A Love Letter to The Enchanted April

Dear Enchanted April,

I think the stars aligned for us to meet. First, I saw a flier for your play version, and the description sounded so lovely that your title remained on the surface of my mind. I never saw the play, but when I was in a bookstore that month, walking by the clearance wall, what book should be prominently displayed, half-off, but you? It didn't matter to me that you were filled with typos because the sale edition was published by one of those online companies that scans in out-of-copyright books and spits them out without proofreading. It only mattered that I found you.

You embody everything that is good about literature. You are filled with gut-busting comedy. Your main character, Lotty, is my existential hero. You make such prudent observations about people. Your character's lives are all transformed for the better.

I am so thankful that Elizabeth von Arnim wrote you, and that Mike Newell directed a film version of you in the '90s that finally came out on DVD this year. But truth be told, it's the book version of you that I like the best. The actors are great in the movie, but they just don't sound as wonderful as they do in my imagination, when I read your words.

Thank you so much for taking me to the coast of Italy for a month in the 1920s, just by reading your pages. You make me believe in change.

Love,
SewBissy

So Very Cheesy

It's time for some cheese. So far I've only acknowledged the stuff out there that avoids, for the most part, being corny. (The Singles Ward not included.) So I'd like to take a break now and acknowledge those works out there that are perhaps not high quality, but oh-so-good anyway.

• Center Stage--This movie about young dancers in a prestigious New York ballet company can be a little nauseating at times (namely the salsa dancing scene--"Your sweat is sweet!"), but the dancing is good. It's worth it for that alone. (Especially the jazz class scene and the year-end performance.) This movie came out when I was taking dance, and our teacher, after hearing many students rave about the movie, finally had to say, "Girls, I understand that the dancing is great, but that love story was awful." I guess that's just what happens when you get amazing dancers to try and act, too. Oh, and it has a soundtrack with Mandy Moore. I somehow have a weakness for Mandy Moore music. She just makes life sound fun. (While looking up the link on IMDb, I realized that a sequel, Center Stage: Turn It Up came out in 2008.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Father of the Bride (and Father of the Bride: Part II)--This is almost too good to be included on this list. I mean come on, it's Steve Martin and Diane Keaton. Still, since I have a hazy sense of embarrassment around expressing just how much I like this, I think it's eligible. This is one of those times when the sequel is as good as, if not better than, the original (although the original original, of course, is the one with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor).
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sleepless in Seattle--There's just something so comforting about Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in innocuous romantic comedies, and when they're in them together--even better. I'm looking at you, too, You've Got Mail.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• High School Musical 3: Senior Year--Why are you so good, High School Musical 3? Is it your song? Your dance? Your smiley Zac Efron? (I am forever endeared to the kid after my first exposure to him, playing an autistic boy in the TV movie Miracle Run.) I don't even enjoy the first two movies that much. This last one is just so...infectious in the best way. It makes me wish I'd gone to a singing, dancing high school.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Meg Cabot in general--This is the author of The Princess Diaries and many, many more novels for both young adults and adults. I've only read the Queen of Babble series, but I've seen the Princess movies (with Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews), and all these combine to make me a big Meg Cabot fan in general. The fact that I've included her on the list gives me pause, though--doesn't she deserve some real recognition? Chick lit gets a bad reputation, but unjustly so. Just because a book is written for a female audience, that automatically makes is seem shallow? Of course not! Here's a blog post by YA author Maureen Johnson that elaborates on this point.

This is actually just the beginning--I'm just too embarrassed to list more. I'll work up the nerve someday, though.

Dakota Skye

So I watched this movie yesterday, Dakota Skye. It was kind of fun. Maybe not high art, but definitely unique. The main character, Dakota, is a high schooler who can see lies. She calls it her "super power." No else knows about it, though. She just goes through life fairly miserably with her slightly cocky boyfriend and her nagging but well-meaning friends, seeing through every fib and falsehood. (Mind you, this doesn't make her stop lying.) Then one day someone new shows up in town, and he doesn't lie. Ever. And that's pretty refreshing, but it also means Dakota's got a lot of thinking to do.

I liked the way this film showed you Dakota's insight into lies. Every time someone tells a whopper, subtitles appear onscreen with the truth. There are two great scenes when Dakota's in history class, and for every statement the teacher makes about American history, there's a subtitle with what really happened. That would have been so helpful to have in school.

The concept behind this whole movie was intelligent. It brought to light how much lying is part of our social interactions--from saying that the embarrassing story you just told was only a joke to insisting that you're not angry with someone when you really are. It really made me put on my thinking cap. Well done.

An Abundance of Recommendations

It's been--hmm, months--since my last post. Not that anyone is reading this, which is perhaps why I went away. Of course, why would anyone be reading an unadvertised blog after three posts? But I'm posting again, because hey, someday people might read this, right? And then they'd go back and read old posts?

I didn't run out of uplifting material. No, I still read wonderful books and rent Netflix movies that I'd like to recommend. Let's see what I can think of off the top of my head as examples.

Books: Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, and Looking for Alaska by John Green. All these books had dark elements, but they weren't written in a way that glorified the darkness, and that I appreciated. My favorite of the three? I don't have one. The order they're listed in is the order I read them. Paper Towns has a great mystery component that keeps you turning the pages. An Abundance of Katherines is humorous--the main character spends his time coming up with a mathematical formula to explain why he's always been dumped by his girlfriends. Looking for Alaska is sad and vivid in its portrayal of boarding school life (something with which I have experience). John Green is definitely one of my new favorite authors. I heart deep young adult fiction. (I'm on a YA bender, apparently. Honestly, I've never outgrown the joys of young adult fiction. So fresh, so honest.)

Website: Vlog Brothers' You Tube Channel. This I found through John Green's website. He and his brother Hank Green set out to communicate every weekday without the written word for a year, and this is what it became. Video blogs back and forth, and they're hilarious. That year ended a while ago, but they're still at it just for the fun of it. Watching their old videos got me through days of lying on the couch feeling under the weather. I laughed out loud, all by myself in the room. I really don't know how to describe these at all, besides hilarious. Here's some of my favorites: July 18: Accio Deathly Hallows and Peanut Butter Face. This one's just interesting because haven't you always wondered how audiobooks are made?

Movies: The Singles Ward, The Singles 2nd Ward, and God's Army. I don't happen to be Mormon, nor have I ever been, nor do I ever plan to be. However, these three films were made by Mormons about Mormons. And you know what? It's really cool to see into their world. I rented the first one by accident--hazily noticed that the description of Singles Ward mentioned a Mormon character, but figured that was just the one character. And then the whole movie was about Latter-Day Saints doing Latter-Day stuff. It was a good movie, too. In a normal movie, many of the laughs come from people getting drunk and doing stupid stuff when they're drunk. The Mormons don't drink, though, nor do they even consume caffeine. The humor is tame, but good. I will say this: Singles Ward is cheesy. There are sound effects and the un-ironic wearing of a metallic silver shirt. But it's entertaining and all around fascinating to see how a whole world of people with whom I've had very little contact live their lives. So much so that I sought out the next two films knowing full well they were Mormon productions.

So listing examples took up some room. I didn't realize how much I had stored up in my head. Have fun reading or web surfing or watching. The world has good stuff in it. It's our job to find it and make more of it.