the other boleyn girl

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So I didn’t do an epic best of list for 2008…whether it’s because I was too busy, or because I was wiped out from being sick for a month, or just because in general I was less impressed with what I saw, read, and listened to I’m not sure.  But in looking at the films from this year, I thought there were enough good ones (a lot of solid 4 stars – very few 5 stars) that I should at least make my lazy self do a best films of 2008.

Please keep in mind that this list is missing some pretty significant films as I was not great about getting to the theater this year.  Likely contenders for best films that are notably missing because of I’ve yet to see them are Synechdoche New York, The Reader, Elegy, W, Taxi To The Dark Side, Religulous, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Tell No One, Che, Wendy & Lucy, American Teen, Blindness (which I was dying to see but still managed to miss) and The Wrestler.  Any of these films had the potential to drastically change the list below, had I been more on the ball with my filmgoing…

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10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 4 stars

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9. Milk 4 stars

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8. Revolutionary Road 4 stars

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7.  Frozen River 4 stars

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6.  Snow Angels 4 stars

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5.  Vicky Cristina Barcelona 4 stars

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4.  Forgetting Sarah Marshall 4.5 stars

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3.  Ballast 4.5 stars

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2.  The Dark Knight 4.5 stars

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1.  Reprise 5 stars

Runner’s Up:  Wall-E and Iron Man

I have to say, reviewing this list, it was a very depressing year overall.  Of the ten films on my list I would say at least seven or eight are significantly depressing.  Maybe I just had a depressing year and so everything seems more depressing to me?  Could be.

The Nice Surprises of 2008? Let The Right One In, Rachel Getting Married, and Redbelt (though I’ve got some serious problems with it, the end largely redeemed it).

Biggest Disappointment of 2008The Changeling.  I enjoy Jolie and thought it was going to be great…it was decidedly not great, though I don’t blame Jolie for it.  Runners up for biggest disappointments go to:  My Blueberry Nights, Burn After Reading, Married Life, The Last Mistress, and Brideshead Revisted all of which I had high hopes for…hopes that were dashed horribly against sharp rocks.

The Middling Mediocre Middle Ground of 2008Hancock (eh), Semi-Pro (barely eh), Step Brothers (eh when it should have been hilarious), Cloverfield (eh), Wanted (eh, Jolie saved it from being an utterly unwatchable special effects commercial), and Hellboy 2 (eh, too many effects, not enough of everything else).

Worst Film of 2008?  The worst film I saw in 2008 was The Other Boleyn Girl, if only because the book (not even the kind of book I generally read) is freaking fantastic, and how you can screw that up so badly is beyond me.   The worst mainstream film made in 2008 had to be a three way tie between Gran Torino and Nights in Rodanthe.  I didn’t see either film, but seeing the previews alone was enough to make me want to slit my wrists and gouge out my eyes.  In the case of this tie I’d have to award the final prize to Gran Torino…how can Clint Eastwood sometimes be so right on and awesome and sometimes be so off the mark and hideously awful?  It defies explanation…

Worst Film of 2008 that I refused to see in the theater and hid out watching in my apartment and am embarrased to say I paid for:  Another tie folks…Sex and the City and 27 Dresses.  Where Katherine Heigl gets off talking shit about Knocked Up for being “anti-female” or whatever and then doing this dreck and thinking it’s somehow “female positive” I have no idea.  As for Sex and the City, it was better than I expected it to be in that the preview looked like one giant commercial, however, I cannot respect this film as I don’t understand how a film can actually have a character while ‘down on her luck’ talking about Cinderella to a child and trying to explain how things don’t always work out that way – happy ending-ish and all – trying to explain that it’s fiction…just a story, and then have that character do a 180 in the next 40 minutes and LITERALLY have a Cinderella style moment in which she is proposed to and a slipper is placed on her foot…SERIOUSLY!?!  WTF?!?!  If they were doing it tongue in cheek…or as a joke…or something I could maybe forgive it, but I just don’t believe they were.  The rest of the film wasn’t smart enough for that part to be a joke.  So, bad on you SATC.  bad.

So, in finally getting back to my previously promised Tudor rant/review, here we are.

I guess part of my problem with this show is that, at this point, I have a surprising amount of actual knowledge about this time period and these people and all the events that led up to these kind of amazing (and horrible) things that happened to these people.  And so, knowing what I know, I just don’t understand the choices that they make for the show. They will make these seemingly valiant attempts to keep it true to the facts in certain ways and then just go wildly off the mark for no apparent reason. 

