http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/09/article-2653199-1E9CD10400000578-44_634x488.jpg
― max, Tuesday, 10 June 2014 11:24 (nine years ago) link
he doesn't look a thing like tebow
― goole, Tuesday, 10 June 2014 13:13 (nine years ago) link
I'm just early in Wolf Hall, but really enjoying it. Supposedly I will read the whole thing in time for a book club discussion next weekend, we'll see. ...
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 30 March 2013 17:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
Ha. Well, a year and a half later -- I'm done! I really loved this book, but life kept intervening and I would go months without picking it up. Finished the last couple hundred pages on a binge this week (partly thanks to a few long travel days hanging out in airports). The writing is so good, so smart and sharp, and Cromwell is such a great prism to see the whole period through. It would be a much different and less entertaining book told from the POV of any of the royals.
Even though the whole thing obviously has a modern perspective, I like how she resists judging anyone by contemporary standards. There aren't really any good guys, but nobody's exactly evil either -- they're all just pursuing self-interests and reacting to the political world of the time. I will definitely read Bring Up the Bodies, but I might wait a few months -- I like the prospect of getting to hang out with Cromwell some more, I don't want to use it all up too quickly and the third one's not out til (supposedly) next year.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 14 September 2014 14:02 (nine years ago) link
Also: the characters least motivated by self-interest -- the protestant martyrs on the one hand, Thomas More on the other -- are in some ways the least sympathetic. Cromwell (and Mantel) don't have a lot of patience for inflexibility.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 14 September 2014 14:22 (nine years ago) link
there are hints throughout that cromwell (as a proto-modern) understands that making henry's state as powerful as possible will secure life and peace for england's people -- that he for some reason is the only one with a dim memory of the civil wars that henry7 ended. lurking beyond henry8's failed marriage and childlessness was war, this time with possible foreign intervention. (and it happened anyway, under another cromwell)
mantel has a lot of fun making more a misogynist prig, but she doesn't make him wrong. i think she at least gives him the gift of seeing things clearly: there was no good legal reason to get rid of catherine, it was the elevation of desire over law, and using it to turn the country away from the church had more to do with national power than conscience. cromwell at the end has to all but beg him not to die for it. that the misogynist is the only one to feel disgust at what henry's men are doing to catherine is another irony.
there are sentences throughout tho that cromwell doesn't know why he does what he does. "what else is there, but affairs?" etc
― goole, Monday, 15 September 2014 16:11 (nine years ago) link
oh shiiiit
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/books/review/the-assassination-of-margaret-thatcher-august-6th-1983.html?_r=0
― goole, Wednesday, 24 September 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
what happened to this hbo series then?
― akm, Wednesday, 24 September 2014 20:54 (nine years ago) link
oh I guess it's BBC and PBS now, which means no boobs.
― akm, Wednesday, 24 September 2014 20:55 (nine years ago) link
http://deadline.com/2014/12/wolf-hall-preview-damian-lewis-mark-rylance-bbc-masterpiece-1201320301/
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Monday, 15 December 2014 14:48 (nine years ago) link
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/14/hilary-mantel-attacks-critics-bbc-margaret-thatcher-story-broadcast
A respectably robust response but: "I do wonder about the journalists involved. The paper doesn’t write itself,” she said. “Sooner or later, surely, they must start to feel ashamed of their paper’s attempt to bully and censor?” - hmmmm probably not.
― ledge, Monday, 15 December 2014 14:53 (nine years ago) link
Fucking cannot stand Damian Lewis but still very stoked for this.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kT2lMkhldc
― xelab, Thursday, 1 January 2015 20:54 (nine years ago) link
January on BBC2....April 2015 on PBS boo (or sooner on the torr3ntz) weeeeeeeeee
― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 1 January 2015 21:06 (nine years ago) link
BRING IT ON
I don't know anything about Ben Miles but he seems a decent Cromwell. God bless those torr3nt sites, they bring so much joy into my life!
― xelab, Thursday, 1 January 2015 21:17 (nine years ago) link
none of those lines sound familiar at all.
― goole, Thursday, 1 January 2015 22:26 (nine years ago) link
he looks appropriately crusty and grumpy
― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 1 January 2015 22:31 (nine years ago) link
I've started it. Need to finish it - like everything else I pick up - before I probably inevitably see the play.
