(no subject)

[sunshine_queen]

Ugh.

We closed on the apartment building today (HURRAH!) which means that when my parents got home we all went out to dinner, and dear sweet lord. An amazing plateful of shrimp cooked in different ways, a salad, their little cheesy biscuits, and dessert, and I am like, the biggest pig of all time and I am regretting it now, but we had a pretty good time. For us. Being as we are.

I finished "The White Countess" today, and, hee, it was a Merchant and Ivory film, which just sounds so, so old-fashioned, like the kind of partnership you would see on an advertisement for soap in the early 1900s. Anyway, the film had a surprisingly happy ending that neither my sister nor I saw coming, and I just love Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson.

Turns out Natasha Richardson plays the narrator (who I believe is named June in the book, but I don't think we know definitively) in "The Handmaid's Tale," and it just doesn't work for me at all, I don't know why. I do know that Faye Dunaway as Serena Joy is just about the best casting ever of all time. Man, do I love Faye Dunaway.

Comments

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Ooh, what is this "The White Countess"? It sounds intriguing. I could IMDB it, but I like MadiSpeak better. And oooh, Ralph and Natasha? Sounds way too pretty. :D

I love Natasha. She is so cute in The Parent Trap. And I should read The Handmaid's Tale. I neglect my Margaret Atwood, but at least I don't hate her like Justine does. Justine kinda twitches and gets this vaguely homicidal glint whenever Margaret Atwood is mentioned. It saddens me a little.

That paragraph ended in a really different place than it began.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

All the Canadians I know haaaaate Margaret Atwood with a burning, fiery passion, and if I didn't love them so much I would disown them, because Atwood is my favorite ever of all time, yessirree bob. Dear Jesus, woman, you definitely need to read The Handmaid's Tale. Stat. It's summer, you have no excuse. And I love Natasha too!

Okay. The White Countess is about this laaaady, Natasha, who is a Countess! Countess Sofia Belinskya! And she's a widow living with her daughter, her mother-in-law, her aunt-in-law, her uncle-in-law and her sister-in-law in Shanghai in 1936. Her husband is dead. I don't know how. Anyway, she is the only one who actually works to support her family because the rest of them are lazy bitches (well, not Aunt Vera and Uncle Peter, but Olga and Grusha are.), and they bitch at Sofia all the time because she works in a night club. And like, not as a prostitute, but the fact that she works in a nightclub dancing with people at all is way, waaaaaay to scandalous for them, and they give her flack all the time, and are super super mean to her. She also is the prettiest one there. They have a really nice neighbor who lives downstairs who happens to be a Jew. We like him a lot. And Aunt Vera is played by MISS VANESSA REDGRAVE. Hooold me.

Ralph Fiennes plays a blind American ex-diplomat, Todd Jackson, who lost his wife, son and daughter in varying accidents because the man is obviously cursed, and the last accident blinded him, and now he hangs out in Shanghai with his valet named Liu. He meets this Japanese guy named Mr Matsuda, who is very important later but I can't tell you whyyyy. Anyway, Mr Jackson puts all his money into making a new nightclub, The White Countess, and when he meets Countess Sofia, he knows she just has to be his showpiece, and so she goes and works for him, but then the bad bad Japanese people come! And bad things happen! And I can't tell you the rest. Suffice it to say that it ends happily, yaaaay!