Road to Avonlea aka ROAD TO MY HEART

I know most of us grew up watching Anne of Avonlea, but I fear too many of you likely missed out on the wonderful television series, Road to Avonlea.  I used to watch this show every week with my mom, it was our thing, and I have since rewatched it as an adult.  I swear if I had $200 to spare, I would buy the entire box set.  Luckily for you, you can get the disks from NetFlix if you have the service, and I do so recommend it.  The show is set in our beloved Avonlea, and lasts for seven seasons and a movie, and you will certainly recognize a few names and faces:

 

That’s right!  Marilla Cuthbert, Rachel Lynde, and Muriel Stacy are each in Road to Avonlea, played by the same actresses as in the Anne movies!  Also, Davy and Dora Keith, who are in the Anne books, are in Road to Avonlea as well.  Some other familiar faces with different names would be:

Mag Ruffman, who you may recognize as Alice Lawson, from Lawsons’ General Store, is transformed into the ever cheery and optimistic baby of the family, Olivia King.

Jacki Burroughs, who played the professional dramatist in Anne of Green Gables is a strict school mistress and head of the King family in Road to Avonlea.

Cedric Smith, who plays Reverend Allan in Anne of Green Gables takes on the role of the middle child, only son, and head of the King farm in Road to Avonlea.

There are in fact many more doubles in Road to Avonlea that you may spot, and you can find a complete list at Avonelea Vignettes, here.  I have chosen these three because, as you may have surmised, Road to Avonlea largely surrounds the lives and times of the King family.  Now, there was once a fourth King sibling, another girl, but alas, she has perished most tragically.  When her husband is thrown in jail for something scandalous, their only daughter, the spoiled and haughty Sarah Stanley is sent to live with her Aunt Hettie in Avonlea.  There, she must deal with her most tragical of circumstances, particularly—cousins.

Of course they all hate each other, and there’s tons of drama to be had.  There’s even a scene that was considered too racey for television at the time, which had to be cut out (it involves cracking an egg on someone’s head and is rather laughable by today’s standards—don’t worry, it’s on the DVD).  Felicity King is just the worst when you first meet her, but you know what?  I end up adoring this girl—the eldest of the King children.  Why?  Well, in no small part, because of Gus Pike.

Oh friends, let me tell you.  You think that Anne and Gilbert have one of the all time greatest slow burn romances?  They’ve got nothing on Felicity and Gus.  Okay, okay, so it’s very nearly the same type of story, but in Road to Avonlea you get 6 seasons and a movie to bite your nails over this pair!  Of course, they’re totally in love, and totally hate each other for years.  It’s fantastic!

Here’s some things you ought to know about Gus Pike:

• Mysterious past involving pirates and buried treasure.
• Lives in the lighthouse—very spooky and intriguing!
• A true seaman and wandering spirit.
• Unwavering devotion to Felicity.  Even when she’s outright cruel to him.
• Plays the fiddle…hot?
• Fantastic accent.

In short, Gus Pike has held a piece of my heart for the past 20 years, and probably always will.  I adore Road to Avonlea, the town, the drama, the people…it’s all so wonderful.  Okay, okay, at the beginning they put ridiculous make-up on Sarah Stanley because it’s 1990, and the picture is often terrible, but please look past that.  This show has a heart of gold, and I’m not even kidding when I say I love it so much just the credit sequence can bring tears to my eyes:

If you call yourself a lover of Avonlea, you must find a way to watch this show.  And when you do, please oh please let me know what you think.  You can find out more information about Road to Avonlea at the official website, here. 

In addition to the blogs and posts already linked, character images may be credited to Share TV’s Road to Avonlea and Yet Another Period Drama Blog, both of which have lovely posts and information about the show!

Thoughts on Young Adult: The Movie

Last night I decided to take an evening off reading and watch my current Netflix movies.  One of them was Young Adult staring Charlize Theron (the other was the American version of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo which I thought was very well done.  I’m super impressed with Roony Mara, and while it doesn’t top the original Swedish version in my mind, it’s well worth watching—if anything just check out the credit sequence).

When I was in high school and college, I used to watch a lot of independent movies.  Every once in a while, one of them is an absolute gem, but most of them?  Most of them have a pretty bleak outlook on life and humanity.  Young Adult could have made me feel worse about my life, but what did bother me the most, quite frankly, was that it was an embarrassment to young adult literature.  Charlize Theron is a rather despicable character, who shook off the dust of her home town in Minnesota and headed off to Minneapolis, which, for all the airs she puts on, may as well be Paris or Milan.  There, she’s made her career ghost writing a “wildly popular” YA series.  In reality, the series is being ended, and she’s currently penning the last book.  Shortly after being divorced, she receives a birth announcement via e-mail with a picture of her ex-boyfriend’s new baby.  She prints it out, stares at it obsessively, until she decides to pack her bags, head home, and win back the love of her life (aka wreck a perfectly happy home).

