strange and random happenstance

If you are looking for something to fill the gaping hole left between seasons of The Gilded Age this isn't where you should be looking. And yes, a lot of it just falls on the scope scale. The Gilded Age has a budget of roughly $15 million an episode and this, this did not. The average Hallmark movie has a budget around $2 million. So you can see there's a steep divide. And I went into this with an open mind. I knew to lower my expectations. That this was just the first movie adapting Alyssa Maxwell's Newport books and I should enjoy this delightful series getting exposure, but so many WTF moments kept pulling me out of the narrative. Which means let's talk letterpress. Our heroine, Emma Vanderbilt-Cross, works at a newspaper. Newspapers in 1895 means letterpress. But just slapping a press in a room with a cabinet does not a proper newspaper make. The entire newspaper seems to be run out of one office with an old guy in the corner with a small platen press... Which is actually impossible given the printed newspaper we are shown. Also don't get me started on how slow he sets the type. Did the writers of this know there used to be competitions among newspapers to see who had the fastest typesetters? Because our friend here would come in last. But the vagaries and lack of knowledge regarding printing is, in my experience, quite common. Don't get me started on the Heidelberg Windmill fiasco in Without a Clue! So let's tackle those issues that other people might actually notice. Just look to the inferior fabrics that the dresses are made of. Seriously, is that poor girl wearing a repurposed eighties prom dress for her coming out? And I mean 1980s not 1880s. It's sure pink and shiny enough. Molly Ringwald would approve. Also the costumes are all so ill-fitting and could they just stop randomly adding lace to cover up imperfections. I'd rather see the imperfections than that much lace. But the biggest sin of all is that this was filmed in Canada. "The Breakers" was previously home to Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. And yes, that at least means it's opulent enough, but it's not Newport enough. The thing is we're dealing with two different coasts and therefore two very different architectural styles. Newport is very gilded, as the title of it's most famous show indicates. The rooms in the homes look like they belong in museums with all that gilt. Whereas Vancouver Island, home to Hatley Castle, is all western lumber and oil barron wealth, so the look leans more towards wood with an occasional node to the arts and crafts movement when not just showcasing the lumber. In other words, nothing like the actual homes in Newport. And I just could not suspend my disbelief. You're probably saying, yes, we get it, the production quality annoyed you, what about the plot? Well, our heroine is too dumb to live. She never stays around to listen to people's answers and just hares off. She spent days looking for the servant Mason and she finds him and just wanders off without getting a single answer!?! Um, if you want to write for a newspaper perhaps actually follow through? At least her half brother looks enough like a young Michael Sheen that when she inevitably dies from doing something stupid he can take over the show and I'll be "content" with that.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alyssa Maxwell, And the Emmy Goes To, Costumes, Gilded Newport Mysteries, Hallmark, Letterpress, Michael Sheen, Molly Ringwald, Murder at the Breakers, Newport, The Gilded Age, Vancouver, Without a Clue, X-Mansion

The Counterfeit Heiress by Tasha Alexander
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: October 14th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

At a masquerade ball there are bound to be people dressed in similar costumes. A plethora of Cleopatras and Queen Elizabeths and Valkyries are to be expected. But Emily didn't expect another goddess of the hunt at the masked ball at Devonshire House. Let alone one who would cause a scene. Estella Lamar has supposedly stopped her gallivanting around the globe and eschewing the company of her peers by deigning to come to the Devonshire's ball in honor of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. But there's only one problem, beyond the fact she is dressed like Emily, she is not Estella Lamar! Emily's dear friend Cecile in full Marie Antoinette regalia, boat firmly in coiffure, is perhaps the only person Estella is in contact with, aside from the newspapers, as she journeys to the far flung corners of the globe, and Cecile quite clearly says that this Estella is an imposter! The ersatz Estella flees only to be found dead hours later on the banks of the Thames. The Duke of Devonshire contacts Emily's husband Colin to request that he investigates and to make sure this doesn't connect back to the ball. Soon Colin and Emily are on the case and are shocked to find that the victim is a rather respectable midwife, Mary Darby, who had aspirations of being an actress. So how did she end up at the event of the season impersonating a known recluse?

