suziebeezieland

movie recommendations

What are your favorite movies? :) Feel free to list as many as you'd like, and to expound on why you like them.

chariots of fire

I believe God made me for a purpose. 
But he also made me FAST.
And when I run, I feel His pleasure.

One of my top two favorite movies of all time, ever, amen, is Chariots of Fire. If you've never seen it, there is more to it than some guys running along a beach in slow motion to Vangelis music. Although that is how it starts.

Liddell, he is your future king, are you refusing to shake his hand? Does your arrogance extend that far? 

My arrogance, sir, extends just as far as my conscience demands. 

This is a good year to watch it. It's the (mostly) true story of two British runners (and their runner friends) (and a girlfriend and a sister) (and a coach) in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

I notice it is coming out on Blu-Ray on July 10 this summer. Pretty smart ... the London Olympics begin on July 27. :)

That's a matter for the committee! 
We are the committee. 

I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; 4 feet wide, with 10 lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. But WILL I? 

I have it memorized, so if you don't get a chance to see it, just give me a call and I will spend four hours telling it to you. (Two hours of screenplay plus two hours of my enthusiastic opinions.) (I can also throw in an additional two hours of random related facts for free.)

You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection. Don't compromise. Compromise is a language of the devil. Run in God's name and let the world stand back in wonder. 

Oh, it's so good. You have to watch it. 

If I can't win, I won't run! 
If you don't run, you can't win.

my personal hunger games trilogy soundtrack

I finished up Mockingjay this week. I think I have mini PTSD. Geez, Louise.

One thing I have been thinking is that they need to use some music off Elliott Brood's Days Into Years album for the soundtrack in the next two movies. I love (love) this album.

It was inspired by a trip the band made through a bunch of WWI and WWII battlefields and cemeteries several years ago up the coasts of France and Belgium. They were, in particular, inspired by the Canadian invasion of Juno Beach on 6 June 1944.

We hold onto each other
For who wants to die alone?

We forgot that we were men
And where we came from and where we laid our heads
And the wounds we had
We all knew they'd never mend

And when I'm sure my days are numbered
Find a nice place in the fields
And thank that little voice inside my head
For such good company

my world and welcome to it

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick."
It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution,
that uses the foolish expression.
A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour,
falls and breaks and has to be put together again,
and sometimes stops
like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
(William Thurber)

When I was little (really little), one of my favorite t.v. shows was called My World and Welcome To It. It starred William Windom, and was a glorious mixture of live action and animation that really struck my five-year-old fancy. The show was based on the writings and cartoons of James Thurber.

The main character, Thurber-like John Monroe, is an artist and cartoonist for a magazine called The Manhattanite. (Thurber worked as an editor at The New Yorker; his friend E.B. White got him the job there).

Are any of you Thurber fans? (Have any of you Ohio girls been to Thurber House?) He's funny but also somewhat tragic ... you get the sense his writing is really all he ever had a real grasp on in his life. But if you are interested in him, The Thurber Carnival is probably a great place to start. It will give you a good sampling of his essays, short stories, and cartoons. 

I love James Thurber.

In my humble opinion, My World and Welcome To It would be a great premise to rework. I like this idea of a loose biography that grabs an artist's images and words and weaves them into an otherwise standard sitcom. I'm not sure his particular forms of misanthropy would translate well to television today, although there's always the standard Hollywood workaround where you ignore the bits of a person that don't work with the story you want to tell about him.

The show was cancelled after just one season of 26 episodes (it was very expensive to produce and reviews were mixed, although it won the 1970 Emmy for Best Comedy, and Windom won for Best Actor in a Comedy.) Sadly, it's not available anywhere to see, except for a few grainy, wobbly episodes on YouTube.

I'm sure most of the content went right over my head ... I liked it best for the fluid transitions between reality and fantasy, which mirrored life inside my own head (and still do ... I'm never completely on earth), and also for Lydia, Monroe's daughter, who was played by Lisa Gerritsen. 

