strange and random happenstance

While I have been very vocal about theatrical releases not belonging on Masterpiece, I feel like The Chaperone is one exception I can make. After all it is adapted from Laura Moriarty's book by Julian Fellowes and it stars Lady Cora herself, Elizabeth McGovern. In fact, because apparently executives who make these decisions think we're dumb and one actor can't play two different characters with the same name, the "chaperone" was renamed Norma from Cora just so Elizabeth McGovern could play the role. I remember when the book came out it made quite a splash, I have a copy around here.... Somewhere. Which is why I was hesitant to watch the movie before I read the book. And in another aspect of my life I've been very vocal about, I eventually just gave up planning to read the book first and watched the movie because of Haley Lu Richardson. Yes, I finally watched this movie because of season two of The White Lotus. Because if there's one thing I was adamant about before watching this movie it was that they had to get Louise Brooks right. Once I saw Haley Lu Richardson on The White Lotus I was no longer worried and it was finally time to watch this movie. It didn't hurt that I was subscribed to the PBS channel on Amazon at the time. I don't know what I actually expected of the movie, after all it's called The Chaperone, not Louise Brooks, but I certainly expected more Louise Brooks. Instead we're following around Cora/Norma in New York City as she tries to solve the mystery of why she was given up for adoption and what this revelation means for her going forward. She doesn't have a loving marriage, she doesn't even know if she knows what love is, but seeing Louise dance sparked something in her and she decides she needs to do a bit of soul-searching. Honestly I found it all rather boring and trite until it ended up being downright unrealistic with her and her husband living together in polyamory with both their male lovers. Because that had to be so realistic for Kansas during WWII right!?! Now I'm not saying that this type of thing didn't happen, I just think the way it's portrayed here with everyone living openly only within the confines of their house is unrealistic. I mean Cora/Norma is passing off her lover as her brother! Hasn't anyone in town noticed they're a little too close? The thing is, this rather radical lifestyle could have been used as a counterpoint to Louise's own life. She didn't play by anyone's rules. She was born to be a star and she became one. She was the torchbearer for sexual liberation and Cora/Norma becomes sexually liberated, and yet there seems to be no connecting the two women's journeys. They are both in the same room but aren't interacting. It's just the weirdest feeling watching this. Because you only get glimpses of Louise's story and I wanted to yell at the screen to follow her. What was she doing while Cora/Norma was in the park being told she was given away just because she didn't fit in with her family's plans and she will never meet her siblings. I know, I know, I was wanting something I was never going to get. On the other hand, if they ever decide to actually make a movie about Louise Brooks I know who I want to play her. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Dance, Downton Abbey, Elizabeth McGovern, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Haley Lu Richardson, Julian Fellowes, Laura Moriarty, Louise Brooks, Polyamory, Sexual Liberation, The Chaperone, The White Lotus, Theatrical Release

Louise Brooks: Detective by Rick Geary
Published by: NBM Publishing
Publication Date: June 1st, 2015
Format: Kindle, 80 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Louise Brooks was once an it girl. A talented and renowned dancer from the age of sixteen and when Hollywood came calling she answered. On the brink of stardom she recklessly failed to renew her contract with Paramount Pictures and took herself off to Germany. The film she made there with G.W. Pabst, Pandora's Box, became a classic of Weimar German cinema but was dismissed when it was first released due to it's frank depiction of sexuality. In 1930 she returned to Hollywood but it seemed that Tinseltown was no longer interested in a girl primarily known for the cut of her hair. In 1940, at the age of thirty-three, she made a "strategic retreat" back to Wichita, Kansas and the home of her parents. She didn't just view herself as a failure, her family did as well. She also lacked the skills to help out around the home. She just wished to disappear into the stories she loved to read in her room. The family wasn't about to let this happen. In the evenings they all listened to the radio. The city was transfixed by a sensational locked room murder. A wealthy widow had been stabbed. In her locked bedroom. The mystery had Louise itching to play detective. But real life was intruding. The times were lean. People came to the door begging for a scrap of food or an odd job. And that's what Louise needed. A job. She opened The Brooks-McCoy Dance Studio. Louise's name recognition was at least bringing customers through the door yet how long could that last? Soon the class sizes where dwindling and the writing was on the wall. Louise Brooks was a failure. Yet again. Soon she took a final, desperate step, into retail. It got her out of her parents house at least, which was usually only achieved when she went out to lunch with her friend Helen who would regale Louise with stories of her improbably named sweetheart, Walden Pond. Though Louise had a friend and a job her life was dispiriting. She decided something needed to be done. Why not become a writer? And she actually knew one, right outside Wichita to ask for advice! Thurgood Ellis and her corresponded back in the day when Louise was just starting out in New York City. He lived in Burden, just an hour's drive southeast. Louise decided to just drive there, and it turned out her friend Helen was also heading to Burden. She thought Walden was finally going to propose at Grouse Creek Falls. They set out separately but would soon be reunited by a police pursuit. As Helen and Walden had helped a man who repaid their kindness with cruelty. Walden is dead and Helen's hopes are dashed. But Louise can't help but think nothing adds up. It's all the details that are wrong. Will she be able to solve the crime or will she perish as Walden did, in a pond?

