It's Gold, man!

I have to hand it to William Goldman. As I said in the last post, he has a brilliant book and screenplay, The Princess Bride. Many aspects of it impress me, but I’m going to focus on two of them.

First, the names. They’re terrible. They’re stupid. They’re simple.
And yet…I love each and every one.
Princess Buttercup. The Dread Pirate Roberts. Prince Humperdinck. Pit of Despair. The names of the towns are European money. But it all works. Beautifully. Maybe it has to do with the absurd child-like charm of it. Maybe it’s because the characters and locations transcend their ridiculous names by being so strong and memorable in a top notch (but simple!) story. It just goes to show that coming up with unique, extraordinary monikers is not always necessary. I find this both a relief and disheartening. Sometimes my character names have hidden meanings, are derived from ancient languages or some such tooled creation process. It’s nice to know that it is possible to “get away with” simplicity. But then it also makes me wonder why I labor. Probably because the techniques each work favorably in different situations.

I should also mention the Star Wars Saga of George Lucas. Ever think about some of the names in there? Death Star. Han Solo (he’s independent, kid!). Skywalker. The Mon Calamari (who are fish and squid-like). Lightsaber. It’s a little silly, no? But again, their strength is their straightforwardness, supported by an amazing tale. And then there is Charles Dickens, who somehow managed to have characters like Mr. McChoakumchild, a strict school master in Hard Times. Not so subtle. Conversely, I often found myself in the thick of Tolkien, trying to recall if some of the names I encountered are a character, town, building, sword or a river. The trick, I suppose, is figuring out when and where to use complexity and simplicity.

The other aspect of The Princess Bride I found masterful is how he interpreted his own story for the film adaptation. For those of you who don’t know, the book is an abridged version of a novel by S. Morgenstern. Morgenstern pontificates and details way too much about the history of the towns and such, satiring the excesses of European royalty. It’s too cumbersome. But the underlying story is fantastic. There’s just one thing. S. Morgenstern doesn’t really exist. Goldman made up the whole ordeal, using a not so uncommon literary device of pretending to have found a work or abridged it. Who cares if it’s been done before? Goldman does it to perfection. In the movie, you might recall, Fred Savage plays a sick child in bed being read to by his Grandfather (Peter Falk). The boy is not so happy with the “kissing parts” so Grandfather kindly skips ahead to adventure for him. This echoes William Goldman claiming that this or that part of S. Morgenstern’s script is too dense and not very interesting at a particular point, so he goes on to the better bits. What a concept! Completely the same and yet altogether different for the new medium of telling the tale. Bravo!

Not bad for asking each daughter what he should write about.
“A princess,” said one. “A bride,” said the other.
And so Goldman wrote: The Princess Bride. The rest is history.

Update: I've now read the book. Post is here.

Listen to Inigo

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
- Inigo Montoya

Truly one of the great lines from The Princess Bride. Too many great lines from that movie. It’s just a brilliant script. Bravo to William Goldman for his book and screenplay.

Part of the reason Montoya’s line is so memorable, I think, is because too many of us keep using words that we don’t know what they mean .

One in particular, I find, is akimbo. Arms akimbo, specifically. It seems most people use it to mean “flailing about haphazardly.” It certainly sounds like it means that. A good friend once even described a different body part set as being akimbo. (No, not legs.) If you do use it to mean hanging here and there all out of sorts, for Inigo’s sake, look it up and be surprised.

I encourage you to have a look at Sunshine’s post about the word “hopefully.” Hopefully you will go to be enlightened.

I recently learned what “nonplussed” actually means, too, as evidenced by the comments in Sunshine’s blog. (Hint: It's not akin to ambivalent.)

And then there’s the Flammable/Inflammable/Nonflammable debacle. When in doubt, just use Flammable and Not Flammable to avoid confusion and save lives.

Literally. This word is abused, though not literally. He literally laughed his way to the bank. Did his uproarious giggles propel him to the financial institution? Um, no. Then don’t say that it did. In a nutshell, literally means exactly as written/spoken. Laughing all the way to bank is a figurative statement. So is being in a nutshell. However, due to overwhelming usage in the incorrect way, the Dictionary now mentions that it is becoming “acceptable” to say things like “She literally had her heart on her sleeve.” Fight it. Don’t let grammar die. [Don't worry, I won't ask you to clap really hard if you believe in good grammar.]

Speaking of words that have become acceptable, “normalcy” takes the cake. Although there is evidence that the word existed in early dictionaries, the story goes that 29th President Warren G. Harding coined it for his “Return to Normalcy" campaign in the absence of a speech writer. Either way, it just sounds silly to me. Since normality is a word already, do we really need this crazy addition?