Adapting material is difficult, and it’s very difficult to do it well, so I do try to cut them some slack, but some of this stuff they have added in or changed is just ridiculous and unnecessary.  The great thing about Henry VIII and his six wives is that it was rife with drama and intrigue to begin with.  There were murders, conspiracies, marriages, affairs, sexual escapades, religious persecution, beheadings, trials, rumors, it’s all there – you actually have to invent very little to “sex it up” and make it pretty for the masses…so I just don’t understand the choices they make. 

The Good:  It’s interesting to see these characters brought to life and the scenes shot on location are rich and beautiful, unfortunately,  too large a percentage of the show is shot on sets, which despite a good effort for a television show, look pretty sad and small and cheap.  The costumes however, show no expense spared, and are fantastic. 

*spoilers*

The Bad & The Ugly:

Mary of Tudor (Henry VIII’s younger sister) was married to King Louis XII when she was 18.  This character is played by…wait for it…38 year old actress Gabrielle Anwar.  Now I hate Anwar, and have never liked her ever, so I’m a bit aggressively biased here.  However, even for the non-biased, Anwar is not looking too good these days (and certainly not anywhere near 18 )  and she has a really bad habit of making these terrible expressions while she is “acting” that make her look even older than her 38 years.  It is a painful experience watching her play this interesting character.  

I know of course that people play characters much younger than their age all the time on TV, but it’s actually kind of important here when you understand that these women were being married off at very young ages.  It was a huge part of what was going on at that time, and it’s difficult to understand as a viewer when we see Anwar, looking 40-ish and being horrified because she’s marrying an ugly old king.  It’s far less dramatic to see Anwar marry this guy, than if they had cast an innocent looking 18 year-old.   

Additionally, in the show they had her marrying the wrong king (who cares about any kind of accuracy, right?).  They invented (or stole?) some King of Portugal for her to marry.  This seems to be not such a sin until you understand what a complex web of alliances there were at this time, and marrying off princesses to other countries was a chief way of solidifying an alliance.  In reality, she married King Louis XII of France…and Portugal had nothing to do with it. 

But the greatest sin is in how it all plays out.  In reality, Mary didn’t kill her husband as Anwar does (a crime of treason for which she could easily be killed).  In truth the King dies about three months after the marriage (an old guy putting it to an 18 year-old for three months can be exhuasting – and fatal).  After King Louis VII died, Mary very cleverly arranged to marry the man she was actually in love with, Charles Brandon, with the help of King Francis I (the new King of France) and much to the anger of her brother King Henry VIII, since it was without his permission.  In the show, Anwar kills this ‘King of Portugal’ and heads back home within a week, marrying Brandon in the process.  It’s like they want to tell the story, but they just can’t manage it.  And I have to say, again, a far less dramatic take than the actual original story, which is pretty tragic and then redeeming in its own way.  A headstrong young woman being sold off to a foreign country but then cleverly managing to marry the man she loves anyway (unheard of in that time)…fascinating.

Henry Fitzroy.  Son of King Henry VIII by his mistress Elizabeth “Bessie” Blount.  This is true, and handled pretty accurately.  And then they suddenly decide to kill the kid with the “sweating sickness”.  Why?  I have no clue.  It’s not like they milk it for high drama.  There is literally one scene in which the kid’s mother comes to see him (already dead) and there is a maybe five-second scene of King Henry looking at the tiny crown of the kid (who he never saw anyway).  In reality Henry Fitzroy lived to the age of 17 and died suddenly of consumption (tuberculousis).  

Anne Boleyn.  They’ve done Anne the biggest disservice of anyone, which is really a crime for a series focused partially (for the first two years at least) on the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn.  I’m not a huge Anne Boleyn fan, she was a manipulative clever woman and a vindictive tyrant of sorts, but she was also incredibly witty and wise in a way and she rose to a power no women had previously imagined, based solely on her own merit (and maybe beauty). 

She also had a very good reason for being as angry as she was and for becoming the tyrant she became.  Much of what Anne Boleyn did in her rise to becoming the Queen of England can be chalked up to revenge.  In reality, Anne was very much in love with Henry Percy (eventually to become the Earl of Northumberland) and he with her.  They were likely married or “pre-contracted” which was as good as marriage in those days (and the relationship was likely consumated).  This was a great match for Anne, both in that it would rise her up in the societal ranks, and also because, rare in that day, she loved the man and he her. 

