Award Winners for a REASON: The African Queen (1951)

The African Queen (1951)

starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn

I'm back! I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted on this blog. Taking a break from certain things proved to be necessary for my emotional survival this last year. We're had a lot of upheaval at work and just overall stress and the last thing I needed was the additional weight of trying to write movie reviews on a regular basis. But I'm back and willing to give it my best shot.

The basics haven't changed. I'll still be watching and discussing classic film and actors.

However, I've also decided to incorporate modern movies set in the era of old Hollywood. Those can be loads of fun. Like, right now, I'm rewatching Zodiac, which is of course about the Zodiac Killer and takes place in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Not a classic movie, but set in the right era. It'll be a fun expansion since I really do love movies set in the era of classic Hollywood, period.

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Book Review: A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay (2016)

Some books got it and some books ain't got it. A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay is the latter.

It felt like I started reading one novel and ended up finishing a completely different one. There was no cohesive whole, just bits and pieces that never matched up together. I was expecting a story of an art restorer and ended up in a whirlwind romance where the heroine (and you wouldn't believe how easy it is to forget her name is Emily despite the title because of how few characters actually use her name) falls in love with an Italian chef and in two weeks has given up her Americanized life and moved to Tuscany so he can help run his family's restaurant.

This one really disappointed me. I was hoping for something poignant and genuine like in Lizzy & Jane or for something magical and literary like in The Bronte Plot. Instead, I'm following a heroine who magically transforms her art from mediocre to magnificent simply by moving to Italy. None of it matched, and if that wasn't disappointing enough, any important conversations and scenes that the reader should have been privy to were referred to instead of experienced. Emily mentions that she had this conversation or was sitting with this person or experiencing that thing, but we weren't there to experience it with her. It's the worse kind of telling instead of showing.

My usual complaint of Ms. Reay's books remains the same; there isn't enough faith in this story to make it anything other than a clean read instead of a Christian one. Ben and Emily fall in love in just two weeks and never once do they express their faith to one another. Ben could have been marrying an atheist for all he knew, which would have gone off real well in his devoutly Catholic family, I'm sure.

While I may not have been overly fond of Dear Mr. Knightley because I don't care for epistolary novels, I would happily give it a re-read before ever again picking up A Portrait of Emily Price. I know that Ms. Reay loves classic literature and tries to imbue her work with it. In this last novel, she failed. Sure, there's a couple of mentions of a book by James Joyce called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but I'm curious as to how many of her readers have picked up Joyce's tome? I know that I never have, but I have read Austen and Bronte. No more obscure reads, please, otherwise the magic of Ms. Reay as an anglophile may just fade.

The next book on her docket is The Austen Escape (releasing November 7, 2017) and I can only hope it's a vast improvement from A Portrait of Emily Price.

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Mini Movie - The Perfect Bride (2017)

Am I a romantic? Sometimes I wonder. I guess there are levels of romanticism in everyone, more in me that in some and less than what some of my friends possess.

But even I have to admit that Hallmark's The Perfect Bride is absolutely, well, perfect.

Especially if you happen to have a mild crush on Kavan Smith and think that Pascale Hutton is just about the cutest thing ever captured on film. Which I do. My friend's husband claims that a Hallmark movie is "good" when it doesn't end with a wedding. Well, this one ends at a wedding, but not necessarily with a wedding, if that makes any sense.

Bridal Bootcamp Instructor Girl meets adorable Wedding Photographer Boy, gets her crush going, has dreams shattered by discovering boy is actually engaged to another girl now attending her Bridal Bootcamp. Ohhhh, that angst.

What I love about Pascale is her ability to make you believe all the feels she's experiencing. Her character is a real sweetheart who refuses to do anything to ruin Wedding Photographer and his fiance's happiness.

Of course, this is Hallmark. Duh, you know what happens. But for a girl like me who only watched The Perfect Bride for Kavan and Pascale, I confess it's pretty cute.

Thank goodness for loving besties who will record a Hallmark movie for you when you don't have the station!

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CCLE - From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg (1967)

And so ends my classic children's books for the month of April. And by far, my top favorite read for this month is From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. This is another one of those books that was my sister's childhood favorite, but that I had never read, although I have seen both film versions, one starring Ingrid Bergman from 1973 and the other with Lauren Bacall from 1995.

