The Great Gatsby – Language, Style, Emotion…

Sometimes when I go to see a movie I wonder what’s wrong with people because if I listened to reviews what would I be watching? Would it be, as seems the case with awards ceremonies that the movies deemed to deal with the ‘big’ subjects would win out? Industry ‘cool’ movies deal with politics, crime, history (and ok I do love history and I don’t mind politics) but gritty dirty ‘realism’ generally. Not much style about. You know I’m not talking about clothes I hope!

Maybe it’s because I never was a ‘cool’ one or maybe like Jay Gatsby I’m just ‘the most hopeful person in the world’ because when I go to a movie I want to be inspired or have my heart broke. I’m funny like that. I want, like in the golden days of cinema, an escape, if only to inside myself. I want to forget the perceived ‘big’ subjects and focus on the real big subjects, on the things that move us like courage, friendship, thought, tragedy, meaning, love and loss and all the complexities of the human world.

If there’s going to be an extra helping of anything please god make it glamour, style, exhilaration or enchantment. If I want just gritty realism I’ll watch a documentary, turn on my computer, open a newspaper, or my eyes. I don’t go to the movies for that! And yet for all my railing on behalf of ‘The Great Gatsby’ it’s the story that delivers it all. There’s gritty reality and escape here, ugliness and beauty, simplicity and complexity.

So if you’re looking for something for the weekend clearly I’m recommending Gatsby. I promise it won’t matter a fig if you haven’t read the book though it might make you want to. I haven’t read it since I was in school but I knew from the quotes I would love it and how I loved it.

This is the futility of the American dream and the flawed nature of capitalism through the story of Jay Gatsby a self made man who has dedicated himself to winning back the girl of his youth now married to another. So at its core we have a devastating love story and there’s nothing better than that. In fact it’s still the most popular movie theme of them all cool or not. Add a sensory feast of glamour, decadence and more style than any of us could imagine in our wildest dreams, brilliant sound track, beautiful effects and cinematography (I loved Luhrmanns treatment of everything), great acting and a world of tragedy well I was in my element!

After the initial heady scenes I was suffering badly as the author intended. Fitzgeralds beautiful language eliciting the maximum desired emotional response. My heart was full with the tragedy conveyed so beautifully by Leo’s moving delivery of meaning with words that seem so simple but in fact are not.

Some critics say this movie like others before has also failed to capture the book when even the book defies capture on many levels. I believed all the actors delivered in the roles they got exactly as the author intended. No mean feat. To me the most important elements are here and chief among these Fitzgerald’s prose so beautiful, skilled and deeply stirring. To hear this kind of language in a movie, spoken out loud by those who can, instead of just on faded pages or in my mind was a rare treat.

I think Fitzgerald would be pleased with me for feeling that emotion he wanted people to feel. I also think he would have loved this adaptation. Critics are saying the opening scenes are an assault, vulgar. I don’t agree at all but I could argue that there was an intended gaudiness and vulgarity to the story anyway. Fitzgerald showed the flaws and futility of the time, of excess and money but he was at the heart of that world himself and the highest paid writer of the day, only 28 when he wrote the novel and I do believe he would have loved this movie. I believe, allowing for the indefinable or arguable traits of this character and that, it captured the time, his intention and his vision. It’s a beautiful film. I want to see it again.

So what do you think? Have you seen it or do you plan to?

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Jane in Books, Art & Movies etc 5 Comments

The House

Hello everyone something different on the blog today. My first stab at ‘flash fiction.’ I won’t say too much about it but I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it and of course I’d love to hear your thoughts : )

Web Definition: Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as three hundred words, while others consider stories as long as a thousand words to be flash fiction.

The House

The house unchanged was just as she’d remembered. To see the house was good, unlike the town it had always been a haven. A place of freedom and free expression, a place of learning and safe keeping, for hiding, for time biding, for secrets…

It gave an impression of being in the sky not on the mountainside. Even standing beside it to look at it was to look up. It held its back to the mountain as if set into its walls and standing at the front door you could see the town about ten steep miles down a sweep of green and fields, of dark forests and golden whin. As a child she’d often thought to fall and her aunt borrowing and changing words from Tennyson as she went would say…

‘She clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, ring’d with the azure world, she stands. The wrinkled road beneath her crawls; she watches from her mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt she falls.’