(I have been thinking about My World and Welcome To It out of the blue this week because I watched several episodes from the first season of Mary Tyler Moore on Hulu Plus while I was sick, and Lisa Gerritsen also played Bess Lindstrom, Phyllis's daughter on MTM. I just loved her when I was little.)

raiders of the lost ark

This big crate was delivered the day before yesterday, with Indiana Jones in hot pursuit.

Actually, it's just the clawfoot bathtub for the big bathroom. But wow, it was packaged well, ay? I finally got out there with a crowbar this morning to open it up. My goals in opening it were as follows:

(1) No tetanus shots, and

(2) No damage to the bathtub.

I succeeded! Yay. If you have anything that needs prying open, let me know, because I'm all giddy with the thrill of crowbarring. It is extremely satisfying.

Inside the crate, it was wrapped in a blanket, which I put back on very gently (my bathtub baby) so that nothing happens to it before we can install it.

I am so thankful the delivery man put it in the garage for me. It weighs ten million pounds. They probably won't get to the big bathroom remodel until after Easter, and I would have hated for this thing to be sitting in my living room until then.

Although it would have given us some fun additional seating for parties and whatnot.

I have to tell you that the reason I am the most excited about this tub is because when I was a little girl, my grandma and grandpa (my dad's parents) had a clawfoot tub in their house, up on the second floor, and I thought it was the neatest thing in the universe. I loved how it wasn't connected to the walls, and how it had feet, and how it had a plug on a chain, and how the faucets said "hot" and "cold", and how you slipped around in it like a mermaid because it was shiny porcelain over cast iron, and how grandma had a box of Spic 'N Span perched on the windowsill, ready to clean up everything at any time. I need to buy a box of Spic 'N Span.

the incredibly capricious, hurtful fickleness of hollywood

I was just checking the news on Yahoo and saw these two photos of our BFFs Colin and Gary (and some chicks) at the Oscars tonight.

I'm a little hurt that my sister and I weren't invited, but whatevs.

to kill a mockingbird

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. 

The 50th anniversary edition of the movie To Kill a Mockingbird comes out today on DVD and Blu-ray. Here is an interesting interview about the movie's legacy with Mary Badham (who played Scout) and Cecilia Peck (Gregory Peck's daughter).

the los angeles premiere of tinker, tailor, soldier, spy

You know I'm a big John LeCarre fan. :) I think he is a brilliant writer. My favorite book of his (and one of my top five favorite novels) is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

So a couple weeks ago, I entered a contest on the Fandango blog to win two free tickets to the Los Angeles premiere of the new Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy movie.

And I won! I was shocked. :) It was last night, and my sister and I went. Oh my goodness, we had so much fun. We just kept giggling the entire time.

(But not during the movie. We were quiet during the movie.) 

Five days ago, we were sitting out here in the suburbs without any power, listening to the food inside our freezer thawing, and tonight, a Hollywood premiere. Whoo, that's a lot of commotion in one week for two stay-at-home moms! :)

My pictures are quick, poor, very blurry iPhone shots taken while things zoomed by, but here they are.

The Sunset Boulevard exit off the freeway

The famous corner of Sunset and Vine. Why is it famous? I am not sure. Speak up if you know why it's famous.

Amoeba Records, the biggest independent music store in the world.

The Cinerama Dome, where the movie was premiering.

George Smiley (as played by Gary Oldman) and Suzie (as played by Suzie)

The Red Carpet out front, as viewed from behind the "don't cross if you're not famous" tape :D

The Red Carpet out front, as viewed from inside the lobby

David Dencik, who plays Toby Esterhase in the movie

The back of Mark Strong's head. He plays Jim Prideaux (my favorite character in the book besides George Smiley) in the movie.

Robyn Slovo, the producer. She had really cute shoes. I almost walked between her and a photographer taking her picture. I came to a screeching halt not to do so. It was so funny. :)

Our exciting free popcorn and drinks!