But the book has a special magic to it. I can relate to a little girl who wants so desperately for her life to change, for her to be different, that she plans the perfect runaway scheme, taking with her only a musical instrument case full of clothes and her little brother who also happens to be the moneybags in the family. I remember a few times where I was so hungry to be understood and appreciated that I tried running away from home too. Although whereas I only made it a few blocks from home, Claudia and Jamie make it all the way into New York City where they proceed to make the Metropolitan Museum their home for a week. Remember, this book was written in 1967, long before they had things like security video cameras.

And that's why I love it. This is a book of glorious imaginings and possibilities, long before the incredible wave of technology wiped a lot of magic out of our lives. Claudia makes sense to me. She helps out so much at home, being the oldest child, but she feels her family doesn't appreciate her and doesn't understand her. She yearns to be special, to be different, to do something glorious with her life, to be the heroine of her own story.

And this book helps her along that path, giving her a secret to keep, a secret about the new Angel statue at the museum that may or may not have been carved by Michelangelo, but she and Jamie discover the truth by tracking down the prior owner, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

My favorite moment in the whole book is near the end. Claudia spends a great deal of time in this story wanting to learn everything about everything, to always be learning new things, ever single day. But Mrs. Frankweiler has news for her.

She says, "I don't agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate factors, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow."

That's a truly glorious sentiment, and that's why I love to take time to just bask in the things I already know, usually the things related to Christ. It's a beautiful feeling, a moment of certain clarity in the hubbub of life's craziness.

Out of all the books I've read for this challenge, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is the one I hope every child has a chance to read. It's encouraging beyond description.

And this is my farewell to Amanda's Classic Children's Literature Event 2017! I can't believe I managed to read 4 books this time around!

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CCLE - The Borrowers by Mary Norton (1952)

The Borrowers by Mary Norton is my 3rd book for the Classic Children's Literature Event.

This one is actually a re-read; my childhood was peppered with a love of the Borrowers and then another group of tiny people called The Littles. But the Borrowers don't have tails like the Littles, so they are slightly different.

The Borrowers are Pod and Homily Clock and their daughter Arrietty and they happen to live underneath the kitchen floor of a rather old house owned by Aunt Sophy and run by Mrs. Driver the housekeeper and Crampfurl their man-of-all-work. The Clock's story is first told to a little girl named Kate by her aunt who happened to be the sister to a Boy who moved into the house unexpectedly. Naturally, any little boy who happens to move into a house with just adults is liable to be curious, and he stumbles quite by accident across the Clock family. Imagine meeting a family of tiny little people while you happen to be reclining in the garden?

There's a good chance that a lot of modern children wouldn't understand many of the phrases in this book, but at the same time, this is a great chance to develop a child's understanding different eras, and not just lock them in to the modern sensibilities that we see today. I think that's one of the best reasons to encourage children to read historic literature; it deepens them in profound ones, at least, it does when the books have something deeper to share.

This is only the first book in a long series of adventures, and I love it so much that I intend to keep reading the series, something I wish that I'd done as a child. There's just enough imagination to feed my love of nostalgic stories, but just enough reality to keep the reader grounded. It's a brilliant book.

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CCLE - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald (1947)

My sister read a ton of children's fiction growing up. She had diverse tastes (still does), and so her books were a little bit of everything, including the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series. I was pretty much a Hardy Boys kinda girl, so our tastes almost never crossed, but now that we're both adults, I'm actually trying some of her favorite books when she was a kid. Hence my rather odd choice of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for this challenge.

I LOVED it. You have this dear older widow woman who befriends pretty much every child in her small town, invites them into her upside-down house (the chandeliers are on the floor, etc.) and just lets them play and be creative. Eventually word gets out that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle knows children, so whenever children in the town start to rebel, inevitably the parents seek out Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for her "cures." Like the little boy who doesn't like to clean his room; she just advises them to let the mess get so big that he can't get out of his room and starts missing out on adventures with his friends. He'll have no choice but to clean his space. And the once sweet little girl who starts back-talking like crazy, so Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle loans the family her parrot who is the queen of back-talk and shows the child just how nasty the habit is. You've got the radish cure for the little girl who refuses to bathe and whose parents plant radishes in the accumulating dirt on her skin one night, and the children who don't want to go to bed on time so the parents let them stay up as late as they want without saying a word until the children are so exhausted and crabby they beg to go to bed on time.

