Re: [book_talk] book review--Samuel Clemens
- From: Audrey <waterdiva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 17:46:38 -0500
I think I remember actually seeing that movie. I was drawn in to go see it
because of how overwhelmingly adorable he had been as a baby actor I had come
across in a couple of other things.
I had been floored by what he had done non verbally in what seemed like an
ultra long soap opera scene for a child. The subtlety and nuance were jaw
dropping. The acting from the finest of the adult soap actors paled in
comparison, and some of those are very fine accomplished actors. We're talking
the caliber of Kim Zimmer here. I didn't always care for the Reva character
she played but the woman playing her could act! Same with Colleen Dewhurst.
The acting doesn't stop in the spaces between the lines. I wanted to become
that skilled of an actress, and to possibly bring it to something like musical
opera. The supporting role, the ensemble cast, were always what grabbed me.
So, I was thinking it would be pretty interesting watching Elijah and McCauly
act off each other. I think I was disappointed though, because it seems like
the script did not really have them in scenes where they were interactively
shot together, leading up to what would have been the climax. I guess I was
craving something more like a live stage production, captured on film. I think
I may only have gotten to see him in one other thing after that. Was there
something called Radio Flyer? I don't know if that one was it or not. That was
one that was a little PTSD triggering for me, kind of in the way Affliction
was.
I have to say that being blind has helped me inadvertently, by forcing me to
walk a lot, getting a certain dosage of sunlight, even though I have to be
careful of the sun. Looking back I can really see how this has made a big
difference and helped control otherwise uncontrolled clinical depression. So
glad some of those triggers don't have quite the intense amount of hold they
used to.
Who'd have thought Elijah Wood would bring up all that. Smiles. What I get
for posting sleepy. I read the Tom Sawyer books around age 7 or 8. We went
through the Mark Twain house sometime around then, and that's what I came away
with, probably with licorice.
Audrey
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 15, 2013, at 2:20 PM, "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
> by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
> read by Elijah Wood
>
> As a child, I was urged by my mother several times to read "Huckleberry
> Finn," but I never could, mostly because my mind could not take in the
> dialect in which it was written. I do remember getting to the chapter
> where Huck goes back onto land to find out how the news about his
> alleged murder was being handled dressed as a girl and speaks of
> himself as both Sarah and Mary, but no further than that the first
> three attempts to read it.
>
> I was a senior in high school when I finally read it through all the
> way. The rest of my family was gone for some reason or other. Big Bro
> was understandable--he'd moved out a year and a half earlier now that
> he was graduated from high school and had enrolled in the local
> community college, and he'd been married for a month or two by that
> point. But where Mom, Dad, Little Bro and my sister had got off to
> that evening I cannot remember. I didn't mind being left home alone,
> and I'd finally restarted Huck Finn intent on getting through it this
> time. I remember that the power went out partway through the evening,
> so I got my camp flashlight and read by its light, laughing as I read
> the descriptions of the None-such and such doings by the King and Duke,
> and the final scene of them being run out of town on a rail by the
> people of the village near which Tom's relatives lived.
>
> But my loudest laughter was saved for the chapters surrounding Jim's
> imprisonment and Tom's grandiose ideas on how it should be dealt with.
> All of the inscriptions and the ladder pie--they are the stuff of grand
> comedy as well as tragedy, and of course Tom Sawyer, knowing all along
> that Jim was a free man already, would want to try them all on for size
> before admitting the far more blase truth of the matter!
>
> Ah, me! Anyway, I've watched a number of film renditions of the book
> over the years, and the only one that even addresses the time at the
> Phelps home was that in which Ron Howard, Opie in the Andy Griffiths
> show, played Huck. But even that could not do justice to the slapstick
> described in the book, a slapstick that in spite of being rendered in
> words is still hilarious--something slapstick rarely achieves. And
> this version read by Elijah Wood is a true treasure. Wood played Huck
> in the Disney version, in which he awakes from grave injury in just
> such a bed as Frodo awakes first in Rivendell and later in the Houses
> of Healing in the Peter Jackson LOTR. Considering the way that Wood
> hung from a cliff by one hand in "The Good Son," Jackson managed to get
> Wood to reprise still another former scene as well--heh!
>
> Anyway, Elijah Wood manages to get the accents perfectly throughout the
> reading, and I easily envisioned the scenes described all through
> listening to the book. A masterful reading of a masterful book that
> encapsulates a period of our history we should never forget.
> Bonnie L. Sherrell
> Teacher at Large
>
> "Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very
> wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
>
> "Don't go where I can't follow."
>
>
>
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