{"id":218,"date":"2005-10-24T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-24T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/wordpress\/?p=218"},"modified":"2010-01-10T15:44:35","modified_gmt":"2010-01-10T15:44:35","slug":"cock-and-bull-or-how-to-talk-youself-out-of-leaving-the-house-and-paying-for-a-movie-ticket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2005\/10\/cock-and-bull-or-how-to-talk-youself-out-of-leaving-the-house-and-paying-for-a-movie-ticket.html","title":{"rendered":"Cock and Bull, or how to talk youself out of leaving the house and paying for a movie ticket."},"content":{"rendered":"
Still juggling several long posts that I can’t be bothered finishing just now, and besides I’ve just found out that someone (Michael Winterbottom<\/a>) has made a movie based on the greatest novel ever written, Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman<\/a><\/em>. (Not to be confused with the blog<\/a> of the same name.) <\/div>\n
That said, I probably won’t go and see it. The last time I went to a cinema of my own volition was to watch Tank Girl<\/em> and I don’t think I’ve sufficiently recovered to show my face again around a ticket booth just yet. Besides, it’s one of those novels-they-said-could-never-be-filmed; worse, it’s one of those films-about-making-a-film. <\/div>\n
A lot of this smart-arsed japery can be sheeted home to Sterne* himself, who all but created the book-within-a-book genre and more stylistic tricks than the combined forces of the postmodernists have deconstructed. But what almost every would-be imitator neglects is that through all of its futile textual acrobatics, Sterne’s book paints the most compassionate, kind-hearted and life-affirming portrait of human imperfection.<\/div>\n
It’s hard to imagine how the movie could add up to more than a sequence of unconnected skits, although framing it in a story of the vanity of attempting a film adaptation could help this problem. Alternatively, it could end up like Sally Potter’s film of Orlando<\/em>, which was only any good in the bits which weren’t based on the book.<\/div>\n
Either way, it may be worth watching just for the prospect of Dylan Moran<\/a> reading the Curse of Ernulphus<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
* Not, to my knowledge, on the cover of Sergeant Pepper<\/a>. He did, however, get namedropped by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Who misspelled his name on the lyric sheet.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Still juggling several long posts that I can’t be bothered finishing just now, and besides I’ve just found out that someone (Michael Winterbottom) has made a movie based on the greatest novel ever written, Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. (Not to be confused with the blog of the same name.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3495,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}