After we went into the theater and were seated and waited awhile, the director, Tomas Alfredson, came onstage and thanked some people and sang happy birthday to somebody in Swedish (it was really cute). Then some of the actors came onstage with him, including Colin Firth and Gary Oldman. Whoo hoo! 

They both look great.

Did I like the movie? Well, yes and no. :) Mostly yes.

Here are the things I liked very much: The casting and acting are brilliant, the plot has been compressed into two hours very nicely (smart screenplay), some of the changes to the plot are refreshing and give it a nice new twist, the cinematography and atmosphere is perfect, the attention to detail is really fun, and the music score is perfect. I was so worried that Gary Oldman would not be a good George Smiley, because I have the George Smiley in my head from the book (whom I like the best) and then Alec Guinness as George Smiley from the mini-series (whom I am also very fond of), and I feel oddly proprietary about George Smiley, as if John LeCarre wrote him just for me and my dad. :) But Gary Oldman did a great job. They all did. Superb acting.

Here are the things I did not like: It is rated "R" and has a lot of junk in it that wasn't in the book and is not needed.

For instance, I understand, artistically, why the director went with the few short, shocking, very graphic bits of violence -- the movie is European in actuality and also in its sensibilities, very quiet in parts, and full of dialogue and thinking and people looking out windows (which I love, all of it), and the gore keeps the Cold War plotline from feeling like a game of chess. There were real, horrible consequences in this story. But LeCarre was able to convey that in the book without being explicit (ditto with the mini-series) so I still object, even though I can understand what the director was going for. It is a very visually stunning movie -- gray and brown and smoky and spy-like.

I have become largely desensitized to movie violence over the years, and this bothers me about myself, and I want to resensitize myself. I really think movie and t.v. people will just keep making things more and more shocking as audiences become blase, and I don't like where that is headed at all. So to be honest, I don't really go to "R" movies, with few exceptions, and sometimes I cover my eyes in the theater. It is working. I am becoming shockable again. I know this will sound nutters or very quaint to some of you, but I don't care. :) We change in different ways as we grow up, all of us. 

But I liked this movie. It was very well done, and I am just so happy that some other people loved LeCarre and made this. Just censor yourself as needed, chickies. (The parents' page on IMDB for the movie explains most potentially objectionable content. But there are some plot spoilers, so don't look at it if you consider yourself unshockable.)

I probably won't see it again for awhile, whereas I can watch the mini-series over and over again annually, but I'm very glad we went, and very thankful to Fandango and Focus Features. I will probably write a long letter to the director and a couple of the actors telling them specific things I loved. I'm hoping that they all keep going and make the novel Smiley's People into a movie, too. (It's the third in the Quest for Karla trilogy.)

If you go, and you have time, read the book first, so you know more of what's going on.

I call this video I took "You have to believe me, it's them." :D

The dot on the far left is Gary Oldman. Colin Firth is on his immediate right. If you have the sound on, that's the director speaking.

the wizarding world of harry potter

I took all these this morning with my iPhone in one hand, a mug of butterbeer* in the other, and a huge, gigantic grin on my face.

If you'd seen me, you'd have known right off I was a Muggle tourist.

(*A very sweet and creamy non-alcoholic beverage. Perhaps the best thing I've ever had to drink in my whole life.)

book character dress-up day at school

How To Annoy Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings Fans

(via Stephen Altrogge's blog, The Blazing Center)

another tinker, tailor video

Ooh! I just found another Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy trailer and interview with Le Carre and some cast members. 

{note: I had to un-embed the video because it was on autoplay. but go here to see it. it's great!}

(I'm sorry, but if you have complaints with the quality of our programming here lately in suziebeezieland, you'll just have to take it up with the management. Who is me, and I say, yay! for everything George Smiley, and you are just going to have to bear with me until November 18th.)

john le carré's tinker tailor soldier spy

If you have stubbornly and wilfully ignored me all these years and haven't read the book yet, you're in big trouble, because the movie is almost here! :)

(You're not really in big trouble. Phew. You have time to read it. The movie will open in North American on November 18.)(Dad! Save November 18th on your calendar!)

