Skip to main content

Miss Potter (2006)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Miss Potter. Feature film. (2006, 92 mins) IMDB

...enchanting and charming...

M

ISS POTTER is a charming film about the life of Beatrix Potter--noted children's book author and illustrator.

It's the early 1900s in London, England. Potter lives an affluent and protected life with her wealthy parents. She loves animals, love to draw and paint. She also writes stories about her animals.

The early scenes show her making her first steps in the publishing world. The two older brothers who run a publishing firm don't think much of her book and give it to their younger, neophyte brother as a pet project. Little did they realize the book and many that followed would be best sellers.

The young brother is Norman Warne. The two fall in love but since Potter has sworn off marriage and the norms of Victorian England are restrictive, it takes a while for the love to blossom. When she agrees to marry him, her parents are against it. He's a tradesman and beneath her standing and the family's standing in society. Such was the way back then. The three reach an agreement. The family will go away for the summer and if after the summer, they still want to marry, they can do so. Day after day Potter and her fiancé exchange letters until his letters stop. It's not that he's fallen out of love, but that he has become ill. When Potter races back to London to be with him, she's too late. The illness took his life.

That's not how a Hollywood movie is supposed to go, but this film is a biographical and these are the facts. Her first love died before they could marry.

As unmarried woman she has lived her entire life with her parents, but with the wealth from her book sales and desire to live in the country, she buys a farm and moves from London. She continues to draw and paint and write new children's books, but develops an interest in conserving farm land and nature and buys up property.

It's during the property buying that she reconnects with a childhood friend, Mr. Heelis--a country lawyer. Eventually they marry.

I enjoyed the movie. The performances by all the actors were strong--even the small roles.

I also enjoyed the animation moments were Potter's drawings of Peter Rabbit come to life on screen. It's been done before but it was fun to watch.

Posted 2009/04/25 at 19h42ET in Movie Commentary.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Please, Please, Please, No More

Saturday, October 8, 2011 ... what is the best way to start your novel ... C ount them. One. Two. I downloaded two thriller e-books from amazon.com, both published by the author, and they both started the same way: the character waking up and going about some morning ritual. Both books were in the top 100 bestsellers of Mystery & Thrillers Fiction. Both had many positive reviews. Those facts seemed encouraging, but once I read the opening scene, I stopped. I did not continue. But James that seems harsh? Perhaps, yes, but the writer is sending a signal with such an opening. It says, I have more to learn about writing thrillers for today’s audience. Why do I say that? Because a waking-up scene is mundane. It’s ordinary. It happens to us everyday. We don’t read thrillers for the mundane and ordinary. We read them for the extraordinary. We read them to live vicariously through the characters. We read them to be entertained. There is nothing in those waking-up scenes th...
2 comments
Read more

Analysis of Amazon E-book Fiction Bestsellers (Week #1)

Sunday, October 30, 2011 ... trying to make sense of the amazon bestsellers and pricing for e-books ... E ach hour Amazon updates its bestsellers lists. I have taken a daily snapshot of the top 20 bestsellers in the e-book fiction list for the past week. See here . What can be learnt from these data? 1. 4 out 5 of the bestsellers are from print or traditional authors. Most are brand-named authors who dominate the print bestsellers. 2. Almost all of the authors have multiple titles to their credit. The author of The Help is a notable exception. 3. The e-book prices of indie authors are substantially lower than print authors. For the most part, their titles are priced at $0.99. 4. The books on the list fall into four categories: (i) pre-release from brand-named authors, (ii) new or recently released titles (iii) long-term bestsellers (greater than one year), (iv) backlist titles. Indie authors fall into (ii) and (iv). 5. The indie authors includes authors who ...
2 comments
Read more

Checked Off

Sunday, April 11, 2010 ... one To Do is off the list ... I recently completed a task that was completely irrational. It was a fixture on my To-Do list because I always put it off. This week I decided to change that. I dug through my files of sketches and drawings and scanned them into my computer. A simple concept, sure, but tedious and time consuming. I suggest wearing latex gloves or buying hand lotion, but maybe that's a personal choice...Anyway, I now have a folder with 1.2 GBs of JPEG and PSD files. Here's an example from 1992. Right, where's that To-Do list? I want to sketch a line on it. Posted 2010/04/11 at 13h54ET in JamesPiper.com.
Post a Comment
Read more