Bitter Pills, Breathing Spaces

And so the spoofed nursery rhyme speaks of a tale of five Austen soul sisters who were all Macfadyen-ed by the end of a 27-hour journey.


In my get-togethers with this circle of friends, the talk about having movie/TV series marathons was mentioned several times. And in one of those talks, Pride & Prejudice became one of the choices given its number of adaptations: from Laurence Olivier's version to this modern-day take.

When 2011 started, I thought that why not pursue a marathon and schedule it during one long holiday weekend. Given enough planning despite the surprising and odd holiday declaration, it happened and this became our line-up:

I came into this marathon knowing that I'm going to be absolutely sleep-deprived but throughly excited at the prospect of watching different adaptations with friends. As you may see from this twitter hashtag, we had tons of fun and fangirl squeals.

Among the three adaptations we watched, for me, the Colin Firth version stayed true to the book. It benefitted from the liberty of being presented as a 6-part mini-series thus every possible detail was covered and some new bits *coughthelakescenecough* were added. The most romantic was the Matthew Macfadyen version, hands-on, if only for the squeals we made for this particular scene in the movie, especially at the 3:45 mark:


That doesn't mean that the Laurence Olivier version didn't have any merits in my book, despite its WTF moment towards the end that sent the most hardcore Austen fans in the den screaming. I loved the campiness of its script! It was not short of wit but it managed to be funny and definitely quote-worthy. This is perhaps my favorite line from this version:


Towards the end of the marathon -- wherein we were re-watching P&P 2005 with commentary -- I mused of the fact that there were five of us in the den, much like there were five Bennet sisters. So I posed the thought as to who's who. I ended up being Jane Bennet since age became the main parameter. The longer I contemplate about the characteristics of each Bennet sister, I think it matched to a good extent as Jane was the one I could relate to the most.


Now that the Pride & Prejudice marathon was over, everyone in the den was excited for the prospect of a next one. There isn't a date yet but a line-up has been determined:

And we're attempting a feat greater than the previous one: the extended cuts of the movies perhaps even with commentary. So, let the journey to Middle Earth begin! ;)