The more they look into Mary's murder the more they realize that Mary isn't the key, Estella is. Estella left France years previously after the death of her parents to see the pyramids and never looked back. Since then she has never returned to any of her three homes despite them all being kept in constant readiness of her arrival. In fact none of her employees have seen her since she left for Egypt! Yet her picture is always in the newspapers at some famous location. Or is it? Her face is never visible so it could be anyone so long as they have the right measurements... Emily begins to worry that her friend Cecile will be in for some heartbreaking news the further they follow the leads. Leads that take them across the channel to Paris where they make Cecile's house the center of their operations. They interrogate lawyers, dressmakers, printers, photographers, journalists, florists, and servants aplenty. But the only true clue they have is that they are chasing someone with a fondness for Dickens. Leaving names like Magwitch from Great Expectations and Swiveller from The Old Curiosity Shop in their wake as a type of calling card. Could this person be the auburn haired man with the magnificent mustache trailing Emily? Who knows. As time goes on it's harder to remember that they are there to find Mary's killer and not solve the mystery of Estella... But who says they can't solve both?

The more you read about wealthy families and their proclivities the more you realize it's a very thin line between eccentricity and illness which is blurred all the more depending on how much money is involved. Estella is a recluse with money, therefore her dislike of society and her habits that might seem rude to others Cecile is able to lump under the umbrella of eccentricity no matter what Emily thinks. So what if Estella left dinner before dessert? Who are we to judge if she hates people dropping in unannounced? If her best friends are dolls whom she tells stories to for hours on end should we really judge? Does it matter that much that all her houses are kept in readiness if she never plans on visiting them so long as the servants are paid? What would raise eyebrows among those of more modest means are easily forgiven by Estella's peers. Instead of seeing these habits as spiraling to some sad fate she is left to her own whims because of her monetary protection. There is almost an elegance to the madness of those with means and I can't help thinking of my Great-Grandmother Mildred Martin. Her husband was a prominent politician, lawyer, and judge in Wisconsin, while she left the raising of my grandmother to other family members and spent about forty years in her room, which she never left. Yet this was just viewed as how it was. One wonders in Mildred's case, much like Estella's, if things could have been different...

Yet Cecile shows us that Paris is far more forgiving of eccentricities than other cities. They thrive on their Bohemian artists and outsiders. Paris is a place unlike anywhere else and while Emily did spend some time in Paris during her first adventure, And Only to Deceive, the city didn't feel as real as it does in this volume. While it could be Tasha's abilities as a writer maturing over eight installments, which they have, I also have to give credit to the two locations that made this volume, the Père Lachaise Cemetery and the Catacombs of Paris. While this could be considered by some as macabre bordering on making Paris the "City of the Dead" as it where I think it's more fascinating then ghoulish, like Parisians's obsession with Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. But then again I am a girl who loves her true crime... What resonated with me was how these actual cities of the dead connect Paris to it's past and how one is there to honor the dead, so long as you're willing to keep your end of the bargain and pay for the upkeep, while the other is there to make a titillating show of death. To concentrate on the more sensational side of death with the Catacombs, I'd never known how they were used basically as a body dump for those ousted from places like Père Lachaise and that they were actually designed to be something out of a Guillermo del Toro daydream. The more you know!

Paris is also interesting in that while it is a city that celebrates it's history it is also willing to tear it down for the good of advancement. This fascinating dichotomy can be seen in this book by the discussion of two different art forms that I love. At the Devonshire ball there is a famous photographer, Mr. Lafayette, recording all the costumes for posterity. I just adore that this modern technology was used to capture this moment in history. Following Emily into his studio reminded me of how much I am fascinated by the history of photography, from the Civil War through to the Cottingley Fairies to even our modern obsession with selfies. Photography was and is an art form that was just at the cusp of it's heyday when Queen Victoria was celebrating her diamond jubilee. Whereas this is countered with printers in France. And don't you dare say typography isn't an art, because it so is! The current resurgence in letterpress is a sign that this form of artistic expression, while some might view it as outdated, is really classical and important to the history of not just books, but graphic design. I couldn't help being fascinated by an argument that French printers kept coming back to in Emily's investigation. Everyone has heard the current argument of one or two spaces behind a period, and at this time it was two for English typesetting, but in France it was a space on either side of the punctuation, making my graphic designer friends scream about floating punctuation. But just this little insight made the book that much more real and tangible to me.

