Word: novels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...character of Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor), our heroine. Rescued as a girl from her family's poverty by a wealthy uncle, Fanny moves to Mansfield Park, where she lives as a quasi-servant--constantly aware of her secondary status--for the duration of the story. In the novel, Fanny is quaintly moral, and pretty much chock-full of sugar and spice and everything nice. But Rozema has taken Fanny to new heights by giving her a boldness and sauciness which the director seems to fashion after Jane Austen herself--Austen in all her fierce humanity, her devastating...
...Victorian patriarch, dropping proper ultimatums right and left). But the new Mansfield Park, Rozema-style, takes the satire to a new level, mocking an entire era and bringing to the surface its deficiencies and ridiculousness. The criticism of the Antiguan slave trade in particular, less prominent in the novel, is quite visually brought to life in the film. By attempting to bring Austen herself into the movie and by transforming Austen's (questionable) implications into blatant innuendos, the director manages to make Jane Austen--well, raucous...
...series of modifications: The Crawfords, Austen's villains, are noticeably less distasteful and quite unabashedly sexual; in general, characters are more unguardedly flirtatious, witticisms a little sharper, plot changes less subtle; and crowning it all is the "sex scene". The infidelity discovered via implication in a letter in Austens novel becomes a visual, shocking debacle in the film, quite in character with the brash nature of the adaptation. Amazingly, the director has planned her story in a way that makes this acceptable by keeping with her more open, admittedly "extreme" tone throughout the movie, Rozema has us prepped for what...
...film, we're ready for the traditional, Austenian happy ending. Rozema has made us want it by putting us through a more turbid, uninhibited version of what is coldly reserved from the novel. Rozema has said that she thinks of Fanny Price as a "test" created by Austen to experiment with the reactions of those around her. Certainly Rozema has made Fanny and Mansfield itself into a test of her own. But can America handle Austen with a little modern spice...
...Tina Turner ditty had some longevity. But what in God's name does Tomorrow Never Dies mean? And that cacophony by Sheryl Crow? And to prove that it wasn't a fluke, now we get The World is Not Enough (it sounds like a Danielle Steel novel) with a boring title track by Garbage. Bring back Octopussy...Michael Mann is one of the finest directors around. He's particularly intriguing because he makes testosterone flicks that somehow play better to females than males. Check out The Last of the Mohicans, Heat and his latest, The Insider...The Backstreet Boys...