I love to nap in the afternoon. For me it’s what I look forward to on weekends, and a guilty pleasure on weekdays when I work from home. It seems I’m not alone. Kurt Kleiner has written an article about napping in the Toronto Star, and he describes it beautifully.
A nap distils the sweetness of a whole night’s sleep down to a few minutes. Ideally, it starts on a soft bed, in a dark room, with a warm blanket. At first your mind lingers on what you’ve done that day, and what you still need to do. Then your thoughts start to unravel a little, become less coherent, more dreamlike. You feel your breathing deepen, your body relax. You lose yourself; you’re asleep. After a few minutes you gradually become aware again of the bed, the room. You open your eyes, gather your thoughts, throw off the blankets. You’re a new person.
The article also discusses famous, intelligent people who napped, and notes new research that suggests that naps can be beneficial – even for well rested people.
There’s an article today in the New York Times that talks about Leonardo DiCaprio’s admirable accents in The Departed (a Boston accent) and Blood Diamond (“vaguely South African”). It compares him favorably to Meryl Streep’s ability to take on almost any accent.
WHILE no one was looking past his movie-star baby face, Leonardo DiCaprio began to morph into Meryl Streep — the Streep who turned up for every film with yet another odd accent. With a Boston accent, he gives one of his best performances as an undercover cop in Martin Scorsese’s current hit, “The Departed.” His accent is vaguely South African as a mercenary in Edward Zwick’s “Blood Diamond” (set to open Dec. 15), an Oscar-bait movie with a social conscience, about gun running and the diamond trade.
While I thought DiCaprio’s Boston accent was more than passable in The Departed, I couldn’t believe that his “vaguely South African” accent was praised, because it’s just that: vaguely South African. In fact, it was several minutes into the trailer before I worked out what his accent was supposed to be. The conversation I had with Solar as we watched the preview went something like this:
Me: That’s a terrible, terrible accent.
Solar: What accent is is supposed to be?
Me: South African.
Solar: Oh. I had no idea.
Me: That’s OK. Neither did I for the first few minutes.
Even more laughable was the favorable account of Meryl Streep’s ability to take on an accent. See, if you’re Australian, the biggest Australian accent joke out there is Streep’s effort in A Cry in the Dark/Evil Angels. Indeed, Meryl Streep crying “A dingo’s got my baby” in a terrible Australian accent is something almost every Australian heard, and laughed over. It’s entirely possible that Streep does a wonderful job on the various American accents (my ear isn’t quite so keen there), but she failed completely when she attempted an Australian accent.
Solar and I went to see Little Children last night. The theater was packed. This sort of surprised me, but I guess it had been a gloomy day without much opportunity to go out, and people were eager to get out of the house.
So what do I think about Little Children? I think it’s funny and well-acted and well written. The ending, though, I could have done without. The problem I had with the end of Little Children was very much the problem I have with the end of The Mermaid Chair. I’d really like characters who are in unhappy situtations to have one of two things happen to them. Either:
- They accept that change is hard, and, defeated, they stay in their situation.
- They make the change. It is hard, and messy, and initially worse than the initial situation, but ultimately an improvement.
This is real life. Instead, what happens in movies and novels is that the characters almost make the change, realize it is hard and that they are are terrified, and go back to their orginal unsatisfying lives, which, suddenly, are no longer unsatisfying (despite the characters having done nothing to make these lives more satisfying). Why would writers do this to their characters? And why would they do it to their readers? Is a little empowerment such a terrible thing?
