Manning Up for Tolstoy

I spent HOURS the other night looking at different adaptations of War & Peace, one of my favorite books. You may be able to sing along with the saga of epicfail that is my quest to reccomend to my girlfriend a book she actually likes, but if I haven't whined about it to you specifically (yet), Crime and Punishment failed like Raskolnikov's murder plan. A book of short stories (as close as I ever came to liking the genre) was deemed "okay, I guess." She thinks George R.R. Martin is unremarkable. Whereas I've loved everything she's reccomended to me--Time Traveler's Wife, Line of Beauty, Legend, The Hours? All great! The disparity is so frustrating!

I decided that, despite its length and Russian-ness, W&P might actually have been the way to go all along--great, engaging characters with interesting, intersecting relationships, lots of adventurey war schennanigans (though that's, er, not the point, I know), awesome prose and embroiled, affecting romantic plots--W&P has made me cry kind of a lot. But perhaps, after she's learned not to trust anything I ever say ever about books, a mini-series could share the love! We could watch an episode, and then more if she was into it! It might work!

I was so happy to find a very pretty 2007 version all in English on youtube. I settled in to watch it. I thought I'd be generous about it beginning in toooootally the wrong place. There was something--but no, perhaps I was just imagining it. I hoped I was imagining it. But as the scenes wore on it became devestatingly clear that no. No, I was right. And it wasn't just like, ONE person. The acting was uniformly /excruciating/.

"OH NO IT IS THAT SCHEMER. THE COUNT. HE WISHES TO TAKE THE INHERITANCE!
"...um, are you... okay I hate to ask, but are you being played by a dalek?"
"...MAAAAAAAAAYBE."

EVERYONE was played by Daleks. Or might as well have been. Also: the script, she was ham-fisted. The weird mash-up first scenes were only the beginning of the jumbled, VERY PRETTY hot mess.

Frustrated, I went over to watch the EPIC multi-million-dollar sixties solviet mini-series, which is known both as

1) The /Definitive/ Adaptation and one of the best examples of Solviet movie-making, and
2) home to some melodramatic schlock that the Americans just had to scrape into the bin before showing it on PBS.

I did find it online--the original cut, which I'm dubious about--but not ALL of it. And with English Subtitles. The girlfriend in question loathes subtitles (which I used to give her shit about, but she explained it rather well). Did I really want to watch hours of Solviet!War & Peace alone, even if I love the book? No. *sigh*

I complained to Meghan about My Deep Woes, and she said "Oh, I've read that." Now, Meghan is thirteen. I raised an eyebrow. "Oh have you, Meghan? Who's your favorite character? Was it the war? Maybe you liked the peace?" And she was like "Okay, so, maybe I have not read War and Peace."

But today we were picking out books for her book reports for the rest of the year, and she needed a historical fiction. She's insisting on reading W&P now, just to punk me.

In the translation I have, half the first page is in french. It's translated into English in the footnotes, but still.

Meghan visibly swallowed, manned up, and read on.

If she actually finishes it, I will throw her a frigging Russian-themed party, complete with madatory fur coat/hat costumes and kareoke!Anastasia (the movie). An suggests "real Russian tea with zavarka and kipyatok," (I'd need equipment on that one--"I will bleed your heart/through a samovar soon," etc.) and "Russian cartoons, like Cheburashka." I think also that weeeeeeird "Father Frost" Koschei and Babba Yaga movie. Also vodka, though not for the 13 year old--only in Mother Russia can 13 year olds drink.

Manning Up for Tolstoy

I spent HOURS the other night looking at different adaptations of War & Peace, one of my favorite books. You may be able to sing along with the saga of epicfail that is my quest to reccomend to my girlfriend a book she actually likes, but if I haven't whined about it to you specifically (yet), Crime and Punishment failed like Raskolnikov's murder plan. A book of short stories (as close as I ever came to liking the genre) was deemed "okay, I guess." She thinks George R.R. Martin is unremarkable. Whereas I've loved everything she's reccomended to me--Time Traveler's Wife, Line of Beauty, Legend, The Hours? All great! The disparity is so frustrating!

I decided that, despite its length and Russian-ness, W&P might actually have been the way to go all along--great, engaging characters with interesting, intersecting relationships, lots of adventurey war schennanigans (though that's, er, not the point, I know), awesome prose and embroiled, affecting romantic plots--W&P has made me cry kind of a lot. But perhaps, after she's learned not to trust anything I ever say ever about books, a mini-series could share the love! We could watch an episode, and then more if she was into it! It might work!

I was so happy to find a very pretty 2007 version all in English on youtube. I settled in to watch it. I thought I'd be generous about it beginning in toooootally the wrong place. There was something--but no, perhaps I was just imagining it. I hoped I was imagining it. But as the scenes wore on it became devestatingly clear that no. No, I was right. And it wasn't just like, ONE person. The acting was uniformly /excruciating/.

"OH NO IT IS THAT SCHEMER. THE COUNT. HE WISHES TO TAKE THE INHERITANCE!
"...um, are you... okay I hate to ask, but are you being played by a dalek?"
"...MAAAAAAAAAYBE."

EVERYONE was played by Daleks. Or might as well have been. Also: the script, she was ham-fisted. The weird mash-up first scenes were only the beginning of the jumbled, VERY PRETTY hot mess.

Frustrated, I went over to watch the EPIC multi-million-dollar sixties solviet mini-series, which is known both as

1) The /Definitive/ Adaptation and one of the best examples of Solviet movie-making, and
2) home to some melodramatic schlock that the Americans just had to scrape into the bin before showing it on PBS.

I did find it online--the original cut, which I'm dubious about--but not ALL of it. And with English Subtitles. The girlfriend in question loathes subtitles (which I used to give her shit about, but she explained it rather well). Did I really want to watch hours of Solviet!War & Peace alone, even if I love the book? No. *sigh*

I complained to Meghan about My Deep Woes, and she said "Oh, I've read that." Now, Meghan is thirteen. I raised an eyebrow. "Oh have you, Meghan? Who's your favorite character? Was it the war? Maybe you liked the peace?" And she was like "Okay, so, maybe I have not read War and Peace."

But today we were picking out books for her book reports for the rest of the year, and she needed a historical fiction. She's insisting on reading W&P now, just to punk me.

In the translation I have, half the first page is in french. It's translated into English in the footnotes, but still.

Meghan visibly swallowed, manned up, and read on.

If she actually finishes it, I will throw her a frigging Russian-themed party, complete with madatory fur coat/hat costumes and kareoke!Anastasia (the movie). An suggests "real Russian tea with zavarka and kipyatok," (I'd need equipment on that one--"I will bleed your heart/through a samovar soon," etc.) and "Russian cartoons, like Cheburashka." I think also that weeeeeeird "Father Frost" Koschei and Babba Yaga movie. Also vodka, though not for the 13 year old--only in Mother Russia can 13 year olds drink.