Together Again ...

[Carol]

> > Carol, who needs to remember that "Sense and Sensibility" is on
'Masterpiece Theater" tonight (not the version with HP actors, though)
> >
> clcb58:
> 
> Actually, "Mr. Weasley" plays "Cousin John" in this version. He's
quite amusing.
>
Carol responds:

I noticed immediately that he was Sir John Middleton. (BTW, it's odd
that the Dashwood brother is also named John).

I thought that the young woman who plays Elinor sounded exactly like
Emma Thompson but was better suited to the role because she was closer
to the right age (but still not close enough). The girl who plays
Marianne is perfect (even though she's technicaly too old for the
part), but Willoughby, I thought, was miscast. He should be much
handsomer and at least five years younger. The actor who played
Colonel Brandon, though I hate to say it, was better suited to the
role than Alan Rickman--he looks the right age (though he was actually
forty-four at the time) and he lacks that slight lisp of Rickman's
that works for Snape because Rickman!Snape enunciates every word
slowly and clearly, but seems completely wrong for the energetic
thirty-five-year-old Brandon.

The film took a few liberties with the book (giving little Margaret a
lot more personality, for one), but overall the first episode was
reasonably faithful and very well done. I don't recall the cottage
being in such bad shape, though, or, for that matter, its being by the
sea. Maybe my memory is failing me!

And Willoughby didn't recite a passage from Byron in the book, that
much I'm sure of. Byron's first book published in his own name came
out in 1807 but the quoted passage (I wish I'd been able to record it
and play it back) was from a much later and much better known poem
that I recognized at the time but couldn't place. At any rate, he
didn't become famous until the publication of "Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage" in 1812. "Sense and Sensibility" was published in 1811,
but the original version, "Elinor and Marianne," was written in 1795,
when Byron was all of seven. (I did a quick check of an online text
and couldn't find them discussing poetry at all, but I'm pretty sure
that if they did discuss it, the poet would have been Gray or Cowper,
or some other poet associated with the cult of Sensibility rather than
Romanticism proper.)

Oh, dear. I've probably bored everyone to tears. But I just discovered
(through Steve bboyminn on OT) that Dan Radcliffe is a fan of Keats,
so I guess I got carried away with Romantic poetry and Jane Austen novels.

Anyway, it was fun seeing Mark Williams as Sir John even though I'd
never have thought of casting him in that role.

Carol, bringing the post back on topic at the end