Fans of [i]Girl with a Pearl Earring[/i]?

Rainey

Anyone else a fan of this pic? I hadn't seen it when my b-i-l was here at Christmas. He insisted that I see it. Since then I've probably seen it a dozen times. It's the most beautiful, sensuous, sexy, haunting thing I think I've ever seen.

Colin Firth and Scarlet Johansen are brilliant. Everyone else does a fabulous job. I don't know whether the set designer and the camera operator got Oscars. They certainly should have! I don't know when I've seen something that translated as magnificently from one medium to another. I would swear I was looking at Vermeer paintings throughout.

Today I finally ordered the book from Half.com. I look forward to reading it even though it seems there's little reason to think that Vermeer didn't have a perfectly happy marriage.

Anyone else as captivated by it as I am?
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swan · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 8:13 am Post subject:

Oh yes Rainy, totally...what a beautiful film, the light, the decor (part Delft, part, as I read,Venice) the sensuallity....very pretty, very addictive. Suddenly I look at the clouds in a different way. I like that.
(and ofcourse I'm in love with Collin Wink

)

Sarape · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 2:08 pm Post subject:

I have not even heard of the film and that's a surprise since I pay attention to films -- my fourth hobby after music, cooking, gardening.

My most interest is in pre-1960 Hollywood films and especially film noir. Recently watched some of The Thin Man series and now I'm into old Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Wonderful seeing the mind of Holmes in action.

Also greatly impressed by Bogart and Bacall (Key Largo, Dark Passage, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not). They are turning out to be my favorite male-female combination.
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Chicago Bear · Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 240 Location: Chicago

I've always liked Vermeer, and the movie really lit me up, to the point where I went to the library and grabbed all the Vermeer books I could find. That would be two. It was fascinating to read about the artists who influenced his style, but then how Vermeer developed his own way of painting the texture of light. And then one day I was in the Louvre, and there were two Vermeers, in a room not very crowded at all. Even after 350 years, I could still imagine Vermeer working on these paintings, after mixing his own pigments in that studio of his. I could feel the connection with that time. That's what the movie did for me.
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Debbie · Joined: 21 Feb 2005 Posts: 861 Location: Paris

Good afternoon!

I haven't seen the movie, but have the book and love it. The author who wrote it has also written one about the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.

Sometimes movies are just no match for the imagination.... but based on the high recommendations here, I will see if I can get an english version of it on dvd and watch it.

Thanks for the recomendation.
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Rainey · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:52 pm Post subject:

If I could burn a DVD of it for you I would. The author, interestingly, speaks very highly of the movie version. She says it's different (how, I can't say 'cause I haven't read the book yet) but she likes the economy and some inversions of the sequence of things.

Have you checked out her website? She has lots of interesting background info. http://www.tchevalier.com/gwape/
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God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

Rainey · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:59 pm Post subject:

sarape- It might not be your cup of tea, based on favorites you cite. It may be something of a "chick flick" given that there's a tremendous amount of repressed sexual tension and it moves at a teasingly slow pace. But, OTOH, it's sooooo beautiful to see -- at the opening the heroine is chopping vegetables and she does it in such a way that they look like rich Flemish still lives -- that I can't imagine anyone's soul not responding to it!

It explores who the girl who posed for Vermeer might have been and what relationship they might have had that produced such a provocative painting as Girl with a Pearl Earring. The site I provided for Debbie will elucidate.
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God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

Chicago Bear · Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 240 Location: Chicago

I just bought Lady and the Unicorn on Amazon for $1.74, based on the reviews on the website Rainey (weather) posted. We have a very long trip approaching: Chicago to London to Cape Town, and I need paper back books to read. Any recommendations? Oh, we have to come back too, so it's a total of about 40 hours of flying time.
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Rainey · Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 6:59 pm Post subject:

Have you already read the Dan Brown books? I found them completely absorbing. I think they'd be a great way to pass the time on long flights. Data Fortress is the softest of them but I thought Devils and Angels and Deception Point were as strong as The Da Vinci Code myself.