(If you're in England you actually ARE in big trouble, though, because it opens there on September 16. Read fast! Zoom!)

Have I ever held my breath so much? I don't think so. I loved the book and old Alec Guinness BBC series so much that I'll be crushed if they mess up the movie. I hope it's good, I hope it's good, I hope it's good!

Le Carré, who has been said to "just about own the literary rights to the Cold War," is one of my top three favorite writers when he's writing spy fiction. (I'm less interested in his newer stuff, which often deals with corporate greed.) He's just absolutely brilliant.

The film stars Gary Oldman, Ciaran Hinds, Jared Harris, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong and Svetlana Khodchenko. 

A few trailers have been released. Here are two of them:

richard armitage as thorin oakenshield

I know I already mentioned that Richard Armitage (from North and South and lots of other things, but mostly from North and South, ha) is going to be Thorin Oakenshield in the film version of The Hobbit. And I was thinking that I'd shown you some photos of what he is going to look like in the role, but no, that was my book club I showed those to. (We read The Hobbit in July.) 

So here are some photos, so you can compare. 

Here's his headshot on imdb:

And here he is in North and South:

And then here he is as Thorin (with Orcrist, the Goblin Cleaver in his hands.) I can hardly see him behind the dwarvish makeup, but he's there. :) Go here to TheOneRing.net to see a bigger version of this photo.

And here he is with the whole company of dwarves, which continues to be hilarious to everyone, because he is over six feet in real life. But I think he's going to be a great Thorin.

(Go here to Peter Jackson's Hobbit blog to see a big version of this photo):

candace loses her phone for the 5th time, perry smiles for the 1st time since season 2, rare tangerine orangutans, jamie oliver, + other cool stuff

New episodes of Phineas and Ferb! Whoo hoo!

You can't see much of the skyline
It looks like more of a grid
It's a viable variation of view
But something I'm sure we'll be glad that we did

It's not like the world that we see from the ground
I guess the main difference is we're looking down

So climb on our aerial area rug
It's certain to keep us aloft
Its aerodynamics are highly advanced
And its weave is so tight and so soft

Though this vista's diverse
Is it better or worse?
If you ask, I'll just give you a shrug
But you can vary your view of the area
From our aerial area rug

It's a brand new perspective
Literally
We can see the tops of buildings
Come along with me

You can vary your view of the area
From our aerial area rug
You can vary your view of the area
From our aerial area rug

richard armitage on thorin oakenshield

I'm posting this video clip for our Debbie H., because she has just finished watching North and South for the first time, and is probably missing Richard Armitage about now, because that's what happens. :)

He has, as you may know, been cast to play Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's upcoming film version of Tolkien's The Hobbit. (If you're on Facebook, "like" Peter Jackson if you would like to get first glance at the filming in New Zealand. He is posting on-set news, sneak-peek pics, and videos pretty regularly. I like seeing Hobbit news pop up in my newsfeed. Or check out The Hobbit blog. And if you really want to geek out completely, The One Ring is the place for you.) 

I guess there was some hubbub about this casting when it happened, because Richard, who is 6'2" and dreamy, seems an unlikely choice to play a dwarf. But Peter Jackson defended his choice by praising Richard's acting, adding, "Thorin Oakenshield is a tough, heroic character, and he certainly should give Leggie and Aragorn a run for their money in the heartthrob stakes -- despite being four feet tall."

Quick, unnecessary recap of Leggie and Aragorn:

And I defend Peter Jackson's choice by noting that Richard Armitage has the loveliest baritone voice ever created, and I feel certain that dwarves are baritones.