It had been standing for a hundred years and on the same spot a house had stood for hundreds of years before. The site had been carefully chosen or pre-destined. A mountain stream and well, a rowan tree beside. With all its points, chimneys and windows it had a curious air of complication. Even those who knew its insides would find it hard to place everything, to say exactly what windows went with what rooms. To add to the foreboding there were straight steep steps up to the door. They didn’t invite the visitor. You’d have to be in great need to come knocking and with good reason.

Over the years subsequent generations had added new parts, new extensions. Life was hard here. They always had to think survival, self sufficiency and protection but inside the cornucopia of rooms large and small offered many warm comforts and surprising delights. It had to serve many purposes beyond that of a normal house. For generations it had kept people safe within its walls while keeping dangers out…

ENDS

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Jane in Scribblings 9 Comments

Memories of May

May is the loveliest of months. Some of my favourite memories are from this time of year. I got married in May so I have an anniversary coming soon to look forward to.

With my lovely dad on my wedding day

In May 2007 we kicked off our honeymoon in Barcelona. We took a mediteranean cruise from there with Royal Carribbean on the brand new and breathtaking ‘Voyager of the Seas’. The cruise experience was like a dream. Very old world, luxurious and quite surreal, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. The beauty of the ship itself, the experience of ‘living’ at sea, on a perfect sea. Waking in a different port every day, walking through sunsets to dinner. It was absolutely worth every penny and proved to me that it’s true what the experts say about how experiences are worth investing in, way more than any object or thing. It always makes us so happy to remember and I know it always will. It’s a perfect memory.

Last year in May for our anniversary we stayed at Bellinter House in Meath. Adrian had won the trip at his work Christmas party, surely the best Christmas party prize in history! This was our first time away without the children in more time than I cared to remember so we were really giddy: ) That combined with incredible weather and the beautiful Boyne Valley setting made for a really fun trip but I fell in love with the beautiful Bellinter House too and it was quiet enough to pretend it was mine!

My… I mean Bellinter House : )

Making myself at home

I think I belong here. It has a green library

Chilling out with Adrian, newspapers and drinks at Bellinter House May 2012

Also last May I went on holidays with my mum and dad for the first time. I probably couldn’t convince you of how brilliant and bizarre a thing that was : ) Holidays are not the norm for them and would never have happened at all had my sister Martha not been living in Salerno on the Amalfi coast in Italy. After some persuasion we did convince them…

Lloyds Baia Hotel, Vietri, pictured from the beach below

We stayed at Lloyds Baia Hotel in Vietri sul Mare which is the next town over and walking distance from Salerno the two being right at the end of the Amalfi coast. The added beauty of Salerno and even Vietri to a lesser extent is because they are at the end of Amalfi they are the least ‘touristy‘ of the towns there that include Positano, Sorrento and Capri. Salerno in particular is much more authentically Italian, has fewer tourist shops or crowds and it’s possible to eat and stay cheaply here even in Summer. Our hotel in Vietri was a stunner with a balcony bar and views to die for. I think we could safely say they had a good time…and so did we.

Martha & Mammy

Dad looking right at home at the port in Salerno

On the ferry approaching Capri

The love birds in their own world

I could get used to this easily

Mum & Dad, May evening 2012 in Salerno, Italy

Here’s to the perfect memories, to May, to long hot summer days…

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Jane in FAMILY, THE YEAR IN EVENTS, PARTIES & SPRAOI'S 11 Comments

My Gatsby Bathroom Dream

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I love glamour,literature and style and and few decades were more stylish than the 1920′s, few books or writers more stylish than F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby.

While I wait impatiently for the new movie version this month that promises…‘decadent, epicurean extravagance & debauchery’ (The Guardian, 4/5/13) with man I love Leonardo di Caprio as Jay Gatsby, I‘ve been dreaming up a dreamly scheme for my bathroom inspired by the 1920′s and all things Gatsby…

Green & Black

Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.

You always look so cool,” she said.

She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Gold, Gatsby, Art Deco, 1920′s, Leo

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Art print for the bathroom wall – link in picture

To set the scene for this dream my bathroom has a black tiled floor, a large window with an art deco insert and a free standing roll top bath, a bit slippery but still, lucky me. I’ve said to Adrian that when we get old and its too dangerous to bathe in we can use it exclusively as a drinks cooler for parties.

I would have art deco style panelling halfway up the walls…

On the left is a metal vintage art deco panelling and on the right is a wooden hand carved deco style from Agrell Architectural Carving (link in image)

Three of these colours from Farrow & Ball…

The wall with the window I’d paint in Pitch Black, all of it, the panelling too.

