Colm Toibin’s novel Brooklyn provides the template for the movie version of Brooklyn. In 1952, a young Irish woman (played by the astonishing Saoirse Ronan) travels to the United States when she cannot find work at home. She leaves her widow mother and her older sister to seek her fortune in America. We get to see her life in a boarding house in Brooklyn, battling homesickness, working in a swanky department store, going to Night School to learn bookkeeping, while adjusting to American food and culture, new friends, and eventually romance with an Italian plumber. The metamorphosis of a mousy Irish girl into a confident woman lights up the screen. This is a quiet movie with few special effects. But, there’s plenty of good old-fashioned drama and great acting. GRADE: B+
After reading the novel, I liked the movie more than I originally did. The novel gave me more insight into her situation and it also made things a little less concrete. Very fine.
Patti, Diane, Katie, Patrick, and I all liked BROOKLYN. Patrick wants to read the novel. Rumors are that Nick Hornby “changed” the ending of the movie with Tobin’s blessing.
I definitely want to read the book and then see the movie. With that title, how can I not?
Jeff, you and Jackie will enjoy BROOKLYN. It’s an understated film with great characters.
It’s got a great cast. I sort of expected Oscar Isaac to be in it (He seems to be in everything this year) in place of Emory Cohen – at least at first glance that’s who I thought it was for a brief time. It’ll be a netflix one for me. I just hope Star Wars is still in the theaters when I get over this wretched cold.
Maggie, three of our friends and my sister in Arizona are all fighting colds. Up your Vitamin-C!
I’ve got a cold too, but it seems somewhat better today. We leave for Florida two weeks from tomorrow so I just need to hold out until then. If the forecast is right – big if, I know – after a couple of very cold days it is supposed to warm up again from the 10th to the 16th.
I still have to type in my info every day too. At least the phone remembers me so I just have to click on name and the rest comes up.
Jeff, I realize re-entering data is a hassle. But WORDPRESS hasn’t responded to our repeated queries on how to fix this problem. Patrick thinks their new, completely re-written WORDPRESS program will fix this. We just have to wait until they roll it out.
Seems the book is the way to go, but I doubt I’ll get to it.
By the way, Jeff, we’d hoped to catch a bit of the Buffett-Lewis show when watching Seacrest New Year Eve show, but they kept pushing it back (“and coming up soon,…”) until it was 10:45 here and the local stations break for the 11:00 news. We weren’t going to sit through that just for a maybe in that last half hour song and we were tired, and tired of the program, so that was it. That’s a problem with tape delay. Anyway, hope you had fun.
Maggie, sorry about that cold.
George, it’s really, really tiresome to have to retype my information in every time. Someone said theirs just pops in after a keystroke or two, but I have to type it all fully.
Rick, I’m sorry for the annoying data entry problem. WORDPRESS tech support is unresponsive to our emails. Patrick says that a completely new version of WORDPRESS in due in a few weeks. That might fix everything!
Oh oh. The new version will mean they no longer support my version of Safari, which is the newest version my iMac will use. I don’t want to buy a new computer just for that (don’t want to buy one at all, I like the one I have, but software and hardware upgrades don’t let us just use the tool we have. Bah. I may be able to go through Chrome (Firefox is a no go for me), or I’ll have to shut down the blog. Yes, it’s that serious.
I wish they would just stop the fucking upgrades (they think they know what I want better than I do – – WRONG!) and just leave it alone. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But no, not with tech. Double Bah.
And when I typed that about it being a hassle, Jeff’s comment wasn’t up yet, I wasn’t just copycating.
Rick, Patrick bought an iPad Pro for himself as a Christmas present. Maybe that might supplement your iMac. APPLE is very insidious with their upgrades. We found our iPad 1 wouldn’t work with AUDIBLE.com so we had to upgrade to an iPad 2. Katie has an iPad 3 and Patrick now has the iPad Pro. APPLE’s made a lot of money off of us (plus Diane, Patrick, and Katie all have iPhones).
Rick, they only showed one song – Margaritaville, obviously – and it was 12:15 our time when they cut to Seacrest’s introduction. So I doubt you’d have had it for some time. It was a good show. Barclays Center is a beautiful new venue and we had great seats, just above the floor at less than half the floor seat price. But we found the very high ceiling seemed to swallow some of the sound. I could hear fine but I’m sure the people way upstairs in the (relatively) cheap seats probably wouldn’t have said the same. Clearly it is an arena built for sports more than concerts.
I have not read the novel but I like watching such films. Thanks, George.
Prashant, BROOKLYN captures the immigrant experience. Excellent film!