Though it's actually the references to another author, not all the technology, art, or intricately arranged femurs and skulls with a slight wink to Indiana Jones, that really made this feel like a book written just for me. I'm talking about the Dickens of it all! I love that our villain uses Dickens in a way that isn't just a smokescreen for their real identity, but as a way to clue Emily, or any other Dickens aficionado, to their real motives. By using the name of Magwitch from Great Expectations, our villain is trying to make a statement while assuaging their own guilt, that while they might be a villain, like Magwitch, the proceeds of the villainy is going to serve the greater good. In the Dickens book that would be to fund Pip's lifestyle and education, but here, here by finding out what Magwitch is doing with their ill gotten gains proves the answer to the riddle of Estella. This integration of one author's work into another's is meta goodness. Think of it as a more historically accurate version of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. I personally think this is just bloody brilliant, and now have started thinking if you could actually do it with other authors in a similar way. They would have to be popular in order to not be obscure... but then again, our villain might have just been doing it for his own fun. And mine. Because seriously, it entertained me to no end.

But in extrapolating the idea of using a popular author to entertain the masses or just using an author to entertain oneself Tasha does have a reference that most likely her loyal readers will get but those unfamiliar with authors whom Tasha loves to read and recommend, well it would have gone over their head. I'm talking about the Elizabeth Peters Easter Egg cleverly buried in The Counterfeit Heiress. Elizabeth Peters is the pen name of Barbara Mertz under which she wrote her wonderful Amelia Peabody series. The series, recommended to me by both Lauren Willig AND Tasha, is a wonderful twenty volumes of Egyptological romps starring Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson and their friends and family as they catch master criminals and excavate priceless artifacts. If you haven't checked out this series, please do, you will not be disappointed. The third book in the series, The Mummy Case, has the hilariously named Baroness von Hohensteinbauergrunewald. The Baroness happens to have a cameo in passing in our story. Cecile and Emily go to Le Meurice, a hotel that Emily loves, and where they hope to find Estella, instead they find out the Baroness has just checked out, a fact that they both lament. Who wouldn't want to meet a lady with that name or that reputation? Ah, this just makes me want to read The Mummy Case all over again... there are just too many books to read let alone re-read!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexander Autumn, And Only to Deceive, Charles Dickens, Devonshire, Elizabeth Peters, Great Expectations, Jasper Fforde, Letterpress, Masquerade, Paris, Photography, Tasha Alexander, The Counterfeit Heiress

My friend Jess and I years ago started referring to each other by our Austen handles, aka Misses Jessica and Eliza. In the spring of 2013 I texted Miss Jessica wondering what she would like for her birthday and she had an idea. It just so happened that 2013 was the bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. As you now know over a month into my Bicentenary Ball I am not one to let a two hundred year celebration slip by! Miss Jessica's suggestion was that instead of doing run-of-the-mill birthday presents we do a crafting exchange where we each make Jane Austen themed gifts for each other. Being both crafty and artistic and at that moment taking an introductory letterpress course, I was all in. I was ready to make a piece dedicated to "Two Hundred years of Darcy and Dancing!"

Madison College has a wonderful selection of wood type and when pursuing the drawers I found these stunningly large "P's" and was only sad for about half a second that there wasn't three of them, Miss Jessica being one of the co-creators of P, P and P, which is the Pride and Prejudice Colin Firth miniseries watched while eating Pizza. But in all honesty P and P works better. Because this was a quick one-off and not class work, where I was actually doing only two prints, one for me and one for her, I did this during open lab time. I didn't even do a full lockup, I just used some magnets and the showcard press, which is basically a proofing press. Funnily enough I had to do this twice, because I'm not the best at spotting typos when they're backwards. There might have been two "S's" at the end of "Misses" because I was going crazy that day apparently. So, on my second attempt I think I nailed it.
  I originally went for too strident a color, a kind of spring green, and went all out metallic gold the second time around, because if gold doesn't say big two hundredth birthday celebration, I don't know what does! For those who do letterpress you might notice that there is actually more texture to the print than just from the wood type. I shall now impart a trick my teacher Beth showed me which I absolutely adore. What I did is I first printed the piece on a heavily textured paper. You pull the paper off and instead of re-inking you print again on a crisp clean sheet of perfectly flat paper. The impression of the textured paper remains in the ink on the wood type and transfers onto the new paper. I use this technique a lot because it just adds something extra, also ironically the textured paper is some of the paper I've used for my Jane Austen series I've been talking about. So this was the first non-illustrative piece I did in tribute to Jane. This was also the first piece for the gift exchange between me and Miss Jessica. Don't worry, there's more to come on that front!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bicentenary, Bicentenary Ball, Dancing, Darcy, Graphic Designer, Jane Austen, Letterpress, Madison College, Miss Eliza, Miss Jessica, Pizza, Presents, Pride and Prejudice, Showcard Press, Typos, Wood Type

