Zelda Zelda Zelda - TTLG Forums

Kolya on 6/2/2017 at 00:06

There's an Amazon series about Zelda Fitzgerald by and with Christina Ricci ((https://www.amazon.com/Z-Beginning-Everything-Season-1/dp/B017APVGL4) Z: The Beginning of Everything) and there's a movie in the making with Scarlett Johansson ("The Beautiful and the Damned") and a Ron Howard film with Jennifer Lawrence ("Zelda").

Sooo, is anyone watching the series? Is there a chance it or any of the movies will match Woody Allen’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXxw6tpM970) Midnight in Paris? And why are people making such a fuss about F. Scott taking lines from her letters/diaries, when she wrote (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-iceberg-a-story-by-zelda-fitzgerald) like this while her husband wrote (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/06/thank-you-for-the-light) like that?

(http://i.imgur.com/6X04GLh.jpg) Internet friendly picture of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald holding a cat

demagogue on 6/2/2017 at 12:00

I found midnight in Paris too gimmicky to believe it was really about these characters. The movie Genius about Tom Wolfe (the 1930s one, not the 1980s one) evoked that era and crowd for me better, and the Fitzgeralds play a notable role in it.

I guess the lost generation is coming back into vogue since we're coming up on the century mark. The Interwar period really had some of the best art and ideas going on in Europe and to a lesser extent the US.

Thirith on 6/2/2017 at 13:20

God, I disliked Midnight in Paris, finding it the smug, trite Woody Allen equivalent of a Paulo Coelho novel, all facile-dressing-up-as-simple-but-deep. I know lots of people like or even love it, but it made me angry.

Aja on 6/2/2017 at 15:10

Midnight in Paris was delightful, I thought. It wasn't deep, no, but it had a great cast, cinematography, and music.

Harvester on 6/2/2017 at 15:19

I liked it too, as an atmospheric piece. Wasn't profound in any way, but I don't know if it was really trying to be.

Thirith on 6/2/2017 at 15:45

Quote Posted by Harvester

I liked it too, as an atmospheric piece. Wasn't profound in any way, but I don't know if it was really trying to be.

I liked the atmosphere too, but as it went on, it definitely had a few moments where it was spelling out a lesson to be learnt from all of this, and those I found unbearable.

heywood on 6/2/2017 at 18:59

Quote Posted by demagogue

I guess the lost generation is coming back into vogue since we're coming up on the century mark. The Interwar period really had some of the best art and ideas going on in Europe and to a lesser extent the US.

Yeah, we’re revisiting a lot of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Modernism has come back to dominate architecture and design and visual arts. And I am happy for that. I am also happy that the more utopian/authoritarian aspects of high modernism have not come back with it. Also, urbanism and city building is back. Some things I’m not so happy about though: mass migration for economic reasons, rapid gentrification in many cities, extreme accumulation of wealth, wage slavery, nationalist movements. And I’m still waiting for the return of the progressive movement.

henke on 6/2/2017 at 19:17

Dema and Thirith, do you guys like Woody Allen movies in general? I liked Midnight in Paris a lot, for the same reason I like most Woody Allen movies. They have this delightful laid-back quality to them. Everything is very low stakes and the characters just kinda amble through the movie. No huge obstacles, at least none that will leave lasting scars. It's just one smooth ride from beginning to end.

What lessons did it spell out? That some people wish they'd lived in an earlier time and that no matter where they are, the current time just isn't good enough? Ok. I didn't find that annoying. Though perhaps that's because I weren't familiar with that idea beforehand. I've never had any desire to live in an earlier age. The current time is the best time!* We got to go from landlines to smartphones. From Commodore 64 to this amazing machine I'm typing this on right now. Movies, music and videogames have never been better! Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now...**

*at least from the perspective of a privileged, cis-gendered, straight, white, well-off guy with an ocean separating him from Trump.

**I'm going to be dropping Hamilton references regularly from now on. I expect you all to keep up.

PigLick on 6/2/2017 at 23:29

pfft the C64 was the pinnacle of mans achievement its all gone downhill since then

Kolya on 6/2/2017 at 23:55

If you were born a few years after WW2 you were at the right age to see Rock'n'Roll develop. In the 70s you would have taken a lot of drugs. In the 80s you would have made a career. And in the 90s you would have gone to all those revival concerts. You still would have seen landlines turn into smartphones. Maybe that would have been your career. And you could die now (or better in the early 2000s), knowing that you've seen the best and it's all going to go down hill for a looong long time. Did you really need to see the last 17 years? What do you expect to happen in the next few years?
I'm personally doing fine, great even. But from an objective standpoint (as much as that's possible) I don't think this is the best time to be alive. However it could be much worse. 1914-1945 certainly sucked a lot more, with only a short intermission. And no one in their right mind would want to live before that. So basically it's second best. :)