Bah, humbug!

 As a longtime Dickens buff and connoisseur of cinematic remakes of A Christmas Carol, I was pleasantly surprised this morning to learn that yet another movie version of the classic story will be released later this year.  This newest one stars Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge, which at first struck me as unusual casting.  But after having viewed the trailer below, I am hopeful the talented actor can give a creditable account of literature's premier curmudgeon.  Coming in November- I look forward to it.

 

Next Trollope

 Earlier this week was the final Zoom meeting session to discuss the Anthony Trollope novel The Claverings.  This is a part of the ongoing Big Read project organized by The Trollope Society.  Starting today, I begin reading the next novel on the list, John Caldigate.  This is a story of a young man, estranged from his father, who leaves his home in England to make his fortune in Australia.  After doing so, he returns to England, only to be embroiled in a bigamy scandal when he is accused of being already married to an Australian wife when he marries in England.  The book is said to be Trollope's response to the common theme in the novels of Charles Dickens of bureaucratic incompetence, as exemplified in Little Dorrit by the Circumlocution Office, which displays its unerring knowledge of "how not to do things."  Trollope, himself a government official in the Royal Mail, refutes Dickens with characters who are government employees who possess cool efficiency and professionalism. I look forward to this book, and the bi-weekly Zoom meetings to discuss it.

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

 On this day, 213 years ago, Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England.  He would eventually become one of the greatest writers in the English language.  But before that, he had a difficult childhood.  He grew up under a spendthrift father who was perpetually in debt- at a time when that condition held great shame and often the threat of imprisonment.  Young Charles was sent to work in a factory at a very young age in order to support his family while his father was in a debtor's prison.  This had a profound effect on him.  Not only did it influence his writing, but Dickens also carried a lifelong desire to aid the poor and oppressed, even founding a shelter home for homeless women.  That's not to say, of course, that he was universally kind and benevolent.  He was a distant father to his many children, an unfaithful husband to his devoted wife, and a cantankerous client of his many publishers.  Yet, he managed to be a prolific and popular author of many novels that have a permanent place in the English literary pantheon.  And each year, his classic A Christmas Carol is read, performed, and shown as a movie (in countless iterations) to a degree hardly seen with any other piece of writing.  Thought his life ran a short 58 years, his lasting influence on the culture cannot be overstated.  So on this day, let us remember a true titan of the written word, Charles Dickens.

An appeal for help

 This morning I learned the name of one of the many victims of the Los Angeles wildfires: Simon Vance.  The name resonated with me because he is my favorite audiobook narrator.  It is to Vance that I owe my longstanding deep love of the works of Charles Dickens; he was the narrator of Bleak House that I first listened to decades ago.  Since then, Simon Vance has been for me the voice of Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, Eliot, and Patrick O'Brian along with dozens of other authors.  You see, in my always solitary and often repetitive work, I resort to audiobooks to occupy the time.  Among book narrators, Simon Vance is simply the best.  He has an uncanny ability to create character voices - both male and female - that give life to every passage of dialog.  He has a true actor's capacity to express the emotion and feeling of every scene that I can't help thinking any author, even those long dead, would applaud.  It would be difficult to understate the impact Vance's exemplary work has had on my life for many years.

So I was particularly moved when I learned this morning that Vance was among the many who have lost their home to the southern California fires.  Not surprisingly, a friend of Vance and his wife has set up a GoFundMe page on their behalf to assist in their time of need.  In situations such as this, there are familiar excuses to not help out:  Celebrities are not deserving of help.  Living in that region of California, he is certainly rich.  He should have insurance that will fully and immediately make him whole.  But so strong is my respect and admiration for his work, I overcame these excuses and made a small contribution to the fund.  I mean, Vance is a prominent voice performer, but hardly a household name.  I have no idea what his personal financial or insurance situation is, but I won't begrudge him on that account.  No, he is simply an individual whose work I admire, and I felt called to demonstrate my appreciation by lending symbolic assistance in his time of need.

The fires in southern California are a tremendous tragedy.  For those who wish to help, there are many worthy and deserving aid organizations to which one can donate:  The American Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, and Los Angeles Animal Services are just a few examples.  But if you, like me, want to give direct help to an individual in need, please consider the Simon Vance GoFundMe page.

Bah, Humbug

 I've previously mentioned the wonderful Dickens novel A Christmas Carol.  So great is the impact of this work on society that we've seen dozens of screen adaptations of the story over the decades.  I've seen most of them, and in my mind have long settled the question of the best of them:  the 1984 version, starring George C. Scott as Scrooge.  Compared to others, this is a very traditional treatment of the familiar story.  To those who've read the book, large passages of dialog will be familiar as traditional text.  The cinematography, casting, costumes, and sets are detailed and lavish in a traditional way.  This production has none of the gimmicks that others so often use to stand out in a crowded field of Carols.  But what it has is the superb acting of Mr. Scott; there has never been a better rendition of Dickens' character than his. I've always held this opinion of the movie, so I was pleasantly surprised to see an online article that reinforced my judgement.  Nice to have the affirmation.

