[inline:1] Ok. It's been awhile and jeff laid out a lovely lovely new blog layout for me so here goes.

I saw Pride and Prejudice opening night. I believe my first coherent thoughts were
1. being skinny in Regency England made you look ass ugly in those dresses. Keira Knightly looked like she was wearing sacks (though I believe some of that was to denote her “boyish” nature. ew.) and for the first time in my life, I realized how unappealing a woman without a bosom can be. Also It's a pity they picked a girl to play Lizzie and not a woman. Besides having sparkling eyes, Knightly was little more than a slat figured tomboy, frolicking through the dawn and twirling on a swing that was situated over a farmyard of mud.

2. My second coherent thought made me startle.- This is a script that Charlotte Bronte got her hands on. I believe I concluded this after words like “bewitching” or “incandescent” were spoken by Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. That's not the right era for those words! And Mr Darcy striving manfully through the foggy sunrise and Lizzie standing on the edge of a cliff, her boyish coat streaming in the wind? These things are not Austen- they're Bronte! Charlotte Bronte hated Jane Austen but it seems like she got her revenge after all.

3. Besides using the words “bewitching”, “incandescent”, etc., the screenwriter screwed with every precocious line of Austen's that deserved to stand on its own. I flinched whenever it happened- happy lines were usually tweeked at the end, a latin based word thrown in. To sound more intellectual? I hardly know. And not only that but they used language and thought we use today! Charlotte Lucas cries out in a passion, “Don't you judge me!” Can anyone really imagine an Austen character saying that? No! The fact of being “judged” would never be alluded to. Charlotte would painfully be congratulated and she would look down and voice some thankful line about Mr. Collins good position with Lady Catherine in response. Never ever would she yell out, “Don't you judge me!”

Hmmm…but I could just be terribly cranky about it. I did after all sit in the second to front row and could only watch one part of the screen at a time. For awhile I would watch the right side and for the other part, I would watch the left side. This all left me a bit queasy.

So despite my judgments, I believe I will go again and sit in a much better seat and criticize.