Ironic. Chances are, it’s not. Poor little “irony” is as abused as “literally.” Irony is the opposite of what you expect, not an absurd conicidence. And the irony of Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic” is that nothing in it is ironic. Unfortunate, coincidental, luck perhaps.…just to get that ironed out.

So, if you’re sitting there with your arms akimbo, literally wondering if my displeasure is inflammable and hopefully assuming that you won’t get nonplussed by it, be comforted that you’re not being ironic and you can resume normality.

And please know that I’m not being superior or accusatory.

Just thinking how Inigo is right, which is not inconceivable.

It's like being there...

I watched the first part (of three) of Andrew Birkin's The Lost Boys. It's a BBC mini-series from 1978 chronicling the friendship between J. M. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies family. Think Finding Neverland but accurate, less showy and more complete. Since Birkin is the authority on Barrie and from the amount of praise given this program, I expected it to be great. It has not disappointed.

From the moment it began, I knew I would love it. For those of you who know what this means, it even showed the balloon lady outside the Gardens. For the rest of you, it mirrored the feel of the Arthur Rackham drawings beautifully. It included little touches that made the past (and now fantasy of it) come alive. In a way that Finding Neverland did not quite achieve. From the costumes to the overall visual quality. And free of the 'must glamorize' mentality of Hollywood.

Another treasure-filled scene for a Barrie scholar is the re-creation of The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. This portion is not unlike having a time machine. Barrie's actual photographs are inserted every so often. They're placed amid history unfolding. We now see the Llewelyn Davies boys tromping along on their adventure, eventually striking the poses in the photos that have come to be known. (Only two copies of The Boy Castaways existed, one for the boys. One for Barrie.)

Thanks to Birkin, we have audio and video of Barrie. Ian Holm does a great job in picking up his speech patterns. Needless to say, his Scottish accent and acting are excellent. Also excellent is Paul Holmes, who plays George. (From the date of birth I assume it to be Holmes, for two boys have played him.) He doesn't seem to be acting at all - natural, convincing.

I enjoy it immensely. It's a delight to hear Barrie's most famous lines (of real life/notes, not from his literature) spoken and deftly inserted into conversations. Though not fast paced, it's compelling. It truly allows for the mundane moments to shine while they build to a lovely protrayal of how matters developed. Looking forward to the rest. (Even though it will be a sad story to come.)

Bravo Birkin! Bravo to Holm! And bravo to everyone who made this possible.

I've been waiting a long time to see this mini-series. It's been worth it.

Learn more about The Boy Castaways and see more of the pictures at Birkin's site.

The link is on the left.

Hero? No, Hiro.

You probably don't agree with me, but I, for one, have had my
FILL of superhero movies.

They've got to stop and they're not going to...

*sigh*

I'll stick with NBC's Heroes

and hope that it doesn't make a rapid decline with Villains.

Real Imagination

Think you've seen it all when it comes to Alice in Wonderland?

When the imagination works overtime, over time, imaginative works result.

Bravo to absinthetic for creating this wonderful set.

Take a trip down the rabbit hole like never before...

"Click Me"

50 States...? No. Rackham's...

It just came to my attention that a new edition of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens is coming out which includes the 50 illustrations by the renowned Arthur Rackham. Such a luxury of having them all can be difficult to get your hands on, so I'm glad they're being made available again. It won't be released until September 19, 2008. But I've got mine pre-ordered...do you? I've included some of my favorite pictures from Rackham's Pan. For the record, the picture seen behind me in the photo on the dust jacket of Peter Pan's NeverWorld is a print of one of Rackham's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens illustrations.

AdMINISTERING the Cat...

I like word games. Usually. The kind played, say, on a road trip. My family devised one we affectionately call Mind Bender. I’m not about to explain the rules to you. They can be rather cumbersome, as a friend of my brother’s challenged them. It caused us to draw up official documentation. But don’t worry about that.

Way back in college, Sunshine shared with us a game her mother and she would play: The Minister’s Cat. I guess I always thought they made it up. It’s a simple enough (and fun enough) game. When I asked her about it recently, she enlightened me that they learned of the game from a black and white movie. The characters played it. She felt pretty sure that Scrooge played, which meant it had to be in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. So….to the Internet! (a la “To the Batcave!”on the 60s TV show)

We were both surprised to learn that it’s not just ‘us’ and that black and white film. It’s an established game! There are even variations. You can learn about it here on Wikipedia. For the record, Wikipedia does not list the movie wherein Sunshine and her mom encountered it. But I found that, too: Scrooge (1951) Apparently it's in numerous adaptations of A Christmas Carol.

It just goes to show that things are often bigger than originally realized.

Let’s play…
The Minister’s Cat is an Auspicious Cat…

UPDATE:  On an episode of Frasier, he fancies that they might play a spirited round of... yes.