Anyhoo, here is the clip of Richard Armitage discussing the role of Thorin. (You may recognize Martin Freeman to his left, who of course has been cast to play Bilbo Baggins, and who starred in the original British version of The Office, as well as (more recently) Holmes in the new Sherlock Holmes BBC series, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock.) (I highly recommend these, if you haven't seen the first three. According to Ian McKellen's blog, Martin is currently off the Hobbit set and back in London to film the next three installments of Sherlock. Hooray!) (Also, fans of the oft-missed Pushing Daisies may be interested to hear that Lee Pace has just been cast to play Thranduil the Elven King.) (You really shouldn't get me going on all this Hobbit & LOTR business, because I will go off tangentially for days.)

the rules for turning my favorite books into movies

I posted these rules over on my Facebook wall yesterday as 25 individual status updates throughout the day, and had some really fun comments on them from like-minded book enthusiasts. I thought I'd go ahead and repost them all here, together.

It started because I saw a trailer for the upcoming Mr. Popper's Penguins movie starring Jim Carrey, and did not care for what I saw, although I loved that book.

After awhile, they're not really rules. They're just my book-into-movie related opinions, of which I have several, it turns out.  :) 

Sometimes I really love a movie adaptation overall, but dislike specific things in it that were off. That's the case with the two hour Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, which is actually my second favorite movie.

**********

I'm going to start a society that keeps filmmakers from making bad adaptations of books I like. I haven't worked out the details of how I will do that, exactly, but I have a pretty good list of rules in my head.

Rule number 1: No fake penguins.

Rule number 2: Jane Eyre was plain. Not an exquisitely gorgeous woman who was just not wearing makeup. She was actually plain. It says so right in the book. Repeatedly.

Rule number 3: Adding rap music and making the kids bratty does not make any older story seem "fresh & modern for today's audience". It just makes it seem lame.

Rule number 4: Whenever possible, use Emma Thompson.

Rule number 5: If nothing exploded in the book, nothing should explode in the movie.

Rule number 6: You cannot compress 23 chapters of dialogue into a 2-minute music montage. Stop that.

Rule 7: Some children's books were written just to entertain. You do not need to shoehorn a political platform or huge moral lesson into every screen adaptation.

Rule 8: Let us never speak of Anne of Green Gables -- The Continuing Story again. Shame on you, Kevin Sullivan.

Rule number 9: The fake penguins in Mary Poppins are a valid exception to rule number 1.

Rule number ten: Let us rejoice in the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, and watch it annually.

Rule number eleven: The antidote to "neurotic, silly, sex-obsessed clotheshorse heroines" is not "humorless, angry, sexless, gun-toting heroines." There are plenty of good novels with nuanced, realistic female characters. Adapt those.

Rule number 12: Marmee was not Susan B. Anthony. Also, THIS is Jo: "Fifteen-year-old Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt, for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce, funny, or thoughtful."

Rule number 13: Elizabeth Bennett did not ask Mr. Darcy to call her "goddess divine." For crying out loud.

Rule number 14: Make the actor read the book first.

Rule number 15: Someone needs to make a movie of The Scarlet Letter. (That abomination in 1995 was not a movie, and was not The Scarlet Letter.)

Rule number 16: Crazy weather and dark portents are for the Brontës. Jane Austen liked calm weather but internal turmoil -- sunny day, stormy heart. Maybe the occasional rainstorm, to make Jane sick enough to stay with the Bingleys, but not to add gothic mood. Keep it straight.

Rule number 17: Christianity is neither quaint nor outdated. If the writer wrote about his faith and his God, keep it in the movie. Don't patronize us, Hollywood.

Rule number 18: Matthew MacFadyen.

Rule number 19: No amount of popcorn or Junior Mints will placate me if you mess up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I mean it.

Rule 20: Thank you for taking a lot of mediocre books over the years and turning them into some truly excellent films, mini-series, and television shows. (This is less a "rule" than a "thanks.")