This marriage was deemed unworthy by both Cardinal Wolsey and Henry Percy’s father and possibly King Henry (although it was a time before Anne would realize the king had anything to do with it – and there is speculation as to whether he actually did).  Wolsey and Percy’s father undid her marraige quite cruelly and Anne was temporarily banished from court.  It was a very hard lesson to learn.  And for a woman like Anne, it was not taken lightly.  She came back to court with a very clear idea about how to get power, and that she would need to play the game like a master.  There was no way to get that power, or revenge on Wolsey without rising as high as possible, and there was nothing above Queen for a woman.  It’s unlikely she ever really loved Henry VIII, although it’s possible that after years of courting she did fall for him.  It’s also highly unlikely she was guilty of any crimes against him. 

In The Tudors there is none of this backstory.  None.  We never know why she hated Wolsey so much. Religious reasons are given, and they were certainly present as well, but her single minded hatred of the man is far too personal for it to just be religious difference, and Wolsey was actually fairly light in punishiment for the followers of Martin Luther (i.e. heretics) compared with his successor Thomas More, who also opposed Anne’s marriage to Henry, yet she did not set out to destroy More, she had a very specific reason to go after Wolsey, and none of that is addressed.  They do give her a previous “dalliance” with the poet Thomas Wyatt, which is completely out of context and just wrong.  There is a recorded flirtation, but an affair is very unlikely.  So overall it is an incredibly unfair portrait.  All the history that built this amazing woman and character is just dropped.  It makes it impossible to understand her motivations and as such it is the broadest of sketches of a fascinating woman.  And it makes me angry.  Really angry. 

In the end, I don’t mind so much if you want to create a completely fictionalized world of The Tudors, I probably couldn’t ever love it, but I certainly can’t even like it if you can’t make it more interesting than what really happened.  If you’re going to make it fiction…it’s gotta be better than reality.  And this, isn’t. 

2 Stars.   Blech.

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I’ve already written a massive review about this book, so I’ll spare you.  Suffice to say the book pretty well rocked, and the movie was one of the most horrible pieces of crap I’ve ever seen in my life.  The comic is a pretty accurate detail of what it was like to read the book, I really did hate Anne Boleyn with such venom for about 450 pages that I could barely sit still, but Gregory does a pretty good job of turning her around towards the end so that you can feel for her as she gets trapped in her own web. 

On the same topic, I recently finished Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminisit Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII.  It was interesting, but I didn’t feel it was a very in depth (or feminist) account of these women, I also didn’t love the author’s writing style and often found it a bit confusing, so I’ve moved on to The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir, which is a giant in-depth biography.  I’m about 100 pages in and so far find it incredibly informative and well-written. 

It’s funny, I probably would have read and enjoyed a book like this in school had it been assigned to me, but I certainly never would have read it in my free time of my own volition, and here I am not only reading it, but actively hunting down other good biographies I’ve heard of.  Strange how people grow up and change.

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I have no idea how to review the book I just read, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory.

I don’t really read historical fiction, I think the last historical fiction I read when I was about 15, and this book, though very engaging, is not really in the same league with the stuff I generally read these days, much of it award winning literary fiction and short fiction. Yet, I cannot deny that I was totally obsessed with this book while I read it, and the proof is in how quickly I devoured it. The book is about 660 pages, and I began reading it Tuesday night after work and was finished late Thursday night after work. Three days. 660 Pages. Clearly, I was smitten.

Let’s start by talking about why I even picked this up since it’s so outside my normal reading range. I am pretty fascinated by the whole Anne Boleyn thing, I think a lot of women are, it’s such an interesting time in the history of women, where they literally had no power and were traded as commodities by their fathers, brothers, uncles, and husbands on a daily basis without a thought as to their own desires. Yet a woman could also become a Queen, as Anne Boleyn did…which held great power (maybe, if you were brilliant like Elizabeth I and didn’t marry a guy who could/would take it all away). Anyway, it is a very interesting and horrible time for women and I’ve always been fascinated by it and have thought often of picking up a biography of Anne Boleyn or a good history of that time period. Instead I went for some historical fiction. At least I didn’t see the movie. I was actually afraid I was going to see the movie, and I was afraid it was going to be terrible and put me off of the whole idea entirely, so while at the bookstore I decided to pick up Gregory’s fictionalized interpretation of the Boleyns with the idea that I would also research getting a great biography as well. This is still my plan, I just didn’t think I’d finish Gregory’s book in three days. So, prologue aside, onto my attempt to rate this monster…

The Good: It was completely compelling. The high-stakes narrative drove the story forward so feverishly that I didn’t care that the beautiful literary writing I have come to expect in things I read was absent. I just needed to know what was going to happen to these characters and how it was going to unfold (even though I knew the true end for Anne, Mary Boleyn’s story is largely unknown or unwritten).

