Ramblings on Food, Film and - er - Fiction

Taking a break from writing, to talk about... well, reading, for a start.

I'm nearly finished The Subtle Knife and can't wait to devour The Amber Spyglass, last novel in Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. Regarding ideal readership, this series truly is ageless. Those of you who have read the books will probably know how I felt when I came to this line on page 301 of my edition of The Subtle Knife:

And now those eyes were looking down at the last landscape they'd ever see: a barren landscape of brutal, tumbled rocks, and beyond it a forest on fire.

I was very sad! I'm not giving anything away by transcribing it here. Even if you are one chapter behind me in reading, I doubt you'll be able to guess who this line is referring to. Sigh... And of course I'm very curious about why a friend of mine, J, still has not read the last ten minutes of the last book.

Interesting how things connect. Late last night I was watching some scenes from my favourite opera DVD, ENO's Xerxes, with English translation by Nicholas Hytner, who also directed the wonderful stage version of Twelfth Night I saw in New York in 1988 with Paul Rudd, Helen Hunt and Philip Bosco as Malvolio. When Bosco made his entrance after his humiliation, he was so magnificently hang-dog that a young girl sitting next to me clasped her throat and gasped, "Oh poor Malvolio!" And then I was doing some internet rambling on His Dark Materials to find that Nicholas Hytner had directed it at the National Theatre in London. How I would have loved to have seen that! With Patricia Hodge as Mrs. Coulter, Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel, and Anna Maxwell Martin (who was so moving as Esther in Bleak House in 2005) as Lyra.

On to film, and I've been very happy to stumble upon BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme, with its host Francine Stock providing interesting film news and a host of interviews with heaps o' interesting film types. In an archived programme from Dec. 28, Thelma Schoonmaker (famed editor for Martin Scorcese and latterly wife of Michael Powell) talks of her career and those two fascinating men who have played such important roles in her life.

*SPOILER ALERT: There are some fascinating tidbits, such as Scorcese being inspired by scenes like one in Powell's Black Narcissus (1947) when Sister Ruth tries to kill Sister Clodagh, to create the ending scene in Goodfellas (1990)... the inspiration being Powell's idea of a "composed film", where a film is very much shot to fit in to certain bars of music. I didn't know that Raging Bull (1980) was her first film for Scorcese and of course she won an Oscar for it - her first of three in total.

The bread (which I haven't made in ages) was a success. I have managed to stop eating it. This is an experiment based on a no-knead recipe by Chef Michael Smith, in turn inspired by Manhattan baker Jim Lahey who apparently has "sparked a worldwide home baking revolution." D'oh... this is the first I've heard of it. I'm committed to trying more variations out... and will keep the blog updated on it. When I bake the next loaf, I will attempt to photograph it before we fall upon it like a pack of slavering beasts.