When I was making a flight a year or so ago, I picked up a book I've never heard of elsewhere at the airport bookstore. It's called Almost French by Australian Sarah Turnbull. It's about dealing with culture clash and I enjoyed it so much I moved on to Paris to the Moon which is New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik's version of the same theme. I could send you both of them as I'm finished with them and wondering who to pass them on to.

I've also got Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs which describes his actual, truly bizarre childhood. It can be very funny. It can also be painful if you had a bizarre or hurtful childhood.

Don't know if they'd be right for you but I loved Rebecca Wells' books Little Altars Everywhere and The Ya Ya Sisterhood. She's also got a third I haven't read yet. The first two got folded together into the film a couple years ago. The books, however, have a lot more of good old Southern story telling and infinitely more complicated social relationships.

There is one passage regarding the heroine's husband (who got REALLY short shrift in the movie) that gave me a perspective on the VietNam era that NEVER would have occurred to me. ...and I lived and breathed that period during my college years.

Send me a PM if you want me to ship off Almost French, Paris to the Moon and Running with Scissors. Half.com is a great place to pick up other books online.

PS to Dawna (if you're reading this) I've been very busy so I haven't gotten to the Post Office yet but I will before this week is out.
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God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

Judy · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:19 am Post subject:

Chicago Bear

How about Jodi Picoult? If you haven't read 'My Sister's Keeper' and 'Perfect Match', they are both real page-turners. I work as an oncology RN and learnt a lot from both those books about bone marrow transplants and stem cell donation. Her other books are all great reads too, although the latest was a bit disappointing.

Happy travels.
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Barbara · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:06 am Post subject:

I loved Almost French. The man she married must be the quintessential Frenchman. He was so like the French chaps I dealt with in the liquor industry.

Girl with a Pearl Earing is a beautiful painting. Some years ago when we were in the Louvre Bryan insisited on taking a photo of me in front of a painting and that was the painting I chose. I must see the movie after all this talk.
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madameshawshank · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:56 pm Post subject: alas :-(

I'd sooooooooooo wanted to love this film! Agree that it looks just as it SHOULD look...however for some reason or other it didn't click with me...you know when that nano-something-or-other isn't there! I've thought of watching it without sound! For me, there was, at times, something almost two-dimensional about it...yet at the same time Scarlett Johansson was stunning...THE girl with a pearl earring!

Has anyone read "The Painted Kiss"....Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floge ~ since "The Kiss" is the painting that's gone straight to my soul, methinks I might leave the book...some have loved it...others have found it quite pedestrian.

Golly ....if it becomes a film...who to play Klimt...and Floge?

That great risk...from book to film...sometimes bordering on perfect ~ other times Crying or Very sad

Must be a tiny tiny group ~ of those who haven't given 5 stars!
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David · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject:

Chicago Bear---I'd like to suggest The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (and a few sequels) by Alexander McCall Smith. These are light yet enlightening mysteries set in Botswana, perfectly delightful!
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Chicago Bear · Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 240 Location: Chicago

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency......there is a force at work here. I have the three-volume boxed set, which belonged to my mother and which I took as a keepsake when she passed away last fall and we had to clean out her apartment. It's been sitting on my dresser, unread, ever since. But now, thanks to your recommendation, David, I'll take at least one of the books with me, and--this is cool--I'll be able to read it when we're in Botswana August 5 and 6.
I'll also investigate Jodi Picoult. She sounds highly worth reading.
And thanks to Rainey, who made some great recommendations, is sending me some books, and who turns out to have been in the same high school class in Poughkeepsie NY as my younger sister. Shocked

I can also reveal that Rainey's husband and I got drunk together at a waterfront bar in Le Havre on Bastille Day in 1961 when we were both in the merchant marine. (only part of that sentence is true).
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JustMe · Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 213 Location: Ontario, Canada

The world just keeps getting smaller. I had not read this topic before today...my reading list has now expanded accordingly.

CB: I'm not even going to ask which part is true, but I would venture the guess that is was "got drunk together"... Wink

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