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By MichelleJanuary 6, 2004 - 3:26 PM
Hello World!
Happy New Year! We were supposed to go visit my sister and her children for the long weekend, but both of my kids were recovering from the flu, so we decided not to subject her family to any lingering germs. To keep them entertained, we went on New Year's Day to the movies and saw Peter Pan.
This movie is absolutely gorgeous. It's well-acted and quite moving in spots, but the overwhelming thing that sticks with me is how visually stunning it is...like a two-hour Pre-Raphaelite painting, or rather a series of paintings, some Rossetti, some Burne-Jones, some Hunt, some Waterhouse, some some Arthur Hughes, some Parrish, some Wyeth. Tinkerbell is the jealous, bitter sort rather than a Disneyfied fairy, which is good and bad: that characterization made me loathe Hook, the dreadful Spielberg version of the story, but here it seems more a reflection on the limits of childhood fantasy than any nonsense about a middle-aged Peter Pan being desirable to women.
The story doesn't feel sexist like so many Barrie adaptations; the roles for men in that society are just as limited and limiting as the roles for women, at least unless one manages to be born in the banker's shoes, and even then it's pretty regimented what he can find pleasant or amusing. Jason Isaacs is wonderful as the ambiguous villain, though I kept finding myself thinking about how much he reminds me of Kevin Kline; I love and adore Kevin Kline, so I mean this as a compliment, but his Hook doesn't strike me as a strikingly original creation like his Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter.
The kids playing Wendy and Peter are phenomenal, creepily beautiful considering their ages, though it doesn't feel creepy while watching; it seems very natural, not the artifice of something like The Blue Lagoon with its sweaty pubescent bodies. The story is a messy Freudian psychodrama, and having Isaacs playing both meek Mr. Darling and Captain Hook is hugely entertaining. But I keep coming back to the sheer beauty of it all.
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Today's Television Listings
- Thursday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, CBS will show a new CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode, "Eleven Angry Jurors". The official synopsis states:
A reviled juror is found dead in the jury room after refusing to go along with his 11 counterparts in voting a defendant guilty in a murder trial; a woman claims that her sister was murdered four years earlier by her brother-in-law who allegedly burned the body and threw the ashes into a river.
- Friday night at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Spike TV will show the third season CSI: Crime Scene Investigation premiere, "Revenge Is Best Served Cold". The official synopsis states:
Catherine and Nick become absorbed in the dangerous world of street racing after one of the illegal sport's hotshot drivers is found dead out in the desert at an abandoned airstrip. Back in town, Grissom and his crew probe the sudden death of a renowned poker player who suffered a violent convulsion in the middle of a high-stakes game with three others. It looks like natural causes, at first, but Grissom suspects foul play.
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