lunabee34

executrix sent me The 2017 Little Women miniseries starring Maya Hawke ages ago, and I just finished it! (Putting it to you in the mail on Monday, kore.)

It is such a good adaptation. It gets off to a little bit of a rocky start. IDK why, but it sounds a little bit stilted in the beginning of Part 1. I think it might be because shall just sounds so awkward to the modern ear. But by the end of Part 1 it is becoming fantastic, and Part 2 blows it out of the water.

The casting is phenomenal. Maya Hawke is amazing as Jo. Kathryn Newton is a fabulous Amy. She plays her so perfectly petulant and self-absorbed but with just the right amount of true love underneath. Angela Lansbury is a wonderfully acerbic Aunt March, Emily Watson steals the show as Marmee, and Jonah Hauer-King is my favorite Laurie thus far.

When I read Little Women, I ship Jo/Laurie hard, and them not ending up together is actively irritating to me. I feel like in the book, we get told they wouldn't work out but not shown that organically. I think the movie does a good job of showing that more clearly if not quite as successfully as I'd like; to be clear, I don't think that's a problem with the miniseries so much as the source material. I also feel like Laurie/Amy comes out of nowhere in the book, and the miniseries does an A++ job of showing the antecedents of that relationship.

I think my favorite moment of the whole thing is when Marmee sees all her girls dressed up for Meg's wedding, and there's this look on her face, and it's everything it is to be a mom distilled into that one look--pride, sorrow that things are changing, love, fear for the future, all of it--and it just gave me chill bumps and then made me cry even harder.

Highly, highly recommended.



Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750 1850 by Tom Mole

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a really good, readable collection of essays. It contains multiple essays about the theater and how celebrity functioned for actors. It also contains a really interesting essay about a famous boxer. Also included are essays about the nature of genius, the practice of lionizing (society women inviting the literary celebrity of the moment to her parties to be gawked at), Byron, Beau Brummel, and the sister of famous actor Sarah Siddons who tried desperately and unsuccessfully to be famous herself among others.

Definitely worth reading if you are interested in celebrity culture, Romanticism, or 19th century England.



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