At one point during our watch, my boyfriend says “I imagine this is exactly how most young adult authors are in real life…only you know, less attractive.”  We quickly agreed that 99.9% of the world’s population is less attractive than Charlize Theron, but then I made him look at pics of authors like Maureen Johnson and admit she was cute while I also told him about how funny and wonderful she seemed as opposed to the heinous, tempestuous Peter Pan character that was Charlize Theron in Young Adult.  I bristled under this comment, and from this movie in general, because the thought that this is how ‘young adult’ can be portrayed to the world just degrades it and feeds into so many of those naïvely negative opinions out there.

The thing about her writing that I liked:  She drew inspiration from teens around her, and tried to write how these teens actually talked.

The thing about her writing that I didn’t like:  It was pretty much a vessel for her to relive her youth that she’s never left.  Her main character is very shallow, vapid, and pretty much a cardboard cut-out of her teen self.  I get the whole she never really grows up or gets over high school thing, and I think it’s great that they did this with a character who did get out of a small town and have a successful career—it proves that it’s not always townies who get stuck in high school, sometimes you can stay in your home town and move on with your life.  But still.  It paints a picture of young adult literature as equally shallow and vapid, and those adults of us who read it as unable to get over our own youth.  There have been all manner of discussions as of late as to what YA lit has to offer readers of all ages, and they’ve been good ones, so I won’t go on and on reiterating those facts here.  I will say that I don’t in any way believe that reading it means I need to grow up, or that it lacks depth (okay some of it does, but not what I usually read).

Have any of you sat down and watched Young Adult?  If so, what did you think?  I’m trying not to get too annoyed at the negative portrayal of the literature I love (and yes, I will continue to refer to it as literature despite those damn critics), I realize that this was an independent movie, and not really main stream.  It did, however, have some big names from the independent world involved (writer of Juno, director of Up In the Air) that are sure to draw a wider audience.  It’s not really worth getting all up in arms over this, but I am curious to see how other YA fans felt.  If you haven’t seen Young Adult, I’m not trying to discourage anyone from watching it.  It’s not a bad movie, but it is a pretty bleak one…

Suspicions Confirmed: Hugo > The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I was so excited to finally see the movie Hugo that I strategically timed my NetFlix return so that I would (hopefully, fingers crossed!) get in on the first round of Hugo recipients without having to face that dreaded very long wait after it won all those Oscars.  Success!  Hugo arrived in our mailbox on Wednesday, and we sat down to watch it Friday night...

And that’s when I experienced something so rare for a bibliophile I had to talk about it here.  I liked the movie better than the book.  I thought I might, I said when I reviewed The Invention of Hugo Cabret that I felt like cinema might be the better venue for a story about cinema, and it was!  Hugo was stunningly gorgeous, the colors were beautiful and rich in gold, brown, and steel hues that made the blues and greens and reds really stand out when they appeared.  The story was charming, I actually liked the ways that they changed the story (like lack of Hugo’s injury) better, and while the movie wasn’t as detailed as the book, I felt that there was more of an investment in the story.  

The movie wasn’t without its flaws.  I don’t like shots obviously built for 3D, but they weren’t rampant.  I was somewhat annoyed by the whole 'let's talk in British accents because this is a foreign location' thing when the movie took place in France. Also one of my complaints about The Invention of Hugo Cabret was the lack of character depth.  This didn’t really improve in Hugo, in fact, I actively disliked Asa Butterfield’s portrayal of Hugo Cabret, finding him disingenuous and whiny.  I didn’t particularly love Chloe Moretz in this role either, attempting to play the sweet little girl we all know she isn’t.  It didn’t really work for me, but it also wasn’t so glaring that it ruined the movie.  

You know what I did love about the cast?  People, Hugo was basically a Harry Potter minor character reunion!  Uncle Dursley, Narcissa Malfoy, Madame Maxime, and I did spend some time online after seeing the smush-faced Persian in Christopher Lee’s bookstore trying to determine if this was Crackerjacks, the cat who played Crookshanks. Alas, this could not be determined.

In the end, I’m putting Hugo in that very rare category of movies I prefer to books.  Let me know what you thought!  Did you enjoy Hugo more than The Invention of Hugo Cabret?