The Old Double N

In 2002, writer/director Douglas McGrath adapted Nicholas Nickleby to the screen. With an ensemble celebrity cast and pretty, unrealistic lighting, it's cosy viewing.

Charlie Hunnam plays Nicholas. It's funny seeing him in a role that isn't action oriented but to-day's tough guy ably played a fresh faced lad twenty two years ago. The best part of the film is when he's forced to work as a teacher in the boarding school run by the vicious Wackford Squeers, played with stalwart ruthlessness by Jim Broadbent. After that, the story settles into Dickens' notorious sentimentalities and improbable plot contrivances.

Christopher Plummer plays Nicholas' uncle and I appreciated the subtlety he brought to the role. Anne Hathaway is Madeline Bray and she is absolutely gorgeous. She's still pretty to-day but I'd forgotten what a knockout she was back then.

The unrealistic lighting was characteristic of '90s, early 2000s period films. I have to say it looks pretty but it's funny that not one interior shot expends the slightest effort to look candlelit.

X Sonnet #1854

Reflected blinks reveal religious knives.
Importance shrank before the useless weed.
The blessed spider's green for twenty lives.
Surpassing lizard ghosts requires speed.
No absence filled the penguin place below.
In double kind, the bottom snow was old.
On shaky men, the noodles now bestow.
Surrounding land just a little cold.
An apple grows beyond its store of mass.
Imagined sights and sounds were dim but strong.
Effusive stars would sing of frequent gas.
For how could manic tastes be ever wrong?
The vicious dust is burning, lacking thought.
The hidden sun is turning, waxing hot.