Rule 21: There is a reason Mr. Darcy and Edward Cullen are bazillion dollar industries. We like chivalric behavior. Controlled desire is attractive. Give us more courtly romance, more gentlemen, and less trash.

Rule 22: Why are there still no decent screen adaptations of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, or Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards?

Rule 23: I bet if you did a Nancy Drew series, and it followed some of the best books very closely, and you set it back in the day, and did right by Nancy and George and Bess, many girls and women would eat it up. The old series is dated and was never great, and the recent movie was a joke. Her hair is TITIAN BLOND. And please don't forget the powder blue convertible.

Rule 24: The Muppet Christmas Carol shouldn't work. It takes a Dickens book & turns it into a musical with Muppets. But it does work, because it is genius, & sticks to the best bits of the book, & has the best Scrooge ever. Let that be a lesson to you, that if you're faithful to the source material, & don't betray the readers, you can take a lot of creative liberties, & nobody will mind that Bob Cratchit is a frog.

Rule 25: In closing, may I say that really all I ask is that you take what is in my head when I read a book, and turn exactly that into the movie, and don't add or subtract from the secret world I've created with the author. But you can join us in our creation if you don't come in and mess it all up. Thank you.

the three musketeers -- coming soon!

I've been meaning to tell you that the upcoming Three Musketeers movie finally has a trailer, as well as its own website up.

I must admit that I find myself rebelling wholeheartedly at the idea of the fresh-faced (nigh, pretty) and California-teenager-voiced Logan Lerman as D'Artagnan.

Were there no rougher-looking, British-sounding teenagers available in Britain? I know they are there. Go to any soccer match. Grab a random lad from the crowd. Cast him as D'Artagnan. You're good to go.

Or even real French people. Sometimes French characters are played by actual French people. The Musketeers of the Guard were French. The real D'Artagnan and the fictional D'Artagnan were also French. So I would be okay with a French teenager, even a too-pretty-to-be-D'Artagnan one, if he had a few convincing fake scars on his face and did not sound Californian. :)

And the trailer has the whole movie looking a bit long on special effects and cleavage (always the temptation with 3-D, I think), and short on actual acting.

However! The California teenager voice is wholly cancelled out by the dulcet tones of the trailer's brilliant narrator, whoever he may be. I find I have absolutely no problem with the trailer's brilliant narrator. Nope.

As for Athos, il est parfaitement parfait: un mousquetaire très beau et charmant, avec la voix la plus merveilleuse du monde, et la meilleure expression du visage jamais vu dans une salle de cinéma partout. Et vraiment les plus beaux yeux. Les plus beaux yeux.

masterpiece theatre spring schedule

Here is the remainder of the Masterpiece Theatre Classic Season (on PBS) for 2011. If you click on it, you can see it in its original size. (You know, for those of us in our forties and up who are grabbing for our reading glasses an awful lot lately. Ha.)

ps I saw this The 39 Steps when it first aired, and I quite liked it. :) I didn't like that horrid version of Persuasion that Rupert Penry Jones was in one bit, but I liked this a lot.

this and that

1. Hey! Have you read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy yet, like I told you to? It has been awhile since I mentioned it. I may have also mentioned it here. And a few other times.

Because it's coming to the big screen at the end of this year, and you have to read the book first, so you can have opinions about the movie.

I just do not think I will be able to look myself in the mirror each morning if I do not officially go on record right now as saying that there is only one George Smiley, and that George Smiley is Sir Alec Guinness. That George Smiley is not Gary Oldman. And if they mess up my fourth favorite book of all time, I am going to be so disappointed, and am going to write an indignant letter. Probably just inside my head, because I rarely actually mail or even type my indignant letters, but still.

Here is one of John LeCarre's descriptions of George Smiley. You will read it, and many other wonderful things, if you read Tinker, Tailor. I leave it to your conscience to decide if Gary Oldman can pull this off. Your conscience should clearly be telling you, "No, no, he cannot. Only Sir Alec Guinness could bring that to life."