― Banned on the Run (benbbag), Friday, 2 January 2015 00:45 (nine years ago) link
tonite
― danzig, Wednesday, 21 January 2015 20:54 (nine years ago) link
I am so excited I almost made a hot mess!
― xelab, Wednesday, 21 January 2015 20:55 (nine years ago) link
Fucking cannot stand Damian Lewis but still very stoked for this.
Same, who is this ginger butt even going to play on this.
― Hollinger Escape Plan (Leee), Wednesday, 21 January 2015 20:55 (nine years ago) link
Only Henry Viii
― xelab, Wednesday, 21 January 2015 20:56 (nine years ago) link
can't believe newsnight are doing a live reaction to it.
― danzig, Wednesday, 21 January 2015 21:00 (nine years ago) link
how was it
― just sayin, Thursday, 22 January 2015 10:04 (nine years ago) link
This felt both rushed and too slow at the same time; and Mark Rylance too fragile and passive as Cromwell, I thought. Twas OK tho.
― painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture (DavidM), Thursday, 22 January 2015 10:05 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, I enjoyed it but can't explain why. It sort of felt superficial AND bogged down in detail.
― the bowels are not what they seem (aldo), Thursday, 22 January 2015 10:29 (nine years ago) link
Watching this tonight but I feel it'll be a let-down after the RSC production, which really rattled through the book but also nailed a lot of it.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 22 January 2015 10:33 (nine years ago) link
I liked it but the tone/rhythm is a bit funny - seems reserved or a bit shy of drama – acting serious w/o being especially serious. I dunno tho', a bit early to judge really & v watchable.
― woof, Thursday, 22 January 2015 10:39 (nine years ago) link
I am quite in love with this after ep 1
― xelab, Friday, 23 January 2015 02:11 (nine years ago) link
DaveM otm
In the book Cromwell is polite to a fault but carries bags of unspoken menace; didn't really see that in Rylance
It also seemed odd to completely bypass Cromwell's rude upbringing which really flavors the entire tone of the book (and establishes that menace, actually, now that I think about it)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 23 January 2015 09:07 (nine years ago) link
Speaking of menace, Jonathan Pryce seemed entirely too doddering for my conception of Wolsey, who I always imagined looking and behaving like a somewhat more brooding version of Alex Salmond
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 23 January 2015 09:08 (nine years ago) link
Sculptors re-use their clay and David Annand used the clay of Wolsey's head to model Alex Salmond's!
http://www.ipswichsociety.org.uk/newsletter/dispart.php?issue=187&art=16
of course he did
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 23 January 2015 09:10 (nine years ago) link
I enjoyed this but everyone in it feels slighter and more genteel than they should, except maybe Thomas More. I didn't get much menace out of Rylance at all, he seemed actually incredibly understated. Having said that, we've only seen him in family man/loyal servant mode so that's possibly natural and perhaps both character and actor have a way to go.
They showed him being beaten by his father which is virtually all you see of his upbringing IIRC. It's been a while since I read it though.
Could have done with more in the way of dry humour early on, perhaps. I laughed out loud at the trial scene, and the Boelyns. Looking forward to the scenes with Mary.
― Matt DC, Friday, 23 January 2015 10:03 (nine years ago) link
Actually there was just the right level off obnoxious little toad coming off the kid playing Mark.
― Matt DC, Friday, 23 January 2015 10:04 (nine years ago) link
Yeah but that beating establishes everything - our sympathy for Cromwell, the psychological basis for preferring the rationality of the law to the force of a truncheon, but also the intimate knowledge of raw boozy brawling that no one else he has truck with really has an inkling of
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 23 January 2015 10:08 (nine years ago) link
I dunno I think I am also possibly simply allergic to televised Tudor costume dramas no matter what their pedigree
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 23 January 2015 10:09 (nine years ago) link
The book is so remarkable because of its tone, the way everything is so poised, all relations feel magnetized and suspended precariously in their current patterns, disaster always feels round the corner. Who can forget, having read it, that description of Wolsey in his chamber, and the shadows surrounding him? He becomes something more than a man, he is a force, a spirit-being. You get none of this in the TV show but there's no reason you couldn't, if given the license to be more creative and impressionistic with the photography and soundtrack
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 23 January 2015 10:14 (nine years ago) link
Reading the book again and it's astonishing how much of the story is gone. Even the main event, the divorce, seems barely sketched in, a mere backdrop for Cromwell's slowly shifting relations with the other major players, his inexorable gaining of the upper hand. After the last scene of his meeting with the king I thought that just might be enough to keep me watching, though I agree that Rylance lacks menace.