Without A Clue
Inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: 1988
Starring:Michael Caine, Ben Kingsley, Jeffrey Jones, Lysette Anthony, Paul Freeman, Pat Keen, Matthew Savage, Nigel Davenport, Tim Killick, Peter Cook, John Warner, Matthew Sim, Fredrick Fox, Harold Innocent, George Sweeney, Murray Ewan, and Jennifer Guy
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Watson is fed up with Sherlock Holmes. Mainly because he created him and now this figment of his imagination has taken on a life of his own, literally, because he hired the unemployed actor Reginald Kincaid to BE Holmes. It all seemed like such a good idea at the time. Watson needed to maintain his prestige to get a job at an exclusive hospital where they would have frowned on his "hobby" of crime solving, and this was a way to do both. He didn't get the job but he did get burdened with his own ingenious loophole. The time has come to eliminate this loophole and destroy Holmes and get the louche Reggie out of his life, and 221B Baker Street, for good. Only problem is, Holmes is popular. Really really popular. And Watson's publisher is disinclined to his new suggestion: "The Crime Doctor." And there's the whole fact that no one listens to Watson but only listens to Holmes parroting back what Watson just said. Therefore a final case will be solved and Holmes will retire. Only problem is, what looks like a simple case is really the machinations of Moriarty. And Reggie REALLY doesn't like the lunatic. The Napoleon of crime, or lunatic, depending on where you stand, has taken up forgery with the actual printing plates from the Bank of England! But when Watson meets an untimely end it is up to the hapless actor to actually fill the shoes of his creator. Hopefully he has picked something up from Watson over their years working together... if not the whole world is about to be disillusioned by Sherlock Holmes.

Growing up in my house my parents didn't really censure television or movies. Basically they viewed that if they wanted to watch it my brother and I could watch it with them. During the early to late eighties this meant that I saw quite a lot of British comedies. Peter Sellers was viewed as the Deity that he rightfully is. One of the family favorites was The Wrong Box. What is not to love about this film? Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, and of course, Peter Sellers with a lot of cats. Therefore when a new comedy with Michael Caine set not only during Victorian times, but within Sherlock Holmes mythology came out, well, it was highly anticipated to say the least. I still have my old VHS copy buried somewhere, but needless to say, it's been awhile since I've reconnected with this movie. I'm happy to say that it was actually better than I remembered it. Over time I tend to think that I was overly kind to movies, and therefore my initial opinion was probably wrong. I thought that what drew me to this film as a kid was the more slapstick elements, and while those are still there, there's so much going on that you can't help but be carried away with the movie and lose yourself to the fun. The conceit of the film is what makes it so clever. The idea that through his narratives published in the paper Watson has created the mythology of Sherlock Holmes, when in fact all of Holmes's powers of deduction are actually Watson's. What's more, make Sherlock a failed drunk actor who is belligerent and it's brilliant. Not to mention Watson's hope of "The Crime Doctor" taking off...

At the very beginning of the film when Holmes is giving a speech to the journalists on the doorstep of 221B after Watson foiled a museum heist and then fired Holmes captures exactly the subversive spirit of the film. Holmes gives his famous line of "you see but do not observe." Reginald Kincaid as Holmes spins out what started as pure nonsense until he has all the reporters in the palm of his hand, all the while Watson is fuming in the background. By taking the canon and spinning it upside down and all around, despite the overt comedy, their is a subtlety that is mocking yet paying tribute to the original text simultaneously. Therefore this film plays on multiple levels, but will be most enjoyed by those familiar with Conan Doyle's canon. But this clever conceit wouldn't have worked without the right actors to pull it off, and I dare say you can't get more well respected or accomplished actors than Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. Michael Caine though is so perfect I couldn't think of anyone else playing the dual role that he takes on. The genius of casting Caine is that he is someone who might logically be cast as Holmes, but here he's an actor playing an actor playing Holmes, and he pulls it off magnificently. The true genius is in his subtle voice work. When Caine is Holmes he has his more refined, later career voice. More polished, but not posh. Whereas when he is playing Reggie, it's more nasal, more reminiscent of his earlier career and The Italian Job. It's just a subtle shift that happens within scenes and it adds another level to the film. I couldn't help thinking of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in The Trip where they dissect how Caine's accent has changed over the years. Without a Clue is like a master class for them. You also can't help thinking that in one of Caine's later films, The Prestige, that Hugh Jackman was greatly inspired by this role of Caine's in his doubling of Robert Angier.