God bless us, everyone

 It was on this day, December 19th, 1843 that Charles Dickens published his classic Christmas story, A Christmas Carol.  And 180 years later, the short novel remains an important part of the holiday tradition.  Literally dozens of film versions of the book have been made (my own personal favorite is the 1984 version starring George C. Scott as Scrooge), as well as innumerable stage productions.  The story of the miser Ebeneezer Scrooge is well known: a succession of four ghosts visit him through the night before Christmas and succeed in changing his cold heart into one in union with a generous Christmas spirit.  The book itself was sort of a hail Mary pass for Dickens, who was in a publishing slump at the time.  A couple of poorly selling novels had landed him in a tight financial spot, and this book was intended to provide a much-needed boost to his income.  It was written and published in a shockingly short time- about six weeks from the first written word to a published book.  And what a book!  Nominally published by Dickens's familiar publisher, Chapman and Hall, it was actually self-published, with the author himself paying for the lavishly appointed volumes of the initial press run.  The story is accurately and entertainingly told in the feature film The Man Who Invented Christmas, a film that includes two actors, Miriam Margolyes and Simon Callow, who are themselves dedicated Dickens buffs and patrons of the Dickens Museum in London.  So on this day, at this time of year, let us remember the lessons of Scrooge's ghosts, and endeavor to embrace the cheer and joy of the season.

Oh, Miriam!

 Next up in my reading list (or to be more correct, listening list) is the newest memoir of British actress Miriam Margolyes, Oh, Miriam!  This volume comes in quick succession after her autobiography This Much Is True which came out in September 2021.  Many will know Margolyes as Professor Sprout from multiple Harry Potter movies, but I first knew her as Lady Whiteadder in the Blackadder television sitcom.  More recently, she played housekeeper Mrs. Fisk in the feature film The Man Who Invented Christmas, which tells the tale of Charles Dickens as he wrote A Christmas Carol.  An appropriate casting, as Margolyes is an enthusiastic patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London.  I'm looking forward to this book, which promises to relate many of Miriam's most amusing anecdotes, for which she is justly famous as an entertaining talk show guest.

Miriam Margolyes

Lean Machine

At the end of the month, the DVD shipping system of Netflix will be shut down.  After years of disks arriving by mail in red envelopes, I will be left with only a hodgepodge of streaming services to access movies.  This is a real loss, since the Netflix DVDs were the best way to view obscure and old movies.  Streaming services show new releases, of course, but their selection of low-demand titles is very limited.  This development has already caused me to adjust my film watching habits, since I now have resorted to buying DVDs from online stores.  One arrived just yesterday: David Lean's Oliver Twist.

 The famous director David Lean, known for cinematic masterpieces such as Bridge on the River Kwai, and Doctor Zhivago, early in his career also made two films that were adaptations of Charles Dickens novels.  Oliver Twist was released in 1948, and starred a very young Alec Guiness.  Two years earlier, Lean directed Great Expectations which also featured Guiness.  Both films are often included in various lists of "100 Best British Films".  Since there are literally dozens of movie versions of any given Dickens novel, I could (and perhaps will) make it a lifelong hobby to view each one.  But I will start with Lean's version of Oliver Twist, which Dickens wrote as a young newlywed while living in a house that is now a museum, which I visited a few years ago.

Lean's work intersects with my life and interests in several instances.  For example, his classic Doctor Zhivago was released the year I was born and won several Academy Awards.  But late in life, Lean began a project to make a film based on what is one of my lifelong favorite books: Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.  In the late 1970s, he was doing the type of work necessary prior to filming a contemporary film about the 1789 mutiny.  He had scouted locations for shooting, and had begun the process of having a replica of the Bounty ship built.  Unfortunately for theater goers, Lean dropped out of the project when fundraising difficulties arose.  The film was ultimately made by a production company founded by Dino De Laurentiis.  It was released in 1984 and featured Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins.   Despite an all-star cast and the most historically accurate Bounty replica ever used in film, the movie was not an overwhelming box office success.  One wonders what it might have been under Lean's direction.

The fate of Bounty replicas also fascinates me.  I know almost nothing about the ship used for the 1932 mutiny film starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton.  But I know quite a bit about the Bounty built for the 1962 film starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard.  That replica was built for the film in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia using traditional wooden ship building techniques.  She was built significantly larger than the original ship, in order to accommodate the MGM film crew.  After use in the '62 film, the ship appeared in various other movies, and was a tourist attraction docked in St. Petersburg, FL.  The vessel was maintained on an irregular schedule, alternating between neglect and major refits.  She received her last maintenance in Boothbay Harbor, Maine in October 2012,  Weeks later while returning to Florida, she sank in hurricane Sandy off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

The Bounty replica used in the '84 film was the most historically faithful of all the major film ships.  This, even though she was built in New Zealand with a steel hull.  Her overall dimensions and wood fittings were closely based on original plans found in English archives.  After the film, the ship saw little use and was home ported in Australia as a tourist attraction.  More recently, the ship has been purchased by a Hong Kong corporation, and her current location and occupation are unclear.