To Poe or Not to Poe

The Pale Blue Eye is a historical murder mystery film that was released in theaters last month before appearing on Netflix, and stars Christian Bale as a retired police constable asked to investigate a mysterious suicide at West Point in 1830. I watched it mostly because I like old mysteries, and the story included a young Edgar Allen Poe, who is a cadet at the academy at the time (which is true, except he was also married in real life at that point.)

What appears to be a suicide turns out to be murder, which Constable Landor reveals after examining the body, and then the hunt for the murderer begins. Landor meets Poe and asks him to discreetly help with the investigation by gathering intel on the other cadets. Various leads seem to point to various characters, but gradually you get the feeling that it's some kind of conspiracy, with Satanic rites involved. By the time the real murderer is exposed in a somewhat ridiculous ritual sacrifice scene I was already suspicious, and rightly so. That's all I'll say so I don't spoil the whole film.

I'm on the fence about how I feel about this movie. I thought the acting started out very well, considering Christian Bale is not one of my favorite actors, and then took a turn in the wrong direction. While actor Harry Melling did a decent job depicting a young Poe he went over the top with an almost comical Southern accent (Poe was born in Boston but raised in Virginia.) Everyone in the film started out okay, but to me ended up struggling, if they were trying too hard to be early 19th century people. Gillian Anderson, an actor I do like, was just okay (and at times looked mildly exasperated with her role to me.) The screenwriter for this one (as well as the novelist who wrote the book) should both get a kick in the butt for what they did with the story.

On the plus side the cinematography was spot on, as was the brooding melancholy of the film. The language and the procedures are accurate to the era, too. This is pre-Civil War America, and you're right there with the costumes, settings and props. That's probably why I'm on the fence. If you could take the actors and the stupid final resolution (and it's really stupid) out of the movie, you have a haunting depiction of life in 1830.

If you're bored and have nothing to watch, and you're not a writer who becomes easily annoyed with tricksy screen writing, The Pale Blue Eye isn't a horrible choice. There is some violence, and graphic depiction of corpses, but it's fairly tame. Available now on Netflix.

Comments

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

Search This Blog