Yet just because Caine steals the show, as he is meant to, you can't discount Kingsley. Because, in truth, Kingsley is Holmes, though not in name. What I find interesting about this version of Watson is that he isn't docile. He has this rage within him that drives his work. Of course this is justified by being overlooked for so many years as the true genius, but it actually makes you think more about Watson's purpose. In the original stories Watson is nothing more then a conduit for the readers and Holmes's biographer. Just a boring sounding board. Yet look to the newest interpretation of Watson by Martin Freeman in Sherlock. He doesn't let himself be pigeonholed in this way as the bumbling fool. He is a new Watson for a new generation. He admires Holmes, but he is there for the adventure. Yet beneath the veneer there is rage, a rage for life and adventure and against the world that wounded him in war and even exasperation with Holmes. I was actually shocked by how much Ben Kingsley's portrayal of Watson is like Martin Freeman's. I can see how Freeman would be more drawn to the darker more visceral portrayal of Watson, it is more in line with his own personality. I just find it interesting that in all the Holmes adaptations out there he obviously looked to this one as the defining portrayal of Watson. So think on that will you? A comedy that lovingly mocks Sherlock Holmes gets to the heart of the matter better than some of the most lauded adaptations out there.

Though there are times when the films swerves a little too far off course. It goes for the easy laugh. For how subtle the film can be it's an interesting dichotomy to pair it with such overt humor that is sometimes too broad; falling down holes, falling off roofs, swinging on ropes, your basic slapstick humor. But keep in mind that the Marx Brothers knew how to blend the erudite with the crass and somehow, like with them, this movie just works. One minute you'll be thinking how clever a turn of phrase was and the next you'll be snort laughing to an embarrassing degree. But like everything good in life, a little goes a long way, and sometimes there's just too much of this brand of humor. For everything that is so right there is a false cord stuck every once in awhile, the Baker Street Irregulars are just a little too twee, Jeffery Jones is miscast as Lestrade, Moriarty... well I do have Moriarty issues. My Moriarty issues are basically that he's acting and even dressed like The Master from Doctor Who. While Doctor Who has done it's fair share of Sherlock Holmes homages, especially with the episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" it's more then a little odd for Sherlock Holmes to be so Whovian (Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss disagree). But the truth of it is that somehow, even with these missteps, the film is fun and you just go with it. So what if Moriarty is The Master, it just adds a little more camp and you're totally OK with it because it just works.

And then there now comes the part of the review when I go off on a little tangent. It's interesting to go back to films that you held dear when younger and find something in it that calls to your interests now. Back when I first saw this film I would have had no interest in the printing of the money, aka Moriarty's evil plot. It was just what the bad guy was up to and what needed to be stopped. Now though... well, in the last few years taking my love of Graphic Design and going backwards in time to learn Letterpress, well, let's just say I spent a lot more of the climax of this movie paying attention to the printing press than to the gas main that could blow up and incinerate everyone. My letterpress addiction might be considered severe when I'm point out how air suction was used on the press to those watching the movie with me. But seriously people, printing is fascinating! In fact the print geek in me was all, oh, look, they're using a Heidelberg Windmill, even if they did take off the metal identifying plaque. Which then got me thinking. They are in a subbasement of a deserted theater that runs on gas and the Windmill needs electricity... yes folks, the appearance of the Heidelberg Windmill, while very cool, was an anachronism in this film. If you are weird like me and read all the props, you will notice that this case took place in 1900 thanks to a newspaper. And what year did the Heidelberg Windmill come out? 1912! So the print geek in me was a little miffed. They went for the look of it versus the accuracy... but then again, isn't that's what they did with a lot of stuff? Without a Clue has some really great insights, but at the end, it's about the shiny entertainment you're watching and a difference of twelve years for a printing press probably didn't seem the most dire of things when it seriously looks cool on screen. I mean, seriously, watch that Windmill action!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Ben Kingsley, Letterpress, Martin Freeman, Michael Caine, Rob Brydon, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, Steve Coogan, The Italian Job, The Prestige, The Trip, The Wrong Box, Without a Clue