The book is organized a little like the Mary Poppins books, but if I were to choose a favorite between the two, it would be Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle hands-down. She's a charming, delightful woman whose love of children and her neighbors is absolutely genuine. The lessons learned are all valuable since they address bad habits, and this first book in the series has "practical" cures instead of magic cures like in the later books. I'm not sure that I'll read any farther in the series, but I highly recommend the first Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle as a delightful read for your little ones, especially read out-loud for story time once chapter at a time!

Read for the Children's Classic Literature Event hosted by Amanda at Simpler Pastimes!

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CCLE - Mary Poppins Comes Back by P.L. Travers (1935)

It's that time again! Time for the Classic Children's Literature Event hosted by Amanda at Simpler Pastimes!

My first read of the event is Mary Poppins Comes Back by P. L. Travers, originally published in 1935. I never imagined myself attempting to reconnect with this character since I didn't much care for the first book in the series, not because of the author's writing style, but simply because Mary Poppins is not a likable character.

However, I did pick up Mary Poppins Come Back and did read it faithfully from start to finish. These books are written rather like Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, in that each chapter is a separate vignette that eventually forms a clearer picture of the characters' lives and personalities. I'm still not entirely sold on the formatting, but it does hold its own form of enchantment for readers, like a collection of short stories all written about the same characters.

As for the book itself, Jane and Michael are the oldest children in the Banks' family, followed by twins John and Barbara and then darling little Annabel, the infant who joins the family halfway through the book. Mary Poppins, of course, is their nanny/governess, and just like the first time, she randomly appears because the children are once again in need of her. Instead of blowing in on a breeze however, now she floats down from the heavens on a kite string. Very Poppinsish of her.

The chapters are all individual tales, like I said, within the main book. We have a chance to meet Mr. Banks' nanny from his childhood (an unpleasant dictator of a woman), travel with Jane into the painting of a bowl where she nearly gets trapped, meet a relation of Mary Poppins named Mr. Turvy, learn that their boy-of-all-work Robertson Ay is actually a book character called the Dirty Rascal, fly to the sky where all the constellations put on a circus for Mary Poppins and the children, bounce around the park with the neighborhood on balloons that all magically have the owners' names printed on them, watch Mary Poppins and some very strange wooden people bring spring to the neighborhood, and finally, watch Mary Poppins ride a carousel in the park that eventually steals her away from the children.

Whewww. Like I said, each chapter is an individual vignette and there are 10 of them in total. Some of the stories, like the one with Mr. Turvy and then the one with the balloon lady are quite charming. There's an adorable innocence to them that's just a little heartwarming. And then there's the chapters that are a bit terrifying, like the one where Jane goes into the bowl's painting. She nearly gets stuck there because the little figures painted on the bowl don't want to release her and she had to be rescued by Mary Poppins.

I also didn't care much for the chapter where Mary Poppins and a character named Nellie Rubina create spring. I understand the concept without much difficulty, but Nellie Rubina is at least as disagreeable as Mary Poppins, if not more so, and I didn't like that she's supposed to be an ancestor of Noah which is why they do what they do. It was just too weird.

Just like the constellation circus was both weird and boring. Even if I'd been a child reading this chapter, I wouldn't have cared for it.

Robertson Ay's back story was possibly one of the best bits in the whole book except that it was a bit on the scary side, with a lot of people dying and getting their heads put on spikes around the castle walls. What is this . . . Game of Thrones?!

And of course, we have Mary herself. Dear Mary Poppins, a woman as disagreeable, contentious, and negative as ever. A woman who puffs herself like a little hen whenever someone dares suggest anything out of the ordinary has occurred. A woman who stops to stare at her own reflection for 5 minutes and then snaps at the children for lollygagging. She pretty much has all of the habits that one would never wish on their own children. So why, in heavens' name is she tasked with childcare?

True, she comes to Jane's rescue, and yes, she loves little Annabel, but her nasty attitude and outright lying about their adventures means she really isn't a good role model for anyone's child.

However, while I dislike Mary just as much as I did in the first book, there are I believe 8 books in the series, so maybe those later books will bring much-needed perspective on the woman. As to whether I'll bother reading those 6 books left in the series, your guess is as good as mine.

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