Rick Geary is no stranger to my top ten list. In my mind he is the definitive graphic novelist for true crime and his telling of the Halls-Mills murders in particular is sheer perfection. When I started delving into his back catalog the only one of his titles I couldn't get through my local library was Louise Brooks: Detective. So I bought it cheap for my Kindle. And then it just sat on my Kindle. My to be read pile is now so unmanageable I should just call it my to be read oubliette. Books go in and never see the light of day again. But then something happened. I watched the 2018 adaptation of Laura Moriarty's book The Chaperone. I did not like the 2018 adaptation of Laura Moriarty's book The Chaperone. I mean, logically I should, so many people from Downton Abbey were involved, it seemed perfect for me. The problem was the film isn't about Louise Brooks, the film is about her chaperone Norma Carlisle. Yes, I obviously should have guessed the focus because of the title, I just didn't realize how much Louise Brooks would be sidelined. I felt bad for Haley Lu Richardson. She was giving it her all as Louise and instead we're dealing with Norma's abandonment issues and how she's handling her sexual awakening. At least Haley Lu Richardson got the break she deserved four years later thanks to The White Lotus. What all this is saying is that I wanted something actually about Louise Brooks and thanks to Rick Geary I finally found it. While Louise solving a crime when she moved back to Wichita for a "strategic retreat" after the collapse of her career didn't happen Rick Geary, with his history of retelling true crime, sets this story up in such a way that you believe it could have happened. There's a propulsive force to the narrative. We have this great backstory, not just Louise's career, but her diminishment on returning home, and then added to this is a day unlike any other. Louise just sets out to visit an old acquaintance and because of one weird coincidence after another she is able to see what the police don't. First she gets lost, then she misses her turn, then she gets a flat, if all these little things hadn't added up she couldn't have definitively told the police that there's no way in hell the chase continued further west. And because of that they find the body. But Rick Geary is able to make this feel real because he's studied so many classic crimes and he sees that it's the weird coincidences, the tiny details, the almost unbelievable yet unassailable facts that are what make up true crime. This might not have happened, but it feels like it should.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Downton Abbey, Film Star, Graphic Novel, Haley Lu Richardson, Kansas, Laura Moriarty, Louise Brooks, Louise Brooks: Detective, Lover's Lane, Norma Carlisle, Rick Geary, The Chaperone, The White Lotus, Top Ten, True Crime, Wichita

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson
Published by: William Morrow and Company
Publication Date: October 17th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 112 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Ashley Smith and Emma Chapman might look alike and matriculate at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London but that is where their similarities begin and end. Ashley is American, parentless, and never says the right thing. Whereas Emma is posh, wears cashmere, and grew up surrounded by her family in a manor house in the Cotswolds. She's perfect and always knows the right thing to say. Like when she heard that Ashley would be spending Christmas alone and invited her to join the family celebrations at Stravewood Hall. That was just the absolutely perfect thing to say and do. And here Ashley thought that Emma didn't like her. Now they will be the best of friends. Ashley is off to Clevemoor for Christmas! It's like something out of a romance novel or a murder mystery, a house that's all stone and stained glass and beams across the ceiling and servants quarters! But the real attraction comes in the form of Emma's brother, Adam. He's like Michelangelo's "David" come alive, but with cigarette breath and a penchant for whiskey. If Ashley's luck holds she might actually be in a romance. Though Ashley can't deny the evidence of her eyes when she goes with the siblings to the local pup, the Sheepfold. There she learns about Joanna Davies, a girl who went missing last summer, who might just have been dating Adam. He was questioned by the police and some still suspect him. But the oddest part is that Joanna and Ashley look alike. Her holiday is veering quickly toward the Gothic, a little bit creepy, and little bit sexy. Though Adam then fucks off back to London so Ashley doesn't know what to make of that. Especially as he left her a lovely Christmas present, a white cashmere scarf to keep her warm. Warm on her walks through the woods where she sees a menacing figure with a big bushy beard. Gothic thriller it is then now that the romantic lead has left. She shouldn't have doubted it when she's the doppelganger of a dead girl. Or when Emma returns to Stravewood Hall after being accosted by the menacing figure of Father Christmas. The same figure Ashley had seen. And that is all Ashley wrote. Because her diary ends prior to her brutal death. A diary that Emma has kept all these years with a newspaper article clipped and saved in the back detailing Ashley's murder. Because Emma "killed "Ashley. Set her up as the perfect victim. But why?

