Bonfires And Brollies

[poliphilo]

I had two goes at incinerating the huge pile of willow wood at the bottom of the lower field. The first time there was no wind and the flame burned steadily upwards and made a hole in the pile then stopped. The second time there was enough of a breeze to spread the flame around and the pile was reduced to ash- right down to the final twig. I love bonfires. They send me into a trance.

Last night, cashing in on the new movie about P.L. Travers and Walt Disney, the BBC gave us the documentary version, presented by Victoria Coren- who is now calling herself Coren-Mitchell.  I could have done without the dodgy green screen shots of Coren-Mitchell flying in on her umbrella but the content was interesting. P.L.Travers was an engagingly peculiar person with a steeliness that verged on the inhuman. To her credit she fought Walt to the last comma of the Mary Poppins script. She hated how he had to add sugar to everything- which is something I hate about him too. If she'd won the battle (which was never going to happen) Mary Poppins would have been a very different film- dark chocolate not milk chocolate. I've never read the books. I think I'd like them.

Comments

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

The books are dark - they're essentially about a broken man, trapped in a job he despises and with a family he can't relate to. I actually don't like the film, as I find the scene where Banks is humiliated by the board cronies painful to watch, and its embarrassing people find it funny.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about the film. It's full of faults but also rather wonderful. I'd like to grab hold of it and shake some of the sugar off, and get Dick Van Dyke a voice coach and replace the American robin with a proper English one. The sequences that combine live action with animation were cutting edge in their day but now look terribly clumsy.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

we used to have bonfires on the beach at the cottage. I was a teenager then, and on up into my 20's, but I loved them no matter if it was cold or hot outside. Everyone there would wander through at some point. Left over from our 'primal' days, maybe? There does seem to be some kind of pull from Somewhere Else.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The conquest of fire was one of our greatest and earliest triumphs as a species. I imagine we still harbour ancestral memories of a time when fire was Big Magic.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

I'd love to have a bonfire - but it would bring the police. I've seen the ads for the Disney film - it look's interesting. I wonder if they have the book at Audible?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Smokeless zone, eh?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I love the books - and while this may result in part from having read them at the right time, I'd still recommend them. They have the marks of their time, but they have some wonderful things in them, too.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to seek them out.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Waaah! LJ has just eaten about two hundred words about the Travers books and the film

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's so annoying! It happens to me all the time. Sometimes I remember to save before I post but more often I don't.