Vacation Soon!

Wednesday through Monday I'll be headed down to Florida with Kate. We are going to spend a couple days in South Beach, then take some time with my friend Jason. So.. blog entries will likely be light after Wednesday.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was decent. Kate and I finally watched Empire Falls which we've been meaning to do. We both read the book by Richard Russo. The HBO miniseries (really a 3+ hour movie split up) was excellent. It was filmed mostly in Skowhegan and Waterville Maine. The characters in this story are very realistic and easy to relate to. The story reads a bit like a Dickens novel, a bit tragic, however the characters manage to get by. Paul Newman, Ed Harris, Helen Hunt, & Philip Seymour Hoffman make up a stellar cast. The production was controlled by Newman as well.

This review from the NY times goes over the book:

Townie

Review for the Mini Series

I read a couple of poor reviews. The most common complaint is that it is too slow, however, I think that the pace is appropriate. The book was written in this manner, even though there is a lot going on, much of it is background noise. And you have to admit, isn't that what life is all about?

One particurally bad review was from the Bangor paper. Someone took offense to what they called "bad accents" As someone who typically notices that stuff... I actually thought the contrary. Ed Harris's character Miles, appropriately has less of an accent because he went away to school. College, especially one that may have many out-of-staters in the student body, makes one more conscious of the many, many, many, foolish speaking habits of Mainers. Amongst these are, removing the letter r from words where it belongs, and adding it where it doesn't. Using imaginary grammar, such as "somewheres" instead of "somewhere". Copious usage of the word "Wicked". Using the phrase "you know" excessively. And there is a certain drawl which tends to be sex dependent, the women sound more nasally, the men seem to hollow our or draw out our add more emphasis to a's and u's. The sort of sound like Ted Kennedy, but where Ted goes Ehhhhh, the Mainer's go "Auuuhhh", otherwise Maine and Massachusetts accents are almost the same. So anyway, I digress, this reviewer was offended by what he said was a cast that makes Mainers sound like a "The Village Idiot". Having left Maine for several years and come back.... I hate to break it to you, but, that's what we sound like in our purest form.

One area I did agree was that Helen Hunt was miscast as Janine. Even though she is a good actress, Helen seems, unbelievable as a former "overweight" woman, too grounded. Janine was a woman who had a confusion of values that is all to common. I think the movie actually didn't explore this as well, as the book examines the Empire Falls world more from Janine's perspective. Her character in the book spends much of it feeling personally assaulted by not only her husband, but by her mother and even her own daughter. She blames them for her unhappiness. She blames Miles for not showing her that he loved her. The movie focuses more on Miles's inability to say "I love you". In the book Janine as seen more of a hedonist enjoying better sex with her new lover, and being attracted to his money and power (which is a facade more than anything). She sacrifices the stable life she has with Miles, and her daughter's happiness, for sex and frills. Janine is a spoiled simpleton who thinks that happiness is personal pleasure that should be lavished upon her. She believes that is more important than her daughter or the work she should put into her relationships. Helen Hunt is too grounded to play this sort of "blind" character. Janine is too much of a contrast with Hunt's former characters in "As Good as it Gets" and "Mad about you". I remember when reading the novel, you want to feel for Janine, but she is filled with so much baseless venom, for imaginary crimes committed against her, that she almost seems borderline crazy. With the exception of 1 scene where Hunt yells at Harris for about 10 minutes, without him even speaking a word (an argument... in Janine's mind), the delusion of this character was not captured on screen.

I remember when this movie first went into production, I believe the intent was originally to make it a movie to be released in the theaters. On the commentary Newman suggests that HBO gave them the leniency to make it long. I personally feel that since it was a mini series, it could of, and probably should have even been longer.