This is a novella in two parts. The first part, Ashley's diary, is perfection. It contains the hopes and desires of a young girl who is lovestruck and experiencing the Christmas of her dreams. Until it devolves into a nightmare. The second part is Emma explaining what actually happened and the guilt that weighs her down as she lives under another name in a country far from her family. Because the truth is, pause for spoiler, her brother, Adam, is a serial killer. And all his victims remind him of his sister. Because obviously he's working up to killing her. Which means way back in the eighties she invited Ashley to Stravewood Hall to be her brother's next victim. Ashley was the sacrificial lamb. Which is interesting when you look back on the events of her time in the Cotswolds. I actually liken it to what happened in season two of The White Lotus. Greg takes Tonya to Italy so that his old acquaintances, the 'Evil Gays,' can kill her. She's given the holiday of anyone's dreams. She is treated like a princess. In other words, she is given the treatment that you would give your dog on it's last day alive. Now I'm not denigrating dogs, I'm denigrating any humans who use the excuse of giving someone a perfect experience as some sort of balancing of the scales prior to murder. You can not balance out the scales here. One really good Christmas is not worth a lifetime of Christmases. Now if the person was actually dying, like said dog, well, then it's a sweet denouement to a life, not the brutal theft of a future. The problem I have with this second half is the ghostly aspect. We went from a top-notch, moody, thriller of a period piece with a lovesick narrator to a pale imitation of A Christmas Carol. Yes, Emma has a few more literal ghosts in her closet, but I feel like she should have had some sort of epiphany earlier. It shouldn't have taken her thirty years to get up the courage to rat out her brother. Because it wasn't just Ashley and Joanna, oh no, he's been killing all along. He's racked up quite the body count and if you were connected to one of the victims, how would you feel knowing that there was this person out there who could have stopped it? Personally Emma being haunted and on the run her entire life doesn't in the least make up for not speaking up. She's been a coward her entire life and, with regard to Ashley, a conspirator. I mean, I'll give the story props for trying something new, and I did enjoy it, it's just that it could have been something more. Something original, not Dickensian part deux.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Christmas Carol, Ashley Smith, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Cotswolds, Emma Chapman, Gothic, Manor House, Murder Most Foul, Mystery, Novella, Peter Swanson, Serial Killer, The Christmas Guest, The White Lotus

During the final season of Riverdale Ashleigh Murray returned for one episode as Josie McCoy. She hadn't been a regular since season three when she fled to the short-lived Katy Keene. Her channeling of Eartha Kitt on Rivderdale was phenomenal. It was wonderful to see an actor who had been so overlooked on the show to come back and do a defining episode. So I looked up what else she's been up to and that's when I first heard about The Other Black Girl. A show that quickly was added to my calendar when I watched the first trailer. A show that after I watched a single episode I knew I'd be binging. If you took Severance, You, and The White Lotus, put them in a blender and came out with the smoothest most wonderfully unique concoction ever, that would be The Other Black Girl. This show isn't just horror, it's about identity and connection and community and, above all, books and what they mean to us. Our heroine for all time, Nella, got a job at Wagner Books, because back in the eighties they published Burning Heart by Diana Gordon. Burning Heart was the first book to make Nella feel seen and that's what she wants to do for other little black girls like herself. The book's editor, Kendra Rae Phillips, is who Nella wants to be, as she walks past her photograph everyday in the halls of Wagner Books. And yes, she took a selfie with the picture. But something strange happened to Kendra Rae, as we see in gloriously retro eighties publishing flashbacks, seriously, look at that spot-on retro publishing logo. Something strange that is starting to happen to Nella. But Nella thinks she finally has an ally. Someone on her side. There is finally another black girl in the office, Hazel. Though, of course, Hazel has ulterior motives, and as each revelation comes to Nella we see it on her expressive face. Sinclair Daniel is an actress to watch. She's going to be big if there's any justice in this world. As for those revelations? Well, she shouldn't have put so much faith in Diana Gordon, because Diana has been up to no good. She's basically created a pod people cult of young black women. I mean, the goal of her "organization" is noble, the raising up of black women, it's just the execution that makes it go all cultish. And the thing I love about that is she falls prey to what aliens always misunderstand about humans time and time again in science fiction. They don't understand that out pain and our trauma are what make us human. So to have a human create a "shortcut" to acceptance by removing rage and emotion to make a more pliable and therefore socially acceptable and upwardly mobile black woman is horrendous. An author is to mine the very depth of the human experience, and Diana wrote a seminal book, which I kind of wish was real, and yet, she is completely and totally out of touch. And I want to see her face her own ignorance. I don't know what I'll do if we don't get a second season. Because now that Nella is "undercover" at Wagner Books, I need to see how that mobile and flexible face pulls off pod person. Also I need more of her BFF Malaika played by Brittany Adebumola. I just need more of all of this. Now. Saldy The Other Black Girl was cancelled on May 10th. A day that will live in infamy.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Ashleigh Murray, Brittany Adebumola, Burning Heart, Diana Gordon, Eartha Kitt, Malaika, Nella, Riverdale, Severance, Sinclair Daniel, The Other Black Girl, The White Lotus, Wagner Books, You