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Rain and Blondes
Oct. 11th, 2002 10:42 amWeather-wise, a completely craptastic day. Steady rain, poorly-graded sidewalks full of unavoidable puddles causing my boots to get soaked by the time I arrived at work. Yuk! Make it stop! But we need the rain so no more whining.
I think I'm going to skip the gym tonight in favor of seeing White Oleander. I just get tired of working so late and then doing a hard workout at the gym--it just feels like an extension of the workday. Maybe I can go on Sunday; anyway I'm skinny right now so I needn't feel guilty. I have high hopes for this movie; I loved the book. Movies tend to be more plot-driven and this is not a particularly linear book, it's much more interior and more of a character study. So it'll be interesting to see how they adapt that. The casting looks pretty good--Michelle Pfeiffer is a good, if obvious choice, for Ingrid. Renee Zellweger is an odd choice as Claire; Claire is older (35+), brunette and fragile. RZ suggests none of those things to me.
One thing I loved about the book was the development of the blonde theme. Ingrid and Astrid are both blondes, but the book consciously subverts the typical blonde paradigms of dumb or childish or sexy. Ingrid says to her daughter "we are descended from the Vikings...we sacked Rome." They're powerful. Blondes always seem to be sui generis in popular culture; it always seen as a choice (because there are so few natural blondes) and they're never considered in a larger context. But natural blondes have a context; generally they have a Northern European ancestry and that's a vein worth exploring. I toyed with this idea in a story idea in college, about a girl named Kristen, who was blonde and tall and lean with chipped blue eyes, and saw herself as the Ice Princess because nothing seemed to touch her, and wondered if there was an Ice Princess 20 or 30 or 50 generations ago in Norway, watching the world below from her cold eyrie.
I think I'm going to skip the gym tonight in favor of seeing White Oleander. I just get tired of working so late and then doing a hard workout at the gym--it just feels like an extension of the workday. Maybe I can go on Sunday; anyway I'm skinny right now so I needn't feel guilty. I have high hopes for this movie; I loved the book. Movies tend to be more plot-driven and this is not a particularly linear book, it's much more interior and more of a character study. So it'll be interesting to see how they adapt that. The casting looks pretty good--Michelle Pfeiffer is a good, if obvious choice, for Ingrid. Renee Zellweger is an odd choice as Claire; Claire is older (35+), brunette and fragile. RZ suggests none of those things to me.
One thing I loved about the book was the development of the blonde theme. Ingrid and Astrid are both blondes, but the book consciously subverts the typical blonde paradigms of dumb or childish or sexy. Ingrid says to her daughter "we are descended from the Vikings...we sacked Rome." They're powerful. Blondes always seem to be sui generis in popular culture; it always seen as a choice (because there are so few natural blondes) and they're never considered in a larger context. But natural blondes have a context; generally they have a Northern European ancestry and that's a vein worth exploring. I toyed with this idea in a story idea in college, about a girl named Kristen, who was blonde and tall and lean with chipped blue eyes, and saw herself as the Ice Princess because nothing seemed to touch her, and wondered if there was an Ice Princess 20 or 30 or 50 generations ago in Norway, watching the world below from her cold eyrie.
