaves a lot differently in the first few episodes than in the later ones.

This is something we fans have discussed over and over:  why is Saunders kind of jokey and light-hearted at the beginning of the series, but later on, he's as serious as possible.  My own theory has always been that the change really happens during an episode called "Far from the Brave."  Saunders spends the whole episode grieving over a guy from his squad named Grady Long.  It's an amazing and powerful episode, and you can watch it on YouTube here.  The thing is, Grady Long was not a series regular.  He's only in that one episode, only for about 3 minutes, and has zero dialog.  We don't even know who played him -- he's totally uncredited.  Not a lot to work with there, for a fanfic writer, or so you'd think.

And yet, eight years ago, my friend Deb Koren and I co-wrote a whole story involving Grady Long.  We watched "Far from the Brave" over and over, finding clues about how the other characters might have related to him, and what kind of person he must have been.  Our story, "Fools of Fortune" (here) is one of my absolute favorites.

Ever since then, I've been tinkering with the idea of writing a story about how Saunders and Grady Long met.  I started two stories, but abandoned them because they felt wrong.  However, when writing all these stories about how Saunders grew and changed, I realized Grady Long's story belonged with them.  And so I wrote the first draft of this story.  That was four years ago, after I'd finished the story of how Saunders and the nurse met, which became "The Better Part of Valor" (here).  That first story idea, of them meeting again after a long time, is still languishing unfinished.  One of these days, maybe I'll fix it up, now that this one is done.

Saunders at Grady's grave.

The 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion

Seventy years ago this morning, thousands upon thousands of Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen attacked the Nazi defenses on the beaches of Normandy.  They called it Operation Overlord, and no one involved was certain it could succeed.  The weather had been lousy.  The Allied track record with beach landings was far from stellar.  And no one was sure if the Axis powers knew where the Allies were planning to land, or if they'd been fooled by all the misinformation the Allies had been sending their way.

Seventy years later, of course, we know they succeeded.  Despite the bad weather, despite snags like one entire landing force hitting the wrong beach, despite terrifyingly high casualties at other beaches, the Allies were not swept back out to sea by the Nazis.  They landed, they stayed, they fought their way inland, and the war... was not won that day.  But the proverbial Shakespearean worm had turned that day, and victory in the European Theater of Operations was not long in coming.

This might be weird to say, but I'm very fond of the D-Day invasion.  I love learning about it, and one of my great dreams is to someday visit the five beaches where the Allies landed.  The best book I've read about the invasion as a whole is still The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, and I love the movie that's based on it.  I also love a much less well-known movie called D-Day:  The Sixth of June which follows three people whose lives are caught up in the preparation for the invasion.  I used to watch one or the other every year on the anniversary, though lately I haven't had time to watch either one, and usually make do with the pilot episode of Combat!, "A Day in June," which also revolves around the invasion.

This is me at the WWII memorial in Washington, DC a few years ago, standing above the section that honors those who participated in D-Day.  I couldn't physically be present there today, or on the beaches of Normandy, to honor those who fought there, both those who lived and those who died.  But I honor them by remembering their sacrifice, their courage, their achievements.  I hope you do too.

And Just When Rabbit Began to Think He Would Never Be Able to Use His Front Door Again...

I've been published!

Being a freelance writer like I am is kind of a weird way to live, creatively.  I mean, I do a lot of other creative things that people can see the product of right away.  I cook a meal, and there it is, you can eat it.  I bake cookies, and you can devour one.  I crochet a baby blanket, and you can see it as it grows under my fingers.  I write a story or a novel or an article, and you don't see anything until it's finished and revised, and revised again, and put somewhere where I can share it, like a website or a magazine issue.

Which means when I'm working on writing projects (my sixth novel and two fanfic stories at the moment), there's a lot of time where no one sees that I've got anything going on.  And then people ask me if I'm "still writing" and I'm like, "Yeah, I am."  And then comes the, "Oh, good!  What have you written lately?" question, and I'm more like, "Um... well... wrote a fanfiction story that's up on the website I co-run..."

So yeah, this post is me saying, "Lookee!  I really am writing stuff still!"  In fact, I've just had an article published in the May/June issue of an online magazine called Femnista.

I've been reading the magazine for about a year, following links from various blogs I read.  And the editor-in-chief, Charity, put out a call a couple months ago for new writers because some of her writers have moved on and she needed fresh voices.  So... now I'm writing for an online magazine!  And not just any magazine, but one aimed at nerdly Christian women -- could it be a more perfect fit?  I think not!

In other words, go read the new issue here!  My article is about Martin and Katie Luther, and how their marriage was an important part of the Reformation.