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TV Show Meme! Day 17!
Jul. 2nd, 2010 10:17 amDay 17 - Favorite mini series
Easy! Anne of Green Gables
!! I love the Anne books
by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and always have. When the CBC miniseries aired on PBS in the 80s, my grandpa taped it and gave it to me, and I watched it over and over and over again.
This is one of the only movie adaptations of a book that I've seen that really gets it right. It doesn't try to be a page-by-page, shot-by-shot reproduction of the book, but it also doesn't deviate in any major way from the characterization, plot, or story. The miniseries also gets the feel of the books right, the wonderful dreamy quality that Anne's whimiscal and melodramatic narration gave the story.
I recently recommended this miniseries to a friend of mine, actually, because the female friendships in the books are so well reproduced that they are probably some of the best female friendships I've ever seen on TV. Anne and Diana! (Bosom friends!) Anne and Miss Stacy! Anne and Marilla! Marilla and Rachel! Anne and Aunt Josephine! (She used up all her imagination on her house!) Oh, and Anne and Katherine!!
(Most of the Anne fans I know love Anne's relationship with Gilbert -- and yeah, it is great. It's great in the books, and even better in the miniseries. But I didn't buy it when I was a kid, and I don't buy it now; I think Anne's heart will always belong to Diana -- and maybe one or two of her other lady friends. No one will ever convince me differently, not even if Lucy Maud Montgomery herself rose from her grave to wag the finger of authorial intent at me.)
Anne is not for everyone. She is totally melodramatic and uses (especially in the books) an awful lot of italics. She's way more tolerable for me as an adult in the miniseries, because Megan Follows tempers her delightfully in the performance, and makes her melodrama and flights of fancy seem much more organic. I still read and love the books, but with the distance that a six year old can't have, I get how Anne is a total pain in the ass for a lot of the people around her -- not to mention that, you know, she is beautiful, has a wonderful imagination, is a fantastic writer, even her enemies grow to love her, most things go her way, and she usually gets what she wants in the end.
At the same time that I can recognize how silly that is, as a kid for whom lots of things went wrong, it was pretty comforting to read about someone with whom I could so strongly relate who, in the end, had it pretty good. And she got to live on Prince Edward Island.
Uh, I'm pretty sure these books, and this miniseries, is what kicked off my obsession with Canada, by the way.
If you never sit down and watch the entirety of the movie, perhaps you'll be interested in these two scenes. This first one is the beginning, in which Anne is wandering through the woods, reading Tennyson to herself, reciting "The Lady of Shalott":
(Later in the movie, Anne floats in a boat, pretending to be the Lady of Shalott -- until her boat sinks! The clip cuts off before she is saved by the charming Gilbert, and rowed to shore.)
And here, the second scene, is Anne reciting "The Highwayman" at a gathering, in a terrible dress with awful hair. Megan Follows is pretty amazing, and I remember watching this for the first time at age seven, totally riveted, suddenly understanding how it was that people could bear to read poetry.
( Other days )
Easy! Anne of Green Gables
!! I love the Anne books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and always have. When the CBC miniseries aired on PBS in the 80s, my grandpa taped it and gave it to me, and I watched it over and over and over again. This is one of the only movie adaptations of a book that I've seen that really gets it right. It doesn't try to be a page-by-page, shot-by-shot reproduction of the book, but it also doesn't deviate in any major way from the characterization, plot, or story. The miniseries also gets the feel of the books right, the wonderful dreamy quality that Anne's whimiscal and melodramatic narration gave the story.
I recently recommended this miniseries to a friend of mine, actually, because the female friendships in the books are so well reproduced that they are probably some of the best female friendships I've ever seen on TV. Anne and Diana! (Bosom friends!) Anne and Miss Stacy! Anne and Marilla! Marilla and Rachel! Anne and Aunt Josephine! (She used up all her imagination on her house!) Oh, and Anne and Katherine!!
(Most of the Anne fans I know love Anne's relationship with Gilbert -- and yeah, it is great. It's great in the books, and even better in the miniseries. But I didn't buy it when I was a kid, and I don't buy it now; I think Anne's heart will always belong to Diana -- and maybe one or two of her other lady friends. No one will ever convince me differently, not even if Lucy Maud Montgomery herself rose from her grave to wag the finger of authorial intent at me.)
Anne is not for everyone. She is totally melodramatic and uses (especially in the books) an awful lot of italics. She's way more tolerable for me as an adult in the miniseries, because Megan Follows tempers her delightfully in the performance, and makes her melodrama and flights of fancy seem much more organic. I still read and love the books, but with the distance that a six year old can't have, I get how Anne is a total pain in the ass for a lot of the people around her -- not to mention that, you know, she is beautiful, has a wonderful imagination, is a fantastic writer, even her enemies grow to love her, most things go her way, and she usually gets what she wants in the end.
At the same time that I can recognize how silly that is, as a kid for whom lots of things went wrong, it was pretty comforting to read about someone with whom I could so strongly relate who, in the end, had it pretty good. And she got to live on Prince Edward Island.
Uh, I'm pretty sure these books, and this miniseries, is what kicked off my obsession with Canada, by the way.
If you never sit down and watch the entirety of the movie, perhaps you'll be interested in these two scenes. This first one is the beginning, in which Anne is wandering through the woods, reading Tennyson to herself, reciting "The Lady of Shalott":
(Later in the movie, Anne floats in a boat, pretending to be the Lady of Shalott -- until her boat sinks! The clip cuts off before she is saved by the charming Gilbert, and rowed to shore.)
And here, the second scene, is Anne reciting "The Highwayman" at a gathering, in a terrible dress with awful hair. Megan Follows is pretty amazing, and I remember watching this for the first time at age seven, totally riveted, suddenly understanding how it was that people could bear to read poetry.
( Other days )
