Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Karl Ove and Gratitude, yay, Cafe Society boo

MMMM. Here is one of the world's most attractive men, Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard, talking about his writing. I could listen to him all day. Be still my beating heart.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/17/karl-ove-knausgaard-world/

And speaking of attractive men, here are two more. Only one of them closely related to me, but both of whom I've watched grow up.
Still incredibly mild. A gift from the gods, this beautiful autumn. John came over to help in the garden today, built a cage to contain my toppling goldenglow for next year and another to stake my raspberries; we spent hours outside on Nov. 30, without gloves or hat or even coat. A marvel.

I got Gratitude by Jenny Diski from the library today, a memoir from columns written as she was dying of cancer, aged only 68 - a whirlwind of words, am enjoying it. Did not enjoy last night's offering - the latest Woody Allen, CafĂ© Society, which Sam, who was visiting, and I ordered from Rogers On Demand. What a terrible movie, though stunningly beautiful to look at, gorgeous lighting, sets, costumes. I'm sick of Woody's absurd, even nauseating fantasies of young twiglet women in love with much older men. His writing here is lazy and weak; subplots and characters are there and then vanish, Jews, of course, take over for a bit and then disappear; lots of the actors are miscast. It's a mess. What happened to the powerhouse auteur of before? Woody, you shouldn't make a film a year, just make a film when you have a really good script and something to say. And maybe, I suggest politely, someone should edit you.

Who edits Woody Allen? That's a big part of the problem.

Not a big part of my problem. Tomorrow the latest edit of the memoir comes from Colin Thomas in Vancouver. There’s so much that’s really lovely in this draft, Beth. At this point, it’s almost all about figuring out what you have to do and how you can do it in Act 1. 

Music to my ears "really lovely,", except that, of course, he's also saying, there's stuff that works and stuff that doesn't that you have to fix. Which I knew already.

Sigh.

Oh well. It's really lovely out there, that's what counts right now.

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