Unlike Jim Prideaux, Mr. George Smiley was not naturally equipped for hurrying in the rain, least of all at dead of night. Indeed, he might have been the final form for which Bill Roach was the prototype. Small, podgy, and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London's meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting, and extremely wet. His overcoat, which had a hint of widowhood about it, was of that black loose weave which is designed to retain moisture. Either the sleeves were too long or his arms were too short, for, as with Roach, when he wore his mackintosh, the cuffs all but concealed the fingers. For reasons of vanity he wore no hat, believing rightly that hats made him ridiculous. "Like an egg-cosy," his beautiful wife had remarked not long before the last occasion on which she had left him, and her criticism, as so often, had endured. Therefore the rain had formed in fat, unbanishable drops on the thick lenses of his spectacles, forcing him alternately to lower or throw back his head as he scuttled along the pavement that skirted the blacked arcades of Victoria Station. He was proceeding west, to the sanctuary of Chelsea, where he lived.

For some unfathomable reason, the book is currently out of print in the U.S. I'm sure they'll release a new version when the movie comes out, with Gary on the cover, which is just ALL WRONG. So just go right over to Amazon right now and buy one of these or, better yet, this one or this one, used.

Or better yet, go to Amazon UK, where they still have it in print, and get this one. 

Then you will look respectable as you read. John LeCarre just donated his literary archive to Oxford. If you are there tomorrow, March 3 (lucky duck), which is World Book Day, you can go see some of it on view at the Bodleian. I would give my eye teeth to do that. :)

Here's a bit (the bit I just quoted) from one of his original drafts of Tinker, Tailor. I have this as my computer desktop right now, because it is inspiring. 

So let's review.

Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley is yes:

Gary Oldman as George Smiley is no:

Although Gary Oldman as Sirius Black was brilliant:

I will apologize loudly and profusely if I turn out to be wrong about this. And I want to be wrong about it, because I want it to be the best movie I have ever seen. The UK is releasing this some time in the last quarter of 2011, so we shall see. 

2. I really hope they don't mess up my fourth favorite book.

3. I started doing Weight Watchers Online on January 31. I have lost ten pounds so far. I even lost a pound on vacation, which I didn't expect. I really like it. I have a very long way to go, but I will check back in with you about it from time to time. 

4. I had these exact same Nikes when I was in junior high. 

5. Violet still isn't potty-trained. It is making me crazy.

6. I bought a used iPod on eBay, and it hasn't blown up yet. And we have music again, after a long time without. I'm so happy about that.

I bought a used one because my last new one got fried, and then the free replacement for it also got fried, so for some reason Apple did not want to give me another free replacement. (Ha.) We think (but do not know) that there was a power surge through the dock that I put it on. I was listening to it (this was last summer) and there was a crackling noise, and poof. It was dead. And then the same thing happened to the replacement a week later.  I have things rearranged in different outlets now, and so far, so good. The new one is one of those cute little squatty light blue Nanos they used to make. Every day, I tell it I love it, so that it will not blow up.

7. I was reading about the Vikings in Scotland for something I'm working on, and this summary of a 13th century Viking travel guide made me laugh:

Scotland is full of dangerous natives who speak an incomprehensible language and the weather is awful. 

8. Did any of you enter to win the HGTV Dream House in Vermont this year? I keep forgetting to ask you that. :) They announce the winner in 17 days. Claire was telling me every single day to enter, because she saw the special about the house on HGTV on New Year's Day after the Rose Parade, and was in love with the dog house. :D That girl cracks me up. She is pretty sure we're going to win. I haven't had the heart to explain "odds" to her.

9. We are done with Girl Scout cookie sales, except that Claire is boothing this Friday. But after that, done. Phew.

10. Do any of you do Zumba? Do you like it? I have to find some exercise to do. I hate exercise. But Zumba looked kind of fun online. Maybe I could just sit here and watch people do it online. :D I wish that worked.