How Are You Escaping?

It might be the least of our troubles, but curating the internet has never been trickier. It hit me that I NEED A PLAN or a method or just some pure dumb luck to navigate this new internet where every second person has a video of them singing, or a recipe for bread, or some great how-to, or some wonderful boop to the soul. What I usually do is find something that I love and then just follow along from one thing to another. It’s not a terrible strategy. But these days what I’m usually doing is finding some cool thing and thinking, no I’m too tired to watch that right now, so I email myself the link. Later I open up my email, and think, I’m still too tired to watch that, and then I delete it. This is actually sort of working for me.

So let me first share with you my love of Cary Grant. As luck would have it, this painting by my husband, Robert Lemay, has come back to us. One of my all-time favourite paintings of his which is based on a screen shot from To Catch a Thief. I’m going to make a point of re-watching it in the coming weeks.

Frequent readers of this blog know of my love for Jane Austen. You may remember reading my essay on the sponge-cake model of friendship. My latest fascination is with an “unmet friend” (admittedly she does not know I exist), Autumn de Wilde. (If you’re reading in the newsletter, you might like to click in to the browser to see the videos). She is the director of the film and a new inspiration.

Because I’ve watched pretty much every Austen adaptation ever made, I was quite thrilled to hear about a new Emma. Of course I’d planned to see it in the theatre, and then the world was shattered. Luckily, it was released on Apple TV and I paid the big bucks to rent it. And is it weird, I want to watch it again asap? I guess it will come out for purchase ‘ere long.

Here I want to say something brilliant and intelligent about the movie. I want to talk about the palette and the humour and the archness and raised eyebrowness of the movie. The delight and the tongue-in-cheek-ness of it along with its lovely sincerity and real understanding of the book. As someone who has read the book more times than I can remember, and repeatedly watched other adaptations and loved them, I was at first a bit taken aback by the movie. It’s very structured, and then it thinks for itself, independent of the other adaptations, which ends up being a strength. I watched it twice all through, because, hey, one thing we have is time right now. I don’t want to talk about it too much here because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but suffice to say, you will think about certain scenes and grow to admire them even more as you continue to think about them, even if your first reaction is WTF??

I want to know everything about her. Did you know that Autumn de Wilde directed Florence + The Machine’s amazing video:

You may or may not know about my obsession with Margeurite Duras. I’ve read most of her work, but hadn’t seen the films she directed. I’d read a lot about Nathalie Granger, but could never find it with subtitles. (It’s available now on DVD so I own a copy). It’s a great failing to only speak English, but there it is. The scene with Gerard Depardieu is quite unforgettable. The way the two women stare him down, and say, “no” is indelible, once watched.

Well, I’m going to leave you with two more TV shows that I’ve been in love with lately. If you haven’t fallen in love already with Schitt’s Creek, I highly recommend. The ending aired and (Spoiler Alert) the wedding is quite an excellent pairing with the ending of Emma. Who says the romance plot is dead?

And, also very near the end of the last season of The Good Place. The cast is amazing. It really seems like a show for this time imho.

I would like to end with a wonderful book list of all the great stuff I’ve been reading. But like many, my brain is mush, and so I’m just concentrating on the stuff that I can do. Reading isn’t the easiest right now, but I’m hopeful I’ve turned the corner on that. I’ve been taking photos, looking at the photos of others, drawing a little, and even baking (not something I really love doing but that’s where we be).

Listening also to a fair bit of music, but I’ll save that for another post.

For now, as the say in Schitt’s Creek, best wishes, warmest regards.