A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I have to admit I’m NOT a sports person. To me unless you’re actually playing the sport, or one of your close friends or relatives is in the game, then watching sports events is about as exciting as watching paint dry. There’s one exception — The Super Bowl — and that’s because of the commercials.

Today I found this list of the Ten Most Memorable Super Bowl Ads. They have some of the ones I consider memorable: The Apple 1984 ad, the Go-Daddy ad, and the Zeroxing Monk.

However, they didn’t list my personal favorite — EDS’s ad on Herding Cats.
Perhaps the reason I like this commercial so much is that for years as a software developer/analyst, help desk support, and all round Jill-of-all-techie-trades, I felt like I was herding cats — big cats, big mutant cats — but cats worth the trouble. So while others may have looked forward to the game, I’m looking forward to the commercials — and I can wait until after the game when they come out on the Internet. Why suffer through that drying paint just to see some great commercials?

Sunday, Feb 3rd saw the airing of Miss Austen Regrets as part of the Masterpiece Theater’s Complete Jane Austen series. This is one that I’ve never seen before in any media so I have nothing to compare or contrast it to. It’s based on the correspondence of Jane Austen and while I’ve had “read her letters” on my list of things to do before I die — I haven’t gotten to it. The closest I’ve come is the page of famous quotes from Jane Austen (or quotes that should be famous) that I read at the Republic of Pemberly (a site every Jane Austen fan should visit — at least once so you know what you’re missing).

Miss Austen Regrets gives us a glimpse into the life and times of Jane Austen. The movie is framed with Fanny Austen coming to her Aunt Jane and wanting her to help her make a decision about a potential suitor. Using this frame, the viewers are shown a Jane Austen, nearly forty, single, living with her sister and mother in a cottage owned by one of her brothers. In asides, we see Jane concerned with her writing, her lack of funds, her worry about her sister and mother, their possible loss of their home if their brother loses a law suit, and the decisions she’s made in her life.

The acting is fabulously nuanced. We see Jane hurt but, with a deep breath and turning a smile, she carries on as a witty conversationalist and flirt. The small gestures that show that the surface may not be a true reading of the inner soul. But then that is the heart of Jane Austen’s novels, the public social faces against the private feelings that are held in check and controlled — always the smooth facade presented to others.

Maybe it’s because it’s the first time I’ve seen this movie — but the tears flowed freely for some parts. Partly at the loss of such a writer and partly at the knowledge that today she could be treated and live so much longer. What would she have written with more years? Other parts made me so angry at the place of women in her time — unable to speak with her publisher on her own behalf, unable to ask for more money for her works. Today, since most of us have read her books and all are still in print, it’s hard to believe that we might never have had them at all if not for her brother representing her.

We’ve come a long way as women and it is sometimes difficult to remember what life was life then. She died in 1817 and yet her characters and her works live on. Perhaps there were some regrets but since most of her correspondence was destroyed, much of what we know of the inner Jane is conjecture and hopeful guessing. Miss Austen Regrets is definitely worth viewing and reviewing. I hope to be able to add it to my rainy day collection of movies — you know the ones that you watch with a box of tissues, a cup of tea, and a lonely heart yearning for more…

A bit late with this, but I did manage to see Sunday’s installment of The Complete Jane Austen — Mansfield Park. The previous version of Mansfield Park that I’d seen was directed by Patricia Rozema and starred Hannah Taylor-Gordon (DVD cover pictured to the left). While that one was indeed a nice movie, it didn’t have the flavor of Austen and had been considerably modernized for feminine equality and sensibilities. Unfortunately, Jane Austen wrote for her times not ours and while many of her women are strong characters, they acted within the bounds of class and society in which they found themselves.

The Masterpiece Theatre version directed by Iain B. MacDonald was much closer to the heart of Jane Austen’s novel. I read the novel several years ago, and while I occasionally reread Austen (her books are some of my comfort reading), I haven’t reread Mansfield Park. Fanny Price is sent at a young age to live with relatives as her family can no longer handle all their children. She therefore has a precarious position — neither one of them or a stranger. Fanny manages to grow up without making waves and secretly in love with her cousin Edmund. Life goes on, Fanny remains in the background and then the Crawfords visit. Mary Crawford and her brother are on a par socially with the Bertrams but they’re schemers and out for mischief. This is only one of the plot threads. The movie, not having the time to deal with the full texture of the novel extracts only this limited storyline and uses that for the movie. While it’s satisfying for what it is, it does make me wish for a fully coverage of the novel with all it’s intrigue and plot twists intact.

So, once again a miss but only because of time constraints, at least the characters acted as one would expect from the book (its time and social milieu intact). Fanny was much more the Fanny of Jane Austen than in previous versions so that’s a win. So, enjoyable but forget what you know of the book and just enjoy an interesting movie, well done but not quite Mansfield Park.