― ledge, Sunday, 25 January 2015 13:15 (nine years ago) link
yeah the major "historical" events are sort of backdrop in the book
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 25 January 2015 14:07 (nine years ago) link
Intricately detailed backdrops, though. You could pretty much use it as a history textbook, unlike the show.
― ledge, Sunday, 25 January 2015 16:15 (nine years ago) link
The scenes with the family were good, and much as I'd imagined them in the book. I welled up a little at the angel scene.
― Matt DC, Sunday, 25 January 2015 18:26 (nine years ago) link
xpost yea and obv more than backdrop, they drive the A-story, but it's all offstage. there's something almost rozencrantz and guildenstern are dead about it in that respect.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 25 January 2015 18:40 (nine years ago) link
In the episode just gone when Alice says "Gregory's been letting us run his dogs in the hall", it's a pale shadow of one of the sweetest scenes in the book. I wish they'd kept it whole, it would really fit Rylance's way with his character.
(Alice) "Oh we are not going to bed. We are running Gregory's greyhounds up and down the hall and making a noise fit to wake the dead.""I can see why you don't want to break it off.""Yes, it is excellent," Alice says. "We have the manners of scullery maids and no one will ever want to marry us. If our aunt Mercy had behaved like us when she was a girl, she would have been knocked round the head till she bled from the ears.""Then we live in happy times," he says.When she has gone, and the door is closed behind her, Cranmer says, "The children are not whipped?""We try to teach them by example, as Erasmus suggests, though we all like to race the dogs up and down and make a noise, so we are not doing very well in that regard."
― ledge, Friday, 30 January 2015 10:12 (nine years ago) link
i especially loved that scene in the book as well.
― estela, Friday, 30 January 2015 10:16 (nine years ago) link
so this is a tv show now huh
― wizaerd (Lamp), Friday, 30 January 2015 13:12 (nine years ago) link
I'm still finding it v watchable, the hour flies by. But I just read the book, and yeah Rylance is good but wrong & it can't give you any sense of immersion in constant microscopic assessment/judgement/decision-making which I find hypnotic in the book. Looks cool though.
― woof, Friday, 30 January 2015 13:51 (nine years ago) link
my mum, who loves the books, just said he's not broad and big enough (in a character sense as well) and without the element of coarseness - he's not a blacksmith's son. I found the books difficult to get through - a uniform consistency of detail with rhythmical emphasis, but am liking the tv series. And did want to read Bring Up the Bodies as it felt the time-span might suit my attention span better.
― Fizzles, Friday, 30 January 2015 13:55 (nine years ago) link
i seem to recall a drinking conversation with Ward Fowler where we somehow came to the conclusion that it wasn't twee enough, but have no memory of how we got there now. Rock solid reasoning tho, of that you can be assured.
― Fizzles, Friday, 30 January 2015 13:56 (nine years ago) link
I understand from a friend who has seen Rylance onstage that actually he's pretty stacked, but the clothing doesn't really bring that out. He reputedly can do bullying and menace very well as well, so the focus on kindly uncle/loyal servant Cromwell at this stage may be a directorial decision.
― Matt DC, Friday, 30 January 2015 13:59 (nine years ago) link
Idk about 'stacked', he was muscular in Jerusalem but still not particularly broad, and I reckon that was mostly put on for the role, especially as he was previously best known for playing Ariel.
― ledge, Friday, 30 January 2015 14:05 (nine years ago) link
they could crank it up but i suspect fizzles' mum otm - the whole 'looks like a murderer' thing is there from early on in the book - Rylance is a bit shifty-sinister but doesn't have that now.
i'm interested in 'more twee needed' - was that wanting more lutes, codpieces etc (+ a trad roister-doister H VIII), or just a bit more poppy narrative drive? Book's really good imo but a bit restrained.
― woof, Friday, 30 January 2015 14:23 (nine years ago) link