Pain like this seems inseparable from perfection

Allow me first off to clarify that today's titular quotation does not refer to any sort of physical injury I've sustained or personal trauma I've encountered since last I wrote. The line comes from L. M. Montgomery's Anne's House of Dreams and the feeling of pain is meant to be connected to an intense sensation experienced upon seeing something very beautiful; also referred to by Anne as "the queer ache." This juxtaposition in feelings is something extremely enjoyable for me in literature and film. It lends a satisfying tension to the work and often composes that illusive feeling of being moved by what you read or watch.

Something similar to this feeling exists in the film I watched last night: Carlos Saura's "Don Giovanni." You may already be familiar with this title as the famous opera. The film gives a sort of fictionalized background as to said opera's creation by composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and lyricist Lorenzo Da Ponte. If you've read my review of "Il Deserto Rosso" (here), you can easily imagine how a colourful, vibrant, period film like this would stand in stark contrast. For the overarching effect of a large, brilliant spectacle, you could likely find similarities in films such as "The Phantom of the Opera" (I'm thinking of the 2004 Gerard Butler version). However, I was impressed by a few unique production choices made in "Don Giovanni" that did an excellent job of echoing the feeling of watching a live onstage performance.

Blocking (placement of characters within the space) was done to a tee and a couple of times further accentuated through the use of tableau. If you're up on your classic films, I think you could compare this tableau and posed crowd effect to the race scene in "My Fair Lady." The other effect that I found very interesting was the use of screens. Occasionally, a printed screen would be used as the backdrop, both in rooms and outdoor settings. They were clearly artificial, but gave a strong feeling of watching a play within a play (or, to be more accurate, an opera within a film). Once, the audience's attention was even specifically drawn to the artificiality of the backgrounds as a character remarked that he was looking after the books in an illustrious library; all of the walls in the library, including the shelves as well as the books upon them, were nothing but hanging backdrops. Screens were used again to achieve extremely smooth transitions between scenes. The scene you were watching would seem to take place in a solid building, then the lights would dim, while other lights on the opposite side of the wall would raise revealing the wall to have been only a screen the whole time. The camera would film the newly illuminated figures on the other side of the screen through the transparent backdrop until switching camera angles to bring the back room into the forefront.

Now for a little of something else I promised you in my last post. I've really been trying hard to take good care of my skin lately. My blog deals a lot with many different areas, but beauty products are definitely one of my interests. In that vein, we most often come across blogs focusing on skincare for the face alone. I can tell you what sort of products I do use on my face if you're interested, but today's review will actually be dealing with body products instead. The Body Shop has had a summer sale on (it still is on online, I'm not sure about in-store) so I swung by and picked up a couple of items. One of these is their body scrub in "Mango," which did not disappoint in terms of providing a scent true to its name. This scrub smells so fantastic you'll have to stop yourself from grabbing a spoon and just shovelling the contents into your mouth. Honestly, it does smell THAT good. Besides the scent, this product has been working really well for me so far. It's quite a thick texture, but I find that you can work it in decently well, even on dry skin. It claims to be for very dry skin, which is great because it doesn't leave your skin feeling super worn out, but rather soft and moisturized instead.

I wish you guys could smell this stuff! UH-mazing.

To seal in the feeling of goodness the scrub leaves on my skin, I then lather on Lubriderm's Advanced Therapy Lotion. I've only been using these products for a little while, but my skin feels amazing, and it smells pretty good too!!

Oops! I didn't realize how blurry this was!

-C

Tone with truth and emotion with beauty

This post's title is adapt from a quotation which comes from Henry James' work The Lesson of the Master. I've been going in full gear these past couple of days as far as overstimulating my mind with novels and films. I don't have any fashion-related pictures for you this time because I like to do things in my own time. I never want to force myself too much with this blog because, as I've mentioned before, I am a perfectionist, and I'd rather write something quite good once a week than something rather mediocre every single day. All of the material I've been watching and reading will hopefully get me motivated to keep my creative juices flowing (I actually really dislike that saying), as it were.

Yesterday, I read The Turn of the Screw in its entirety. I can unhesitatingly remark that it is certainly the finest thing I've read by James and one of the more interesting things I've consumed lately in general. It wasn't nearly as frightening as I had expected it might be, but it definitely is a psychological thriller. I love that it has so so many possible interpretations.

I've now switched into a different track completely and have picked up the fifth Anne novel: L.M. Montgomery's Anne's House of Dreams. It was my intention last summer to read the entire series (I own all eight novels), but I ended up only getting through four of them. Rather than begin again from the top, I've started where I last left off. I know that these stories are typically considered the property of children, but I really think Mark Twain said it best when he called the series "the sweetest creation of child life yet written."

The two movies I've watched are "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Mona Lisa Smile." The first I viewed mostly because I almost couldn't believe myself that I hadn't seen it before. I mean, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks? Come on. It was decent, but I appreciate it mostly for the nostalgia of watching an old and beloved film (though it was technically new to me). "Mona Lisa Smile" is not as old of a movie, but it's one that I actually have seen before. It had been a long time though, and I've found myself recently on a bit of a Julia Roberts kick ever since I wrote about how much I adore her character's style in "Pretty Woman" (see here and here). This film is really wonderful for the very important story it tells, but, truth be told, I'd have watched almost anything just to see this cast together. Besides Julia Roberts, we also see another talented Julia: Julia Stiles. I absolutely adore this actress who stars in my favourite film of all time: "10 Things I Hate About You." After these two lovely Julias, there are also Kirsten Dunst (who I'll always love as the littlest March girl in "Little Women"), Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ginnifer Goodwin, and many more talented women. Cast is a big deal for me; it's probably what's going to get me to watch the finale of the Batman series this year even though I didn't like the last two. I realize this is near blasphemous to say anymore, since so many people adore them, but they just weren't my thing.

What have you been loving in literature and mooning over in movies? Please let me know so I can check it out too!

-C