The story is told from the point of view of Mary Boleyn, which is quite a brilliant decision because it allowed Gregory to speak from a point of view largely ignored or unknown in the history of the Boleyns and the court of King Henry VIII. It also allowed me to hate Anne with a fiery freaking passion, which I did for about 450 pages. Like any good story though, Anne reaps what she sows, and Gregory successfully turns her around in the last 150 or so pages so that I could feel the requisite horror and sympathy for her ultimate fate.

I feared that the romance factor would be gag inducing and put me off the book immediately, but I was pleased to find there was very little, if any of this. In fact, because Mary and Anne are never really allowed to be in love (except Mary in the end) there was almost no romantic swooning at all, for which I was very very grateful. When Mary finally does swoon in the end, you don’t mind so much because she’s had such a miserable lot of luck most of the time, she’s earned a good swoon.

Gregory also did an excellent job of getting my feminist ideals all twisted up within this web. There is an excellent point in the story, when Anne is becoming successful in her bid for winning the King’s affections (pushing her sister quite roughly to the side without a thought by the way) and she makes an impassioned argument to Mary that basically the world will never be the same for women, because she (Anne) is proving that even women, who are perceived to have no power, can accomplish great things (becoming Queen out of sheer will) by being clever and intelligent and not giving up or letting others set her path.

It’s a good argument, and you almost feel with her for a moment, until you hear Mary’s perspective, which though milder, is equally as feminist and powerful in its own way. Mary sees Anne’s pushing aside of a legitimate Queen (Queen Katherine) who has literally done nothing wrong except for get older and not bear any male heirs, as setting the standard for wives to be removed and tossed aside as soon as a king, or man, tires of them.

And the wonderful thing is that they are both right – which is when feminist perspectives get so interesting. Anne is right to push her way forward and not be bound by the men in her life (father, uncle, brother, and even her King) and though it is ultimately her undoing her daughter eventually becomes Queen Elizabeth, a powerful, brilliant, and eternally clever woman, like her mother was, who is arguably one of the greatest Queens in history. But Mary is proven right as well, in that when the King tires of Anne she is quite quickly beheaded (he has already learned it is quite fine to get rid of a wife, even if she is a Queen) and he goes on to divorce (“annul”) two more wives and behead a third before he dies (not in this text). Setting the stage for men with wandering eyes and lustful hearts everywhere to get bored and move on at the slightest whim. And that has worked out SO well for women.

The Bad: I did hate Anne with a venomous passion. Perhaps that was what Gregory intended, or perhaps she didn’t care and just wanted to present the characters as accurately as she could, but it was a flaw in the book I thought. Despite my drive forward with the book I sometimes wanted to put it down simply because I hated Anne so much. I also think this could have been a real problem if I had not pushed through the book so quickly. If I had been reading more slowly and had left off on a bit about Anne, I might have been more hesitant to pick it back up immediately.

Though Gregory’s book is historical fiction and makes no claim to historical accuracy, it’s not that far off. A lot of what is in the book as fact (executions, religious and political moves, movements of the royal family, affairs, children, miscarriages, mistresses, marriages, coronations) is largely accurate. However. while this book is a mere one or two (maybe three?) steps away from being accurate (and makes clear that it is), it has spawned a Hollywood film that is about 100 steps away from this partial accuracy, and from what I can tell, about 100 steps away from the fictionalized though historically based account that Gregory told. While this is premature since I have not yet seen the movie, I can pretty well tell from the trailers, previews, synopsis, and rants from other fans of Gregory that the movie takes incredible liberties with Gregory’s material and the actual history. I’m sure I’ll see the film eventually (though I don’t want to pay so it may be a long time) and I’ll post an update here if I’m not right in my assumptions.

I implore you Hollywood…why? Why spend the money to buy Gregory’s or anyone’s material if you just want to tell your own horrible inaccurate piece of crap story anyway? I’ll never understand you Hollywood…but you sure are pretty and shiny. Good for you. Impressive.

The Ugly: Nothing really. It’s been a very long time since I read something with a historical basis, and a while since I read something with such a strong and direct narrative. I find no major faults with this book, and for what it is, it is extremely effective. I missed my beautiful literary language though. I do wonder if I will feel the same way about this book after I read a couple biographies – my appetite has totally been whet for it – so I’m going to pick some up immediately (anyone have any great recommendations?)

The Rating: Ugh. Here we go. I’m going to dock it one star for just not being in the “upper echelon” of material that I read (god, how snobby did that sound?) and then a half star because it’s not a perfect book. So 3.5 stars.