I’d have Dove Tale on the panelling around the rest of the room and also on the skirting, architraving and door.

Arsenic, a simply fabulous colour, I’d have on the remaining three walls above the panelling.

Here’s a beautiful example of arsenic with pink in a bedroom…

For the lighting I would go for the one of these. The one on the left is beautiful, vintage, art deco and more in keeping with the theme but I might go with the one on the right as I do like to mix my styles and the coloured drops would look stunning against the black and green…Click Here for the Vintage Chandelier Company and Here for the Art Deco version.

From a slightly earlier time I’d hang this painting by artist I love Kees van Dongen…’Woman with Frill’ 1911…I love her pose, her expression and her colours are sublime…

I’d have to have my long time favourite, ‘A Challenge to Admiration’ by Rolf Armstrong, 1926…along with at least one oversized mirror and one Great Gatsby printed quote but which one? So many gems to choose from…I’m in love with every one and I’m in love with this painting…

Life’s just not glamourous enough but in a bathroom this glamourous we should have a party. I’m thinking eight to ten at a squeeze along with the champagne, the piano and a disco ball so who’d like to come? Not so intimate as a large party but still silly, stylish and fun…

“I’m not sentimental–I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last–the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Woman in Champagne Glass print by Howard S Redell 1930′s click HERE

Disco Bubbles print click HERE

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Jane in Books, Art & Movies etc, GLAMOUR....ALWAYS GLAMOUR, THE YEAR IN EVENTS, PARTIES & SPRAOI'S 2 Comments

Coming up Roses by Martha Gilheaney

As umbrellas magically transform into impossibly long stemmed roses I feel a growing excitement.

For the second year I will know what summer is.

Rome, like most European cities is dark and gloomy in winter and while the idea of globe trotting in a direction so as to shun the darkest season is appealing, my January arrival in Rome allowed me to appreciate the contrast, allowed me to experience car alarm activating, gigantic hailstones, the rising Tiber swallowing all its adjoining paths and torrential puddles dismantling my pumps with a devil may care attitude because come April you have blue skies, 30 degrees.

The city is beginning to stir and come alive. When you think of the eternal city I imagine that you too think of an eternal summer. Rome has no time for mellow spring. For what is spring without daffodils, furry tree buds and baby birds? Spring…. a happening, or a half season (as Italians call it) reserved for the rural. Rome is currently charging full steam ahead into SUMMER

If you’re thinking of visiting Rome come now, now is the time.

Last Friday I spent the evening on the steps of a piazza. It was one of the best nights I’ve had in Rome so far. Why? Because of the weather. Good weather changes everything, the mundane into the extraordinary. This evening was a melting pot of sensations for the senses, it had pizza, the napoletana with its salty anchovies being my present obsession, a few bottles of peroni followed by pistachio and nutella gelato, pistachio being my tried and tested favourite, nutella being the never give up looking for something better.

Entertainment was provided by the street performers… clowns who made me cry with laughter, skillfully using the entire piazza and its people for their choreography, breathtaking fire eaters and musicians whose beautiful music would have carried me away, had I not already been somewhere people dream of being carried to.

Bubbles the size of cars were blowing by our heads and a drunk with a guitar was strumming furiously to collect money for beer and cigarettes… every so often a spray from the fountain blew our way, dusk was falling and it was warm.

It was one of those beautiful, hazy evenings where all your senses are sizzling and you relish every moment, leading to a memory you will never forget.

What is it about hot, balmy evenings that even while I type this I feel giddy? I try to explain it to Christian (My New Jersian flatmate). Sun dresses, floppy hats, bare feet, bronzed skin, frothy waves, the way flavours of food are enhanced, sitting on sunny steps (feeling that alone is a novel activity), heat on the skin and the endless social events that open up, rooftop barbeques, roofless discos, everything being roofless or rooftop! All amazing but coming from temperate Ireland the thing that gets me most are the hot, balmy evenings.

As we tend to remember with rose tinted glasses I do have some hot summer, home memories (mainly from the summer of ’95) but these memories rarely materialize again or stretch to the evening. Now, sitting outside a Roman restaurant, red and white checkered tablecloth, candlelight, wine breathing, cat at my feet and the knowledge that the world’s best pizza is in the stone oven with my name on it, I soak up the fading rays and the lingering heat and I wonder how will I ever acclimatize to home life again?