Word: johnings
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...scenarios that are nicely executed but not exactly relevant beyond the pleasure of nostalgia. The Whittaker family members are classic examples of interwar, edging-toward-shabby English gentry, ready to be jolted into 20th century reality. The scissors-sharp matriarch (Kristen Scott Thomas) thoroughly disapproves of her son John's (Ben Barnes) taste in brides. He was supposed to marry Sarah (Charlotte Riley), the girl from the next castle over, who could have restored the family to its former glory. Instead he shows up with Larita, a race-car-driving native of Detroit who doesn't want to play lawn...
...Colin Firth plays John's father Jim, a sardonic, kindly and unkempt World War I vet who dallied with French whores at war's end before being fetched home. John's daffy older sister Marion (Katherine Parkinson, whose voice is as treacherously sweet as cotton candy) is halfway to becoming a Miss Havisham. The youngest Whittaker is Hilda (Kimberley Nixon), who is both jealous of Larita and bewitched by her and is, in her troublemaking, a clear precursor to Briony of Ian McEwan's Atonement, written nearly 75 years after Coward's play...
...Elliott adapted Easy Virtue with co-writer Sheridan Jobbins and has been respectful to the basic plot (although he brightens up the ending) and to Coward's gift with a bon mot. "We try not to speak of it," John tells Larita, referencing his father's disgraceful postwar doings in France. "Except in public." I do not have a copy of the original play on hand, but if that isn't lifted straight out of Coward, I'll eat Larita's cloche. (Not until after I've worn it a bit though. Charlotte Walters' costumes are perfection.) I suspect this...
...zingers are so constant and sharp that everyone has, of necessity, donned emotional armor, but unfortunately, that also tends to keep the audience at a distance. Even Larita, who is so likable thanks to Biel, is a bit of an emotional mystery. She tells us why she married John, but we still aren't sure what she could have seen in him; he's almost embarrassingly boyish. (Biel is actually a few months younger than Barnes, although from her sophistication you'd never know it.) Because of the comedy of the language and Elliott's light, eager pacing, the darker...
...John Scales, a first-year resident at the University of Florida who will begin his training in radiology this summer, says more sleep would enable him to better retain everything, "to consolidate some of the learning that happens on an almost daily basis," he explains. But he worries that more mandatory rest could mean missed educational opportunities. "More days off always sounds nice, but it distances us from what is going on in day-to-day patient care. A lot can change in 24 to 48 hours," he says...